Contact information

Email: David Davies
Tel.: 514-398-4870
Office: LEA 941
Office hours (Fall 2009) : Thurs. 4:15 - 6pm; Grad hours on Tues. 4:15 - 5pm.

Degrees

PhD in Philosophy, University of Western Ontario (1987)
MA in Philosophy, University of Manitoba (1979)
BA in Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Oxford University (1970)

Teaching and research areas

(a) Teaching:
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Art
Philosophy of Social Science
Contemporary Metaphysics
Philosophy of Literature

(B) Areas of Current Research and Specialization:
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Art
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Literature

Current research

I have recently completed a manuscript on the Ontology of Art, Art as Performance, which will be published early in 2004. While I am continuing to work in the Philosophy of Art - and am in the early stages of a manuscript on the Philosophy of Literature - I am also reviving earlier research interests in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, and Philosophy of Mind. I have just embarked on a three year funded research project to elaborate and defend a conceptually-enriched model of perceptual experience as a key to comprehending the normativity of conceptual content, and to apply this model to central problems in philosophy of art, philosophy of science, and ethics. In this project, I draw upon and develop insights in the recent work of Brandom and McDowell, while trying to avoid what I take to be difficulties in their own positions.

Selected publications

Art as Performance (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming February 2004)

"The Imaged, the Imagined, and the Imaginary", in Matthew Kieran and Dom Lopes, eds., Imagination, Philosophy, and the Arts (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 225-44.

"Medium", in Jerrold Levinson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford: OUP, 2003), pp. 181-91.

"Fiction", in Berys Gaut and Dom Lopes, eds., Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 263-73.

"Living in the Space of Reasons: the Rationality Debate Revisited", International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13.3 (1999), pp. 231-44.

"On Gauging Attitudes", Philosophical Studies 90 (May 1998), pp. 129-54.

"How Sceptical is Kripkes Sceptical Solution?", Philosophia (March 1998), pp. 119-40.

"Why One Shouldnt Make an Example of a Brain in a Vat", Analysis 57.1 (January 1997), pp. 51-9.

"Fictional Truth and Fictional Authors", British Journal of Aesthetics 36.1 (January 1996), pp. 43-55.

"Putnams Brain-Teaser", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (June 1995), pp. 203-28.

"Perspectives on Intentional Realism", Mind and Language 7 (1992), pp. 264-85.