Monte Cook

Monte L. Cook

Professor Emeritus

Ph.D., Iowa
Research areas: History of Modern Philosophy, Metaphysics

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.

Curriculum vitae (doc)

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”