•  18
    A Buddhist approach to moral knowledge without god
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1-16. forthcoming.
    Noah McKay provides a novel argument for theism over naturalism. The argument is novel because it connects metaphysical issues to issues regarding moral epistemology. The connection concerns the power of theism and naturalism, respectively, to explain the human capacity to obtain correct beliefs about the domain of morality. The gist of McKay’s argument is that theism provides a much more plausible account of this capacity than naturalism. The reason for this superiority, according to McKay, is …Read more
  •  9
    Standard views about metaphysical structure presume that if metaphysical structure is hierarchical, any priority ordering of individuals is rigid or situationally invariant. This paper challenges this presumption. The challenge derives from an effort to interpret the kind of metaphysical structure implicit in writings central to the Huayan tradition of Chinese Buddhism. The Huayan tradition views reality as a realm of thoroughgoing interdependence. Close attention to primary sources indicates th…Read more
  •  6
    Aang is unwilling to kill Ozai in order to secure peace. The Lion Turtle's remark indicates that Aang's alternative strategy involves bending Ozai's energy, and that Aang is victorious because his spirit is unbendable while Ozai's presumably is bendable. Buddhist teachings identify five fundamental hindrances that foster duhkha. Aang struggles with all five hindrances, but he ultimately overcomes them and has a true heart. The first hindrance concerns sensory desire, longing for pleasure through…Read more
  •  475
    Idealizing, Abstracting, and Semantic Dispositionalism
    European Journal of Philosophy 20 (1): 166-178. 2010.
    Abstract: According to certain dispositional accounts of meaning, an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an idealized version of this agent has in optimal conditions. We argue that such attempts cannot properly fix meaning. For even if there is a way to determine which features of an agent should be idealized without appealing to what the agent means, there is no non-circular way to determine how those features should be idealized. We sketch an alternative dispositional accoun…Read more
  •  7
    Fazang’s arguments in his Treatise on the Five Teachings of Huayan provide a philosophical foundation for the Avatamsaka Sutra’s rich and suggestive imagery. This chapter focuses on one of Fazang’s central arguments in that treatise, namely, his argument that mutually reliant dharmas are mutually identical. The chapter presents the background context for Fazang’s argument, reconstructs the argument’s logical structure, interprets the central concepts appearing therein, and explains why Fazang mi…Read more
  •  25
    Soteriological Mereology in the Pāli Discourses, Buddhaghosa, and Huayan Buddhism
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 22 (1): 117-143. 2023.
    Extant discussions of Buddhist mereology give minimal attention to the soteriological significance of denying the reality of wholes. This is unfortunate, because the connection between mereology and soteriological is both significant and problematic. The connection is significant, because it supports an argument for the unreality of composite wholes that does not depend upon any claim about the nature of wholes. The connection is also problematic, because some Buddhists endorse the soteriologica…Read more
  •  9
    According to many experiments in cross-cultural psychology, East Asians exhibit holistic cognitive style typified by use of resemblance heuristics, field dependence, external sources of causation, intuitive forms of reasoning, and interdependent forms of social thinking. Holistic cognitive style contrasts with analytic cognitive style, which is common to Westerners. Section 1 presents information on the background of Buddhism’s entry into and treatment by China. Section 2 discusses experimental …Read more
  •  504
    During Aang's intermingling with Fire Lord Ozai, the voice of a Lion Turtle hints at the reason why Aang prevails. “In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements but the energy within ourselves. To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable or you will be corrupted and destroyed.” We use ideas from Buddhist philosophy to answer four questions about the world of Avatar: (1) What is it for a spirit to be unbendable? (2) What is it to bend another's energy? (3) Does Aang's …Read more
  •  58
    Interpreting Interdependence in Fazang's Metaphysics
    Journal of East Asian Philosophy 2 35-52. 2022.
    This paper examines the metaphysics of interdependence in the work of the Chinese Buddhist Fazang. The dominant approach of this metaphysics interprets it as a species of metaphysical coherentism wherein everything depends upon everything else, no individual is more fundamental than any other, and so reality itself is non-well-founded in the sense that chains of dependence never terminate. I argue, to the contrary, that Fazang's metaphysics is better interpreted as a novel variety of foundationa…Read more
  •  420
    Mereological Composition in Analytic and Buddhist Perspective
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (2): 173-194. 2021.
