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Philosophy professor shares in $140,000 Templeton grant

By David Gonnerman '90
February 10, 2004

St. Olaf Professor of Philosophy Charles Taliaferro is sharing a $140,000 grant from the Tempelton Foundation with six faculty members (five philosophers and one evolutionary biologist) from six other U.S. colleges and universities. The grant is for a three-year joint project to study philosophy of mind.

"There is a prevailing assumption in philosophy of mind today that human nature may be fully accounted for in physical terms, ideally in the terms of a completed physics," says Taliaferro. Such a physical reduction, according to Taliaferro and the other grant recipients, undermines human subjective experience, reason and values. Their goal is to critique current materialism and to articulate and defend an alternative, nonreductive account of human nature that is compatible with contemporary science as well as with human experience, reason and values.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-646-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.