I am a philosophy professor at the University of Iowa. My research and teaching interests include the history of the mind-body problem, the methods of rationalism, free will and determinism, agency, and the rhetoric of inquiry. I recently completed a scholarly book on Descartes on the limits of philosophical inquiry. Descartes defends just a small number of metaphysical theses, and the theses that he does defend are in the service of everyday embodied life. For example, he offers an austere and unconventional view of the nature of God, and he appeals that view to derive a view of the good life for human beings. I am also working on a number of issues in the philosophy of Margaret Cavendish–with a focus on freedom, agency, and authority. I am also thinking about related issues in Spinoza's monism and pan-psychism.

Selected publications

• Descartes, in the series The Routledge Philosophers, Routledge (2023), 424 pp.
• Editor, Margaret Cavendish: Philosophical Writings, Oxford University Press (2019), 274 pp.
• Cavendish, in the series The Arguments of the Philosophers, Routledge (2016), 318 pp.
• Everyday Examples, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, (2015), 312 pp.
• Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations, Cambridge University Press (2014), 336 pp.
• Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations, Oxford University Press (2010), 248 pp.

Articles

• "Cavendish on Liberty and Freedom," commissioned for The Oxford Handbook of Cavendish, ed. Julie Crawford and Jacqueline Broad, Oxford UP.
• "Active Mind or Active Body: A review of Lascano on Cavendish and Conway," commissioned for Mind.
• "Margaret Cavendish," forthcoming in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Simple Natures and Eternal Truths," forthcoming in The Cartesian Mind, ed. Cecilia Wee and Jorge Secada, Routledge Publishing.
• "Margaret Cavendish and Galen Strawson on Emergence, Mind, and Self," Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 4 (2023), 369-398.
• "Ways of Knowing," in The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, ed. Karen Detlefsen and Lisa Shapiro, Routledge Publishing (2023), 140-154.
• "Cavendish, Philosophical Letters, and the Plenum," in Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Lisa Walters and Brandie Siegfried, Cambridge UP (2022), 98-111.
• "The Feminist Worlds of Margaret Cavendish," in World-Making Renaissance Women, ed. Pamela Hammons and Brandie Siegfried, Cambridge UP (2021), 184-198.
• Review of J. Broad, Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2020).
• "Hyperbolic Doubt, Cognitive Garbage, and the Regulae," Revue Internationale De Philosophie 2019/4, 449-467.
• "Cavendish on Material Causation and Cognition," Causation and Cognition: Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Dominik Perler and Sebastian Bender, Routledge Publishing (2019), 145-170.
• Review of The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish by Deborah Boyle, Locke Studies 18 (2018), 1-9.
• "Cavendish on the Metaphysics of Imagination and the Dramatic Force of the Imaginary World," Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, ed. Emily Thomas, Cambridge UP (2018), 188-210.
• "Mind-Body Problems," The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. D. Kaufman, Routledge Publishing (2018), 253-286.
• "Descartes and the Force of Skepticism," Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Baron Reed and Diego Machuca, Bloomsbury Academic (2017)
• Review of C.P. Ragland, The Will to Reason: Theodicy and Freedom in Descartes, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2016).
• "True and Immutable Natures," The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. L. Nolan, Cambridge UP (2016), 727-730
• "Analysis vs. Synthesis," The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. L. Nolan, Cambridge UP (2016), 7-12
• "Introduction," The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations, ed. D. Cunning, Cambridge UP (2014), 1-22
• "The First Meditation: Divine Omnipotence, Necessary Truths, and the Possibility of Radical Deception," The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations, Cambridge UP (2014), 68-87
• "Descartes on God and the Products of His Will," Models of God and Other Ultimate Realities, ed. J. Diller and A. Kasher, Springer Publishing (2013), 175-193.
• Review of K. Smith, Matter Matters, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011), 997-1001
• “Margaret Lucas Cavendish,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (2009), 43 pp.
• Review (co-authored) of M. Moriarty, Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II, Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (2008), 644-5
• "Malebranche and Occasional Causes," Philosophy Compass 3 (2008), 1-20
• "Fifth Meditation TINs Revisited: A Reply to Criticisms of the Epistemic Interpretation,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2008), 215-227
• "Nicolas Malebranche," The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, ed. T. Hockey, Springer Academic Publishers (2007), 731-2
• "Semel in Vita: Descartes' Stoic View on the Place of Philosophy in Human Life," Faith and Philosophy 24 (2007), 164-183
• "Descartes on the Dubitability of the Existence of Self," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007), 111-131
• "Cavendish on the Intelligibility of the Prospect of Thinking Matter," History of Philosophy Quarterly 23 (2006), 117-136
• "Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations,"An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, Athens: Atiner Publishing (2006), 17-32
• Review of D. Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2005)
• "Rationalism and Education," A Companion to Rationalism, ed. A. Nelson, Blackwell Publishing (2005), 61-81
• Editor and translator, “Principii Cartesia” by Robert Percy Smith, The Philological Museum (2004), ed. D. Sutton
• "Systematic Divergences in Malebranche and Cudworth," Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (2003), 343-363
• "True and Immutable Natures and Epistemic Progress in Descartes' Meditations," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003), 235-248
• "Descartes on the Immutability of the Divine Will," Religious Studies 39 (2003), 79-92
• "Descartes' Modal Metaphysics," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002), ed. E. Zalta, 37 pp.
• "Agency and Consciousness," Synthese 120 (1999), 271-294
• "Modality and Cognition in Descartes" (co-authored), Acta Philosophica Fennica 64 (1999), 137-153

Presentations

• Comments on Kevin Lower, "Margaret Cavendish's Relational Metaphysics of Action and Passion," at the conference "Reappearing Ink: Celebrating the Legacy of Eileen O’Neill," U Mass Amherst, April 2023.
• "Cavendish on Self-Motion: what it is and what it isn't," Pacific APA meeting, San Francisco, April 2023.
• Comments on Jan Forsman, "Teresa's Demons: Teresa of Ávila's Influence on the Cartesian Skeptical Scenario of Demonic Deception," Pacific APA meeting, San Francisco, April 2023.
• "Descartes, Rational Distinction, and the Omnibenevolence of God," Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, November 2022.
• "Cavendish on Action at a Distance" The Cavendish Collective, November 2022.
• Facilitator, Academic Workplace discussion group - 2004 paper by T.0. Patton, "In the Guise of Civility: The Complicitous Maintenance of Inferential Forms of Sexism and Racism in Higher Education," November 2022.
• "Cavendish: Think Like the River," The Figge Museum, August 2022.
• "Publishing in early modern philosophy," Conference of the International Margaret Cavendish Society, June 2022.