John Burgess
BA, MA (Melbourne), DPhil (Oxford)
John Burgess is a member of the Philosophy Program
and teaches principally in the following areas: Practical
Reasoning and Formal Logic; Bioethics and Environmental
Ethics; Theoretical Ethics; Philosophy of Language;
Epistemology and Metaphysics. He is currently exploring
modes of flexible delivery for the teaching and evaluation
of practical reasoning.
Publications
Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date
Research
John Burgess publishes in each of the areas in which
he teaches but mainly in Philosophical Logic, Bioethics
and Environmental Ethics, Meta-ethics and Metaphysics.
He is particularly interested in drawing case studies
from (especially but not exclusively) applied ethics
for theoretical problems he is trying to solve in the
more theoretical areas of interest. He currently has
a rather large project going in which he is trying to
show that various supposedly pathological features of
language and thought - false theories, vagueness, ambiguity,
arbitrariness in definitions, circularity in definitions
- are not just tolerable but are essential tools if
our language and thought are to do the jobs we want
of them. Recent and continuing applied work has been
on the development of sentience in human fetuses, competing
definitions of life and death and on genetic engineering.
He has also written in defence of indeterminist theories
of vagueness and dispositional theories of both colour
and value and on the variety of ways in which false
theories and myths manage to mimic the truth.
E-Mail jburgess@uow.edu.au
Phone: (02) 4221 4069 |
