Kirk Lougheed
Biographic Data
| ID | 460115 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kirk Lougheed |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kirk |
| FAMILY NAME | Lougheed |
| SIGNATURE | LOUGHEED K |
| AFFILIATIONS | LCC International University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5844-2870 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Should Anti-Natalists Strive to Improve the World?
Anti-natalism is a controversial thesis in procreative ethics that says it is always, or almost always, impermissible to procreate. A recent challenge to anti-natalists suggests that since they are committed to the extinction of the human species, it is unclear why they should care about environmental preservation and protection. This is because the strongest practical reasons in favour of environmental care are based on concern for future genera…
A Moral Theory of Liveliness: A Secular Interpretation of African Life Force
African life force, or vitalism, is the view that literally everything that exists, including both animate and inanimate objects, are imbued with an imperceptible energy that comes from God. This book begins by mining current work on life force, which tends to be descriptive, in order to identify its normative implications. The book then shows that there is a plausible secular description of life force, which it calls liveliness. This can be unde…
The Afterlife in African Traditional Religion: Notions of Punishment and Immortality
This article explores the nature of the afterlife in African Traditional Religion. According to this belief, when a person dies, their spirit transitions to become a member of the living dead for about five generations after which they become a nameless ghost and their personal identity is lost. After explaining these ideas in more detail, I turn to a philosophical examination of the afterlife by focusing on two concepts in punishment and immorta…
Capacity for life force, communality, and the scope of cross-cultural bioethics: Additional thoughts on African Life Force and the Permissibility of Euthanasia
African vital force and the permissibility of euthanasia
One argument for the permissibility of euthanasia found in the African philosophical tradition suggests that the sole goal of life is to develop one’s vital force, which is done by relating harmoniously with one’s community. However, this is impossible for people with certain medical conditions. If the goals of life cannot be achieved, then euthanasia is permissible. I challenge this argument by showing that it overlooks the fact that severely il…
Classic Pro‐Choice Thought Experiments and African Communitarianism
I analyse two classic pro‐choice thought experiments in the Anglo‐American philosophical literature in Thomson's Violinist Case and Tooley's Kitten Serum Case, in light of two prominent African normative theories. Though each of these cases is designed to generate pro‐choice intuitions, I suggest they do not do so nearly as clearly when African normative theories are in view. Furthermore, even where they might yield a pro‐choice verdict, they do …
Rescuing the (Open) Theistic Multiverse Against Two Recent Challenges
Unfriendly Cases for Metz’s Moral Relational Theory
Metz’s Moral Relational Theory says that an action is right if it respects our capacity to be party to friendly relationships. Friendliness involves exhibiting solidarity and identification with others. Though Metz’s theory often issues intuitively correct moral judgments, I argue that it fails to do so in the cases of female genital mutilation, religious offense, and homosexual romantic relationships. I conclude by exploring whether there are po…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Thaddeus Metz's A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics In and Beyond the Continent
An interview with John Leslie
This article is part of Religious Studies ’ new initiative to publish a series of interviews with distinguished philosophers of religion. Each interview explores the personal and academic background of the interviewee and discusses their core philosophical views. The aim is to inspire students and scholars and to provide an overview of some of the most important works developed by contemporary philosophers of religion. In this interview, Kirk Lou…
Liveliness as Secular Life Force
This chapter explains and motivates the secular conception of life force called liveliness that will be employed for the rest of the book. Liveliness is a force, not substance, and is associated with health, creativity, reproduction, and courage, among other qualities. A lack or decrease of liveliness is represented by disease, weakness, and destruction. These features of liveliness and its lack so strongly accord with most of our intuitions that…
Conclusion
This chapter wraps up the book by summarizing its main conclusions. It also suggests that possible next steps include not only adding the theory of liveliness to the list of long-standing Anglo-American moral theories, but to include it in even larger comparative evaluations. This means that liveliness should be considered as a moral theory alongside moral theories from other regions of the global south such as Latin America, in addition to those…
Advancing global economic justice in the face of race: Mwipikeni’s critique of Metz’s reformist normative economics
Liveliness as a Theory of Meaning in Life: Problems and Prospects
I aim to more fully develop a theory of meaning in life based on the concept of life force that is important to a substantial number of Africans in the sub-Sahara region. While life force implies a large invisible ontology, Thaddeus Metz has recently developed an entirely naturalistic version of it known as liveliness . However, he also offers two objections that hinge on the idea that life force cannot accommodate intuitions that certain types o…
Future minds are not a challenge to anti‐natalism: A reply to Gould
Deke Caiñas Gould (2021) argues that the possibility of future non‐human‐like minds who are not harmed by coming into existence poses a challenge to David Benatar's well‐known Asymmetry Argument for anti‐natalism. Since the good of these future minds has the potential to outweigh the current harms of human existence, they can be appealed to in order to justify procreation. I argue that Gould's argument rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of B…
