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47Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 35 (2): 189-203. 2022.This slender and very clearly written book challenges an influential view that seems to be supported by social and cognitive science: that outside domains where there is familiarity and effective f...
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45Review of Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton (eds.), Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (8). 2008.
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45Spinoza on the Politics of Philosophical UnderstandingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3). 2011.In this paper I offer three main challenges to James (2011). All three turn on the nature of philosophy and secure knowledge in Spinoza. First, I criticize James's account of the epistemic role that experience plays in securing adequate ideas for Spinoza. In doing so I criticize her treatment of what is known as the 'conatus doctrine' in Spinoza in order to challenge her picture of the relationship between true religion and philosophy. Second, this leads me into a criticism of her account of the…Read more
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45Neil McArthur, David Hume's Political Theory: Law, Commerce, and the Constitution of Government, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2007. 208pp. H/b. CDN$45. ISBN 978-0-8020-9335- (review)Journal of Scottish Philosophy 7 (1): 103-107. 2009.
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44Paul Russell. The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 424. $99.00 ; $34.95 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 172-175. 2013.
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42A Composite Portrait of a True American Philosophy on MagnanimityIn Sophia Vasalou (ed.), The Measure of Greatness: Philosophers on Magnanimity, Oxford University Press. pp. 235-265. 2019.This paper offers a composite portrait of the concept of magnanimity in nineteenth-century America, focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. A composite portrait, as a method in the history of philosophy, is designed to bring out characteristic features of a group's philosophizing in order to illuminate characteristic features that may still resonate in today's philosophy. Compared to more standard methods in the historiography of philosophy, the construction o…Read more
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38Nothing Much for PhilosophersPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (1): 40-46. 2018.In this article, I argue that by discarding the significance of philosophical methods and tools, the picture of field philosophy offered in Socrates Tenured is more akin to public interest consulting than to philosophy.
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38Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, by Catherine WilsonMind 119 (474): 535-539. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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36Newton and Empiricism (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2014.This is the first volume of original commissioned papers on the subject of Newton and empiricism. The chapters, contributed by a leading team of both established and younger international scholars, explore the nature and extent of Newton's relationship to a variety of empiricisms and empiricists
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35Review of Knud Haakonssen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
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35Newton's Philosophy of TimeIn Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley. 2013.This chapter explains what Isaac Newton means with the phrase “absolute, true, and mathematical time” in order to discuss some of the philosophic issues that it gives rise to. It describes Newton's thought in light of a number of scientific, technological, and metaphysical issues that arose in seventeenth‐century natural philosophy. The first section discusses some of the relevant context from the history of Galilean, mathematical natural philosophy, especially as exhibited by the work of Christ…Read more
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35Toland and Adam Smith's Posthumous WorkDiametros 40 115-125. 2014.In this paper I offer a speculative answer to the question why Adam Smith, who burned nearly all of his papers, arranged for posthumous publication for a number of his essays. I rely on a number of hints in those essays and put them in the context of eighteenth century natural philosophy. I argue that those hints trace back to John Toland and Spinozism
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34Indispensable Hume: From Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy to Adam Smith's "Science of Man"Dissertation, The University of Chicago. 2002.Chapter one is an introduction. In chapter two, I argue that, due to a lack of knowledge of Newton, Hume is unable to use the "Science of Man" to provide a foundation for the other sciences. Hume's account of causality and the missing shade of blue receive special attention. Hume tries, without paying attention to scientific practice, to constrain what science can be about. ;In chapter three, I reconstruct Adam Smith's epistemology. The major theoretical concept of Smith's moral psychology, the …Read more
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34Two Definitions of ‘cause,’ Newton, and The Significance of the Humean Distinction Between Natural and Philosophical RelationsJournal of Scottish Philosophy 5 (1): 83-101. 2007.The main aim of this paper is to explore why it is so important for Hume to defi ne ‘cause’ as he does. This will shed light on the signifi cance of the natural/philosophical relation (hereafter NPR) distinction in the Treatise. Hume's use of the NPR distinction allows him to dismiss on general grounds conceptions of causation at odds with his own. In particular, it allows him to avoid having to engage in detailed re-interpretation of potentially confl icting theories formulated by natural philo…Read more
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33Review of Omri Boehm’s Kant’s Critique of Spinoza (review)Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 36 (2): 463-483. 2015.
