My research focuses on early modern philosophy and on metaphysics. Much of my work in early modern philosophy has been on the theories of ideas of Descartes, Malebranche, and Arnauld; and much of my work in metaphysics has been on possible-worlds metaphysics. Recently I have been working on the late seventeenth-century Cartesian Robert Desgabets.
Recent Courses
- PHIL 1103 Critical Reasoning (often)
- PHIL 3333/3833 History of Modern Philosophy (spring 2009)
- PHIL 3393 20th-Century Anglo-American Philosophy (fall 2008, spring 2010)
- PHIL 5333 Rationalism (fall 2009)
- PHIL 6393 Seminar: Actualism and Possibilism in Modern Philosophy (spring 2008)
Selected Publications
- "Desgabets as a Cartesian Empiricist," The Journal of the History of Philosophy, October 2008, 501-515.
- “Malebranche’s Criticism of Descartes’s Proof that there are Bodies,” The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15(4) 2007: 641 – 657.
- "Tips for Time Travel" in Philosophers Look at Science Fiction, ed. Nicholas D. Smith (Chicago: Nelson‑Hall, 1982), 47‑55.
- "If 'Cat' is a Rigid Designator, What Does It Designate?" Philosophical Studies 37 (1980), 61‑64.
- "Arnauld's Alleged Representationalism," The Journal of the History of Philosophy, January 1974 (XII/1), 53‑62. Reprinted in Vere Chappell (ed.), Early Modern Philosophers, Volume 4 (New York: Garland, 1992).
Works in Progress
- “Cartesian Actualism”
- “Malebranche’s Soft Dualism”
- “Descartes on Matter”
