Brandon Watson

Education

Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Toronto, March 2006.

B.A. Theology/Philosophy, University of Portland, 1999, maxima cum laude.

Area of Specialization

Early Modern Philosophy

Areas of Competence

Medieval Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion

Particular Areas of Research Interest

Early Modern Theories of the External World; Seventeenth-Century Augustinianism; Early Modern Responses to Hume; Lady Mary Shepherd's Causal Theory; William Whewell's Philosophy of Science

Dissertation

Title: The External World and the Fall from Reason: Malebranche's Account of our Knowledge of the Existence and Nature of Bodies
Committee: Donald Ainslie (Primary Advisor), Elmar Kremer, Marleen Rozemond

(dissertation abstract)

Presentations

The Universe of the Imagination: Malebranche’s Walking-Soul Argument and Treatise 1.2.6. International Hume Society, Toronto ON, 2005.
God in the Works: Malebranche's Account of Mind-Body Union. Canadian Philosophical Association, London ON, 2005.
Hume and Coherence. International Hume Society, Las Vegas NV, 2003.
Universal Reason and Malebranche's Theory of Ideas. South Central Seminar in the History of Early Modern Philosophy, Lubbock TX, 2002.

Papers in Progress

Coherence and the Loose Idea: Mental Impulse in Hume's Theory of the External World (draft available on request)

Sample of Teaching Experience

17th- and 18th-Century Philosophy (PHL 210Y), University of Toronto, Fall 2005 (First Term) -- forthcoming
17th- and 18th-Century Philosophy (PHL 210Y), University of Toronto, Summer 2004 (Second Term)
The Rationalists (PHL 310S), University of Toronto, Spring 2004
The Empiricists (PHL 311F), University of Toronto, Fall 2003

(teaching dossier available on request)

References

(references available on request)

Last updated 5 December 2005