Curriculum Vitae

Abraham D. Stone

Office Address Department of Philosophy University of California, Santa Cruz Cowell Academic Services 1156 High St. Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (831)459-5723 abestone@ucsc.edu AIM: abestone3

Home Address 1326 Virginia St. Berkeley, CA 94702

Areas of Specialization

19th and Early 20th c. German Philosophy (Continental and Analytic), Philosophy of Science and Mathematics, Medieval Philosophy, Metaphysics

Areas of Competence

Ancient Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy, Kant, Jewish Philosophy, Logic

Employment

Assisstant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of California Santa Cruz, Fall 2005–present.

Humanities Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Humanities, University of Chicago, Fall 2001–Spring 2005

Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2000–2001

Education

Harvard University, Ph.D. in philosophy, June 2000

Princeton University, MA in astrophysics, 1993

Harvard University, A.B. in astronomy and astrophysics, 1989

Publications

“On the Sources and Implications of Carnap’s Der Raum” Forthcoming in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science.

“On Scientific Method as a Method for Testing the Legitimacy of Concepts.” Review of Contemporary Philosophy 8 (2009): 13–48.

“Avicenna.” In Substantia: sic et non: eine Geschichte des Substanzbegriffs von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzelbeiträgen, ed. H. Gutschmidt, A. Lang-Balestra, and G. Segalerba(Frankfurt: Ontos-Verlag, 2008), 133–47.

Book review of Y. Ben-Menahem, Conventionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Iyyun 57 (2008): 305–16.

“Avicenna’s Theory of Primary Mixture.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 18 (2008): 99–119.

“Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics.” In S. Mulhall, ed., Martin Heidegger, International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought. Ashgate Publishing, 2006, 217–44.

“The Continental Origins of Verificationism: Natorp, Husserl and Carnap on the Object as Infinitely Determinable X.” Angelaki 10 (special issue on “Continental Philosophy and the Sciences: The German Tradition”) (2005): 129–43.

Book review of Husserl and the Sciences: Selected Perspectives, ed. Richard Feist (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004). Review of Metaphysics 58 (2005): 891.

“Specific and Generic Objects in Cavell and Thomas Aquinas.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2003): 48–74.

“Simplicius and Avicenna on the Essential Corporeity of Material Substance.” In R. Wisnovsky, ed., Aspects of Avicenna. Vol. 9, no. 2 of Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2001, 73–130. (Note: this was a refereed publication.) (A shorter and less technical version of this paper is available online here.)

“On Husserl and Cavellian Scepticism.” Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2000): 1–21.

“Does the Bohm Theory Solve the Measurement Problem?” Philosophy of Science 61 (1994): 250–66.

Unpublished Papers

“On the Teaching of Virtue in Plato’s Meno and the Nature of Philosophical Authority.”

Works in Progress

Heidegger and Carnap as Responses to Husserl (book). It is now widely acknowledged that Heidegger and Carnap have more in common than meets the eye. But whereas recent scholarship has taken Marburg neo-Kantianism as their common background, I claim that they are better understood as reacting against Husserl’s phenomenology. In particular, both want to replace Husserl’s science of phenomenology, as the root of all the sciences, with a practical decision to use our language responsibly. But they differ about what constitutes a responsible use of language. This is why they sound so different, despite having a lot in common, and also why we, their intellectual descendants, sound so different to this day.

“On Succession, Objective Interest and the Applicability of Mathematics.” This paper has existed for some time, first as a short list of theses, then as a talk (from notes) that I’ve given in several different version, but I hope to write it up soon in a more formal way. The basic plan is to use ideas from Hegel and from Natorp (who in these respects follows Hegel closely) to explain why mathematicians find certain mathematical objects, concepts, structures, or theorems, but not others, interesting, and to show that this is an objective interest, based on features which ought to interest all rational beings as such. (Roughly, I claim that what interests mathematicians are the general forms of transition from relatively subjective and arbitrary concepts to relatively objective and necessary ones.) This conclusion is then used to argue against Mark Steiner’s claim,that the repeated usefulness in physics of just those object, concepts, structures, and theorems is explicable only as literally miraculous.

Presentations

“Husserl, Heidegger and Carnap on Fixing the Sense of Philosophical Terminology”
Contemporary European Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago, May, 2009.

“Physics 4 vs. Physics 5: How Heidegger Misread Kierkegaard on the Augenblick”
Post Hegelian German Philosophy and the Ancients, workshop at the Univ. of Leiden, December, 2007.

“The Disunity of Being and the Disunity of Beings in Husserl, Heidegger and Carnap”
Structure and Identity, Contactforum at the Royal Flemish Academy, Brussels, Belgium, December, 2007.

