John Leslie

Philosophy Department - Univeristy of Guelph

John Leslie
M.Litt. (Oxford), F.R.S.C.

Bio: Joining the Philosophy Department in 1968, I took early retirement in 1996 to have more time for research and writing. I have held visiting posts at the University of Calgary (Dept. of Religious Studies), the Australian National University (Research School of Philosophy), and the University of Liège (Institute of Astrophysics). I was appointed the British Academy--Royal Society of Canada Exchange Lecturer for 1998.

Interests: Metaphysics, with emphasis on the nature of causation, of time, of the mind, and of the world's unity. Philosophy of Religion, emphasizing (1) the neoplatonist idea that God, instead of being an omnipotent creator, is a need for the world to exist, a need which is itself creatively effective; and (2) the spinozistic notion that the world is just the thoughts of a divine mind. Philosophy of Cosmology, particularly the suggestion that there exist many universes, ours being one of the rare ones in which intelligent living beings can evolve. Ethics, particularly the duty to prevent the extinction of the human race. Analysis of Risks. Probability Theory. Decision Theory.

Other interests: Rock climbing; board games, particularly "Hostage Chess" (see below); family life; the oriental board game "Go".

Publications:

"Infinite Minds", Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2001.

http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/humanities/philosophy/viewpoint/leslie/

"The End of the World", Routledge, London and New York, 1996, paperback 1998.

Hostage Chess David Pritchard, the world authority on chess variants (he has written an Encyclopedia listing 1,450 of them) said the game was better than the one he'd previously picked as "variant of the decade".
http://www.chessvariants.com/difftaking.dir/hostage.html

Theology and Cosmology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-theology/

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