E.J.BOND

E.J.(Ted )Bond (Ph.D Cornell) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada (formally retired in 1997 but continuing to teach, research and write). He has four articles in the forthcoming 2nd edition of the Becker & Becker _Encyclopedia of Ethics_ and is the author of two books, _Reason and Value- (Cambridge UP, 1983) and _Ethics and Human Well-being: an Introduction to Moral Philosophy_ Blackwell Publishers, 1996), as well as 29 articles (including full-length review articles) in refereed journals, Festchriften and anthologies, with three more in the pipeline. He has given 21 public lectures, and read 68 papers (62 of them by invitation), most of them on ethical topics. He has long advocated that ethics can only be grounded in human well-being. His present major project is a book with the working title "The Elimination of Conflict: an Ethical Study".

DENA DAVIS

Dena S. Davis has a Ph.D. (Religious Studies) from the U of Iowa and a J.D. from U Virginia. She currently teaches courses in bioethics at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She has been a Fulbright Fellow in India, a Visiting Professor at State University of Novgorod in Russia, and a Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Center and at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH). In 2000-01 she is a SmithKline Beecham Fellow in Genetics, Ethics and Law at the Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology at Arizona State University. In the spring of 2002 she will be a Fulbright professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She is the author of NOTES FROM A NARROW RIDGE: RELIGION AND BIOETHICS (with Laurie Zoloth) and GENETIC DILEMMAS: REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY, PARENTAL CHOICES, AND CHILDREN'S FUTURES. Her interests are primarily focused on genetic ethics and the ethics of genetic research.
E-mail: dena.davis@law.csuohio.edu

WALTER FODDIS

In 1999, I graduated with a BA in psychology & will be a graduate student in the PhD Clinical Psychology program at the University of Waterloo. My current research focus is self-esteem & I developed a measuring tool calling it the Self-Esteem Sentence Completion Instrument (SESCI). Using it in conjunction with a self-report questionnaire, I believe the combined scores converge on a more refined assessment of self-esteem. The initial results in a few studies are promising, including some support for the idea of defensive or pseudo self-esteem. Those interested in the SESCI, please contact me.

Philosophically, I operate within the humanistic framework of Objectivism, the philosophy originated by Ayn Rand. In the Objectivist value hierarchy, self-esteem is viewed as one of the pen-ultimate values, on par with the values of purposeful living and benevolence, with rationality as the ultimate value. The self-esteem theory upon which I score the SESCI is that of Nathaniel Branden's, whose philosophical roots are Objectivist. Thus, my self-esteem research can be viewed as a means to empirically validate a primary value within Objectivism. I have a manuscript in preparation exploring the relationship between self-esteem and the Objectivist ethics, which is entitled "Objectivism's Answer to the Self-Actualized Person."

I am very open to collaborative efforts. Please check out my psychology discussion list: http://www.wetheliving.com/psychology

wfoddis@home.com

SHULAMIT GRIBOV

I hold a doctorate in Philosophy of Education (with vast graduate and undergraduate training in philosophy, AOC: epistemology; ethics), specializing in Ethics. In my dissertation I've developed a minimalist version of virtue ethics, where I argue, among other things, for thin naturalistic grounds for human moral sensitivities. this version of virtue ethics incorporates

Post's biological normativity. My research program is focused on refining the minimalist virtue ethics as well as exploring its ramifications on several aspects (educational, social and political) of human endeavor.

ROBERT HALLIDAY

I am a professor of philosophy at Utica College of Syracuse University. My fundamental research interest is the foundation for normative judgments but my research has always been predicated on the assumption that philosophy and other disciplines have a lot to offer each other. When I was asked to present a paper to a session of the Society for Value Inquiry at the 2000 American Philosophical Association in New York I used the opportunity to give shape to my thoughts on the possibility of a naturalistic foundation for ethics. Response to that paper led to the formation of the Society for Empirical Ethics and the paper itself, "Being Human, Naturally," is posted on the Society's web site. The paper is still a work in progress and I would appreciate any feedback

I am most excited about the formation of S.E.E. as it provides the opportunity to share ideas and perspectives. I hope the Society will become a forum for cross-disciplinary discussion and maybe even a catalyst for further research. I also hope we can expand our horizons by recruiting members who work in the empirical sciences but share our interests and assumptions.

Rhalliday@utica.ucsu.edu

MARK LEBAR

I am an assistant professor of philosophy at Ohio University, where I focus on moral and political philosophy. I teach ethics of several sorts (normative theory, metaethics, environmental and business ethics), as well as phil of law and some social political.

