Deep Empiricism: Kant, Whitehead and the Necessity of Philosophical Theism offers a critical and comparative engagement of two great philosophers who are rarely treated together: Immanuel Kant and Alfred North Whitehead. Derek Malone-France provides insightful readings of Kant and Whitehead as he bridges the gap between those who study Kant's transcendental idealism and scholars of Whitehead's organic realism.

The doctrine of inerrant divine “middle knowledge” of future contingent events, first developed by the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, has resurfaced as a prominent position within contemporary debates over divine foreknowledge, creaturely freedom, and the ontological status of possibilities. As yet, the only substantive response to the new Molinism from a process perspective has come in a brief section on “Hartshorne and the Challenge of Molinism,” in an essay on Hartshorne’s view of “The Logic of Future Contingents” (...) by George W. Shields and Donald W. Viney, in Shields’ edited anthology Process and Analysis.Shields and Viney offer an insightful critique of Molinism. However, their use of Hartshorne’s understanding of possibility presents problems for those, like me, who prefer Whitehead’s more robustly realist notion of eternal objects. Here, I defend Whitehead’s Platonism from the main lines of criticism leveled against itby Hartshorne, while demonstrating that a “thick” conception of the objective content of the possible within the context of the divine understanding need not crossover into a deterministic conception of God’s foreknowledge, à la Molina. (shrink)

This essay extends the recent trend toward greater emphasis on writing-related pedagogical practices in introductory philosophy courses to upper-division courses, providing a holistic model for course design that centers on certain techniques and practices that have been developed in the context of the new wave of multidisciplinary writing programs in the United States. I argue that instructors can more effectively teach philosophy and encourage philosophical thinking by incorporating the methods of writing instruction into their courses in systematic ways and offer (...) practical guidance on how to do so. (shrink)

This essay extends the recent trend toward greater emphasis on writing-related pedagogical practices in introductory philosophy courses to upper-division courses, providing a holistic model for course design that centers on certain techniques and practices that have been developed in the context of the new wave of multidisciplinary writing programs in the United States. I argue that instructors can more effectively teach philosophy and encourage philosophical thinking by incorporating the methods of writing instruction into their courses in systematic ways and offer (...) practical guidance on how to do so. (shrink)

I argue for a re-appropriation of the religious/philosophical concept of ‘anxiety’ regarding human finitude and fallibility as an ‘epistemic virtue’ thatshould frame the relationship between personal (including religious) belief and political participation and procedures. I contend that moral justificationsof liberal norms based on ‘respect for persons’ and ‘tolerance’ are insufficient without relation to such a (complementary) epistemic basis. Furthermore, Iargue that a careful examination of the internal logic of religious belief, per se, undermines traditional understandings of ‘faith’ (as being categoricallyopposed (...) to ‘doubt’) and reveals support for liberal norms as an necessary implication thereof. (shrink)

This is—to my knowledge—the first anthology ever published to collect great texts in the history of political dissent from across the ideological spectrum and throughout world history. It provides a diverse set of historically important pieces of political dissent writing that connect to a range of disciplines, including history, political theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and religion and would make an excellent textbook for introductory courses in these fields, as well as in freshman composition courses.

This is—to my knowledge—the first anthology ever published to collect great texts in the history of political dissent from across the ideological spectrum and throughout world history. It provides a diverse set of historically important pieces of political dissent writing that connect to a range of disciplines, including history, political theory, philosophy, rhetoric, and religion and would make an excellent textbook for introductory courses in these fields, as well as in freshman composition courses.

Ongoing developments in evolutionary and systems biology highlight the deficiencies of reductionistic and mechanistic explanations of the "organic" world. Whitehead's ontology provides the basis for a unified theory of social organization that connects the emergence of primitive life to the development and diversification of human societies along a continuum of creative ontogeneration. The metaphysical characteristic of "creativity" is precisely the manifestation of the ontogenerative relationship between possibility and actuality. Actualization is change. While all actualization necessarily exhibits some degree of continuity (...) with the past, it is driven by the inertiac availability of specific relevant forms of possibility, through which it has access to an array of "novel" forms for actualization. This relation to novelty explains everything from the emergence ofprokaryotes on earth 3.6 billion years ago to the possibility of ideological resistance in human societies today. (shrink)