Profile: David Owens
(BA Cambridge, BPhil, DPhil Oxford)
David Owens joined the department in 1993 from Cambridge. In 1992, he published a book with Cambridge University Press entitled Causes and Coincidences. This work dealt with the nature of explanation, the relationship between causation and causal explanation, the direction of causation and the problem of reductionism.
During the academic year 1996-7, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. There he completed the first draft of a book which has since been published under the title Reason Without Freedom (Routledge 2000). This work focuses on the connection between the justification of belief and notions of freedom, responsibility, agency and control. Since 2000, he has published several articles expanding on the themes of the book including 'Scepticisms: Descartes and Hume', PAS 2000; 'Epistemic Akrasia' Monist 2002; 'Does Belief Have an Aim?', Philosophical Studies 2003; 'Testimony and Assertion' Philosophical Studies 2006; and 'Doubt in Descartes', forthcoming.
Recently David's interests have turned towards ethics. He has published a number of papers on promissory obligation, including 'The Right and the Reasonable', Mind 114 (2005); 'A Simple Theory of Promising', Philosophical Review 115 (2006); and 'Duress, Deception and the Validity of a Promise', forthcoming in Mind (2007). He has also written on lying, and on the nature of obligation. He was recently awarded a two-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. In the Fall of 2007, he will be Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.
Contact
email : d.owens@sheffield.ac.uk
Recent publications
See a list of recent publications
Office hours;
Thursday 10am - 12noon
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