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23Buddhist Anattā, Dependent Arising, and the Problem of Free WillJournal of Speculative Philosophy 36 (4): 457-475. 2022.ABSTRACT The article analyzes recent Western interpretations of the Theravāda Buddhist position on free will in order to reveal how differences in worldview and methodology impact claims about agency—exposing assumptions about the meaning of will, cause, and self—and how commonalities across traditions enable us to discover what may be at stake, more generally, in the philosophical problem of free will. Embedded in different ontologies and expressed by disparate means are similar intuitions abou…Read more
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20Psyche as Agent: Overcoming the "Free/Unfree" DichotomyTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 58 (2): 79-96. 2022.I argue that the dichotomous treatment of agency and free will is problematic because it rests on a Cartesian interpretation of self and world that many present-day thinkers take themselves to be denying. I do so in order to reconstruct the concept of human agency using the psychologies of American philosophers John Dewey and George Santayana. Identifying the self with the entire organism, as these thinkers do, allows for an importantly different sense of agency. In embracing an organismic inter…Read more
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10The Real Metaphysical Club: The Philosophers. Their Debates, and Selected Writings from 1870 to 1885American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 42 (3): 78-80. 2021.The title of this book invites the question "what makes a metaphysical club real?" Overthinkers like myself may wonder whether metaphysical clubs can partake of varying degrees of reality or whether the distinction is, more likely, one between imposters and the genuine article. It only heightens the curiosity to read, in the general introduction to the book, that metaphysical clubs both preceded and followed the so-called "real" one and that the real one was itself divided into two phases. Given…Read more
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14Materialism in Limbo: Democritus, Santayana, and the ethics of MetaphysicsCognitio 18 (1): 135. 2017.Neste artigo, argumento que a marca de uma metafísica viável é tanto prática e ética quanto é lógica e sistemática. Para tal, analiso os Diálogos no Limbo de George Santayana, no qual ele afirma seu apoio ao materialismo atomístico de Demócrito em bases pragmáticas. Uma metafísica, ele sugere, é uma visão de mundo que acomoda uma pessoa – vista como um determinado tipo de organismo psicológico – sabiamente às forças da natureza e da melhor forma possibilita essa pessoa a levar uma vida próspera.…Read more
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Citizen or Guest?: Cosmopolitanism as HomelessnessIn Jessica Wahman, John J. Stuhr & José Medina (eds.), Cosmopolitanism and Place, Indiana University Press. 2017.
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1It Depends What the Meaning of 'Is' Is: Santayana, Identity Theory, and the Mind-Body ProblemIn Matthew Caleb Flamm & Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (eds.), Under Any Sky: Contemporary Readings of George Santayana, Cambridge Scholars Press. 2007.