Kenneth L. Pearce

Publications

"Understanding Omnipotence" (with Alexander R. Pruss). Forthcoming in Religious Studies.

"Thomas Reid on Character and Freedom". History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (2012): 159-176.

"Omnipotence" in James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, eds., The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. November 8, 2011. http://www.iep.utm.edu/omnipote/.

"The Semantics of Sense Perception in Berkeley". Religious Studies 44 (2008): 249-268.

Presentations

"Leibniz on Phenomenalism, Mechanism, and the Great Chain of Being". The Early Modern Circle. Pasadena, CA. February 4, 2012.

"Divine Language, Unperceived Objects, and Berkeley's Response to Skepticism". International Berkeley Society Group Session, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting. Washington, DC. December 28, 2011.

"Berkeley's Lockean Religious Epistemology". 2011 International Berkeley Conference. Zurich, Switzerland. June 23, 2011.

"A Leibnizian Theory of Miracles". Society of Christian Philosophers 2011 Pacific and Mountain Region Conference. Newberg, OR. March 4, 2011.

"A Leibnizian Theory of Miracles". 13th Annual Southern California Philosophy Conference. Pomona, CA. November 6, 2010.

"In Defense of Ignorant Assertions". 64th Annual Mountain-Plains Philosophy Conference. Washington, PA. October 16, 2010.

"A Leibnizian Theory of Miracles". Interdisciplinary and International Graduate Conference in French and Francophone Studies. Santa Barbara, CA. May 14, 2010.

"Can Berkeley's God Raise the Same Body, Transformed?" Society of Christian Philosophers Pacific Division Conference. Riverside, CA. October 31, 2008.

Dissertation (In Progress)

Title: Language and the Structure of Berkeley's World
Committee: Prof. James Van Cleve (chair), Prof. Edwin McCann, Prof. Gideon Yaffe, Prof. Samuel Rickless, Prof. Anthony Kemp

Berkeley's philosophy is meant to be a defense of commonsense. However, Berkeley's claim that the ultimate constituents of physical reality are fleeting, causally passive ideas appears to be radically at odds with commonsense. In particular, such a theory seems unable to account for the robust structure which commonsense takes the world to exhibit. The problem of structure, as I understand it, includes the problem of how qualities can be grouped by their co-occurence in a single enduring object and how these enduring objects can bear spatiotemporal, causal, and other relations to one another. I argue that Berkeley's solution to these problems lies in his views about language. At one level, human language allows us to exploit patterns in our perceptions to construct a highly structured representation of the physical world which allows us to make accurate predictions at minimal cognitive expense. At a deeper level, these patterns occur in perception because our perceptions themselves form a language in which God speaks to us.

Other Work in Progress

"Leibniz on Phenomenalism, Mechanism, and the Great Chain of Being," in preparation

"Berkeley's Philosophy of Religion" (invited contribution to The Continuum Companion to Berkeley), in preparation

"Berkeley's Lockean Religious Epistemology," in preparation

"A Leibnizian Theory of Miracles," under submission

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistantships

Spring 2012	Love and its Representations in Western Literature, Philosophy, and Film (Prof. Edwin McCann)
Fall 2011	Knowledge, Explanation, and the Cosmos (Prof. Jacob Ross)
Spring 2011	Philosophical Foundations of Modern Western Culture (Prof. James Van Cleve)
Fall 2010	Social Ethics for Earthlings and Others (Prof. John Dreher)

Guest Lectures

November 1, 2011	Topic: Introduction to the Philosophy of Time Course: Knowledge, Explanation, and the Cosmos (Prof. Jacob Ross)
April 8, 2011	Topic: Leibniz, Newton, and Laplace on God and Physics Invited lecture to the USC Undergraduate Philosophy Club
November 23, 2010	Topic: Hume's "Of a Particular Providence and Of a Future State" Course: British Empiricism (Prof. James Van Cleve)
March 23, 2010	Topic: Skeptical Hypotheses Course: Epistemology (Prof. James Van Cleve)

Other Professional Activities

March 2011 - Present	PhilPapers Category Editor, "Divine Omnipotence" (http://philpapers.org/browse/divine-omnipotence/)
September 2010 - Present	Contributor, The Prosblogion (http://prosblogion.ektopos.com)
August 2009 - Present	PhilPapers Category Editor, "George Berkeley" (http://philpapers.org/browse/george-berkeley)

Graduate Coursework

Early Modern Philosophy

Spring 2011	Locke's Essay and Leibniz's New Essays (Prof. Edwin McCann)
Fall 2010	Thomas Reid's Philosophy of Action (Prof. James Van Cleve and Prof. Gideon Yaffe)
Fall 2009	Studies in Modern Philosophy: Perception (Prof. James Van Cleve)
Spring 2009	Innate Ideas (Prof. Nicholas Jolley) [Audited]
Fall 2008	Spinoza (Prof. Joseph Almog) [Audited]

Metaphysics

Spring 2012	Metaphysics (Prof. Shieva Klenschmidt)
Fall 2010	Metaphysics (Prof. Kadri Vihvelin)
Fall 2008	Material Constitution (Prof. M. Oreste Fiocco)
Spring 2007	Metaphysics (Prof. Susan Schneider)

Ancient Philosophy

Spring 2009	Plato and Aristotle (Prof. Gerasimos X. Santas)
Fall 2006	Plato's Parmenides (Prof. Charles Kahn)

Epistemology

Spring 2010	Epistemology (Prof. Jacob Ross)
Fall 2008	First Year Seminar: Skepticism (Prof. Philip J. Nickel)

Philosophy of Language, Logic, and Philosophy of Mathematics

Fall 2009	Introduction to Contemporary Philosophical Literature (Prof. Scott Soames)
Spring 2009	Incompleteness (Prof. Kent Johnson) [Audited]
Winter 2009	Defending the Axioms (Prof. Penelope Maddy) [Audited]

Value Theory

Spring 2011	Recent Work in Moral Philosophy (Prof. Jacob Ross)
Spring 2010	Introduction to Contemporary Philosophical Literature on Value (Prof. Mark Schroeder and Prof. Gary Watson)

Select Non-Academic Employment

May 2005 - July 2008	Software Engineer, Hx Technologies, Philadelphia, PA
February 2004 - May 2005	University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Philadelphia, PA
June 2003 - August 2003	Research Assistant, Washington State University Institute of Biological Chemistry, Pullman, WA

2009 - Present	University of Southern California Ph.D in Philosophy (expected 2014)
2008 - 2009	University of California, Irvine Graduate Student in Philosophy
2003 - 2007	University of Pennsylvania B.A. Philosophy (cum laude), Classical Studies B.A.S. Computer Science (cum laude)