Michael Martin (philosopher)

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Michael L. Martin (born February 3, 1932 - † May 27, 2015 in Boston ) was an American philosopher . He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University and taught from 1975 as a professor at Boston University .

Career

Martin's research focus was the philosophy of religion , but he also worked on the philosophy of science of the social sciences and legal philosophy . Martin has defended his atheism in books and articles with transcendental arguments against the existence of God . He called his argument for the nonexistence of God TANG (Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God) . In his philosophical justification of atheism, Atheism: a Philosophical Justification, Martin refers to the small proportion of atheist contributions in the current American religious-philosophical debate: “This book is not intended to popularize atheism, not even to make it culturally visible. I have no utopian goals. I just want to provide good reasons to be an atheist. I want to show that atheism is a rational position and belief in God is not. I understand that atheist beliefs are not always well founded, but they should be. "

Martin advocated a methodical and ontological naturalism , which, however, does not include reductionism or physicalism . Specifically, Martin assumes that the existence of abstract entities and moral facts contradicts a physicalistic ontology. Martin's thesis that ethical realism and atheism are compatible is essentially formulated in the examination of the subjectivist ethics of the Australian philosopher John Leslie Mackie . In contrast to Mackie, Martin assumes that moral facts and properties are ontologically unproblematic parts of nature. For example, he objects to Mackie that differences of opinion on ethical issues are not sufficient grounds to doubt moral facts, since they differ neither in structure nor extent from scientific differences.

Martin advised the Secular Student Alliance and was co-editor of Philo magazine .

Works

  • with M. Foster: Probability, Confirmation and Simplicity. Odyssey Press, New York 1966.
  • Concepts of Science Education: A Philosophical Analysis. Scott-Foresman, Chicago 1972, ISBN 0-8191-4479-7 .
  • Social Science and Philosophical Analysis: Essays on The Philosophy of The Social Sciences. University Press of America, Washington, DC, 1978.
  • The Legal Philosophy of HLA Hart: A Critical Appraisal. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1987, ISBN 0-87722-471-4 .
  • Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1989, reprinted 1992, ISBN 0-87722-943-0 .
  • The Case Against Christianity. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1991, ISBN 1-56639-081-8 .
  • with L. McIntry: Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1994, ISBN 0-262-13296-6 .
  • The Big Domino in The Sky and Other Atheistic Tales. Prometheus Books, Buffalo 1996, ISBN 1-57392-111-4 .
  • Legal Realism: American and Scandinavian. Peter Lang, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8204-3462-0 .
  • Atheism, Morality, and Meaning. Prometheus, Amherst, NY 2002, ISBN 1-57392-987-5 .
  • with R. Monnier: The Impossibility of God. Prometheus, Amherst, NY 2003/2006, ISBN 1-59102-120-0 / ISBN 1-59102-381-5 .

Essays

  • Theological Statements, Phenomenalistic Language and Confirmation. In: Religious Studies , No. 14, 1978, pp. 217-221.
  • The Verificationist Challenge. In: Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Eds.): A Companion to Philosophy of Religion , Blackwell, Oxford 1997, pp. 204-212.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael L. Martin, Philosopher and Author, 1932-2015
  2. ^ "The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. ... My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am quite aware that atheistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is that they should be ". - Atheism: A Philosophical Justification , p.24
  3. ↑ See. Justifying Methodological Naturalism , 2002
  4. ^ Atheism, Christian Theism, and Rape , 1997.
  5. ↑ Academic Advisory Board List | Secular Student Alliance
  6. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated June 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philoonline.org

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Martin, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Martin, Michael L.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1932
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 2015
Place of death Boston