Boston University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2011
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy
  •  8
    Locke holds that the experience of voluntary action is the sole origin of the concept of causal power. What is it about this experience that compels Locke to draw this conclusion? I think this question should puzzle scholars a great deal more than it has. There are three existing interpretations of Locke’s position. The first explanation holds that Locke appeals to voluntary action because he takes this experience to reveal a necessary connection between volition and action; the second holds tha…Read more
  •  19
    Hume's Impression of Will
    Hume Studies 43 (1): 91-116. 2017.
    The "impression of will" is intended to pick out the experience of willing an act. Hume discusses this impression in the Treatise primarily in terms of its psychological setting, describing it as "the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind".1 It is not obvious what Hume means in this and related passages. Scholars have offered a number of suggestions about how the impression of will fits into Hume…Read more
  •  32
    On grounding superadded properties in Locke
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (5): 878-896. 2016.
    ABSTRACTScholars have employed three interpretive strategies to explain how Locke understands the metaphysical relationship between a superadded property and the material body to which it is affixed. The first is the mechanist strategy advanced by Michael Ayers and Edwin McCann. It argues that the mechanical affections of a given body are causally responsible for the operation of superadded powers. The second is the extrinsic strategy found in Mathew Stuart. It argues that Locke, who rejects mec…Read more
  •  512
    Causality and Mind: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (review)
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (4): 849-851. 2014.
  •  880
    Hume and the Metaphysics of Agency
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (1): 87-112. 2014.
    I examine Hume’s ‘construal of the basic structure of human agency’ and his ‘analysis of human agency’ as they arise in his investigation of causal power. Hume’s construal holds both that volition is separable from action and that the causal mechanism of voluntary action is incomprehensible. Hume’s analysis argues, on the basis of these two claims, that we cannot draw the concept of causal power from human agency. Some commentators suggest that Hume’s construal of human agency is untenable, undu…Read more
  •  164
    Hume and the phenomenology of agency
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4): 496-517. 2014.
    Some philosophers argue that Hume, given his theory of causation, is committed to an implausibly thin account of what it is like to act voluntarily. Others suggest, on the basis of his argument against free will, that Hume takes no more than an illusory feature of action to distinguish the experience of performing an act from the experience of merely observing an act. In this paper, I argue that Hume is committed to neither an unduly parsimonious nor a sceptical account of the phenomenology of a…Read more