For the next few years, I will be working almost exclusively on two large projects, a new Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, and a monograph on the basic principles of metaphysics from the death of Aquinas (1274) up to the publication of Locke's Essay (1689) -- aka "The Grand Unified Theory."
This volume will update the Kretzmann et al. volume of 1982, and provide a more comprehensive picture of medieval philosophy in its different aspects, from East to West, and from the ninth century through the fourteenth. Here is my brief Introduction to the volume. Here is my chapter on Form and Matter.
The book -- in two volumes -- should be available in August 2009.
The book is under contract with Oxford University Press, and I will be sending them a complete manuscript by the end of 2009. Here is the latest table of contents.
"The Event of Color," Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).
Abstract. I argue that there is another, hitherto unnoticed way of thinking about color: that colors are not standing properties or dispositions of objects, but events that take place when an surface is illuminated by light. If physicalism about color is true at all, this is its most defensible form.
"On Existing All at Once," forthcoming in a volume of papers from the 2008 Berlin conference on divine eternality.
Abstract. It is important to distinguish between two ways in which God might be timelessly eternal: eternality as being wholly outside of time, versus the sort of timelessness that consists in lacking temporal parts, and so existing “all at once.” A prominent but neglected historical tradition, most clearly evident in Anselm, advocates putting God in time, but in an all-at-once sort of way that makes God immune to temporal change. This is an intrinsically plausible conception of divine eternality, which also might shed some light on the modern dispute over the endurance or perdurance of material objects.
Last revised January 8, 2009.