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174Semantics of Knowledge “a positio”Etica E Politica 11 (1): 427-437. 2009.This paper challenges the standard a priori/a posteriori distinction by looking at statements in which comprehension requires more that merely passive awareness of objects and their properties. A proposal is made to add to the traditional categories of knowledge, the “a positio,” characterized by active, intentional, and collective involvement of language users in the existence and nature of objects of reference needed for the truth of statements about various kinds of artifacts, broadly constru…Read more
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80Social intentions: Aggregate, collective, and generalPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 26 (1): 61-76. 1996.The literature on collective action largely ignores the constraints that moral principle places on action-prompting intentions. Here I suggest that neither individualism nor holism can account for the generality of intentional contents demanded by universalizability principles, respect for persons, or proactive altruism. Utilitarian and communitarian ethics are criticized for nominalism with respect to social intentions. The failure of individualism and holism as grounds for moral theory is conf…Read more
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75Brian Epstein, The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 36 (3): 103-108. 2016.In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein proposes a bold new systematic strategy for developing social ontology. He explores the history and current state of the art and provides pointed critiques of leading theories in the field. His framework, incompassing frames that provide principles for grounding social facts, is developed in some detail across a variety of social practices and applied to revealing real world as well as hyporthetical examples. If Epstein's account holds, it should provide new direct…Read more
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54Parmenides' Paradox: Negative Reference and Negative ExistentialsReview of Metaphysics 33 (4). 1980.IN THE beginning Parmenides sought to deny the void. But he found himself trapped by his language and his thought into admitting what he sought to deny. Wisely, he counseled others to avoid the whole region in which the problem arises, lest they too be unwarily ensnared. Plato, being less easily intimidated and grasping for the first time the urgency of the paradox, unearthed each snare in turn until he felt he had found a safe path through the forbidden terrain in a new conception of being and …Read more
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48The Permanent Heartland of SubjectivityIdealistic Studies 25 (3): 221-229. 1995.One aim of that type of transcendental argument known to us as the cogito is to reveal a self about which there can be no contention, neither about its existence nor its nature. Serious doubts are, of course, perennial over whether there is any such thing as the self, if that is meant to imply that all selves have some essence or structure in common, and whether selves are best understood in terms of their intrinsic nature or external influences. Here is a dialectic that tosses us to and fro bet…Read more
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45The Morality of Groups: Collective Responsibility, Group-Based Harm, and Corporate Rights (review)Noûs 24 (3): 497-500. 1990.
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44Piper on Respect for Personal Autonomy and Prudential ValueSouthwest Philosophy Review 25 (2): 63-67. 2009.
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41Does Strawson’s “Reconciliation” Apply to Groups?Southwest Philosophy Review 28 (1): 135-142. 2012.
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29Commentary on Scott Aikin’s “Modest (but not Self-Effacing) Transcendental Arguments”Southwest Philosophy Review 31 (2): 11-14. 2015.
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26Commentary on Paul Gowder: “Institutional Values, or How to Say What Democracy Is”Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (2): 71-74. 2014.
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21Induction, Probability and Skepticism (review)Review of Metaphysics 46 (2): 394-396. 1992.Pyrrho of Elis followed Alexander into the Indus Valley where he contracted the skepticism which has ever since goaded Western thought. In this masterful study of the limits of human knowledge, D. P. Chattopadhyaya, one of India's brightest philosophical lights, revitalizes the westward flow of skepticism by putting our major epistemologies and philosophies of science to the test of his "anthropological rationalism". Often echoing Western pragmatists as well as Indians like Nägärjuna and Samkara…Read more
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18Simplicity: A Meta-Metaphysics by Craig Dilworth (review)Review of Metaphysics 68 (3): 649-651. 2015.
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11Weaving: An Analysis of the Constitution of ObjectsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1991.In this moderate realist account of the whole range of issues facing contemporary analytic philosophy, J. K. Swindler aims to fill the gap in the literature between extreme realism and extreme nominalism. He discusses such fundamental concepts as existence, property, universality, individual, and necessity; analyzes the paradoxes of negative existentials and the substitutivity of co-referential terms; and defends objectivity in philosophy. The study moves through three phases: first, an argument…Read more
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5Fathering for FreedomIn Fritz Allhoff, Lon S. Nease & Michael W. Austin (eds.), Fatherhood ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010-09-24.This chapter contains sections titled: Why a Philosophy of Fatherhood? Role Responsibilities Autonomy Autonomy and Fatherhood Conclusion Notes.
Normal, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Meta-Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |