(All sessions held in YMCA 401.)

3:45    Lisa Downing (Ohio State University): “Was Locke Agnostic Between Materialism and Dualism?”

    Friday, Sept. 27
        3:00-4:00    Chrissy S. Meijns (University College London/Yale University): “Suárez on the Unity of Inner Sense Power”
        4:05-5:00    Joseph Zepeda (St. Mary's College, California): “Descartes on Abstraction, Exclusion, and Real Distinction”
        5:10-6:10    Amber Carlson (Notre Dame University): “The Problem of Universals in Descartesʼ Dualism”
    Saturday, Sept. 28
        9:00-10:00    Lisa Downing (Ohio State University): “Malebranche: Causation, volition, Impact”
        10:05-11:05    Sanem Soyarslan (North Carolina State University): “The Power of Intuitive Knowledge in Spinozaʼs Ethics: The Case of Akrasia”
        11:10-12:10    Julia Borcherding (Yale University): “Leibniz on Knowing Necessary Truths”
        2:00-3:00    Stewart Duncan (University of Florida): “Locke and What God Would Not Do”
        3:05-4:05    Kristen Irwin (Biola University, California): “Locke and Bayle on Religious (In)tolerance”
        4:15-5:15    Stefan Storrie (Trinity College Dublin): “Berkeley and the Internal 'Ought'”
        5:20-6:20    Hsueh Qu (New York University): “Humeʼs Practically Epistemic Conclusions”

Nov. 22-23, 2013: Texas A&M Early Modern Initiative Conference for Ph.D. Applicants

Twelve students from North America and Europe who will be entering early modern philosophy Ph.D. programs in 2014 come together to present their research and receive feedback from early modern scholars and other graduate students. All respondents listed below are Texas A&M graduate students.

Friday, November 22

• 3:00-3:45 Issei Takehara (Western Ontario): "Descartes on Transubstantiation"; respondent Steven Dezort
• 3:45-4:30 Sam Eklund (Macalester Coll): "A Cardinal Sin: Spinozaʼs Degrees of Infinity"; respondent Curry OʼDay
• 4:45-5:30 Erin Islo (KU Leuven): "In Nature and In God: Spinozaʼs Concept of Essence"; respondent Diana Yarzagaray
• 5:30-6:15 Jenny Charmichael (Michigan State): "Spinoza and Anomalous Monism"; respondent Zak Fisher

Saturday, November 23

• 9:00-9:45 Ryan Manley (San Francisco State): "Spinozaʼs Just and Loving God"; respondent Michael Istvan
• 9:45-10:30 Dominique Reid (Marquette): "The Implications of Spinozaʼs Hermeneutical Method in his Theological-Political Treatise"; respondent Kristin Drake
• 10:45-11:30 Austen Haynes (Rhode Island): "Leibnizʼs Language of Ideas: How Force Illuminates Our Understanding of Innate Ideas"; respondent T. J. Kasperbauer
• 11:30-12:15 Richard Martin (Mississippi): "Can Leibniz Avoid Necessitarianism? The Modality of What Is Best"; respondent Josh Barthuly
• 2:15-3:00 Jameson Putnam (San Francisco State): "Disinterested Love, Knowledge, and Becoming God: Leibnizʼs Rationalist Morality"; respondent Wendy Bustamante
• 3:00-3:45 Dan Ferguson (North Carolina, Chapel Hill): "Newton's General Scholium Argument for Godʼs Substantial Omnipresence"; respondent Josh Cason
• 4:00-4:45 Rosalind Chaplin (Simon Fraser): "Hume on Existence and the Content of Perceptions"; respondent Jackson Hoerth
• 4:45-5:30 Adam Bobella (San Francisco State): "Humeʼs Loss of the External World"; respondent Andrew Soto

For more information (and advanced copies of the papers), contact Stephen Daniel.

3:45    Tad Schmaltz (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): “Descartes and Malebranche on the Metaphysics of Rest”

3:45    Christia Mercer (Columbia University): “Suffering, Sympathy, and Ultimate Truths in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: The Case of Anne Conway”

• Lisa Downing (Ohio State): “Was Locke Agnostic Between Materialism and Dualism?” (Sept. 26, 2013)
• Tad Schmaltz (Michigan, Ann Arbor): “Descartes and Malebranche on the Metaphysics of Rest” (Jan. 23, 2014)

