My research is mainly in the history of seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophy, centering on the metaphysics and natural philosophy of the period. Publications include Spectres of False Divinity: Hume’s Moral Atheism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), a critical examination of Hume’s case for the amorality of any first cause or designer, and hence the irrelevance of theological speculation for human practice or conduct. The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant (Oxford University Press, 2004) (http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-926326-4) presents a critical study of the early modern debate over the paradoxes of material structure, and covers issues to do with the ontology of parts and wholes, atomism and infinite divisibility. Other areas of research interest include the seventeenth-century controversies over the authority and bounds of reason, political philosophy, and historical conceptions of the nature of philosophy. Philosophical heroes: Aristotle, Montaigne, Bayle, Hume, Walter Shandy, Russell and Quine.

Selected Bibliography

BOOKS

• The Architecture of Matter: Galileo to Kant (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Spectres of False Divinity: Hume's Moral Atheism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

ARTICLES

• “Infinite Divisibility and Actual Parts in Hume’s Treatise,” Hume Studies, 28, 2002, pp. 3-25.
• “Bayle and the Case for Actual Parts,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 42, 2004, pp. 145-64.
• "Religion and Moral Prohibition in Hume's 'Of Suicide'," Hume Studies, 31, 2005, pp. 189-210.
• "Robert Boyle on Things above Reason," British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 15, 2007, pp. 283-312.
• "Hume on Religious Affect," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89 (2007), 283-306.

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