Mylan angel

Mylan Engel Jr.

Mylan Engel Jr. (* 1960 ) is an American philosophy professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb , Illinois .

He studied at Vanderbilt University (BA 1981) and at the University of Arizona (MA 1985), where he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1988. He was then from 1988 to 1999 a research assistant (Assistant Professor) at Northern Illinois University. This was followed by visiting professorships at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck in Austria (1999) and at the University of Maribor in Slovenia (1999, 2000, 2002). Since 1999 he has been an associate professor at Northern Illinois University.

His focus areas include epistemology , religious philosophy , the philosophy of Thomas Reid , animal and environmental ethics .

Engel is a morally motivated vegetarian , which means that he takes the view that humans are morally obliged to forego the consumption of meat. In a widely acclaimed essay titled "The Immorality of Eating Meat" (2000), he argues that all people would arrive at the same point of view if only they consistently applied the moral beliefs they already hold. Furthermore, Engel is a religious skeptic and deduces from the lack of positive reasons for believing in one god (or several gods) that atheism is the only rational position.

Engel has been Managing Director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals since September 2002 .

Publications (selection)

• "Animal Ethics, Animal Rights and Moral Integrity". Interdisciplinary Working Group on Animal Ethics (Ed.). Animal Rights - An Interdisciplinary Challenge . Erlangen 2007. ISBN 978-3-89131-417-3
• "The Immorality of Eating Meat". Louis P. Pojman (Ed.). The Moral Life . New York / Oxford 2000.
• "Internalism, the Gettier Problem, and Metaepistemological Skepticism", Grazer Philosophische Studien 60 (2000).
• "The Possibility of Maximal Greatness Examined: A Critique of Plantinga's Modal Ontological Argument", Acta Analytica 19 (1997).
• "Coarsening Brand on Events, While Proliferating Davidsonian Events", Grazer Philosophische Studien 47 (1994).
• "The Problem of Other Minds: A Reliable Solution", Acta Analytica 11 (1993).
• "Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge?", Southern Journal of Philosophy XXX 2 (1992).
• "Personal and Doxastic Justification in Epistemology", Philosophical Studies 67 (1992).
• "Russellizing Russell: A Reply to His 'A Critique of Lehrer's Coherentism'", Philosophical Studies 66 (1992).
• "Inconsistency: The Coherence Theorist's Nemesis", Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1991).
• "Coherentism Reliabilized", Acta Analytica (1986).

Web links

• Official website of Mylan Engel at Northern Illinois University
• Video recording of a lecture by Engel entitled "Do Animals Have Rights, and Does It Matter if They Don't?" , held as part of the interdisciplinary lecture series Animal Rights at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg on June 7, 2006
• Northern Star, "Tackling the tough issues: Philosophy professor specializes in ethics; champions animal rights"
• "The Immorality of Eating Meat". Louis P. Pojman (Ed.). The Moral Life . New York / Oxford 2000. (PDF; 1.2 MB) A well-received article by Engels on the moral status of eating meat (also here (PDF; 3.8 MB) and available here ). (1.15 MB; PDF)