Indiana University, Bloomington
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1999
Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
  • Introduction
    In Charles Bolyard & Rondo Keele (eds.), Later Medieval Metaphysics: Ontology, Language, and Logic, Fordham University Press. pp. 1-8. 2013.
  • 4 Accidents in Scotus’s Metaphysics Commentary
    In Charles Bolyard & Rondo Keele (eds.), Later Medieval Metaphysics: Ontology, Language, and Logic, Fordham University Press. pp. 84-100. 2013.
  •  6
    Augustine on Error and Knowing That One Does Not Know
    In Andreas Speer & Maxime Mauriège (eds.), Irrtum – Error – Erreur (Miscellanea Mediaevalia Band 40), De Gruyter. pp. 3-18. 2018.
  •  3
    Medieval Epistemology: Augustine, Aquinas, and Ockham
    In Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology: The Key Thinkers, Continuum. pp. 99-123. 2012.
    The epistemological views of medieval philosophers Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ockham are considered in turn. First, Augustine’s refutation of skepticism from the Contra Academicos and his positive account of knowing Divine Ideas from the De Magistro are outlined, after which there is a brief discussion of his Vital Attention theory of sensation. Second, Aquinas’s account of self-evident propositions, sensation, concept formation, knowledge of singulars, and self-knowledge from t…Read more
  •  17
    Augustine on Error and Knowing That One Does Not Know
    In Andreas Speer & Maxime Mauriège (eds.), Irrtum – Error – Erreur (Miscellanea Mediaevalia Band 40), De Gruyter. pp. 3-18. 2018.
    In this paper, I examine Augustine’s response to two Socratic statements: his exhortation for us to know ourselves, and his claim that he knows only that he knows nothing. Augustine addresses these statements in many works, but I focus in particular on his discussion of error in Contra Academicos, and his account of self-knowing (and not-knowing) in De Trinitate (DT). For Augustine, error can occur in at least four distinct ways, and one of his main purposes in Contra Academicos is to show that …Read more
  •  21
    Henry of Harclay on Knowing Many Things at Once
    Recherches de Theologie Et Philosophie Medievales 81 (1): 75-93. 2014.
  • This work examines the combined epistemological and psychological theory of Peter Auriol , a French scholastic philosopher and theologian. Though not himself a skeptic, Auriol's concerns with sensory illusions force him to maintain a distinction between the real being of extramental objects and the apparent or objective being of entities existing only in the mind. This view had a profound impact on his contemporaries, especially William of Ockham, and thus establishes Auriol's place at the foref…Read more
  •  13
    Letter to the Editor
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81 (2). 2007.
  •  53
  •  1
    John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (review)
    Philosophy in Review 19 (5): 347-349. 1999.
  •  172
    Augustine, epicurus, and external world skepticism
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2): 157-168. 2006.
    : In Contra Academicos 3.11.24, Augustine responds to skepticism about the existence of the external world by arguing that what appears to be the world — as he terms things, the "quasi-earth" and "quasi-sky" — cannot be doubted. While some (e.g., M. Burnyeat and G. Matthews) interpret this passage as a subjectivist response to global skepticism, it is here argued that Augustine's debt to Epicurean epistemology and theology, especially as presented in Cicero's De Natura Deorum 1.25.69 - 1.26.74, …Read more
  •  30
    Truth and Certainty in Peter Auriol
    Vivarium 53 (1): 45-64. 2015.
    This paper investigates the nature of truth and certainty according to the French Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol. In the first section, I attempt to harmonize a few different sections of Auriol’s Scriptum on book i of the Sentences: the accounts of truth as conformity in question 2 of the Prologue and question 10 of distinction 2, and the account of truth as quiddity in question 3 of distinction 19. In the second section, I explore the notion of certainty in question 1 of the Prologue. Here,…Read more
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  •  6
    Later Medieval Metaphysics: Ontology, Language, and Logic (edited book)
    Fordham University Press. 2013.
    This book begins with standard ontological topics--such as the nature of existence--and of metaphysics generally, such as the status of universals, form, and accidents. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and, if so, are they anything more than general concepts? Among the figures…Read more
  •  2
    Joseph Bobik, Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements (review)
    Philosophy in Review 20 (2): 84-86. 2000.