Robert F. Almeder

Last updated
Robert Almeder
Born (1939-12-11) December 11, 1939 (age 84)
EducationPhD in philosophy (University of Pennsylvania, 1969)
OccupationProfessor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University.
Known for Philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics
AwardsOutstanding Educator of America Award (1973)
Georgia State University Alumni Distinguished Professor Award for College of Arts and Sciences (1984) and for University (1995)

Robert F. Almeder (born December 11, 1939) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University. [1] He is known in particular for his work on the philosophy of science, and has also written on the philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. He is the author of 24 books, including The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1980), Death and Personal Survival (1992), Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy (1998), Human Happiness and Morality (2000), and Truth and Skepticism (2010).

Contents

Almeder served as the editor of the American Philosophical Quarterly (1998–2003), and co-edited the annual Biomedical Ethics Reviews (1983–2004). He was the inaugural McCullough Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College in New York (2005–2007), where he taught courses on human rights, biomedical ethics and the law.

Background

Almeder completed his PhD on "The Metaphysical and Logical Realism of Charles Peirce" at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. Since then he has been the president of the Charles S. Peirce Society as well as president of the Georgia Philosophical Association. He joined the philosophy faculty at Georgia State University in 1972 as an associate professor, and became a full professor in 1980. He retired in 2005. [2]

Almeder received the Outstanding Educator of America Award in 1973, and the Georgia State University Alumni Distinguished Professor Award for teaching and research in 1984 and 1995. He was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 1992 and then again in 2005. [2] [3]

Georgia State University instituted a student award in honour of Almeder upon his retirement, the Robert F. Almeder Prize, awarded to the student who writes the best paper at the annual Georgia State Student Philosophy Symposium. [4]

Views on mind

Almeder was strongly influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, Ian Stevenson, and W.O. Quine, and subscribes to Cartesian dualism, broadly rejecting scientism and materialism. Stevenson's reincarnation research work on children who claimed to remember past lives convinced Almeder that minds are irreducible to brain states. He has argued in several papers and in his Beyond Death: The Evidence for Life After Death (1992) that Stevenson's critics, most notably the philosopher Paul Edwards, have misunderstood the nature of Stevenson's work. [5]

Editorial roles

Almeder served as the editor of the American Philosophical Quarterly from 1998–2003, and co-edited the annual Biomedical Ethics Reviews from 1983 to 2004. He has also served on several editorial boards, including:

Works

Selected books

Almeder has authored and co-authored 24 books, including: [6]

Selected papers

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Alston</span> American philosopher (1921–2009)

William Payne Alston was an American philosopher. He is widely considered to be one of the most important epistemologists and philosophers of religion of the twentieth century, and is also known for his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of language. His views on foundationalism, internalism and externalism, speech acts, and the epistemic value of mystical experience, among many other topics, have been very influential. He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, University of Illinois, and Syracuse University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pragmatism</span> Philosophical tradition

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Haack</span> British philosopher and academic (born 1945)

Susan Haack is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Stevenson</span> American psychiatrist

Ian Pretyman Stevenson was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years. He was chair of their department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Rescher</span> American philosopher (1928–2024)

Nicholas Rescher was a German-born American philosopher, polymath, and author, who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1961. He was chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and chairman of the philosophy department.

Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity. It is not a specific doctrine or school, although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Wolterstorff</span> American philosopher

Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic views about the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts the focus of epistemology away from many traditional philosophical questions, and towards the empirical processes of knowledge acquisition. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that we should abandon traditional epistemology and replace it with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from cognitive sciences. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.

Laurence BonJour is an American philosopher and Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tibor Machan</span> Hungarian-American philosopher (1939–2016)

Tibor Richard Machan was a Hungarian-American philosopher. A professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at Auburn University, Machan held the R. C. Hoiles Chair of Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics at Chapman University in Orange, California until 31 December 2014.

Paul Edwards was an Austrian-American moral philosopher. He was the editor-in-chief of MacMillan's eight-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy from 1967, and lectured at New York University, Brooklyn College and the New School for Social Research from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Robert N. Audi is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics, rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and previously held a chair in the business school there. His 2005 book, The Good in the Right, updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy, particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

<i>Philosophical Explanations</i> 1981 book by Robert Nozick

Philosophical Explanations is a 1981 metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical treatise by the philosopher Robert Nozick.

David Edward Cooper is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Durham University.

John L. Pollock (1940–2009) was an American philosopher known for influential work in epistemology, philosophical logic, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.

Formative epistemology is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. According to formative epistemology, knowledge is gained through the imputation of thoughts from one human being to another in the societal setting. Humans are born without intrinsic knowledge and through their evolutionary and developmental processes gain knowledge from other human beings. Thus, according to formative epistemology, all knowledge is completely subjective and truth does not exist.

Jamie Lindemann Nelson is a philosophy professor and bioethicist currently teaching at Michigan State University. Nelson earned her doctorate in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1980 and taught at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and St. John's University before moving to Michigan State University. In addition, Nelson was an Associate for Ethical Studies at The Hastings Center from 1990–95 and is both a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and a Fellow of the Hastings Center. Nelson usually teaches courses on biomedical ethics, ethical theory, moral psychology, feminist theory, and philosophy of language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Huemer</span> American philosopher (born 1969)

Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has defended ethical intuitionism, direct realism, libertarianism, substance dualism, reincarnation, the repugnant conclusion, and philosophical anarchism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tamara Horowitz</span> American philosopher (1950–2000)

Tamara Horowitz was an American philosopher who worked on epistemology, feminist philosophy and the philosophy of science. She spent much of her career at the University of Pittsburgh, and was appointed chair of the philosophy department there in September 1999, but died a few months later.

Nancy Tuana is an American philosopher who specializes in feminist philosophy. She holds the DuPont/Class of 1949 Professorship in Philosophy and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She came to Penn State from the University of Oregon in 2001 to serve as the founding director of the Rock Ethics Institute. She won the 2022 Victoria Davion Award.

References

  1. "Faculty Emeriti", Department of Philosophy, George State University.
  2. 1 2 "Robert Almeder". Archived from the original on October 13, 2008. Retrieved 2012-01-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Georgia State University.
  3. "Fulbright Scholar Stories: Robert Almeder". www.cies.org. Archived from the original on 2005-12-15.
  4. "Philosophy Student Awards". www2.gsu.edu. Archived from the original on 2006-09-05.
  5. Bache, Christopher. Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind, SUNY Press, 2000, pp. 37–40.
    • Woodhouse, Mark. Paradigm Wars. Frog Books, p. 144ff. Woodhouse writes that the paradigm war over reincarnation "has pitted Robert Almeder, a nationally distinguished philosopher of science, against Paul Edwards, general editor of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Almeder's recent book, Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death, contains perhaps the most formidable point-for-point defense of reincarnation against a wide range of criticisms."
    • Almeder, Robert. Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death. Rowman and Littlefield, 1992.
    • Almeder, Robert. "A Critique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11(4), 1997, pp. 499–526.
  6. Robert Almeder's books