Traditional African Religion and Non-Doxastic Accounts of Faith
In the recent Anglo-American philosophy of religion, significant attention has been given to the nature of faith. My goal is to show that some of the recent discussion of faith can be fruitfully brought to bear on a problem for a less globally well-known version of monotheism found in African Traditional Religion. I argue that African Traditional Religion could benefit from utilizing non-doxastic accounts of faith. For a significant number of Afr…
Benatar and Metz on Cosmic Meaning and Anti-natalism
David Benatar argues that one important consideration in favour of anti-natalism is based on the fact that all humans lack cosmic meaning; we will never transcend space and time such that we will have an impact on the entire universe, forever. Instead of denying Benatar's claim that we lack cosmic meaning, Thaddeus Metz recently argues that our lack of cosmic meaning is not that significant because we ought not to regret lacking a good that we co…
Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious Approaches
Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious
Existential gratitude—gratitude for one’s very existence or life as a whole—is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time
A Relational Theory of the Atonement: African Contributions to Western Philosophical Theology
While the atonement is a central component of Christianity, there is little agreement in the tradition about how it should be understood. This book develops and defends a novel relational theory of atonement inspired by African relational ethics. This book brings important themes from African ethics into conversation with the contemporary philosophical literature on the atonement. The author employs an African relational ethic that says an act is…
African Communitarianism and the Misanthropic Argument for Anti-Natalism
Value Beyond Monotheism: The Axiology of the Divine
Are atheist worlds really the best
Anti-theism is the view that God's existence would (or does) detract from the value of the world. A distinctive argument for anti-theism says that the very best atheist worlds are better than the best theist worlds. The reason for this is that it's possible to gain most or all of the benefits associated with theism in Godless worlds. For instance, worlds with a lesser god or several lesser gods can provide many of the benefits of theism without t…
Molefe on the value of community for personhood
In his book, An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics, Motsamai Molefe defends a character-based ethics where the goal of morality is to achieve personhood (in the African normative sense of the term). He moves away from many in the African tradition who hold that community is intrinsically valuable, and instead contends that community is instrumentally valuable in that it is the means by which agents achieve personhood. Accord…
African Communitarianism and the Misanthropic Argument for Anti-Natalism
Catherine Elgin on peerhood and the epistemic benefits of disagreement
Anti-Theism and the Objective Meaningful Life Argument
Philosophers of religion have begun to explore the value question of whether God's existence would add to, detract from, or have no impact on the value of our world. The Meaningful Life Argument is one of the most promising arguments in support of the view that God's existence would make the world worse, at least for certain individuals. I offer an objectivized version of the Meaningful Life Argument and show why recent objections leveled against…
Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Axiology of Theism: Problems and Prospects
Does God exist? This is a question that philosophers have sought to answer for centuries. But consider the following: What is the value impact of God's existence? Would God's existence be good or bad? Should we want God to exist? These are questions that have only very recently garnered attention from philosophers. To date, they have mostly been tackled by comparing a world where God exists to another world as similar to it as possible but where …
On How (Not) to Argue for Preferring God's Non-Existence
Consider two epistemically possible worlds that are as similar as can be, except that atheism is true in one world and theism is true in the other world. Which world is it rational to prefer? I explore the strongest defence of the somewhat counterintuitive claim that it is rational to prefer the atheistic world. I also discuss the opposite conclusion, namely, that it's rational to prefer the theistic world. Surprisingly, my conclusion is that it'…
Indirect epistemic reasons and religious belief
If believing P will result in epistemically good outcomes, does this generate an epistemic reason to believe P, or just a pragmatic reason? Conceiving of such reasons as epistemic reasons seems to lead to absurdity, e.g. by allowing that someone can rationally hold beliefs that conflict with her assessment of her evidence's probative force. We explain how this and other intuitively unwelcome results can be avoided. We also suggest a positive case…
Anti-Theism and the Objective Meaningful Life Argument
Philosophers of religion have begun to explore the value question of whether God's existence would add to, detract from, or have no impact on the value of our world. The Meaningful Life Argument is one of the most promising arguments in support of the view that God's existence would make the world worse, at least for certain individuals. I offer an objectivized version of the Meaningful Life Argument and show why recent objections leveled against…
The Epistemic Benefits of Disagreement
On How (Not) to Argue for Preferring God's Non-Existence
Consider two epistemically possible worlds that are as similar as can be, except that atheism is true in one world and theism is true in the other world. Which world is it rational to prefer? I explore the strongest defence of the somewhat counterintuitive claim that it is rational to prefer the atheistic world. I also discuss the opposite conclusion, namely, that it's rational to prefer the theistic world. Surprisingly, my conclusion is that it'…
Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment
Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment , by John Pittard. Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp xiii + 339. $80 (hardcover).
