Karen Bennett

The Sage School of Philosophy

218 Goldwin Smith Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853-3201

Office: (607) 255-7350

Fax: (607) 255-8177

kb383@cornell.edu

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kb383

Academic Employment:

Associate Professor, Cornell University, 2007-present

Assistant Professor, Princeton University, 2000-2007

Postdoctoral Fellow, RSSS, Australian National University, August 2001—August 2005. (taken up in 3 semesters and the summers)

Education:

Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), 2000

Dissertation: Keeping Modality in Mind: In Defense of Token Identity

Co-chairs: Stephen Yablo, James Joyce

M.A., Philosophy, University of Michigan, 1996

B.A., Philosophy, magna cum laude, Oberlin College, 1993

Areas of Specialization:

Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind

Published and Forthcoming Papers

Forthcoming. What you don’t know can hurt you. Contribution to book symposium on Daniel Stoljar’s Ignorance and Imagination, to appear in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

2009. Composition, coincidence, and metaontology. In Metametaphysics, eds. David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press.

2008. Exclusion again. In Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, Causation, eds. J. Kallestrup and J. Hohwy, Oxford University Press.

2007. Mental causation. Philosophy Compass 2: 316-337.

2006. Proxy ‘actualism’. Philosophical Studies 129:2, 263-294.

2005. Two axes of actualism. The Philosophical Review 114:3, 297-326.

2005. Supervenience. (With Brian McLaughlin). In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

2004. Global supervenience and dependence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68:3, 501-529.

2004. Spatio-temporal coincidence and the grounding problem. Philosophical Studies 118:3, 339-371.

2003. Why the exclusion problem seems intractable, and how, just maybe, to tract it. Noûs 37:3, 471-497.

Papers in Progress

Putting things together.

Construction area: no hard hat required.

Maybe sometime.

Why I am not a dualist.

Zombies everywhere.

Two causal –isms.

Book Reviews

2005. Review of Possible Worlds, by John Divers. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83:2, 282-285.

2004. Review of How Things Persist, by Katherine Hawley. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69:1, 230-233.

2003. Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, ed. James B. South. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (http://ndpr.nd.edu/).

Talks and Conference Presentations:

“Construction Area: No Hard Hat Required”

Invited symposium on ontological emergence, Central APA, February 2009

“Putting Things Together”

Perspectives on Ontology Conference, University of Leeds, UK, September 2008

Keynote Address to Columbia-NYU Graduate Conference, March 2009

Indiana University, March 2009

Notre Dame University, March 2009

“Thomasson’s Ordinary Objects”

Author meets critics session, Eastern APA, December 2008

Comments on Jonathan Schaffer’s “The Internal Relatedness of All Things”
Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, August 2008

“Metametametaphysics”

Invited symposium, Eidos group, University of Geneva, Switzerland, July 2008

Invited symposium, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, March 2008

“Maybe Sometime”

University of Toronto, February 2008

Jowett Society, Oxford University, October 2007

Syracuse University, November 2007

“New Thoughts on Mental Causation”

Syracuse Mental Causation Workshop, December 2007

“Eternalist Actualism”

Keynote address at the University of Texas Graduate Conference, April 2007

Comments on Michael Nelson’s “The Contingency of Existence”

Invited symposium, Pacific APA, April 2007

Comments on Thomas Hofweber’s “Ontology as a Philosopher’s Project”

Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, March 2007

“Two Causal –isms”

NYU Causation Conference, La Pietra, Italy, June 2006

Comments on Eric Hiddleston’s “The Reductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation”

Invited symposium, Pacific APA, March 2006

“Why I am Not a Dualist”

Mt. Holyoke College, April 2007

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, January 2007

Cornell University, December 2006

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, December 2006

University of Utah, November 2006

Metaphysics of Science Workshop, Birmingham, UK, June 2006

UC Vermont, April 2006

UC Davis, April 2006

Columbia University, March 2006

Harvard University, October 2005

University of Pennsylvania, November 2005

Brown University, December 2005

Australasian Association of Philosophy Meetings, July 2005

“Exclusion Again”

Reed College, February 2006

Comments on Cian Dorr’s “Numbers and Electrons”

Eastern APA, December 2005

“Composition, Coincidence, and Metaontology”

University of Colorado at Boulder, December 2006

Ohio State University, October 2006

Washington University in St. Louis, October 2006

Arizona Ontology Conference, Tucson, January 2006

Metametaphysics Conference, ANU, July 2005

CUNY Graduate Center, February 2005

Oberlin College, February 2005

NYU Mind and Language Seminar, April 2005

Invited symposium on metaontology, with Stephen Yablo and Eli Hirsch

Eastern APA, Dec. 2004

“Metametaphysics”

