Professor David Owen, Visiting Professorial Fellow (September 2005 to February 2006)
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, (BA Cambridge, BPhil, DPhil Oxford), since October 1993. David Owens joined the department in 1993 from Cambridge after periods as a visiting lecturer at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland and the University of Sydney in Australia. In 1992, he published a book with Cambridge University Press entitled Causes and Coincidences. This work dealt with the nature of explanation, the relationship between causation and causal explaination, the direction of causation and the problem of reductionism.
During the academic year 1996-7, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. There he completed the first draft of a book which has since been published under the title Reason Withoutl Freedom (Routledge 2000). This work focuses on the connection between the justification of belief and notions of freedom, responsibility, agency and control. Since 2000, he has also published several articles expanding on the themes of the book inlcuding 'Epitemic Akrasia' Monist 2002 and 'Does Belief Have an Aim?', Philosophical Studies 2003.
Recently David's interests have turned towards ethics, moral psychology and seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy. He has recently written papers on moral testimony, promissory obligation, lying, and the philosophy of Descartes.
In Spring 2005, he joined the Philosophy Programme, now the Institute of Philosophy, for a semester of research leave laying the basis for a future monograph.
He has published papers on ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of explanation, and is the author of Causes and Coincidences (1992) and Reason Without Freedom (2000).
Professor Owens gave a paper at the Dean's Seminar, on 19th October, entitled "Insincerity". He also gave a lecture on 17th November entitled "Duress, Deception and the Validity of Promise"
