lewis.powell@wayne.edu
curriculum vitae

Employment

• Assistant Professor at Wayne State University
• August, 2011 to present

Education

• Ph.D. in Philosophy from USC
• Degree Conferred on: May 13, 2011


• Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Rochester
• May 2005

Current Research

Hume's Conception-Based Account of Cognition

Building on the work done in my Dissertation, "Just Imagining Things: Hume's Conception-Based Account of Cognition", I am working to determine what tasks we might have for an account of cognition that genuinely require resources beyond those available to Hume.

Philosophers have routinely taken a pessimistic view of the account of cognition — thinking, judging, and reasoning — offered by David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature, claiming that Hume's limited explanatory resources cannot capture the rich complexity of our mental lives. I provide a qualified defense of Hume's attempt to analyze a cognitive activity in terms of objectual conception — i.e. conceiving or imagining an object. I defend Hume from objections offered by his contemporary Thomas Reid (and echoed by various recent Hume scholars), presenting an interpretation of the account that resolves these worries. I investigate both what these objections reveal about the fundamental challenges facing theories of cognition, and what implications my interpretation has for other issues in Hume scholarship.

Early Modern Philosophy of Language

The period from Hobbes through Mill witnessed an impressive array of developments in the philosophy of language, despite the fact that few figures treated such issues as central to their philosophical thinking. Since mentalistic theories of meaning enjoying long-standing dominence in the period, many extremeley interesting developments arose from attempts by empiricist thinkers to reconcile the broad array of apparent linguistic significance with their sparse accounts of mental representation. One central figure of interest for me is George Berkeley, who develops a fascinating non-cognitivist account in the face of these tensions.

Other Research Interests

As noted, my primary areas of interest are the history of early modern philosophy (especially David Hume, but also Nicolas Malebranche, John Locke, George Berkeley, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Reid). I also have substantial interests in contemporary issues pertaining to philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaethics.

Also:

Visit: Horseless Telegraph, my personal philosophy blog

Visit: The Mod Squad, the group blog in Modern Philosophy

Download: My Curriculum Vitae (pdf)