University of Melbourne, October 2004

“Exclusion Again”

Conference on ‘Descrying the World in Physics’, Rutgers, April 2005

Australasian Association of Philosophy Meeting, July 2004

Macquarie University Mental Causation Workshop, September 2004

Comments on Carolina Sartorio’s “On Causing Something to Happen in a Certain Way without Causing it to Happen”

Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, August 2004

“Exclusion Again: Poison Pills and Placebos”

NAMICONA conference on Mental Causation, Aarhus University (Denmark), May 2004

“Metametaphysics” (early version)

Brown University, March 2004

Invited symposium on Michael Jubien’s “Analyzing Modality”

Pacific APA, March 2004

Comments on Dean Zimmerman’s “Presentism and a Timelessly Eternal Deity”

Keynote session, New Jersey Regional Philosophy Conference, November 2003

“Two Axes of Actualism”

MIT, October 2003

“Barcan Mad”

Keynote Address at Princeton-Rutgers Graduate Student Conference, April 2003

Monash University, April 2002

Response to Jessica Wilson’s “The Many in One Problem”

Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, August 2002:

“How Not to Be an Actualist”

RSSS, Australian National University, February 2002

“Why the Exclusion Problem Seems Intractable, and How, Just Maybe, to Tract It”

New York University, April 2001

“Token Dualism and Causal Competition (or, Mental Causation Yet Again)”

Metaphysical Mayhem V, August 2000

“On Differing Modally”

Cornell University, Stanford University, The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Florida at Gainesville, Pomona College, The University of Southern California, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Arizona State University, Jan-Feb 2000.

Comments on Robert Allen’s “The Necessity of Identity”

APA Central Division Meeting, May 1999

Response to Jaegwon Kim’s “What is Naturalism?”

16th Annual University of Michigan Spring Colloquium, March 1997

Courses Taught

Philosophy and Everyday Life (new introductory course slated for Fall 2009)

Introduction to Philosophy (Fall 2007, 2008)

Intermediate Metaphysics (Fall 2008)

Introduction to Metaphysics (Spring 2008, Fall 2009)

Graduate Seminar: The Nonfundamental: Aggregation, Causation, Dependence (Spring 2008, with Richard Boyd.)

Graduate Seminar: Metametaphysics (Fall 2005)

Graduate Seminar: Objects (Spring 2005)

Graduate Seminar: Metaphysics of Mind (Spring 2004)

Graduate Seminar: Modality (Spring 2003)

Graduate Seminar: Contemporary Dualisms (Spring 2001)

Philosophy of Mind (Fall 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006)

Metaphysics (Spring 2003, 2004, 2005)

Junior Seminar: Causation (Fall 2006)

Junior Seminar: Constitution and Identity (Fall 2000)

Teaching experience as a graduate student available upon request.

Ph.D, Students, chair or co-chair

Gabriel Love, Princeton, in progress

Paul Audi, “Beyond Causal Theories of Mind,” Princeton 2007

Colin Klein, “Idealizing the Mind,” Princeton 2006

Stephan Leuenberger, “Ceteris Absentibus Physicalism,” Princeton 2006

Honors and Awards:

Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, 2008

For excellence in both teaching and research. Awarded annually to roughly three newly tenured faculty at Cornell.

John Dewey Prize, 2000

For excellence in undergraduate teaching in the Michigan Philosophy Department

Graduate Student Mentor, 1999-2000

In charge of training first-time teaching assistants in the Michigan Philosophy Dept.

Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 1997-1998

University-wide competition

Charles Stevenson Award, 1997

Awarded annually for the best candidacy dossier submitted to the Michigan Phil. Dept.

Mellon Fellowship, 1997

Marshall Weinberg Summer Fellowship, 1996

Phi Beta Kappa, 1993

National Merit Scholar, 1989-1993

Service:

Co-editor (with Dean Zimmerman), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, starting with volume 6

Editorial Board, The Philosophical Review, 2007-present

Editorial Board, Philosophical Studies, 2005-present

Advisory Committee to APA Eastern Division Program Committee (Metaphysics), 2007-2010

Referee for The Philosophical Review, Mind, Noûs, Mind and Language, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Synthèse, The Philosophical Quarterly, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, The Monist, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, Acumen Press.

Program Committee, 7^th Annual Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference, 2006; guest co-editor of resulting issue of Philosophical Studies

Placement director, Cornell University, 2008-2009

Departmental committee work: the usual slate, including hiring and graduate admissions, etc.

Faculty advisor to Rockefeller College, Princeton University, 2002-2004