Abraham D. Stone
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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 |
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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, Kant
Areas of Competence
Ancient Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy, Jewish Philosophy, Logic
Employment
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of California Santa Cruz, July 2011–present.
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of California Santa Cruz, Fall 2005–June 2011.
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
“Kant on Objects and Things” Disputatio (Spain), vol. 11, no. 20 (2022): 37–69.
“Lewis and Cavell on Ordinary Language and Academic Philosophy.”![[*]](footnote.png)
Philosophical Inquiries 6 (special issue on The History of Late
Analytic Philosophy) (2018): 73–94.
Review of J. Shearmur and G. Stokes, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Popper. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (July 2017). With Paul Roth.
“On the Teaching of Virtue in Plato’s Meno and the Nature of Philosophical Authority.” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 10 (2010): 251–82. (This journal is not available on-line, but the draft version can still be found here.)
“On the Sources and Implications of Carnap’s Der Raum.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 41 (2010): 65-74.
“On Scientific Method as a Method for Testing the Legitimacy of Concepts” (or if you have access to this journal you can find it here). 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.
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
Works in Progress
On Succession (book).
“Avicenna on the Souls of Plants and Animals.”
“Kant’s Categories as Transcendental Predicates”
“That the Objects of Mathematics are Determinate Deconstructions of Concepts”
Presentations
“Kant on Substances and Things”
Workshop on Things, UC Santa Cruz, June 2013.
“Continuity, Direction and the Possibility of Mathematics”
Society for Neo-Kantianism, APA Eastern Division Meeting, Atlanta, December, 2012.
“Husserl, Heidegger and Carnap on Fixing the Sense of Philosophical
Terminology”
Invited session on Heidegger and Analytic Philosophy, APA Eastern Division Meeting, Atlanta, December, 2012;
Workshop in Phenomenological Philosophy, University of Seattle, April, 2010;
Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University, November, 2009;
Contemporary European Philosophy Workshop, University of Chicago, May, 2009.
“What Did Kant Really Mean by ‘Transcendental Idealism’?”
Workshop in Phenomenological Philosophy, UC Santa Cruz, May, 2012.
“Kant on Objects and Things”
Society for Neo-Kantianism, APA Eastern Division Meeting, Washington, DC, December, 2011;
Pacific Study Group of the North American Kant Society, UC Santa Cruz, November, 2011;
Workshop in Phenomenological Philosophy, Boston University, May, 2011;
Dept. of Philosophy, UC Irvine, April, 2011.
“That the Objects of Mathematics are Determinate Deconstructions of
Concepts”
Dept. of Philosophy, San Jose State University, March, 2011.
“Kant’s Qualified Defense of Newton’s Thesis that Space is a
Direct Emanation of the First Cause”
North American Hermann Cohen Society, Eastern Division APA Meeting, December,
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
Instructor
The Post-Hume Debate on Causation in Scotland (grad seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2022).
Early Modern Political Philosophy (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2019; Winter 2021; Spring 2022).
Philosophy of Science (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2006; Fall 2006; Winter 2017; Fall 2020; Winter 2022).
Nineteenth Century Philosophy (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2020; Fall 2021).
The Empiricists (intro level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2014; Spring 2015; Spring 2016; Winter 2017; Spring 2018; Spring 2019; Spring 2021).
Locke (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2020).
David Lewis (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2010; Fall 2018).
Kant (upper level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2007; Spring 2009; Spring 2010; Spring 2011; Spring 2012; Fall 2015; Winter 2016; Fall 2018).
Kant on the Finite and the Infinite (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2018.)
The Rationalists (intro level undergraduate course). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2006; Winter 2007; Winter 2009; Winter 2010; Winter 2011; Winter 2012; Spring 2013; Winter 2014; Winter 2015; Winter 2018).
Hegel’s Logic (advanced undergraduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2010; Fall 2011; Fall 2014; Winter 2018).
Levinas (graduate seminar) (UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2016).
Introduction to Philosophy. (UC Santa Cruz, Winter 2012; Fall 2015).
Husserl (advanced undegraduate and graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2005; Fall 2008; Winter 2011; Fall 2015).
The Transcendental Analytic, except for the Deduction (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2015).
David Lewis (advanced undergraduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2014).
Proclus (graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2013).
Philosophy of Mathematics (advanced undergraduate and graduate seminar). (UC Santa Cruz, Spring 2007)
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?; Cavell’s Claim of Reason; Heidegger’s Being and Time; Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic; Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy; Thoreau’s Walden
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; Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche, book II (on the eternal recurrence of the same) (two quarters); Hegel and Quantum Mechanics; reading group on Sellars (with Michael Hicks); reading group on Mill’s Examination of William Hamilton’s Philosophy (with Michael Hicks and Janetter Dinishak); Weyl’s The Continuum (with two students); Derrida’s Farewell to Emanuel Levinas (with two students); Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations (with three students); texts on universals from late antiquity and the middle ages; Thomas Aquinas, Suma contra gentiles (selections); Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems; Husserl’s Logical Investigations
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