    Comparing Buddhist and contemporary analytic views about mereological composition reveals significant dissimilarities about the purposes that constrain successful answers to mereological questions, the kinds of considerations taken to be probative in justifying those answers, and the value of mereological inquiry. I develop these dissimilarities by examining three questions relevant to those who deny the existence of composite wholes. The first is a question of justification: What justifies deny…Read more
  •  366
    An Account of Generous Action and Esteem in Pāli Buddhism
    International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 30 (2): 195-225. 2020.
    I propose an account of generous action in the Pāli Buddhist tradition, whereby generous actions are instances of giving in which the donor has esteem for the recipient of their giving. The account differs from recent Anglophone accounts of generous action. These tend to construe generous actions as instances of a donor freely offering a gift to the recipient for the sake of benefiting the recipient. Unlike the Buddhist account I propose, these accounts do not require donors to esteem their reci…Read more
  •  1072
    Race, Technology, and Posthumanism
    with Holly Flint Jones
    In Mads Rosenthal Thomsen & Jacob Wamberg (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism, Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 161-170. 2020.
    This chapter briefly reviews the role of race (as a concept) in the history of theorizing the posthuman, engages with existing discussions of race as technology, and explores the significance of understanding race as technology for the field of posthumanism. Our aim is to engage existing literature that posits racialized individuals as posthumans and to consider how studying race might inform theories of the posthuman.
  •  71
    A Russellian Analysis of Buddhist Catuskoti
    Comparative Philosophy 11 (2): 63-89. 2020.
    Names name, but there are no individuals who are named by names. This is the key to an elegant and ideologically parsimonious strategy for analyzing the Buddhist catuṣkoṭi. The strategy is ideologically parsimonious, because it appeals to no analytic resources beyond those of standard predicate logic. The strategy is elegant, because it is, in effect, an application of Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions to Buddhist contexts. The strategy imposes some minor adjustments upon Russel…Read more
  •  62
    The architecture of Fazang’s six characteristics
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (3): 468-491. 2019.
    This paper examines the Huayan teaching of the six characteristics as presented in the Rafter Dialogue from Fazang's Treatise on the Five Teachings. The goal is to make the teaching accessible to those with minimal training in Buddhist philosophy, and especially for those who aim to engage with the extensive question-and-answer section of the Rafter Dialogue. The method for achieving this goal is threefold: first, contextualizing Fazang's account of the characteristics with earlier Buddhist atte…Read more
  •  24
    Huayan Numismatics as Metaphysics: Explicating Fazang's Coin-Counting Metaphor
    Philosophy East and West 68 (4): 1155-1177. 2019.
    This paper explicates the counting ten coins metaphor as it appears in Fazang’s Treatise on the Five Teachings of Huayan. The goal is to transform Fazang’s inexact and obscure mentions of the metaphor into something that is clearer and more precise. The method for achieving this goal is threefold: first, presenting Fazang’s version of the metaphor as improving upon prior efforts by Zhiyan and Ŭisang to interpret a brief stanza in the Avataṁsaka sutra; second, providing textual evidence to suppor…Read more
  •  320
    Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology
    Philosophy of Science 85 (5): 955-968. 2018.
    I consider three explanatory strategies from recent systems biology that are driven by mathematics as much as mechanistic detail. Analysis of differential equations drives the first strategy; topological analysis of network motifs drives the second; mathematical theorems from control engineering drive the third. I also distinguish three abstraction types: aggregations, which simplify by condensing information; generalizations, which simplify by generalizing information; and structurations, which…Read more
  •  53
    Critical Epistemology for Analysis of Competing Hypotheses
    Intelligence and National Security 33 (2): 273-289. 2018.
    Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) promises a relatively objective and tractable methodology for ranking the plausibility of competing hypotheses. Unlike Bayesianism, it is computationally modest. Unlike explanationism, it appeals to minimally subjective judgments about relations between hypotheses and evidence. Yet the canonical procedures for ACH allow a certain kind of instability in applications of the methodology, by virtue of supporting competing rankings despite common evidential base…Read more
  •  825
    Race as Technology: From Posthuman Cyborg to Human Industry
    with Holly Jones
    Ilha Do Desterro 70 (2): 39-51. 2017.
    Cyborg and prosthetic technologies frame prominent posthumanist approaches to understanding the nature of race. But these frameworks struggle to accommodate the phenomena of racial passing and racial travel, and their posthumanist orientation blurs useful distinctions between racialized humans and their social contexts. We advocate, instead, a humanist approach to race, understanding racial hierarchy as an industrial technology. Our approach accommodates racial passing and travel. It integrates …Read more
  •  439
    Don’t Blame the Idealizations
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1): 85-100. 2013.
