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Department
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Wesley Cooper, ProfessorMy The Unity of William James's Thought attempts to argue the unity of James's thought by reference to his doctrine of pure experience, which `constructs' the physical world and the stream of thought without being either physical or mental, and which constrains the pragmatic method and the pursuit of moral objectivity. The central argument of the book appeared in Inquiry (2000) as "Pragmatism and Radical Empiricism". The book on James turns out to overlap with two other interests of mine, the first in the construction of social reality, which I have recently pursued in "Moral Realism, Social Construction, and Communal Ontology" (South African Journal of Philosophy Volume 19 Number 2, co-authored with Augustine Frimpong-Mansoh); and the second in the role of symbolic considerations in rational choice, which I address in "Buridan's Ass And Other Dilemmas: A Decision-Value Approach to Moral Problems" (Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 2001, co-authored with Guillermo Barron). My flagship article on behalf of decision value and symbolic utility is "Parfit, Heroic Death, and Symbolic Utility" (Journal of Social Philosophy, summer 2002) which argues that Parfit's case for the rationality of acting on moral reasons without regard to self-interest is guilty of overlooking `symbolic utility'; in doing so, I think I successfully defend Nozick's decision-value account of rational choice against criticism in the literature. In a paper I read to a philosophical conference in Beijing in June 2002, I defend a decision-value alternative to utilitarianism and kantianism. I have also tried my hand at writing about Internet culture, information technology, and virtual reality. My first effort appeared in the mid-nineties, in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, and a bit later a piece appeared in an on-line journal, Computer-Mediated Communication, in an issue edited by Charles Ess. Two long articles have appeared recently in the Journal of Virtual Environments, and a shorter one is forthcoming in the Blackwell Guide to the Internet, edited by Luciano Floridi. These pieces, together with some work on Bernard Suits's theory of games and David Deutsch's conception of virtual reality, as well as a Decision-Value approach to computing ethics, seem to be coalescing into a monograph. Degrees: BA (1966) Occidental College, BLitt (1974) Oxford University, PhD (1976) University
of Calgary.
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