Charles Lowney

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Charles Lowney received his Ph.D. from Boston University and his MA from Boston College. His work focuses primarily on the limits of understanding and expression in the analytic tradition and on moral epistemology. The exploration of scientific epistemology led Dr. Lowney to a metaphysics of emergent being and emergent value in nature. His primary interest is bringing his theoretic work in epistemology and meta-ethics into engagement with moral, social and political action. In teaching, he carries his scholarly work into the practical areas of applied ethics by offering courses such as Ethics and the Environment, Poverty and Human Capability, and Art and Authenticity.

Education

Boston University, Ph.D.
Boston College, M.A.
Boston College, B.A.

Research

Meta-ethics, Theoretical and Applied Ethics
Epistemology & Metaphysics
Analytic Philosophy
  with an emphasis on Philosophy of Logic, Language, Science & Mind
Social and Political Philosophy
American Pragmatism
History of Philosophy

Teaching

PHIL 150 Ethics and the Environment
PHIL 320 Wittgenstein
PHIL 170 Introduction to Logic
PHIL 296 Art and Authenticity
POV 101 Poverty and Human Capability
POV 102 Fieldwork in Poverty Studies

POV 423 / LAW 391 Poverty Research Seminar

Selected Publications

Books

• The Tacit and the Ineffable: Frege and Wittgenstein on the Distinction between Language as a Calculus and Language as the Universal Medium, Dissertation, Boston University Library, 2005.
• Identities: Theoretical Considerations and Case Studies, Charles W. Lowney, ed., Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, 1998.

Articles and Book Chapters

• "Ineffable, Tacit, Explicable, Explicit: Qualifying Knowledge in the Age of 'Intelligent' Machines",Tradition and Discovery,  38:1, 2011-12: 18-37.
• "Re-Thinking the Machine since Descartes: On the Irreducibility of Bodies, Minds and Meanings", Bulletin of Science Technology and Society, 31:3, June 2011: 179-192.
• "From Morality to Spirituality: Society, Religion and Transformation", Tradition and Discovery, 37:1, Fall 2010: 19-38.
• "Morality: Emergentist Ethics and Virtue For Itself", Tradition and Discovery, 36:3, Summer 2010: 52-65.
• "From Science to Morality:A Polanyian Perspective on the Letter and Spirit of the Law", Tradition and Discovery, 36:1, Fall 2009: 42-54.
• "Authenticity and the Reconciliation of Modernity", The Pluralist, 4:1, Spring 2009: 33-50.
• "Seeing, Saying and Being the Gestalt", Appraisal, Journal of the Society for Post-Critical and Personalist Studies, vol. 7:1, Spring, 2008: 21-38.
• "The Tacit in Frege", Polanyiana, 17:1-2, 2008: 19-37.
• "What I Learned the Day I Was Not a Philosopher", Practical Philosophy 8:2, 2007: 18-21
• "The Silence After Kant", Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy: A Reassessment after 50 Years, The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 2001: 33-38
• "Wittgenstein and Polanyi: Metaphysics Reconsidered", Tradition and Discovery, 26 (1999-2000): 19-27.
• "Metaphysics Reconsidered", in Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age, Uwe Meixner and Peter Simons, eds., The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 1999: 385-391
• "The Decline of the West: An Introduction to Epistemology", Identities: Theoretical Considerations and Case Studies, Lowney, C., ed., Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, 1998: 1-60
• "Dewey’s Criticisms of Traditional Philosophy", published on-line and recommended by the Philosophy Pages entry on John Dewey.
• "Wittgenstein and Dewey: On the Usefulness of Philosophy", The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy, Paul Weingartner, Gerhard Schirz and Georg Dorn, eds., The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 1997: 580-585