David Sosa is an

American philosopher This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States. {, border="0" style="margin:auto;" class="toccolours" , - ! {{MediaWiki:Toc , - , style="text-al ...

who is currently Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the

University of Texas, Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal '' Analytic Philosophy''.

Career

He received his

undergraduate degree An undergraduate degree (also called first degree or simply degree) is a colloquial term for an academic degree earned by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. In the United States, it is usually offered at an institution of higher e ...

from Brown University and a doctorate in philosophy from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. His PhD dissertation, completed in 1996 under the supervision of Mark Johnston (philosopher), was titled "Representing Thoughts and Language". Before moving to

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, Sosa was a post-doctoral fellow at U.C. Berkeley and an assistant professor of philosophy at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

. He is the son of the philosopher

Ernest Sosa Ernest Sosa (born June 17, 1940) is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University. Educa ...

Views

Sosa appeared in Richard Linklater's film ''

Waking Life ''Waking Life'' is a 2001 American experimental adult animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the ...

'', in which he performed a short monologue on the implications of discoveries in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

on the problem of

free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...

. He explained the view, often called ''

hard determinism Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomol ...

'', which holds that there is no place for free action in a world governed by physical laws since human beings, like everything else in the physical world, are physical things and are thus subject to these same laws.

Sample publications

Authored

*'Consequences of Consequentialism' ( Mind, 1993) *'Reference from a Perspective versus Reference' (Philosophical Issues, 1995) *'The Import of the Puzzle About Belief' (

Philosophical Review ''The Philosophical Review'' is a quarterly journal of philosophy edited by the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University and published by Duke University Press (since September 2006). Overview The journal publishes original ...

, 1996) *'Meaningful Explanation' (Philosophical Issues, 1997) *'Perception and Reason' (

, 1998) *'Getting Clear on the Concept' (Philosophical Issues, 1998) *'Pathetic Ethics' (''Objectivity in Law and Morals'', 2000) *'Rigidity in the Scope of Russell's Theory' (

Noûs ''Noûs'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy published by Wiley-Blackwell. It was established in 1967 by Hector-Neri Castañeda and is currently edited by Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University). The journal is accompanied by ...

, 2001) *'A Big, Good Thing' (

, 2004) *'Skepticism about Intuition' (Philosophy, 2006) *'Scenes Seen' (Philosophical Books, 2006) *'The Conditional Fallacy' (

, 2006) with D. Bonevac and J. Dever *'Rigidity' (''The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language'', 2006)

Edited

*''A Companion to Analytic Philosophy'' (Blackwell, 2001) with A.P. Martinich *''Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology'' (Blackwell, 2001) *''Philosophy for the 21st Century'' (

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, 2002)

References

External links

Page at UT Austin Dept. of Philosophy
21st-century American philosophers Analytic philosophers Brown University alumni Dartmouth College faculty Living people Philosophers of language Philosophers of mind Princeton University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-philosopher-stub