[site is under construction as of April 2025]
I’m a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. I completed my PhD in philosophy (December 2011) at the University of California, Riverside. I'm interested in metaphysics, ethics, free will and moral responsibility, and philosophy of religion.
From September 2022 - September 2024, I was on leave from Edinburgh, and based at Lund University in Sweden, having taken a two year position as a Senior Research Fellow in the Lund Gothenburg Responsibility Project.
Contact: pat.c.todd@gmail.com .
BOOK
The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are all False, Oxford University Press, 2021.
Symposia in Analytic Philosophy (with John MacFarlane, Mitchell Green, Anthony Bigg & Kristie Miller, and Ryan Wasserman), and in The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion (with Daniel Rubio and Alan Rhoda).
Reviews:
NDPR - Green, Ratio - Andreoletti, EJAP - Santelli , Metaphilosophy - Ingram, Manuscrito -Frigerio, EJPR - Hess, JAT - Rhoda, Process Studies - Viney, ZTP - Hunt, F&P - Effingham
Critical Notices:
Phil Q - Torre
Argumenta - Spolaore
Analysis - Baron
Edited Book
Freedom, Fatalism, and Foreknowledge, with John Martin Fischer, co-edited anthology, with a substantive new introduction of 20,000 words (co-written, but as lead author), 2015, Oxford University Press.
Articles
34. “Future Contingents, Openness, and the Possibility of Omniscience: Defending an Argument Against Relativism and Supervaluationism", forthcoming, Theoria.
33. “Strawsonian Moral Responsibility, Response-Dependence, and the Possibility of Global Error,” forthcoming, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.
32. “Defending the Open Future: Replies to MacFarlane, Green, Wasserman, and Bigg & Miller,” forthcoming, Analytic Philosophy.
31. “On the Open Future: Replies to Rhoda and Rubio,” forthcoming, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
30. “It Would be Bad if Compatibilism Were True; Therefore, It Isn’t,” forthcoming, Philosophical
Issues (special issue: Free will), eds. Michael McKenna and Carolina Sartorio.
29. “Let’s See You Do Better,” forthcoming, Ergo.
28. “A Puzzle About Scope for Restricted Deontic Modals,” with Brian Rabern, forthcoming, Snippets.
27. “Critical Notice: The Modal Future,” forthcoming, The Philosophical Quarterly.
26. “Resisting the Epistemic Argument for Compatibilism,” with Brian Rabern, Philosophical Studies.
25. “The Consequences of Incompatibilism,” Routledge Handbook of Responsibility, ed. Maximillian Kiener, forthcoming 2023.
24. “Foreknowledge Requires Determinism,” forthcoming, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
23. “The Paradox of Self-Blame,” with B. Rabern, American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2022): 111–125.
22. “Future Contingents and the Logic of Temporal Omniscience,” with B. Rabern, Noûs 55 (2021):
102 – 127.
21. “The Problem of Future Contingents: Scoping out a Solution,” Synthese 197 (2020): 5051 - 5072.
20. “The Replication Argument for Incompatibilism,” Erkenntnis 84 (2019): 1341 – 1359.
19. “A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame,” Noûs 53(2) (2019): 347 – 374.
18. “Does God have the moral standing to blame?,” Faith and Philosophy 35 (1)(2018): 33-55.
17. “Manipulation Arguments and the Freedom to do Otherwise,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2) (2017): 395 – 407.
16. “Strawson, Moral Responsibility, and the ‘Order of Explanation’: An Intervention,” Ethics 127 (1)(2016): 208-240.
15. “Future Contingents are all False! On Behalf of a Russellian Open Future,” Mind 125 (499)
(2016)): 775-798.
14. “On Behalf of a Mutable Future,” Synthese 193 (7) (2016): 2077-2095
13. “The greatest possible being needn’t be anything impossible,” Religious Studies 51 (4) (December
2015): 531 - 542.
12. “Against Limited Foreknowledge,” Philosophia 42(2) (2014): 523 – 538.
11. “Prepunishment and Explanatory Dependence: A New Argument for Incompatibilism About
Foreknowledge and Freedom,” The Philosophical Review 122(4) (2013): 619 – 639.
10. “Defending (A Modified Version Of) The Zygote Argument,” Philosophical Studies 164(1) (2013): 189 – 203.
9. “Soft Facts and Ontological Dependence,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 164(3) (July 2013): 829-44.
8. “The Truth About Foreknowledge” (with John Martin Fischer), Faith and Philosophy 30(3) (2013): 286 – 301.
7. “Manipulation,” entry for the International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Blackwell), ed. Hugh LaFollette (2013).
6. “Manipulation and Moral Standing: An Argument for Incompatibilism,” Philosophers' Imprint, Vol. 12, No. 7 (March 2012): 1 - 18.
5. “The Truth About Freedom: A Reply to Merricks,” (with John Martin Fischer), The Philosophical
Review, Vol. 120, No. 1 (January 2011): 97 – 115.
4. “A New Approach to Manipulation Arguments,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 152 (1) (January 2011): 127-133.
3. “Geachianism,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume III, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 222 – 251. Reprinted in Fischer and Todd 2015.
2. “Engaging with Pike: God, Freedom, and Time” (with John Martin Fischer
and Neal Tognazzini), Philosophical Papers, Vol. 38: 2 (July 2009): 247-270.
1. “A Problem for Guidance Control,” (with Neal Tognazzini), The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 58,
No. 233 (2008): 685-692.