Arthur Schipper

Arthur Schipper is an Assistant Professor at UAEU specialised in logic & metaphysics, especially of mind and language, and the methodology of philosophy, with a specialisation also in the historical developments of these fields.

Before this, he worked at Peking University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Institute of Foreign Philosophy, which is part of the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies; at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) as Lecturer, the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation (ILLC)  as a regular member, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) as affiliated member; at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University as University Lecturer (Assistant Professor, UD, fixed term); and  at the University of London, University College London and Heythrop College  as tutor and module convenor.

Areas of Specialisation: Logic & Metaphysics (esp. Metaphysics of Mind and Language), Methodology in Philosophy, History of Philosophy (especially early- to mid-20th century Anglophone Philosophy, and David Hume)

Areas of Competence: Philosophy of Mind & Language, Epistemology,  Philosophical Logic, Early Modern Philosophy, Social & Political Philosophy

Recent publications (*: original research articles; ^: Invited Article (e.g. book chapters); +: substantial book reviews; ^: books)

• *Acting on Reasons: Synchronic Executive Control

  • European Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming); Early View published 31 January 2024: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.12925?af=R

• *Henry Habberley Price. 

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 

  • Published on 4 November 2023: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/price/ 

  • co-authored with Paul F. Snowdon

• *Singular Terms and Ontological Seriousness. 

  • Journal of the American Philosophical Association. (2023; Volume 9, Issue 3 , September 2023 , pp. 574 - 595) (behind paywall) 

  • https://www.doi.org/10.1017/apa.2022.10, but available to view on the Cambridge Core Share site: https://tinyurl.com/schipper-j-apa2022-ccshare 

• *Necessitation and the Changing Past. 

  • Theoria (Stockholm). (2022; Volume88, Issue5, October 2022, pp. 997-1013) (behind paywall): 

  • https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12424; pre-publication (available without paywall): here

• *Inquiry and Ordinary Truthmakers

  • Metaphysica. (2022, Volume 23, Issue 2; published by De Guyter on 26 August 2022)

  • https://doi.org/10.1515/mp-2021-0035; pre-publication version:  https://tinyurl.com/schipper-metaphysica2022-pp

• *Ontological accounting and aboutness: on Asay's A Theory of Truthmaking. 

  • Asian Journal of Philosophy (Peer-reviewed Book Symposium): (2022; 1(1):1-8).  [Downloaded 1600+ times so far]

  • FREE TO DOWNLOAD FOR 2 YEARS: DOI: 10.1007%2Fs44204-021-00005-z 

• ^Williamson’s Abductive Paradigm and Theory Comparison in Philosophy. 

  • Forthcoming in Methods of Philosophy: Lectures at Peking University by Timothy Williamson. Edited by Chen Bo. Translated into Chinese by Xu Zhaoqing. Book Chapter. Beijing: Renmin University Press.

  • English pre-print copy available: here 

• *Fundamental truthmakers and non-fundamental truths. 

  • Synthese (Peer-reviewed): (2021; 198(4):3073-3098; Online First: 4th June, 2019).  [Downloaded 4,800+ times so far]  DOI: 10.1007/s11229-019-02266-x; 26 pages total (Open Access)

• *Aboutness and Ontology: A Modest Approach to Truthmakers. 

  • Philosophical Studies (Peer-reviewed): (2020). February, 177, pages 505–533; [Downloaded 3,500+ times so far] Published Online First and OPEN ACCESS 28 October 2018: DOI: 10.1007/s11098-018-1192-6

• *Aboutness and negative truths: a modest strategy for truthmaker theorists. 

  • Synthese (Peer-reviewed): (2018). Volume 195, Issue 8, August, pp. 3685--3722; [Downloaded 5,500+ times so far] OPENACCESS: here DOI: 10.1007/s11229-017-1396-x

• +Review of The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice edited by G. Hull. 

  • The Philosophical Quarterly: (2017). Volume 67, Issue 269, 1 October 2017, Pages 863–865, DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqw063; available online: here

• +Review of Dialectics in World Politics edited by S. Brincat. 

  • Marx & Philosophy Review of Books: (2016). available online: here

Description of current research: Arthur Schipper's work is mainly focused on the relations between language, thought, truth, and reality. Specifically, he looks most closely at the nature of and interrelations between truth, truthmaking, and aboutness/intentionality (the property that things have in relation to other things via their directedness and relevance), and uses the results of his investigations to formulate answers to central, and often ancient, philosophical problems, such as the problem of negative truths, and to philosophical debates concerning, for instance, realism and anti-realism,  the scientific and the manifest images of the world, the nature of metaphysical commitment, and the particulars/universals distinction. He is also interested in other topics in metaphysics such as the nature of modality, agency, relations (esp. internal relations) and perception. 

His further interests in the history of philosophy focus especially on early to mid 20th Century Anglophone philosophy (especially H. H. Price, Russell, Wittgenstein), the influence of the Brentano School and Scottish Realism on analytic philosophy and the relations between dialectical and analytic philosophy. He frequently also thinks about early modern philosophy (especially Hume, Descartes, Locke, Thomas Reid, and the truthmaker theorists among the early modern scholastics). He has also written on egalitarianism and comparative approaches, in social and political philosophy.