“On the Completion and Generalization of Intuitive Space in Der Raum: Husserlian and Drieschian Elements”
GAP.6 (meeting of the Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie), workshop on Rudolf Carnap, Berlin, Germany, September, 2006.

“How Heidegger Misread Kierkegaard on the Augenblick”
Saving Time (conference on time and memory held at UC Santa Cruz), November, 2005.

“The Object as Infinitely Determinable X: Husserl vs. Natorp, Carnap and Levinas”
Husserl Circle, Dublin, Ireland, June, 2005;
Depts. of Phil. and of Relig. Studies, Univ. of Calgary, March, 2005;
Department of Philosophy, Univ. of Illinois Chicago, January, 2005.

“On Succession, Objective Interest, and the Applicability of Mathematics,”
Dept. of Philosophy, Univ. of California Santa Cruz, February, 2005;
Dept. of Philosophy, Univ. of New Mexico, January, 2005;
Wittgenstein Workshop, University of Chicago, December, 2004.

“Why Heidegger and Carnap Reacted Violently Against Husserl,”
Husserl Circle, Washington, DC, June, 2004.

“Carnap as a Hyper-Kantian Reaction to Husserl, David Lewis as a Hyper-Carnapian Reaction to Quine,”
Department of Philosophy, University of Ottawa, February, 2004.

“Why Philosophy of Science Needs Hegel,”
Department of Philosophy, Colby College, February, 2005;
Philosophy Club, The College of William and Mary, February, 2004.

“Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics,”
Department of Philosophy, Seattle University, February 2004;
University of Illinois, Springfield, January, 2004;
Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, July, 2003.

“On Scientific Method, Induction, Statistics, and Skepticism,”
Peter Wall Institute, University of British Columbia, July, 2003;
Department of Philosophy, Reed College, April, 2001;
Department of Philosophy, University of Tel Aviv, 2001;
Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, February, 2001.

“Specific and Generic Objects in Cavell and Thomas Aquinas,”
Department of Philosophy, Hebrew University, 2001;
Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, February, 2000.

Dissertation

On Husserl and Cavellian Skepticism, With Reference to the Thomistic Theory of Creation

Committee: Professors Stanley Cavell, Charles Parsons, and Hilary Putnam

The dissertation investigates the relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and skepticism, in particular as the latter concept is analyzed by Stanley Cavell. It emerges that epistemological considerations naturally drove Husserl into a radical egocentric metaphysics. The connection is established by noting a parallel between the different ways in which an object can be considered as an object of knowledge, on the one hand, and the different ways in which, according to traditional metaphysics, an object’s causes of being cause it to exist.

Teaching Experience

Instructor

Hegel’s Logic (advanced undergraduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, upcoming in Winter 2010).

Husserl (advanced undegraduate and graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2005; Fall 2008).

Kant (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2007; Spring 2009)

Philosophy of Mathematics (advanced undergraduate and graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2007)

The Rationalists (intro level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2006; Winter 2007; Winter 2009; upcoming in Winter 2010).

Philosophy of Science (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2006; Fall 2006).

Metaphysics and Epistemology (topic: Heidegger and Carnap) (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2006).

Philosophical Perspectives on the Humanities (three-quarter freshman Core Humanities sequence). (University of Chicago, Fall 2001–Spring 2005)

Introduction to Philosophy of Science. (University of Chicago, Fall 2003)

The Tradition of Aristotelian Physics (“tutorial,” i.e. advanced undergraduate seminar). (Harvard University, Spring 1998)

Independent study courses directed

Undergraduate: Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety; Plato and Aristotle; Levinas’s Totality and Infinity; Alfarabi’s Perfect City; Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say?

Graduate: Heidegger’s Being and Time (informal); early 20th century views on space and time; Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity; Cavell’s The Claim of Reason; Plato’s Theaetetus

Teaching Assistant

Four Jewish Philosophers (Putnam, Spring 1997)

“If There is no God, Everything is Permitted”: Theism and Moral Reasoning (Jay Harris, Spring 1996)

Deductive Logic (Heck, Fall 1996)

Languages

Arabic, German, Greek, Hebrew; basic reading knowledge of medieval philosophical Latin

Honors and Awards

UC President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities, 2007–2008

Visiting Junior Scholar, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, July 2003

Member, University of Chicago Society of Fellows, 2001–2005

Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow, Hebrew University, 2000–2001

Adams Prize for best dissertation graduate or undergraduate on a subject to be determined by the Department of Philosophy, but preferably in the field of history of Philosophy, Harvard University, 2000

R.M. Martin Prize Fellow in Philosophy, Harvard University, 1999–2000

Summa cum Laude, Harvard University, 1989

Professional Affiliations

American Philosophical Association

Husserl Circle

Footnotes

... claim,

The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).