•  69
    Mary Astell’s theory of spiritual friendship
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (1): 46-65. 2018.
    Mary Astell’s theory of friendship has been interpreted either as a version of Aristotelian virtue friendship, or as aligned with a Christian and Platonist tradition. In this paper, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship is determinedly anti-Aristotelian; it is a theory of spiritual friendship offered as an alternative to Aristotelian virtue friendship. By grounding her conception of friendship in a Christian–Platonist metaphysics, I show that Astell rejects the Aristotelian criteria of reci…Read more
  •  64
    Why Hume's counterexample is insignificant and why it is not
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (5). 2009.
    The idea of the missing shade of blue presents a difficulty for Hume's first principle that ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspond...
  •  61
    There are many reasons to include texts written by women in early modern philosophy courses. The most obvious one is accuracy: women helped to shape the philosophical landscape of the time. Thus, to craft a syllabus that wholly excludes women is to give students an inaccurate picture of the early modern period. Since it seems safe to assume that we all aim for accuracy, this should be reason enough to include women writers in our courses. This article nonetheless offers an additional reason: whe…Read more
  •  56
    The non-Christian influence on Anselm’s Proslogion argument
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69 (2): 73-89. 2011.
    This paper considers Anselm’s Proslogion argument against a background of historical events that include philosophical disputes between Christian and Jewish polemicists. I argue that the Proslogion argument was addressed, in part, to non-Christian theists and that it offered a response to Jewish polemicists who had argued that the Christian conception of God as an instantiated unity was irrational. Anselm is not trying to convince atheists that there really is a God. He is arguing that the Chris…Read more
  •  42
    Recovering Early Modern Women Writers
    Metaphilosophy 50 (3): 268-285. 2019.
    Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in…Read more
  •  42
    Why Cartesian Ideas of Sense are Innate
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 38 (3): 413-428. 2000.
  •  39
    New interpretations of Berkeley's thought (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (3). 2009.
    Berkeley apologizes in the Principles for his apparent verbosity. After all, "to what purpose is it to dilate on that which may be demonstrated . . . in a line or two . . . ?" . His justification for his prolixity is that "all men do not equally apprehend things of this nature; and I am willing to be understood by every one" .A willingness to be understood by everyone is surely an intellectual virtue and suggests good will on the part of an author. In this excellent collection of twelve essays, …Read more
  •  28
  •  24
    Perception and Reality (review)
    Philosophical Review 107 (2): 332-334. 1998.
    This book does several things, and it does them all well. Yolton firmly contextualizes the debates about perception within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while showing how these debates are often repeated in contemporary philosophy of mind. Along the way, he provides novel interpretations of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant that are clearly and convincingly presented. Perhaps the most important feature of his treatment is that it so vividly shows the Moderns grappling with i…Read more
  •  13
    Perception and Reality: A History from Descartes to Kant
    with John W. Yolton
    Philosophical Review 107 (2): 332. 1998.
    This book does several things, and it does them all well. Yolton firmly contextualizes the debates about perception within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while showing how these debates are often repeated in contemporary philosophy of mind. Along the way, he provides novel interpretations of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant that are clearly and convincingly presented. Perhaps the most important feature of his treatment is that it so vividly shows the Moderns grappling with i…Read more