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Academic History

I came to UCSD in July 2001 after having spent five years as an assistant professor of philosophy at Florida State University.  I was promoted to associate professor in July 2003, and to full professor in March 2009.

Although my graduate training was primarily in the philosophy of language, my work focuses mostly on topics in early modern philosophy (particularly Locke, Berkeley, and Hume), ancient philosophy (particularly Plato), ethics, and constitutional law.  Recently I have been working on a book on George Berkeley’s argument for idealism, and a book about Locke’s philosophy for Blackwell’s Great Minds series.  I have also been working on articles on the following topics:

will and motivation in seventeenth century British philosophy (focusing on Bramhall, Hobbes, Cudworth, and Locke), seventeenth century accounts of the qualities of bodies, Locke’s account of sensitive knowledge (concerning the existence of material things outside our minds), Hume’s theory of the passions (particularly pity and malice), the moral status of enabling harm, a defense of a version of the doctrine of double effect (with Dana Nelkin), how to solve the problem of empty names in semantics, and a refutation of epistemic contrastivism.  I am the editor for the History:Modern section of Blackwell Philosophy Compass.

News

I received the 2010 Chancellor’s Associates Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (for details and video, see here and here), and the 2010 Warren College Faculty Service Award.