Robert F. Almeder

Robert Almeder
Born (1939-12-11)December 11, 1939
Boston, Massachusetts
Education PhD in philosophy (University of Pennsylvania, 1969)
Occupation Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University.
Known for Philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics
Awards Outstanding 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).

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

References

  1. ↑ "Faculty Emeriti", Department of Philosophy, George State University.
  2. 1 2 "Robert Almeder" at the Wayback Machine (archived October 13, 2008), Georgia State University.
  3. ↑ http://www.cies.org/stories/s_ralmeder.htm
  4. ↑ http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwphl/philosophy/PhilosophyAwards.html
  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
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