University of Notre Dame
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1994
San Diego, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy
PhilPapers Editorships
Kant: Causation
  •  2
    18 The Antinomy of Pure Reason, Sections 3–8
    In Georg Mohr & Marcus Willaschek (eds.), Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, De Gruyter. pp. 355-370. 2024.
  •  162
    : In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cann…Read more
  •  64
    The Development of Physical Influx In Early Eighteenth-Century Germany
    Review of Metaphysics 49 (2): 295-339. 1995.
    Before the story can be told, however, some stage-setting is necessary. First, it is important to be clear about the most basic doctrines of Pre-established Harmony, Occasionalism, and Physical Influx. Physical Influx asserts intersubstantial causation amongst finite substances. For instance, when I appear to kick a ball, I really am the cause of the ball's motion. Pre-established Harmony denies intersubstantial causation, but affirms intrasubstantial causation. According to Pre-established Harm…Read more
  •  7
    18. The Antinomy of Pure Reason, Sections 3–8
    In Georg Mohr & Marcus Willaschek (eds.), Review: Kant, Immanuel, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, Peeters Press. pp. 447-464. 1999.
  •  146
    Kant on cognition and knowledge
    Synthese 197 (8): 3195-3213. 2020.
    Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we first (I) investigate Ka…Read more
  •  3
    Kant’s Compatibilism (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 31 (2): 147-149. 1999.
  •  45
    Book Notes (review)
    with Nora K. Bell, Samantha J. Brennan, William F. Bristow, Diana H. Coole, Justin DArms, Michael S. Davis, Daniel A. Dombrowski, John J. P. Donnelly, Anthony J. Ellis, Mark C. Fowler, Alan E. Fuchs, Chris Hackler, Garth L. Hallett, Rita C. Manning, Kevin E. Olson, Lansing R. Pollock, Marc Lee Raphael, Robert A. Sedler, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Kristin S. Schrader‐Frechette, Anita Silvers, Doran Smolkin, Alan G. Soble, James P. Sterba, and Stephen P. Turner
    Ethics 111 (2): 446-459. 2001.
  •  93
    Kant on the Hiddenness of God
    Kantian Review 14 (1): 81-122. 2009.
    Kant's sustained reflections on God have received considerable scholarly attention over the years and rightly so. His provocative criticisms of the three traditional theoretical proofs of the existence of God, and his own positive proof for belief in God's existence on moral grounds, have fully deserved the clarification and analysis that has occurred in these discussions. What I want to focus on, however, is the extent to which Kant's position contains resources sufficient to answer a line of q…Read more
  •  307
    Kant’s Account of Cognition
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (1): 83-112. 2017.
    kant’s critique of pure reason undertakes a systematic investigation of the possibility of synthetic cognition a priori so as to determine whether this kind of cognition is possible in the case of traditional metaphysics.1 While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments as well as to that between the a priori and the a posteriori, less attention has been devoted to understanding exactly what cognition is for Kant. In particular, it is o…Read more
  •  20
    Kant's Theory of Biology (Introduction)
    with Ina Goy
    In Eric Watkins & Ina Goy (eds.), Kant's Theory of Biology, De Gruyter. pp. 1-22. 2014.
  •  13
  •  15
    Comments on Karin de Boer’s Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics
    Kantian Review 27 (1): 133-138. 2022.
    In my comments on Karin de Boer’s Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics, I pose five questions. First, I ask how the fundamental principle of practical philosophy that Kant identifies and claims is fundamentally different from Wolff’s is consistent with the claim that Kant is reforming Wolff’s metaphysics. Second, I ask whether De Boer thinks that Kant, as a reformer of Wolff, continues to accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason (or some variant thereof). Third, I ask whether De Boer accepts Wolff’s co…Read more
  • This paper attempts to shed light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering the extent to which he presents a similar doctrine in his theoretical philosophy, where he strikingly claims (e.g., in the Prolegomena) that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. It argues that even though there are important points of difference between the cases of theoretical legislation of the laws of nature and autonomy in moral philosophy, their extensive parallels make a strong, ev…Read more
  •  33
    Mini-symposium on Kant and cognition
    Synthese 197 (8): 3193-3194. 2020.
  •  100
    This paper argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Kant and contemporary analytic metaphysicians are interested in the same kind of metaphysical dependence relation that finds application in a range of contexts and that is today commonly referred to as grounding. It also argues that comparing and contrasting Kant’s and contemporary metaphysicians’ accounts of this relation proves useful for both Kant scholarship and for contemporary metaphysics. The analyses provided by contemporary me…Read more
  •  19
    Kant on Laws
    Cambridge University Press. 2019.
    This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, Watkins show…Read more
  •  1
    Kant on Persons and Agency (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2017.
    Today we consider ourselves to be free and equal persons, capable of acting rationally and autonomously in both practical and theoretical contexts. The essays in this volume show how this conception was first articulated in a fully systematic fashion by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Twelve leading scholars shed new light on Kant's philosophy, with each devoting particular attention to at least one of three aspects of this conception: autonomy, freedom, and personhood. Some focus on cl…Read more
  •  4
    This anthology offers the key works of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in their entirety or in substantial selections, along with a rich selection of associated texts by other leading thinkers of the period.
  •  2
    Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 68 (3): 624-626. 2005.
  •  68
    Kants Übergangskonzeption im ‘Opus Postumum’, by Dina Emundts (review)
    European Journal of Philosophy 16 (2): 332-336. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  9
    Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus (review)
    The Owl of Minerva 24 (2): 215-226. 1993.
    It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that there has been a plethora of work on Neo-Kantianism in recent years. There has, however, been a modest increase, due not only to Köhnke's work but also to Hans-Ludwig Ollig's Der Neukantianismus and Materialien zur Neukantianismus-Diskussion, Thomas Willey's Back To Kant, and Werner Flach's and Helmut Holzey's Erkenntnistheorie und Logik in Neukantianismus. On several counts there is reason to suspect, or at least to hope, that this tendency will…Read more
  •  53
    Givenness and Cognition: Reply to Grüne and Chignell
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (1): 143-152. 2017.
    stefanie grüne takes issue with our claim that for an object to be given, this object must exist. On her view, givenness, according to Kant, does not require the existence of the object, but only its real possibility. She develops her critique in three steps. First, she argues that the reason why Kant requires objects to be given in intuition is that otherwise our concepts would not have ‘objective reality’ and would thus not constitute cognitions. But since the objective reality of a concept co…Read more