I include here some of my pieces of writing I have produced in the last few years.
But before saying anything else, I need to state the obvious. It is extremely easy these days for anyone to create a website. That means that just because something has been written down and is publically available, there is no guarantee that what is written is good, correct, useful, valuable, and/or appropriate. This applies to what is written here by me, as well as to most other websites currently available.
In fact, I know that some of what I have written here is complete rubbish! I have moved on from a number of positions I once held. And some of what I wrote was badly expressed, factually wrong, or ignorant. Hopefully my more recent work is better, but there is no guarantee there, either.
I emphasise: What is written here was written by a university student -- someone who is still in the process of learning. Many of the pieces of writing were answers to set essay questions for university courses in which I was enrolled. I started my graduate studies in 1999, at the same time as I started working for the university as a tutor, but that doesn't mean that I am suddenly correct about everything. In other words, I am no more authoritative than anyone else, and probably less authoritative than many. Read what I have written with a healthy dose of scepticism.
Consider yourself suitably warned!!
So, by all means read what I have written, and I hope you get something out of it. But please don't put too much reliance on what is here. If your teacher tells you that you need references for your essay, you would do far better to find a book written by a professional in that area. Don't waste your time surfing the web for resources. You'll find more mud than gold, and often it is hard to tell the difference if one is just starting out.
Having said all this, why am I bothering to make my writings available in this way? It could well be that I have delusions of grandeur -- I'm not discounting that!! But certainly partly it is to practice my HTML. Partly it is to play my small part in promoting the free exchange of information. Partly it is to provide a more rigorous foundation to email and mailing list conversations I occasionally indulge in. Partly it is to provide a means of backup, should my computer explode and burn my office down! Partly it is to provide a means to show samples of my writing to potential employers. And partly it is to put my ideas out in the hope that I can get back some useful comments on issues that interest me.
Consequently, email comments and/or criticisms about any of these pieces of writing are more than welcome - learning of one's weaknesses is one of the better paths to improvement. I'm often busy, so I cannot guarantee immediate replies, but I will eventually get back to you.
Dates below refer to the day of the last update to the piece of work, and the most recent works are listed first.
I am pretty much in agreement with Peter Suber's thoughts on copyright on his Copyright page.
2004
Of what use is a Moral Philosopher in Public Policy Decision-Making? A bit of an advertisement for myself
2003
The Ethics of Teacher / Student Contact A discussion of the ethics of socialising between ESL teachers and their students
The Existence of God A discussion of theistic and atheistic apologetics, aiming to discover if the god of the philosophers exists
Stakeholders and Stakeholder Theories: An Analysis A critique of Freeman's Stakeholder Theory
Two Arguments for Vegetarianism A brief discussion of Peter Singer and Tom Regan
A Reply to Friedman Showing how one of Milton Friedman's arguments against the broad view of social responsibility of business fails
Weakening Role-Differentiation A discussion of role-conflict, and how it causes problems for the role-differentiation thesis
My O.E. to South America Not philosophy; a few words on a backpacking holiday I had in 1997/98
Buddhist Economics vs. Modern Western Economics: Some Assumptions A commentary on a paper written by E. F. Schumacher
2002
Review of Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy A brief review written for a friend who lent me his copy of Schaeffer's book
The Concept of God A discussion of some concepts of god, and an investigation into what might make them all concepts of the same thing
Identity, Constitution and Statues made of Clay Looking at some of the arguments for and against the view that constitution is identity
Is Philosophical Interest in the Absurd Absurd? A taxonomy of absurdities, and a discussion of whether any forms of absurdity should be of interest to philosophers
Summary of the Bell Curve, Chapter 4 A brief summary of the main argument in this chapter of the controversial book
Notes on Steve Kumar - Who is God? A few notes written for a friend who gave me a tape recording of a sermon by Kumar
2000
Theology without a Metaphysics of Presence Discussing the possibility of theism in light of Derridean deconstruction
The Metaphysics of Xunzi: On the Concept of Tian A discussion of the world-view of a 3rd century BCE Chinese writer
Two Arguments for the Existence of God Notes and questions for a discussion starter on the Ontological Argument and the Design Argument, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
Free Will Notes and questions for a discussion starter on Free Will, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
Knowledge Questions for a discussion starter on knowledge, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
Personal Identity Scenarios Questions for a discussion starter on Personal Identity, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
A Menu of Position in Philosophy of Mind A brief list of the main possible positions, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
Descartes' Cogito Argument Questions for a discussion starter on the Cogito, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
The Painful Truth About Madmen and Martians? Against David Lewis' theory of the mind
Does Swamp-Person have Intentional States (or should we feel silly for even asking)? I say no (and no), and defend teleosemantics
Pascal's Wager Notes and questions for a discussion starter on Pascal's Wager, written for an introductory philosophy tutorial
1999
On the Formulation of an Adequate Concept of God A methodology for approaching concepts of God
Sartre on the Freudian Unconscious and Surrealism Jean-Paul Sartre's misunderstanding of Sigmund Freud
On Hegel's "The Life of Jesus" G. W. F. Hegel's early theological writings
Is Art Dead in Modernity? Martin Heidegger thinks so, and thinks it's a bad thing
Aphorisms My Nietzschean phase - some bad poetic prose
1998
Responses to Functionalism -The China Brain and The Chinese Room Defending functionalism as a theory of the mind
Article Review - "Findings From the Nun Study" An article review exercise for a psych class
A Question of "The Question Concerning Technology" Martin Heidegger's question evaluated
Category-Specific Semantic Memory and Event Related Potentials (ERPs) A psych experiment
The Causal Closure of the Physical as a Problem for Dualism Does the causal closure of the physical cause a problem for dualist theories of the mind?
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) A method of inferring functionality of areas of the brain
Epilepsy It's classification and how it has been seen historically
Mild Head Injury Effects and assessment
Empedocles of Acragas - Was he pro-Democratic? Well, yes and no ...
On "On the Heights of Despair" On Emile Cioran's poetic prose discussions of meaning and meaninglessness
Is it Rational to Fear Death? Arthur Schopenhauer thinks not
Item Analysis of Raven's Progressive Matrices A statistical analysis of the worth of items in a psych test
1997
Archimedes - The God of Mathematics and a Mathematical Devil His life and his greatest discovery
Non-Euclidean Geometry A brief history of the parallel postulate
Time Travel - Is it Possible? A bit of a confused questioning of our meaning of 'time'
Mesopotamian & Mayan Number Systems Looking at how they developed
Stimulus Control Behavioural psych
Euclidean Geometry A look at the logical structure of Euclid's "Elements"
Problems with Induction Perhaps I should have mentioned Hume
Prosodic Cues About how speech variation helps understanding
Processing Memory in the Brain What areas of the brain are important for memory?
Visual Attention A psych experiment
Applying Learning Theories to Mathematics Education How Jean Piaget's theory explains a personal maths learning episode
Ecological Validity of Psychological Tasks A psych experiment
Processing Visual Stimuli in the Brain The areas of the brain that are important for vision
Purposes of Mathematics Education Why ought we study maths?
1996
Teletransporters: A Sensible Way of Travelling or a Death Machine? I say both
