ANDREW LAW
Ph.D. in Philosophy
ABOUT ME
I am an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College, where I work primarily on freedom and moral responsibility. My other interests include metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion. I earned my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Riverside in June of 2020. Here is my CV, if you are interested. Thanks for visiting my site!
RESEARCH
BOOKS
Freedom, Responsibility, and Value: Essays in Honor of John Martin Fischer (with Taylor W. Cyr and Neal A. Tognazzini). Routledge, 2023.
ARTICLES
"Articulating the Threats of Determinism and Foreknowledge: Moving Beyond Modality," Erkenntnis (forthcoming).
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"The Fixity of the Past, the Fixity of the Independent, and Local-Miracle Compatibilism," Theoria 91(2), 2025: e12585.
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"Time Travel, Foreknowledge, and Dependence: A Response to Cyr," Faith and Philosophy 40(4), 2023: 581-598. [Backdated; accepted in fall of 2024.]
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"Reasons-Responsiveness and the Demarcation Problem" (with Taylor W. Cyr), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 48, 2024: 71-89.
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"If Molinism is True, What Can You Do?" International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 95(3), 2024: 307-322.
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"Incompatibilism and the Garden of Forking Paths," Philosophical Issues 33(1), 2023: 110-123.
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"Lessons from Grandfather," (with Ryan Wasserman) Philosophies (7), 2022.
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"What Does Indeterminism Offer to Agency?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy (100), 2022: 371-385.
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"From the Fixity of the Past to the Fixity of the Independent," Philosophical Studies 178, 2021: 1301-1314.
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"The Dependence Response and Explanatory Loops" Faith and Philosophy 37 (3), 2020: 294-307.
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"Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Dependence: A Dialectical Intervention" (with Taylor W. Cyr), American Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2), 2020: 145-154.
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"Free Will and Two Local Determinisms" (with Neal A. Tognazzini), Erkenntnis 84 (5), 2019: 1011-1023.
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"The Puzzle of Hyper-Change," Ratio 33 (1), 2019: 1-11.
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"Logical Toolkit," (primary co-author) in Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings, eds Perry, Bratman, and Fischer, 9th edition, 2021: Oxford University Press.
REVIEWS
"Review of Stephen Maitzen's Determinism, Death, and Meaning," The Review of Metaphysics (75), 2022: 823-825.
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"Review of Carolina Sartorio's Causation and Free Will " (with Peter J. Graham and Jonah Nagashima), Analysis (78), 2018: 371-373.
TEACHING
Below are courses I have taught as the primary instructor. If you would like to see my syllabi, please feel free to contact me.
SCIENCE AND FREE WILL
Summer 2023 (Leibniz University Hannover)
A Master's course examining the supposed scientific threats to free will and moral responsibility, including the threats from situationism, automaticity, new wave neuroscience, and physical determinism.
PARADOXES OF TIME TRAVEL
Winter 2022 (Leibniz University Hannover).
A Master's course examining the central (and not-so-central) philosophical paradoxes of time travel. Issues discussed include: philosophy of physics, ontology of time, reality of tense, causation, counterfactuals, free will, mereology, persistence, and change.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Winter 2022 (Western Washington University)
An upper-division course focused on general topics in the philosophy of science such as the demarcation problem, the problem of induction, the laws of nature, and scientific explanation.
METAPHYSICS
Spring 2022 (Western Washington University); Fall 2019 (UC, Riverside)
An upper-division course focused on traditional metaphysical issues such as the nature of time, freedom, and causation, along with their application to less traditional issues such as time travel.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Summer 2022 (Leibniz University Hannover); Winter 2021 & Spring 2019 (UC, Riverside)
An upper-division course focused on issues such as the nature of God, arguments for and against God's existence, faith and reason, as well as freedom and foreknowledge.
MORTAL QUESTIONS
Winter 2022 (Leibniz University Hannover); Summer 2019 (UC, Riverside)
An upper-division course focused on philosophical questions surrounding death, such as: What, if anything, makes death bad? What, if anything, makes for a meaningful life? Would an immortal life be better than a mortal one? And what obligations do we have to those who will be around long after we've gone?
INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC LOGIC
Spring 2021 & Summer 2018 (UC, Riverside)
An introductory course focused on propositional logic and its applications.
INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING
Winter 2022 & Spring 2022 (Western Washington University); Summer 2017 (UC, Riverside)
An introductory course focused on different types of reasoning, such as deductive, abductive, and analogical.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Andrew Law
Department of Philosophy
Pomona College
Andrew[dot]Law@pomona[dot]edu