My interest in empirical ethics comes from a desire to see if the theoretical model of practical reason that the ancient eudaimonists seemed to be working with can handle modern questions in ethical and metaethical theory. Can they account for what Nagel calls the "victim-centered" nature of wrongness in cases of violent harm? Can they provide a unified account of practical reasoning? Can they explain what value is, or the nature of normativity? And, can they shed light on the relationship between the goods of individual people and the political structures in which they live their lives? Lots of questions, few answers. Right now I'm thinking mostly about the metaethical questions answers to which I hope the ancients may have given us pointers.

BEN MULVEY

Ben Mulvey is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Liberal Arts at Nova Southeastern University. He received his doctorate in philosophy from Michigan State University with a specialization in political theory and applied ethics. He teaches biomedical ethics at NSU. He is a member of Broward General Medical Center's bioethics committee, Hospice Care of Broward County's ethics committee, Florida Department of Corrections Health Services Bioethics Committee, and is a member of the board of advisors of the Florida Bioethics Network. His research interests include moral development and virtue ethics. His email address is: mulvey@nova.edu. His web site can be found at: www.nova.edu/mulvey

HEIDI RAVVEN

I am Professor of Religious Studies (Jewish Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion) at Hamilton College. Since 1987, I have been focussing on Spinoza's philosophy, esp. the moral and social psychology. Spinoza certainly believed that evidence from the sciences was of paramount importance to the construction of ethics as an account of mental and physical well being. He held the identity of mind and body. He understood ethics as applied psychology --as a psychotherapeutic self-praxis. Psychology itself, in Spinoza's estimation, is a subset of identifiable causes or laws of nature that play out both as a mental causal system and also as a physical causal system. Both explain the same phenomena in mutually exclusive ways. Spinoza holds that "nature is everywhere the same," by which he means that the same regularities and laws cut across all domains. Thus he does not, as we generally do today, think of the social and natural sciences as occupying highly discrete domains. However, at the same time, he was not a reductive materialist but a parallelist and identity theorist. What I am interested in is how much of Spinoza's account of ethics is borne out by to contemporary science and social science. I know that a book delineating Einstein's Spinozism recently came out. I want to know whether contemporary psychology and neuropsychology lend support to Spinoza's psychology and ethics as much as some contemporary physics lends support to his metaphysics. To the extent that Spinoza is outdated, how can we correct our understanding to reflect currect evidence and best accounts.

BILL ROTTSCHAEFER

I am a Professor of Philosophy at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. One of my areas of specialization and research concerns the biological and psychological bases of moral agency. I am interested in developing a scientific naturalistic account of morality using both the natural and social sciences. Such an account should explain the acquisition, maintenance, loss, use and justification of our cognitive, motivational and behavioral moral capacities. My current research focuses on using the findings and theories in moral developmental psychology, especially those of Martin Hoffman, to understand both the origins and justification of our emotional and cognitive capacities for empathic concern and helping behavior. My recent relevant publications include The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency, Cambridge University Press, 1998, "Moral Learning and Moral Realism: How Empirical Psychology Illuminates Issues in Moral Ontology," Behavior and Philosophy, 27, 19-49 (1999) and "Naturalizing Ethics: The Death of Ethics and the Resurrection of Moral Science," Zygon, (June, 2000) 35, pp.253-286. My Web Page address is http://www.lclark.edu/~rotts/

ALLEN THOMPSON

I am currently an Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fort Lewis College, in Durango, CO, while I am completing my dissertation at the University of Washington, in Seattle (under William Talbott). My dissertation concerns recent work by Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Alasdair MacIntyre on neo-Aristotlian ethical naturalism and in it I attempt to develop a naturalized account of practical reason and describe its connection with the moral virtues. Additionally, I am interested in biological evolution, the descriptive theories of reason developed in the cognitive sciences (e.g. Tversky and Kahneman, Nisbett and Ross, etc.) and the grounds this may provide for critically evaluating traditional normative theories of reason, particularly decision theory.

NEALWEINER

I am a professor of philosophy at Marlboro College. My expertise was originally Greek philosophy, especially Plato. I became interested in empirical ethics fifteen years ago when it occurred to me that the contemporary notion of mental health was the best possible contemporary interpretation of the classical notion of virtue. My book The Harmony of the Soul (introduction on this web site) was an attempt to work out that identity in as much detail as I could muster. The argument consisted of a detailed philosophical analysis of the general notion of health and of the specific problems involved in the idea of mental or behavioral health. I argued that there really is such a notion and that to a very large extent it overlaps with and has an identical structure with the Aristotelian conception of virtue.

But all that was worked out only in rough outline. My hope is for others who are sympathetic to this general goal and want to discuss it more specifically. This might mean trying to understand exactly how sexuality and work are part of the formula -- how the anthropology of hunter-gatherer societies, for example, or sociobiology, can or cannot shed light on such questions.

nweiner@marlboro.edu