    Idealizing conditions are scapegoats for scientific hypotheses, too often blamed for falsehood better attributed to less obvious sources. But while the tendency to blame idealizations is common among both philosophers of science and scientists themselves, the blame is misplaced. Attention to the nature of idealizing conditions, the content of idealized hypotheses, and scientists’ attitudes toward those hypotheses shows that idealizing conditions are blameless when hypotheses misrepresent. These …Read more
  •  192
    A Principles-based Model of Ethical Considerations in Military Decision Making
    with Gregory Reed, Mikel Petty, Anthony Morris, John Ballenger, and Harry Delugach
    Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation 13 (2): 195-211. 2016.
    When comparing alternative courses of action, modern military decision makers often must consider both the military effectiveness and the ethical consequences of the available alternatives. The basis, design, calibration, and performance of a principles-based computational model of ethical considerations in military decision making are reported in this article. The relative ethical violation (REV) model comparatively evaluates alternative military actions based upon the degree to which they viol…Read more
  •  777
    One recent priority of the U.S. government is developing autonomous robotic systems. The U.S. Army has funded research to design a metric of evil to support military commanders with ethical decision-making and, in the future, allow robotic military systems to make autonomous ethical judgments. We use this particular project as a case study for efforts that seek to frame morality in quantitative terms. We report preliminary results from this research, describing the assumptions and limitations of…Read more
  •  210
    Is All Abstracting Idealizing?
    The Reasoner 2 (4): 4-5. 2008.
    I defend a distinction between abstraction and idealization. Idealizations distort; abstractions do not.
  •  604
    While mechanistic explanation and, to a lesser extent, nomological explanation are well-explored topics in the philosophy of biology, topological explanation is not. Nor is the role of diagrams in topological explanations. These explanations do not appeal to the operation of mechanisms or laws, and extant accounts of the role of diagrams in biological science explain neither why scientists might prefer diagrammatic representations of topological information to sentential equivalents nor how such…Read more
  •  1585
    Nyāya-vaiśesika inherence, buddhist reduction, and huayan total power
    Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (2): 215-230. 2010.
    This paper elaborates upon various responses to the Problem of the One over the Many, in the service of two central goals. The first is to situate Huayan's mereology within the context of Buddhism's historical development, showing its continuity with a broader tradition of philosophizing about part-whole relations. The second goal is to highlight the way in which Huayan's mereology combines the virtues of the Nyāya-Vaisheshika and Indian Buddhist solutions to the Problem of the One over the Ma…Read more
  •  98
    In this reply to Gregory Peterson 's essay "Maintaining Respectability," which itself is a response to my "Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?" I elaborate upon my claims that theology treats God's existence as an absolute certainty immune to refutation and that modern science constitutes the canons of respectable reasoning for metaphysical disciplines. I conclude with some comments on Peterson 's "In Praise of Folly? Theology and the University."
  •  1204
    In his _Treatise on the Golden Lion_, Fazang says that wholes are _in_ each of their parts and that each part of a whole _is_ every other part of the whole. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of these remarks according to which they are not obviously false, and I use this interpretation in order to rigorously reconstruct Fazang's arguments for his claims. On the interpretation I favor, Fazang means that the presence of a whole's part suffices for the presence of the whole and that the pres…Read more
  •  693
    Is theology respectable as metaphysics?
    Zygon 43 (3): 579-592. 2008.
    Theology involves inquiry into God's nature, God's purposes, and whether certain experiences or pronouncements come From God. These inquiries are metaphysical, part of theology's concern with the veridicality of signs and realities that are independent from humans. Several research programs concerned with the relation between theology and science aim to secure theology's intellectual standing as a metaphysical discipline by showing that it satisfies criteria that make modern science reputable, o…Read more
  •  1397
    Correlative Reasoning about Water in Mengzi 6A2
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 15 (2): 193-207. 2016.
    Mengzi 孟子 6A2 contains the famous water analogy for the innate goodness of human nature. Some evaluate Mengzi’s reasoning as strong and sophisticated; others, as weak or sophistical. I urge for more nuance in our evaluation. Mengzi’s reasoning fares poorly when judged by contemporary standards of analogical strength. However, if we evaluate the analogy as an instance of correlative thinking within a yin-yang 陰陽 cosmology, his reasoning fares well. That cosmology provides good reason to assert th…Read more
  •  2479
    An Atheistic Argument from Ugliness
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (1): 209-217. 2015.
    The theistic argument from beauty has what we call an 'evil twin', the argument from ugliness. The argument yields either what we call 'atheist win', or, when faced with aesthetic theodicies, 'agnostic tie' with the argument from beauty.
  •  17