• Resilience as a systems concept, with an application to the American West
    with Jared L. Talley
    In Kelly A. Parker & Heather E. Keith (eds.), Pragmatist and American Philosophical Perspectives on Resilience, Lexington Books. 2019.
  • Further Thoughts on Food Futures
    In Samantha Noll & Zachary Piso (eds.), Paul B. Thompson's Philosophy of Agriculture: Fields, Farmers, Forks, and Food, Springer Verlag. pp. 185-206. 2023.
    Thompson provides commentary and reaction to other chapters in the book. It is organized as sections identified by the names of chapter authors. Thompson responds to chapters advancing new ideas in agriculture by indicating how he understands the authors’ analysis with respect to his own work. Chapters that address more philosophical dimensions of Thompson’s writings are addressed by clarifying the pragmatist orientation of Thompson’s thought. Michel Foucault’s metaethics is used as a basis for …Read more
  • Book Reviews (review)
    Environmental Values 2 (1): 83-84. 1993.
  •  8
    Agrarian Vision, Industrial Vision, and Rent-Seeking: A Viewpoint
    with Johanna Jauernig, Ingo Pies, and Vladislav Valentinov
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 33 (3): 391-400. 2020.
    Many public debates about the societal significance and impact of agriculture are usefully framed by Paul Thompson’s distinction between the “agrarian” and the “industrial vision.” The key argument of the present paper is that the ongoing debate between these visions goes beyond academic philosophy and has direct effects on the political economy of agriculture by influencing the scope of rent-seeking activities that are undertaken primarily in the name of the agrarian vision. The existence of re…Read more
  • Why Food Biotechnology Needs an Opt Out
    In , Island Press. pp. 27-44. 2002.
  • The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 9. 1996.
  • The Ethics of Molecular Silviculture
    In , Resources For the Future. pp. 101-111. 2004.
  • Land
    In , Iowa State Press. pp. 169-190. 2002.
  •  6
    Commodification and Secondary Rationalization.
  • Animal agriculture and the welfare of animals
    Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 226 (8): 1325-1327. 2005.
  •  48
    The Evolutionary Biology of Evil
    The Monist 85 (2): 239-259. 2002.
    This paper is intended to be exploratory, polemical, and, I hope, provocative. It attempts to provide an evolutionary and naturalistic account of a central ethical concept: evil. I attempt this with full knowledge of the widespread and longstanding aversion, by philosophers, to naturalism in ethics.
  •  6
    Issues in Evolutionary Ethics (edited book)
    State University of New York Press. 1995.
    This book explores historical and current discussions of the relevance of evolutionary theory to ethics. The historical section conveys the intellectual struggle that took place within the framework of Darwinism from its inception up to the work of G. C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, R. D. Alexander, A. L. Trivers, E. O. Wilson, R. Dawkins, and others. The contemporary section discusses ethics within the framework of evolutionary theory as enriched by the works of biologists such as those mentioned …Read more
  •  23
    The Structure of Biological Theories
    State University of New York Press. 1989.
    The central thesis of this book is that the semantic conception is a logical methodologically and heuristically richer and more accurate account of scientific theorizing, and in particular of theorizing in evolutionary biology, than the ...
  •  8
    Land and Water
    In Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion to Environmental Philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Threatened agro‐ecosystems The optimization approach Agricultural environmental ethics: a neglected topic The dogma of pristine nature The dogma of environmental impact Pristine nature and environmental impact: implications for land use The agrarian alternative Agrarian philosophy and environmental quality From agrarianism to sustainable land and water use.
  •  2
    Gmos
    In Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 1003-1008. 2021.
  •  30
    Steven A. Moore. Technology and Place: Sustainable Agriculture and the Blueprint Farm (review)
    Agriculture and Human Values 19 (4): 369-371. 2002.
  •  6
    Ethics in the Innovation Process: Some Unaddressed Issues for Pragmatists
    Contemporary Pragmatism 20 (1-2): 53-76. 2023.
    There are now dozens of proposals for integrating ethics into the early planning and assessment of technological innovation. This paper tracks some of Larry Hickman’s contributions to these trends. While Hickman’s suggestions could be incorporated into virtually many of the new proposals for integrating ethics into technological research, development and dissemination, barriers remain. In this paper, I will explores some reasons why the field remains fragmented, emphasizing weaknesses in the pra…Read more
  •  57
    Environmentalism and Posthumanism
    Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 21 (2): 63-73. 2013.
    The term ‘posthumanism’ has not been promoted by many environmental philosophers, and it is not clear how the figures I discuss would react to be being characterized as posthumanist. It is more typical for advocates of the perspectives I discuss to characterize them with labels such as ‘non-anthropocentric,’ ‘ecocentric’, or ‘deep ecology.’ Yet, as I will argue, the ideas that have emerged in these lines of thought reflect philosophical commitments that could aptly be characterized as posthumani…Read more
  •  10
    The development of modern evolutionary ethics began shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Early discussions were plagued by several problems. First, evolutionary ethical explanations were dependent on group‐selection accounts of social behavior (especially the explanation of altruism). Second, they seem to violate the philosophical principle that “ought” statements cannot be derived from “is” statements alone (values cannot be derivedfro…Read more
  •  4
    Narrative & Genre: Contexts and Types of Communication
    with Mary Chamberlain
    Routledge. 1998.
    Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction to the Series -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Oral History as Genre -- 3. Silences -- 4. A Brazilian Worker's Autobiography in an Unexpected Form -- 5. Family Fables -- 6. Anecdote as Narrative Resource in Working-Class Life Stories -- 7. My Life as Consumer -- 8. Distant Homes, Our Genre -- 9. The Oral History Interview in a Cross-Cultural Setting -- 10. In the Archieve, In the …Read more
  •  63
    Putting Pragmatism to Work?
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7 (1): 41-44. 2003.
  •  12
    McDermott as a Colleague
    The Pluralist 15 (1): 95-97. 2020.
    Although I took one class with John McDermott at SUNY Stony Brook, I write as a colleague who came through the ranks under his mentorship at Texas A&M from 1980 to 1997, when I left College Station to assume the Joyce and Edward E. Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University. I came to Texas A&M during the transition from McDermott's term as the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities to the leadership of Professor Hugh McCann. It was a heady time in Central Texas, and especi…Read more
  •  16
  •  2
    Book Review of Sarah Franklin, Dolly Mixtures (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (4): 385-388. 2008.