Edward Jonathan Lowe (; 24 March 1950 – 5 January 2014), usually cited as E. J. Lowe but known personally as Jonathan Lowe, was a British philosopher and academic. He was Professor of Philosophy at Durham University.

Biography

Lowe was born in Dover, England. His secondary education was at

Bushey Grammar School Bushey is a town in the Hertsmere borough of Hertfordshire in the East of England. It has a population of over 25,000 inhabitants. Bushey Heath is a large neighbourhood south east of Bushey on the boundary with the London Borough of Harrow ...

, and he subsequently studied at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, 1968–72 (BA in History, 1st Class), and the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, 1972–75 (BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy).

Philosophical work

Lowe was one of the leading philosophers of his generation. He mainly researched and published in

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 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 the history of early modern philosophy. He supervised many PhD students, working on a wide variety of topics. One of his contributions was a sophisticated defense of

dualistic interactionism Interactionism or interactionist dualism is the theory in the philosophy of mind which holds that matter and mind are two distinct and independent substances that exert causal effects on one another. It is one type of dualism, traditionally a ty ...

in the philosophy of mind. This is the view that the mind and the brain are distinct substances, and that facts about each are "causally relevant" to the other.

Publications

* ''Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) * ''Locke on Human Understanding'' (London: Routledge, 1995) * ''Subjects of Experience'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) * ''The Possibility of Metaphysics'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) * ''An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) * ''A Survey of Metaphysics'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) * ''Locke'' (London, New York: Routledge: 2005) * ''The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) * ''Personal Agency'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) * ''More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) * ''Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical Logic'' (Cambridge University Press, 2013) He also published over 200 articles, including in the leading journals in the field, such as ''

The Journal of Philosophy ''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, ...

'', '' Mind'', and ''

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 ...

''.

References

External links

E.J. Lowe
, article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy by J.T.M. Miller outlining central parts of Lowe's philosophy, especially his metaphysics, ontology, and philosophy of mind.
Metaphysical foundations for science
" interviewed by Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine, 18 March 2013.
Recent Advances in Metaphysics
, Lowe's keynote address, about his four-category ontology, at th
International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information systems
17-19 October 2001, Ogunquit, Maine. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lowe, Jonathan 1950 births 2014 deaths 21st-century British philosophers Academics of Durham University Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford British logicians Metaphysicians People from Dover, Kent Philosophers of mind Scholars of modern philosophy