all of life redeemed

His personal web site is here.  His full CV is here and a list of his publications  is here.

1999. On the ontological status of virtual environments
This is an unfinished paper, but it is included in this collection because it addresses a very different topic than the other papers do. The ideas in this paper were presented at the CPTS Working Conference in 1999 but have yet to be published. So it is offered in its unfinished state in case the ideas are found useful. It used Dooyeweerdian ideas to try to understand the ontic status of things in virtual environments (virtual reality), such as characters and objects in a computer game. It employs Dooyeweerd's notion of enkapsis. Much of this can also be found in chapters IV and V of the author's book, Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems.

1991. A new framework for sustainability
This paper was produced for the St. Andrew's Prize in 1999 in new thinking in sustainability. It shows how Dooyeweerd's aspects can help us understand sustainability.

2001. Beyond emancipation
This paper was presented at the Critical Research in Information Systems conference at the University of Salford in June 2001. It suggests how Dooyeweerd's aspects might help us enrich the notion of emancipation which is espoused by Critical Social Theory. Note that, though the author's understanding of critical social theory has moved on since 2001, what he wrote in this paper still pertains.

2001. A philosophical underpinning for IT evaluation
This paper was presented at the 8th European Conference on IT Evaluation, ECITE, Oriel College, Oxford, 17-18 September 2001. It is an early discussion in mainstream IS community of how Dooyeweerd's philosophy can be used to understand the benefits and detrimental impact (success and failure) of information systems as used in human life. As such, it contained a brief introduction of relevant Dooyeweerdian ideas because they were new to the community. A more sophisticated approach is now available in chapter IV of the author's 2007 book, Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems.

2002. The critical theory of Herman Dooyeweerd?
This paper was originally presented at ECRM 2002: European Conference on Research Methodology in Business and Management Studies, Reading, UK, 29 April 2002. It was written as I was beginning to get to grips with Critical Social Theory, especially that of Habermas. Dr. Heinz Klein, one of the foremost critical thinkers in information systems, in a visit to the University of Salford in 2002, had given a number of criteria for what it means to be 'critical' and the author suggested that Dooyeweerd fulfilled every criterion. The author would like to give credit to Heinz for accepting this suggestion at face value and encouraging him to develop the ideas. This paper resulted. Later, a more developed version was published as: 2002. 'The Critical Theory of Herman Dooyeweerd?' Journal of Information Technology 17:257-69

2002. A Philosophical Underpinning For ISD
This paper was presented at the European Conference of Information Systems, Gdansk, Poland, 2002. It shows how Dooyeweerd's philosophy can help us understand information systems development (ISD). Since Dooyeweerd was unknown in the IS community, it provides a brief introduction to relevant Dooyeweerdian ideas, such as aspects and normativity.

2003. with A. Trevor Wood-Harper 2003. A Philosophical Enrichment of CATWOE
This paper was presented at the Australia and New Zealand Systems Conference, ANZSYS 2003. It won the prize for best paper. It takes a well-known and much-discussed concept from Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology and discusses how Dooyeweerdian ideas might enrich it and address some of its known problems. It is an example of how Dooyeweerd can work with rather than against extant ideas. See also the paper 'Enriching humanist thought'.

2003. Enriching critical theory
This paper was presented at CMS3, the Critical Management Systems conference held at Lancaster University, UK, in 2003. It argues that some of Habermas' notions, of lifeworld, system and modernity may benefit from being enriched by Dooyeweerd, in an immanent way, i.e. fufilling the aims Habermas had for them. It then applies this to information technology. See also the paper, 'Emancipation as if it mattered'.

2003.Levels of guidance
This paper was presented at HCI International, 2003, Crete. It shows how Dooyeweerd's aspects can provide guidance at various levels for the design of user interfaces.

2004. Emancipation as if it mattered
This paper was submitted to a special issue of the Information Systems Journal in August 2004 but was not selected. It takes the notion of emancipatory information systems and explores how Dooyeweerd might account for this idea, and critique and enrich it.

2004. On Appealing to Philosophy in Information Systems
This paper was submitted to IFIP 2004 but not selected. It discusses the way information systems and information technology researchers have appealed to philosophy, shows how this leads to ways of understanding different areas of research that are incommensurable with each other because the basic philosophies are incommensurable. It then suggests that Dooyeweerdian philosophy can address issues in all areas, and thus might offer a common philosophy. This paper is an early version of the argument developed in the author's book Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems

2005. Enriching humanist thought
This paper was presented at the Reformational Conference in the Netherlands in 2005. It discusses how the author has, in his research in information systems and critical social theory, has been able to enrich rather than oppose humanist thought with Dooyeweerd. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion about how this might be done. Since this talk, this paper has been worked up for Philosophia Reformata, to be published 2008.

2006. Information systems as a life-world
This paper was submitted to a special issue of Information Systems Journal in 2006-07, but was not considered suitable. It looks at the notion of lifeworld as understood by Husserl, Sxhutz, Heidegger and Habermas, and argues that Dooyeweerd's notion of naïve experience can enrich the debate, especially in the context of information systems use and development. It is currently being reformulated into a more substantial paper for another journal, but is presented here as an indication of what might be said. Note that the author's understanding of extant views of life-world has improved since this version was written, though this version holds most of the main ideas.

2007. 'Fresh light thrown on the Chinese room'
This is an unfinished paper, but is included in this collection because it provides ideas which have yet to be published fully. It is based on an extended abstract submitted to the European Computers and Philosophy Conference, ECAP 2007, but not selected. It suggests that Dooyeweerd's radical non-Cartesian notion of subject-object relationship can provide new ways to address the artificial intelligence question of whether computers can be like human beings, as epitomized by John Searle's thought experiment of the Chinese Room. Debate has polarized into two camps, but Dooyeweerd can provide fresh insight, because he gives priority to meaning rather than to being or causality. A short version of this can be found in chapter V of the author's book, 'Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems'.

2007. A brief overview of Dooyeweerd's philosophy
This paper was prepared by the request of the Centre for Philosophy, Technology and Social Systems in May 2007 for inclusion in their Proceedings. Its aim is to summarise the introduction to Dooyeweerd's philosophy found in the author's book Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems, so as to provide a useful brief introduction. It has yet to be accepted for publication, so is being donated to the All of Life Redeemed website for the time being.


2007. Frameworks for understanding IS and ICT
This paper was presented at the European Computers and Philosophy Conference, June 2007, Enschede, Netherlands, in the 'Intersections' track. It summarises how the author has used Dooyeweerd's philosophy to formulate frameworks for understanding five areas of research and practice in information systems. It was very well received. For more, see the author's book, Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems, (IGI Global: Hershey, PA, USA), 2007.