Nina Chua. Lavender (2011).
My research interests cluster around the following topics.
1. Self-consciousness and objectivity. In The Practical Self, forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2024, I argue that self-conscious subjects are required to have faith in themselves as the agents of their thinking and that this faith is sustained by practices which relate us to an objective world. The book draws on Lichtenberg’s enigmatic remarks on the cogito to draw a connection between self-consciousness, intellectual agency, and a world of other thinkers. An extract from the book was published on The Raven.
2. Kant. Andrew Stephenson and I are editing the Oxford Handbook of Kant. We previously edited a volume on Kant and the Philosophy of Mind. I've written on the Transcendental Deduction, the nature of intuition (1, 2), and the relation of intuition to cognition. I'm particularly interested in Kant's relation to the analytic tradition.
3. Perception. Some of my interest in the nature of perception draws on my work on Kant (e.g. in my Kantian form of naïve realism and in this discussion of transcendental arguments). Some of it doesn't. Craig French and I have written some papers setting out and defending a form of naïve realism (1, 2, 3), which we hope to extend in future work.
4. The problem of other minds. A recent paper defends the idea that we have non-inferential and non-perceptual ways of knowing about others’ minds; an older paper defends a role for testimony in our coming to know about others’ minds. And I've written papers on the epistemological and conceptual problems of other minds.
5. Iris Murdoch. I have a longstanding interest in Murdoch's work. This TLS article provides an overview of her life and work. I've also written on her views on art and ethics and her account of moral vision. I will be teaching a graduate class on her work in the near future.
I have a soft spot for a certain kind of twentieth-century English philosophy: J.L. Austin; Iris Murdoch; Anthony Kenny; P.F. Strawson; John McDowell. My ideal philosophy of mind course begins with chapter 1 of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. My actual Kant course begins with Rorty.
1. Self-consciousness and objectivity. In The Practical Self, forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2024, I argue that self-conscious subjects are required to have faith in themselves as the agents of their thinking and that this faith is sustained by practices which relate us to an objective world. The book draws on Lichtenberg’s enigmatic remarks on the cogito to draw a connection between self-consciousness, intellectual agency, and a world of other thinkers. An extract from the book was published on The Raven.
2. Kant. Andrew Stephenson and I are editing the Oxford Handbook of Kant. We previously edited a volume on Kant and the Philosophy of Mind. I've written on the Transcendental Deduction, the nature of intuition (1, 2), and the relation of intuition to cognition. I'm particularly interested in Kant's relation to the analytic tradition.
3. Perception. Some of my interest in the nature of perception draws on my work on Kant (e.g. in my Kantian form of naïve realism and in this discussion of transcendental arguments). Some of it doesn't. Craig French and I have written some papers setting out and defending a form of naïve realism (1, 2, 3), which we hope to extend in future work.
4. The problem of other minds. A recent paper defends the idea that we have non-inferential and non-perceptual ways of knowing about others’ minds; an older paper defends a role for testimony in our coming to know about others’ minds. And I've written papers on the epistemological and conceptual problems of other minds.
5. Iris Murdoch. I have a longstanding interest in Murdoch's work. This TLS article provides an overview of her life and work. I've also written on her views on art and ethics and her account of moral vision. I will be teaching a graduate class on her work in the near future.
I have a soft spot for a certain kind of twentieth-century English philosophy: J.L. Austin; Iris Murdoch; Anthony Kenny; P.F. Strawson; John McDowell. My ideal philosophy of mind course begins with chapter 1 of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. My actual Kant course begins with Rorty.
