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352The direct contextual realism theory of perceptionJournal of Speculative Philosophy 17 (4): 245-258. 2003.
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100Larry Hickman, Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 45 (1): 109-114. 2009.
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93Dewey's empirical theory of knowledge and realityVanderbilt University Press. 2000.While previous studies of Dewey's work have taken either a historical or topical focus, Shook offers an innovative, organic approach to understanding Dewey and eloquently shows that Dewey's instrumentalism grew seamlessly out of his idealism. He argues that most current scholarship operates under a mistaken impression of Dewey's early philosophical positions.
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85Varieties of Twentieth Century American NaturalismThe Pluralist 6 (2): 1-17. 2011.Naturalism dominated twentieth century American philosophy.1 Naturalism is a philosophical worldview that relies upon experience, reason, and especially science for developing an understanding of reality. Naturalism demands that these three modes of understanding together shall control our notion of reality. Varieties of naturalism emerge because the many essential factors of experience, reason, and science can be coherently related in numerous ways. All naturalisms demand that experience, reaso…Read more
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78Comparative political philosophy: Categorizing political philosophies using twelve archetypesMetaphilosophy 40 (5): 633-655. 2009.Abstract: Comparative political philosophy can be stimulated by imposing a categorization scheme on possible varieties of political philosophies. This article develops a categorization scheme using four essential features of political philosophies, resulting in twelve archetypal political philosophies. The four essential features selected are a political philosophy's views concerning human nature, the proper function of morality, the best form of society, and the highest responsibility of citize…Read more
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68Peirce's pragmatic theology and stoic religious ethics1Journal of Religious Ethics 39 (2): 344-363. 2011.Charles S. Peirce believed that his pragmatic philosophy could reconcile religion and science and that this reconciliation involves a religious ethics creating a real community with the cosmos and God. After some rival pragmatic approaches to God and religious belief inconsistent with Peirce's philosophy are set aside, his metaphysical plan for a reconciliation of religion and science is outlined. A panentheistic God makes the best match with his desired conclusions from the Neglected Argument f…Read more
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66A Companion to Pragmatism (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2006._A Companion to Pragmatism,_ comprised of 38 newly commissioned essays, provides comprehensive coverage of one of the most vibrant and exciting fields of philosophy today. Unique in depth and coverage of classical figures and their philosophies as well as pragmatism as a living force in philosophy. Chapters include discussions on philosophers such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and Hilary Putnam
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66Peter Hare on the philosophy of curt John DucasseTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 46 (1): 47-52. 2010.Peter Hare published two books about philosophy, both co-authored with his colleague Edward Madden. The first was Evil and the Problem of God, while the second was titled Causing, Perceiving and Believing: An Examination of the Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel), published in 97 . Hare's choice of Ducasse for extended study tells us a great deal about Hare's own interests. Ducasse was a confessedly analytic philosopher who advocated several views extending classical Amer…Read more
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63Rationalist atheologyInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78 (3): 329-348. 2015.Atheology, accurately defined by Alvin Plantinga, offers reasons why god’s existence is implausible. Skeptically reasoning that theological arguments for god fail to make their case is one way of leaving supernaturalism in an implausible condition. This ‘rationalist’ atheology appeals to logical standards to point out fallacies and other sorts of inferential gaps. Beyond that methodological marker, few shared tactics characterize atheists and agnostics stalking theological targets. If unbelief b…Read more
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60DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded…Read more
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59This book raises many moral, legal, social, and political, questions related to possible development, in the near future, of an artificial womb for human use. Is ectogenesis ever morally permissible? If so, under what circumstances? Will ectogenesis enhance or diminish women's reproductive rights and/or their economic opportunities? These are some of the difficult and crucial questions this anthology addresses and attempts to answer.
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57Neuroethics and the Possible Types of Moral EnhancementAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (4): 3-14. 2012.Techniques for achieving moral enhancement will modify brain processes to produce what is alleged to be more moral conduct. Neurophilosophy and neuroethics must ponder what “moral enhancement” could possibly be, if possible at all. Objections to the very possibility of moral enhancement, raised from various philosophical and neuroscientific standpoints, fail to justify skepticism, but they do place serious constraints on the kinds of efficacious moral enhancers. While there won't be a “morality …Read more
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57God's Justified Knowledge and the Hard-Soft Fact DistinctionThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 8 69-73. 2006.The distinction between hard and soft facts has been used by compatibilists to argue that God's divine foreknowledge is not incompatible with human free will. The debate over this distinction has ignored the question of the justification of divine knowledge. I argue that the distinction between hard and soft facts is illusory because the existence of soft facts presupposes that justification exists. Moreover, if the hard fact /soft fact distinction collapses, then God justifiably knows all futur…Read more
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52A principled and cosmopolitan neuroethics: considerations for international relevancePhilosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 9 1. 2014.Neuroethics applies cognitive neuroscience for prescribing alterations to conceptions of self and society, and for prescriptively judging the ethical applications of neurotechnologies. Plentiful normative premises are available to ground such prescriptivity, however prescriptive neuroethics may remain fragmented by social conventions, cultural ideologies, and ethical theories. Herein we offer that an objectively principled neuroethics for international relevance requires a new meta-ethics: under…Read more
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52Knowledge and Inquiry (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 37 (108): 47-49. 2009.
