Nina Chua. Lavender (2011).
My research interests cluster around the following topics.
1. Self-consciousness and objectivity. A recurring theme in modern philosophy has been the idea that there is some connection between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world. My British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship explores versions of this idea as they arise in early modern and contemporary philosophy. Does self-consciousness require that one believe or know of an objective world? Does it require that we experience an objective world? Or is the connection less straightforward? I'm particularly interested in Lichtenberg’s enigmatic response to Descartes: ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning. To say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement’. I'm teaching a seminar on this material in Summer 2020 and it forms the basis for a book under contract with Oxford University Press.
2. Kant. Andrew Stephenson and I are editing the Oxford Handbook of Kant (contents page). We previously edited a volume on Kant and the Philosophy of Mind. I've published papers on the Transcendental Deduction, the relation of the Deduction to claims about 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, as in my papers on naïve realism in Kantian phrase and on the role that transcendental arguments can play in the philosophy of perception. 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 (see here and here) and am currently writing on her views on faith and on 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. A recurring theme in modern philosophy has been the idea that there is some connection between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world. My British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship explores versions of this idea as they arise in early modern and contemporary philosophy. Does self-consciousness require that one believe or know of an objective world? Does it require that we experience an objective world? Or is the connection less straightforward? I'm particularly interested in Lichtenberg’s enigmatic response to Descartes: ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning. To say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement’. I'm teaching a seminar on this material in Summer 2020 and it forms the basis for a book under contract with Oxford University Press.
2. Kant. Andrew Stephenson and I are editing the Oxford Handbook of Kant (contents page). We previously edited a volume on Kant and the Philosophy of Mind. I've published papers on the Transcendental Deduction, the relation of the Deduction to claims about 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, as in my papers on naïve realism in Kantian phrase and on the role that transcendental arguments can play in the philosophy of perception. 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 (see here and here) and am currently writing on her views on faith and on 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.