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32Galilean reflections on Milton friedman’ S “ methodology of positive economics, ” with thoughts on Vernon smith’ S “ economics in the laboratory&rdquo””Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (1): 50-74. 2005.In this article, the author offers a discussion of the evidential role of the Galilean constant in the history of physics. The author argues that measurable constants help theories constrain data. Theories are engines for research, and this helps explain why the Duhem-Quine thesis does not undermine scientific practice. The author connects his argument to discussion of two famous papers in the history of economic methodology, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of Positive Economics,” which appealed …Read more
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30Review of G.A.J. Rogers, Tom Sorrell, Jill Kraye (eds.), Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (3). 2010.
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28Sophie de Grouchy, de traditie(s) van de twee vrijheden en de missende moeder(s) van het liberalisme1Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 109 (1): 7-23. 2017.Sophie de Grouchy: The Tradition of Two Liberties and the Missing Mother of LiberalismIn this paper, I treat Sophie de Grouchy as an important contributor to liberal reflection on the famous distinction between two kinds of liberty. I place her in the intellectual context of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and show it is likely that Benjamin Constant was familiar with her work. Along the way, by engaging with Isaiah Berlin and with Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver, I make some suggestions on…Read more
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27The Newtonian refutation of Spinoza: Newton's challenge and the socratic problemIn Andrew Janiak & Eric Schliesser (eds.), Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 299--319. 2012.
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26Newton's Metaphysics: EssaysOxford University Press. 2021.In this collection of new and previously published essays, noted philosopher Eric Schliesser offers new interpretations of the signifance of Isaac Newton's metaphysics on his physics and the subsequent development of philosophy more broadly. In particular, he explores the rich resonances between Newton's and Spinoza's metaphysics. The volume includes a substantive introduction, new chapters on Newton's modal metaphysics and his theology, and two postscripts in whichSchliesser responds to some of…Read more
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26Does Berkeley's Immaterialism Support Toland's Spinozism? The Posidonian Argument and the Eleventh ObjectionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 88 33-71. 2020.This paper argues that a debate between Toland and Clarke is the intellectual context to help understand the motive behind the critic and the significance of Berkeley's response to the critic in PHK 60-66. These, in turn, are responding to Boyle's adaptation of a neglected design argument by Cicero. The paper shows that there is an intimate connection between these claims of natural science and a once famous design argument. In particular, that in the early modern period the connection between t…Read more
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25Critical Notice: New Essays on David Hume (review)Journal of Scottish Philosophy 6 (2): 203-208. 2008.
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25Book reviews (review)International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21 (3). 2007.This Article does not have an abstract
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23Response to Amy Olberding, "Philosophical Exclusion and Conversational Practices"Philosophy East and West 67 (4): 1038-1044. 2017.A full third of the book is devoted to "Buddhist themes," and although I am unfortunately unqualified to comment on its exegetical and interpretative quality, I can report that I found the discussion fascinating and enlightening. Priest gives us clear, precise, technical, and philosophically sophisticated theorizing based around these thinkers, giving the lie to the not-uncommon trope among analytic philosophers that so-called "continental" and Eastern thought are inherently wooly, without rigor…Read more
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23Locke’s Humean conventionalismBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 1-10. forthcoming.This paper shows that Locke anticipates key features of Hume's more celebrated analysis of convention. It does so by developing Lenz's account of Lockean (linguistic) convention and its normativity, as presented in Socializing Minds. Locke's account of linguistic convention shares structural features also visible in Locke's treatment of the convention of money and property. The paper shows that Locke's ‘Humean' account of convention responds to a lacuna in Pufendorf’s treatment of linguistic con…Read more
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