• Susanne Sreedhar (Boston U): “Pufendorf on Patriarchy”; commentator Michael LeBuffe (Texas A&M)
• Kinch Hoekstra (UC Berkeley): “Hobbes on ‘Mixarchyʼ”; commentator Elisabeth Ellis (Texas A&M)
• Helen Hattab (Houston): “Interpreting Spinozaʼs Method Against the Background of Aristotelian, Cartesian, and Hobbesian Methods”; commentator Stephen H. Daniel (Texas A&M)
• Samuel Newlands (Notre Dame): “‘Eminenceʼ and Other Dubious Attempts to Avoid Spinozism”; commentator Robert Garcia (Texas A&M)
• Sam Levey (Dartmouth): “Part, Whole, Quantity, Infinity in Galileo and Leibniz”;  commentator Katherine Dunlop (Texas, Austin)
• Kate Abramson (Indiana): “Modes of Evaluation for Persons and Passions: A Humean Perspective”; commentator Joshua Wood (Texas A&M)

• Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown): “Islands, Bedrooms, and the Public Square: Rousseau and Sade on the Place of Philosophy” (Jan. 25, 2013)
• Marleen Rozemond (Toronto): “Thinking Matter: The Cartesian Demon and the Leibnizian Mill vs. Locke” (Nov. 15, 2012)
• Ken Winkler (Yale): “The Idealism of Emerson” (Nov. 1, 2012)
• Lex Newman (Utah): “Locke on the Ideas of Personal Identity” (Sept. 27, 2012)

• Tom Holden (UC Santa Barbara): “Hobbes on the Function of Evaluative Speech”
• Marie Jayasekera (Colgate): “Descartes on the Analogy between the Divine and Human Will”
• Joshua Wood (Texas A&M): “Nisus in Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume”
• John Whipple (Illinois, Chicago): “Discours Exoterique in Leibnizʼs Essais de Theodicée: Moral and Physical Evil”
• Samuel Rickless (UC San Diego): “Lockeʼs Theory of Personal Identity”
• Jessica Gordon-Roth (Washington and Lee): “A New Substance Reading of Locke on Persons”
• Benjamin Hill (Western Ontario): “A Better Argument for Content Externalism in Locke”
• Melissa Frankel (Carlton U, Ottawa): “Berkeley on Divine Archetypes and the Rejection of Scepticism”
• Dario Perinetti (Québec à Montréal): “Perceptions and Objects in Humeʼs Treatise”
• Ken Winkler (Yale): “Causal Realism and Humeʼs Revisions of the Enquiry”

• Alison Simmons (Harvard): “Re-Humanizing Descartes” (April 19, 2012)
• Michael Della Rocca (Yale): “Playing with Fire: Hume, Rationalism, and a Little Bit of Spinoza” (Mar. 8, 2012)
• Daniel Garber (Princeton): “Divine Laws and the Laws of Nature: Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza” (Jan. 19, 2012)
• Jeffrey McDonough (Harvard): “The Heyday of Teleology and Early Modern Philosophy” (Nov. 3, 2011)

• Andreea Mihali (Wilfrid Laurier): “Toward a Cartesian Epistemic Rule Consequentialism”
• Colin Chamberlain (Harvard): “Youʼve Changed: Descartes on the Mind-Body Union”
• Andrew Platt (Central Michigan): “Malebrancheʼs Compatibilism”
• Jeffrey McDonough (Harvard): “Leibniz on Monadic Teleology and Optimal Form”
• Jeremy Dunham (U West of England): “Leibniz, Nominalism and Platoʼs Beard”
• Gregory Brown (Houston): “Leibniz on the Possibility of a Spatial Vacuum”
• Ruth Boeker (St Andrews/Rutgers): “The Role of Appropriation in Lockeʼs Account of Persons and Personal Identity”
• Lewis Powell (Wayne State): “Lockeʼs Problem with Privations”
• Shelley Weinberg (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): “Lockeʼs Reply to the Skeptic”
• Remy Debes (Memphis): “The Peculiar Ethics of David Hume”
  

• Matt Kisner (South Carolina): “Spinoza’s Theory of the Good: Rare and Difficult”
• John Carriero (UCLA): “The Ethics in Spinoza’s Ethics"
• Tamra Frei (Michigan State): “Knowledge of Good and Evil and True Knowledge of Good and Evil”
• Charles Jarrett (Rutgers): “Spinozistic Constructivism”
• Olli Koistinen (Turku): “Spinoza on Motivation and Goodness”
• Valtteri Viljanen (Academy of Finland): “Spinoza on Virtue and Eternity”
• Eugene Marshall (Wellesley): “It Does a Body Good: The Affects, Extension, and Freedom in Spinoza”
• Jon Miller (Queen’s, Ontario): “Spinoza on the Life According to Nature”
• Karolina Huebner (Toronto): “Spinoza’s Ideal of Human Nature”
• Michael Rosenthal (U of Washington): “Politics and Ethics in Spinoza: The Problem of Normativity”
• Justin Steinberg (Brooklyn College/CUNY): “Spinoza on Practical Reason”
• Michael LeBuffe (Texas A&M): “Necessity and Prescriptions in the Ethics”