David Cunning Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Philosophy The University of Iowa       250 English-Philosophy Bldg. Voice: (319) 335-0027 Fax: (319) 353-2322     e-mail c.v.

Hi.  I am a philosophy professor at the University of Iowa.  My main research and teaching interests are in History of Modern Philosophy -- esp. in the great system builders.  I am also interested in a number of philosophical issues in Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, and Ethics: how and when we know that our concepts are of the things that we would identify as their objects, and the implications for the relevance of the results of conceptual analysis; issues of concept-formation and belief-revision, and the way in which belief systems are resilient in the face of evidence that might otherwise bring them down; the relationship between body and mind, and the influence of historical conceptions of body and mind on current conceptions of body and mind; and issues surrounding self, agency, and accountability.  I received my B.A. in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and my Ph.D. from UC Irvine.  For 2004-2005 I was a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Books

• Argument and Persuasion in Descartes' Meditations, New York: Oxford University Press (June 2010), 248 pp.
  • [brief synopsis]
• Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations, Cambridge University Press (under contract)

Articles and Reviews

• "Descartes on God and the Products of His Will," Models of God and Other Ultimate Realities, ed. J. Diller and A. Kasher, Springer Publishing (2011)
• "Introduction," forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations, ed. D. Cunning, Cambridge University Press
• "The First Meditation: Divine Omnipotence, the Eternal Truths, and the Possibility of Radical Deception," The Cambridge Companion to Descartes' Meditations
• "True and Immutable Natures," The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. L. Nolan, Cambridge University Press
• "Analysis vs. Synthesis," The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, ed. L. Nolan, Cambridge University Press
• Review of K. Smith, Matter Matters, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011), 997-1001
• "Mind-Body Problems," The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. D. Kaufman, Routledge Publishing
• “Margaret Lucas Cavendish,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (2009), 43 pp.
• Review (co-authored) of M. Moriarty, Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II, Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (2008), 644-5
• "Malebranche and Occasional Causes," Philosophy Compass 3 (2008), 1-20
• "Fifth Meditation TINs Revisited: A Reply to Criticisms of the Epistemic Interpretation,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2008), 215-227
• "Nicolas Malebranche," The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, ed. T. Hockey, Springer Academic Publishers (2007), 731-2
• "Semel in Vita: Descartes' Stoic View on the Place of Philosophy in Human Life," Faith and Philosophy 24 (2007), 164-183
• "Descartes on the Dubitability of the Existence of Self," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007), 111-131
• "Cavendish on the Intelligibility of the Prospect of Thinking Matter," History of Philosophy Quarterly 23 (2006), 117-136
• "Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations,"An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, Athens: Atiner Publishing (2006), 17-32
• Review of D. Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2005)
• "Rationalism and Education," A Companion to Rationalism, ed. A. Nelson, Blackwell Publishing (2005), 61-81
• Editor and translator, “Principii Cartesia” by Robert Percy Smith, The Philological Museum (2004), ed. D. Sutton
• "Systematic Divergences in Malebranche and Cudworth," Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (2003), 343-363
• "True and Immutable Natures and Epistemic Progress in Descartes' Meditations," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003), 235-248
• "Descartes on the Immutability of the Divine Will," Religious Studies 39 (2003), 79-92
• "Descartes' Modal Metaphysics," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002), ed. E. Zalta, 37 pp.
• "Agency and Consciousness," Synthese 120 (1999), 271-294
• "Modality and Cognition in Descartes" (co-authored), Acta Philosophica Fennica 64 (1999), 137-153

Below are some links to materials that might be useful.

Page updated 26 October 2010.