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Emily Carson

Academic title(s): 

Associate Professor

Emily Carson
Contact Information
Address: 

855 Sherbrooke St. W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2T7

Email address: 
emily.carson [at] mcgill.ca
Office: 
Leacock 936
Research areas: 
Kant
Early Modern Philosophy
History and Philosophy of Mathematics
Biography: 

Emily Carson earned an MA in Philosophy at McGill, and a PhD in Philosophy at Harvard. Her primary area of research is in early modern philosophy and the intersection of philosophy, mathematics and science in that period, with a particular focus on Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. She is an Executive Editor with the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Teaching areas: 

Kant, Early Modern Philosophy

Selected publications: 

Books

Philosophy of Mathematics from Descartes to Kant in the Cambridge Elements series on Philosophy of Mathematics (ed. Stewart Shapiro), Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Kant: Studies on Mathematics in the Critical Philosophy, co-edited with Lisa Shabel, Routledge, 2015.

Intuition and the axiomatic method, co-edited with Renate Huber, in the University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, Kluwer, 2006.

Papers

  • “Kant and du Châtelet: mathematics and idealism” in Du Châtelet and Kant: Copernican Turns. Ruth E. Hagengruber and Aaron Wells; Springer. To appear 2026.
  • "Philosophy of Mathematics from Leibniz to Kant" (2026) in The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Corey Dyck, Frederick Beiser and Brandon Look. Oxford University Press.
  • “Arithmetic and the possibility of experience” in Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics: Modern Essays. Vol.1: The Critical Philosophy and Its Background, Ofra Rechter and Carl Posy (eds.); Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • “Space and time in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics” in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics: a critical guide, Courtney Fugate (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • “Synthesis, number and the mathematical method” in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus 12, Sally Sedgwick and Dina Emundts (eds.), de Gruyter, 2015. 
  • “Pure intuition and Kant’s synthetic a priori”, 2012, in Debates in modern philosophy, edited by Antonia LoLordo and Stewart Duncan, Routledge.
  • “Sensibility: space and time, transcendental idealism” in Kant: Key Concepts, edited by Kristina Engelhardt and Will Dudley, Acumen 2011.
  • “Hintikka on Kant’s mathematical method” in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, volume 250, no. 4, 2010.
  • “Leibniz on Locke on mathematical knowledge”, Locke Studies 7 (2007), pp.21-47.
  • “Locke and Kant on mathematical knowledge” (2006)edited by Emily Carson and Renate Huber (eds.): Intuition and the Axiomatic Method, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 3-21.
  • “Locke on simple and mixed modes”, Locke Studies, volume 5, 2005, pp. 19-39.
  • “Metaphysics, mathematics and the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible in Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation”, Journal of the History of Philosophy (37), 2004, pp. 652-79.
  • “Locke’s account of certain and demonstrative knowledge”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10(3), August 2002, pp.359-78.
  • "Kant on the method of mathematics", Journal of the History of Philosophy, October 1999, volume XXXVII, no. 4, pp.629-52.
  • "Kant on intuition in geometry", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol.27, Number 4, December, 1997, pp.489-512.
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