Stephen Harrop > Research

My philosophical interests are both historical and contemporary. (I never really learned the specialization trick.)

In historical philosophy, I'm primarily interested in the philosophy of the early modern period in Western Europe. One prong of interest has to do with the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza. I've published papers on his philosophy of science, and am working on a book project on his account of scientific explanation. Moreover, I'm interested in what might broadly be called his philosophy of religion. One project focuses on how his conception of God is more continuous with classical theistic pictures of the Deity than most people think these days. Another project (I'm not sure whether this end up being a paper or a book at the moment) deals with his doctrine of the "eternity of the mind" as expressed in Ethics V. This project argues that, contrary to most modern interpretations, this eternity involves a significant degree of personal conscious survival beyond the death of the body.

Another historical interest has to do with so-called "mixed mathematics" and the development of classical mechanics in the 17th century. I'm currently working on a project that re-examines the development and content of Isaac Newton's conception of absolute space.

In contemporary philosophy, I'm primarily interested in metaphysics. My interests are twofold. First, I'm interested in arguments for and the implications of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). I've published a paper defending a new argument for the PSR and am working on a project about weaker versions of the PSR, where the "reasons" in question do not necessitate that of which they are the reasons, but rather contribute to their existence by making that existence more likely. I'm also interested in the so-called "modal collapse" argument, which is supposed to show that the PSR implies that there are no contingent truths. (This interest might lead to a book project; I'm not sure yet.)

Second, I'm interested in contemporary forms of monism. I've published a paper arguing that a prominent form of monism (priority monism) implies a form of necessitarianism: The only concrete objects that possibly exist are the ones that exist in the actual world. I'm working on another project arguing that, given some plausible assumptions, priority monism collapses into another kind of monism, substance monism.