Mark Johnston is an Australian philosopher and the Henry Putnam University Professor of Philosophy at

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 ...

, where he is also the Director of the Program in Cognitive Science.

Biography and career

A native of Australia, Johnston was "educated by Jesuits and briefly considered taking priestly orders before opting for a PhD in philosophy instead." Johnston received his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in philosophy from Princeton University in 1984 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Particulars and persistence", under the supervision of

Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and em ...

and David Lewis. Johnston is also the Senior Academic Advisor to the Marc Sanders Foundation, which awards prizes for the best work in various areas of philosophy, such as

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning ph ...

, and

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

Philosophical work

Johnston has written many articles on topics in

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...

, philosophical logic, and

metaethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...

and, more recently, two books in philosophy of religion, ''Saving God: Religion After Idolatry'' (Princeton University Press, 2009) and ''Surviving Death'' (Princeton University Press, 2010). The literary critic James Wood picked ''Saving God'' as one of the top non-fiction books of 2009 in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''.

Selected articles

*"Human Beings," ''Journal of Philosophy'' 84 (1987): 59–83. *"Dispositional Theories of Value," ''Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society'' 63 (1989): 89-174 (with

David K. Lewis David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) was an American philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University fr ...

and

Michael A. Smith Michael Smith or Mike Smith may refer to: Arts * Michael E. Smith (artist) (born 1977), American sculptor * Michael Paul Smith (born 1950), American artist and photographer *Michael Smith (performance artist) (born 1951), American performance ar ...

) *"Reasons and Reductionism," ''Philosophical Review'' (1992): 589–618. *"Constitution is Not Identity," ''Mind'' 101 (1992): 89–106. *"Manifest Kinds," ''Journal of Philosophy'' 94 (1997): 564–583. *"The Obscure Object of Hallucination," ''Philosophical Studies'' 120 (2004): 113–83. *"Hylomorphism," ''Journal of Philosophy'' 103 (2006): 652–698.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century Australian philosophers 21st-century Australian philosophers Analytic philosophers Princeton University faculty Metaphysicians Philosophers of identity Philosophers of mind {{Australia-philosopher-stub