CV

THE BET
 

Education

Ph.D., Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008

Dissertation: The Synthesis of Concepts: Inferentialism and Semantic Theory in Hume, Kant and Hegel

Committee: Jay Rosenberg (Director), Jesse Prinz, Alan Nelson, William Lycan, Marc Lange, Gerald Postema

M.A., Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003

Thesis: Absolute Relativism

Committee: Gerald Postema (Director), William Lycan, David Reeve

B.A., Philosophy, Bard College, 2001

   

Areas of Specialization

Kant, Modern Philosophy

   

Areas of Competence

German Idealism, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind

   

Refereed Journal Papers

“Hume’s Impression/Idea Distinction” Hume Studies, 32, 1 (April 2006): 119-139

“A (Sellarsian) Kantian Critique of Hume’s Theory of Concepts” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 88, 4 (December 2007): 445-457

“Hegel’s Account of Rule-Following” Inquiry, 51, 3 (October 2008): 169-192

“Sellars on Hume and Kant on Representing Complexes” European Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming

“Inferentialism and the Transcendental Deduction” Kantian Review, forthcoming

   

Invited Papers

"The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept" Self, Language, and World: Essays to celebrate the work of Jay F. Rosenberg. Eds. Jim O'Shea and Eric Rubenstein

   

Presentations

Conferences:

The Philosophy of Jay Rosenberg, UNC Chapel Hill, September 2008

Meaning and Modern Empiricism, Virginia Tech, April 2008

Departmental Colloquia:

Scripps College, January 2008

Illinois State University, February 2008


   

Research Outline

My work centers around the thesis that the history of Modern philosophy is at its core a debate about the nature and content of mental representation, a debate that is initiated as early as Descartes, and which crescendos with the contrasting theories of Hume and Kant. Hume is a sophisticated relationalist who believes that content is fixed by a relation between a mental entity and that which it represents. Hume’s employs his famous Copy Principle not only as a explanation of the causal origin of ideas, but also as the principle that determines their representational content. Kant, on the other hand, rejects relationalism on the grounds that it makes impossible our representing as such a world of objects bearing lawful relations to one another. Since he argues that this is necessary for representing oneself as a single, unified subject of experience persisting through time, he concludes that relationalism is untenable. Kant presents inferentialism—the thesis that the content of a representation is constituted by that representation’s role in a system of inference—as a viable alternative to relationalism. Hegel accepts the Kantian picture, emphasizes the normativity involved in the inferential articulation of concepts, and argues that this is an essentially social affair. By reading these figures in this way I am able to reveal the motivations behind their semantic programs and uncover arguments that have been underappreciated in scholarship on Modern philosophy and in contemporary semantic theory.

   

Editorial Work

Referee, Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 2007

Editorial Assistant, Wilfrid Sellars: Fusing the Images. Jay Rosenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007

 

   

Teaching Experience

Wake Forest University

Basic Problems in Philosophy (three sections)

University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill

Main Problems in Philosophy (three times)
Great Works in Philosophy (twice)
Modern Philosophy (three times)
Existentialism
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Religion

 

   

Graduate Courses Taken (* indicates audit)

Hume, Don Garrett

Kant*, Jay Rosenberg Kant, Andrew Janiak

Modern Philosophy*, Alan Nelson

Hegel, Gerald Postema Sellars*, Jay Rosenberg

Philosophy of Language, Dorit Bar-On

Concepts, Jesse Prinz Sellars, Quine, Wittgenstein, Marc Lange

Philosophy of Mind, Richard Zaffron

Relativism*, Jesse Prinz & Dorit Bar-On Epistemology*, Jay Rosenberg

Wittgenstein*, Jay Rosenberg

Ontology, Thomas Hofweber Skepticism and Virtue Epistemology, William Lycan

Philosophy of Science, John Roberts

Causation, Marc Lange Normative Concepts, Geoff Sayre-McCord

Aristotle, Edward Galligan

Plato, David Reeve Plato’s Republic*, David Reeve

Self-Knowledge, Dorit Bar-On

Utilitarianism, Susan Wolf Logic, Mike Resnik


   

References

Don Garrett, Professor of Philosophy, New York University. don.garrett@nyu.edu, (212) 995-4179

Alan Nelson, Professor Of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. anelson@unc.edu, (919) 962-3030

Jesse Prinz, Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. jesse@subcortex.com, (919) 962-3323

Jay Rosenberg, Taylor Grandy Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (deceased)