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46Abduction, Complex Inferences, and Emergent Heuristics of Scientific InquiryAxiomathes 26 (2): 157-186. 2016.The roles of abductive inference in dynamic heuristics allows scientific methodologies to test novel explanations for the world’s ways. Deliberate reasoning often follows abductive patterns, as well as patterns dominated by deduction and induction, but complex mixtures of these three modes of inference are crucial for scientific explanation. All possible mixed inferences are formulated and categorized using a novel typology and nomenclature. Twenty five possible combinations among abduction, ind…Read more
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46It's only natural: Humanism's higher purpose: Shook it's only natural: Humanism's higher purposeThink 9 (24): 7-11. 2010.It's only natural to wonder about the higher purposes in one's life. Religious people sometimes argue that because they discover and enjoy a higher purpose to life, then religious beliefs appear quite natural and reasonable. This argument can be turned around, to make humanism look unnatural and unreasonable, if humanism denies any higher purpose to life. Either way, humanism seems inhumanly cold towards the very notion of ‘higher purpose’, but is this matter really so clear-cut and simple? Reli…Read more
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45Erratum to: A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neurosciencePhilosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 12 2. 2017.Background As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; ne…Read more
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44Advancing neuroscience on the 21st century world stage: The need for - and structure of - an internationally-relevant neuroethicsEthics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine. forthcoming.
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42Neuropragmatism, knowledge, and pragmatic naturalismHuman Affairs 23 (4): 576-593. 2013.Neuropragmatism is a research program taking sciences about cognitive development and learning methods most seriously, in order to reevaluate and reformulate philosophical issues. Knowledge, consciousness, and reason are among the crucial philosophical issues directly affected. Pragmatism in general has allied with the science-affirming philosophy of naturalism. Naturalism is perennially tested by challenges questioning its ability to accommodate and account for knowledge, consciousness, and rea…Read more
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42My Brain Made Me Moral: Moral Performance Enhancement for RealistsNeuroethics 9 (3): 199-211. 2016.How should ethics help decide the morality of enhancing morality? The idea of morally enhancing the human brain quickly emerged when the promise of cognitive enhancement in general began to seem realizable. However, on reflection, achieving moral enhancement must be limited by the practical challenges to any sort of cognitive modification, along with obstacles particular to morality’s bases in social cognition. The objectivity offered by the brain sciences cannot ensure the technological achieve…Read more
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40John Dewey's philosophy of spirit, with the 1897 lecture on HegelFordham University Press. 2010.This book shows that, far from repudiating Hegel, Dewey's entire pragmatic philosophy is premised on a "philosophy of spirit" inspired by Hegel's project.
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37Philosophy of religion and two types of atheologyInternational Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76 (1): 1-19. 2015.Atheism is skeptical towards gods, and atheology advances philosophical positions defending the reasonableness of that rejection. The history of philosophy encompasses many unorthodox and irreligious movements of thought, and these varieties of unbelief deserve more exegesis and analysis than presently available. Going back to philosophy’s origins, two primary types of atheology have dominated the advancement of atheism, yet they have not cooperated very well. Materialist philosophies assemble c…Read more
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37Abduction in Cognition and Action: Logical Reasoning, Scientific Inquiry, and Social Practice (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2021.This book gathers together novel essays on the state-of-the-art research into the logic and practice of abduction. In many ways, abduction has become established and essential to several fields, such as logic, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, philosophy of science, and methodology. In recent years this interest in abduction’s many aspects and functions has accelerated. There are evidently several different interpretations and uses for abduction. Many fundamental questions on abduction…Read more
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36Neuroethics beyond NormalCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25 (1): 121-140. 2016.Abstract:An integrated and principled neuroethics offers ethical guidelines able to transcend conventional and medical reliance on normality standards. Elsewhere we have proposed four principles for wise guidance on human transformations. Principles like these are already urgently needed, as bio- and cyberenhancements are rapidly emerging. Context matters. Neither “treatments” nor “enhancements” are objectively identifiable apart from performance expectations, social contexts, and civic orders. …Read more
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36Paul Kurtz, Atheology, and Secular HumanismEssays in the Philosophy of Humanism 21 (2): 111-116. 2013.Paul Kurtz will be long remembered as the late twentieth century’s pre-eminent philosophical defender of freethinking rationalism and skepticism, the scientific worldview to replace superstition and religion, the healthy ethics of humanism, and democracy’s foundation in secularism. Reason, science, ethics, and civics – Kurtz repeatedly cycled through these affirmative agendas, not only to relegate religion to humanity’s ignorant past, but mainly to indicate the direction of humanity’s better fut…Read more
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36A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neurosciencePhilosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 2017 12:1 12 (1): 1. 2017.As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neuroethics a…Read more
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35Dewey's Ethical Justification for Public Deliberation DemocracyEducation and Culture 29 (1): 3-26. 2013.John Dewey developed sophisticated theories for a liberal civil society and a deliberative democracy. These theories have recently enjoyed renewed attention, discussion, and practical application.1 However, no consensus on Dewey's primary theoretical strategies has yet emerged.2 What precisely was Dewey's justification for democracy and its superiority over other ways of life and forms of government? This essay explains how Dewey attempted to formulate a philosophical justification for democracy…Read more
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35A four-part working bibliography of neuroethics: Part 4 - Ethical issues in clinical and social applications of neurosciencePhilosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine 12 1. 2017.BackgroundAs a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neu…Read more
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33God’s Divinely Justified Knowledge is Incompatible with Human Free WillForum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 15 (1): 141-159. 2010.A new version of the incompatibilist argument is developed. Knowledge is justified true belief. If God’s divine knowledge must be justified knowledge, then humans cannot have the “alternative possibilities” type of free will. This incompatibilist argument is immunized against the application of the hard-soft fact distinction. If divine knowledge is justified, then the only kind of facts that God can know are hard facts, permitting this incompatibilist argument to succeed.
Buffalo, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
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Pragmatism |
Neuroethics |
Moral Psychology |
Naturalism |
General Philosophy of Science |
History of Science |
Philosophy of Religion |
History of Western Philosophy |