The Epistemic Benefits of Worldview Disagreement
In my recent book, The Epistemic Benefits of Disagreement, I develop a defense of non-conciliationism, but one that only applies in research contexts: Epistemic benefits are more likely in the offing if inquirers stick to their guns in the face of disagreement. I aim to expand my original account by examining its implications for non-inquiry beliefs. I’m particularly interested in broader worldview disagreements. I want to examine how inquirers s…
No-fault Unbelief Defended: A Reply to Roberto Di Ceglie
Ubuntu and Western Monotheism: An Axiological Investigation
Ubuntu and the Axiology of Ultimism
Catherine Elgin on peerhood and the epistemic benefits of disagreement
Religious Disagreement, Mystical Experience, and Doxastic Minimalism: Critical Notice of John Pittard's Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment
In his recent book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard challenges J.L. Schellenberg's rejection of mystical experience as worthy of enjoying presumptive doxastic trust for two main reasons. First, Pittard holds that Schellenberg wrongly focuses only on avoiding error while placing no emphasis on gaining truth. I argue that, contra Pittard, Schellenberg's account nicely balances the competing epistemic goals of gaining…
African Communitarianism and the Misanthropic Argument for Anti-Natalism
Value Beyond Monotheism: The Axiology of the Divine
Are atheist worlds really the best
Anti-theism is the view that God's existence would (or does) detract from the value of the world. A distinctive argument for anti-theism says that the very best atheist worlds are better than the best theist worlds. The reason for this is that it's possible to gain most or all of the benefits associated with theism in Godless worlds. For instance, worlds with a lesser god or several lesser gods can provide many of the benefits of theism without t…
Molefe on the value of community for personhood
In his book, An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics, Motsamai Molefe defends a character-based ethics where the goal of morality is to achieve personhood (in the African normative sense of the term). He moves away from many in the African tradition who hold that community is intrinsically valuable, and instead contends that community is instrumentally valuable in that it is the means by which agents achieve personhood. Accord…
African Communitarianism and the Misanthropic Argument for Anti-Natalism
Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Axiology of Theism: Problems and Prospects
Does God exist? This is a question that philosophers have sought to answer for centuries. But consider the following: What is the value impact of God's existence? Would God's existence be good or bad? Should we want God to exist? These are questions that have only very recently garnered attention from philosophers. To date, they have mostly been tackled by comparing a world where God exists to another world as similar to it as possible but where …
The axiology of theism: Problems and prospects
Roughly put, the axiology of theism asks whether God's existence would be good, bad, or neutral. Thus far the literature has focused on comparing theism as represented by 'Western monotheism' to atheism as represented by 'metaphysical naturalism'. Furthermore, the comparison has focused on comparing the actual world to a nearby epistemically possible world. I begin by surveying the literature comparing the value of such worlds before turning to e…
Future minds are not a challenge to anti‐natalism: A reply to Gould
Deke Caiñas Gould (2021) argues that the possibility of future non‐human‐like minds who are not harmed by coming into existence poses a challenge to David Benatar's well‐known Asymmetry Argument for anti‐natalism. Since the good of these future minds has the potential to outweigh the current harms of human existence, they can be appealed to in order to justify procreation. I argue that Gould's argument rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of B…
Traditional African Religion and Non-Doxastic Accounts of Faith
In the recent Anglo-American philosophy of religion, significant attention has been given to the nature of faith. My goal is to show that some of the recent discussion of faith can be fruitfully brought to bear on a problem for a less globally well-known version of monotheism found in African Traditional Religion. I argue that African Traditional Religion could benefit from utilizing non-doxastic accounts of faith. For a significant number of Afr…
Benatar and Metz on Cosmic Meaning and Anti-natalism
David Benatar argues that one important consideration in favour of anti-natalism is based on the fact that all humans lack cosmic meaning; we will never transcend space and time such that we will have an impact on the entire universe, forever. Instead of denying Benatar's claim that we lack cosmic meaning, Thaddeus Metz recently argues that our lack of cosmic meaning is not that significant because we ought not to regret lacking a good that we co…
Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious Approaches
Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious
Existential gratitude—gratitude for one’s very existence or life as a whole—is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time
A Relational Theory of the Atonement: African Contributions to Western Philosophical Theology
While the atonement is a central component of Christianity, there is little agreement in the tradition about how it should be understood. This book develops and defends a novel relational theory of atonement inspired by African relational ethics. This book brings important themes from African ethics into conversation with the contemporary philosophical literature on the atonement. The author employs an African relational ethic that says an act is…
Liveliness as a Theory of Meaning in Life: Problems and Prospects
I aim to more fully develop a theory of meaning in life based on the concept of life force that is important to a substantial number of Africans in the sub-Sahara region. While life force implies a large invisible ontology, Thaddeus Metz has recently developed an entirely naturalistic version of it known as liveliness . However, he also offers two objections that hinge on the idea that life force cannot accommodate intuitions that certain types o…
Philosophy (31 works) · Epistemology (24 works) · Psychology (14 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Theology and Philosophy of Evil (12 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (6 works) · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs (6 works)