Nathaniel Goldberg

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Nathaniel Goldberg's primary research interests are in philosophy of language, epistemology, and modern philosophy, and their implications for metaphysics. He has published on conceptual change, interpretation, meaning, relativism, and skepticism--mostly by publishing on Donald Davidson, Michael Friedman, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Kuhn, Philip Pettit, and W. V. Quine. He is now synthesizing these themes into a book tentatively called Kantian Conceptual Geography.

Education

Georgetown University, Ph.D.
Tufts University, M.A.
Brandeis University, B.A.

Research

Epistemology
Metaphysics 
Modern Philosophy
Philosophy of Language

Teaching

PHIL 110 Ancient Philosophy
PHIL 120 Modern Philosophy
PHIL 170 Introduction to Logic
PHIL 270 Intermediate Logic
PHIL 274 Metaphysics: Existence and Reality
PHIL 278 Epistemology: Knowledge and Doubt
PHIL 295 American Pragmatism
PHIL 310 Kant
PHIL 372 Philosophy of Language
PHIL 385 Philosophy of Time Travel
PHIL 403 Directed Individual Study: Quine and Davidson 

Selected Publications

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• "Davidson, Dualism, and Truth," Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy 1:7 (2012): 0-19
• "Swampman, Response-Dependence, and Meaning," in Gerhard Preyer, ed. Davidson's Philosophy: Truth, Meaning, and the Mental (Oxford University Press, 2012), ch. 6
• "Psychological Eudaimonism and Interpretation in Greek Ethics" with Mark LeBar, in Rachana Kamtekar, ed., Virtue and Happiness, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, ed. Brad Inwood. Supplementary Volume (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 287-319
• "Interpreting Thomas Kuhn as a Response-Dependence Theorist," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (2011): 729-52
• "Where Does Knowledge Come From? Quine, Davidson, and Traditional Epistemology," in David Stewart, H. Gene Blocker, and James Petrik, eds. Fundamentals of Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), pp. 210-8
• "Historicism, Entrenchment, and Conventionalism," Journal for General Philosophy of Science 40 (2009): 259-76
• "Triangulation, Untranslatability, and Reconciliation," Philosophia 37 (2009): 261-80
• "Universal and Relative Rationality," Principia 13 (2009): 67-84
• "Response-Dependence, Noumenalism, and Ontological Mystery," European Journal of Philosophy 17 (2008): 469-88
• “Tension within Triangulation,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (2008): 367-83
• “Incommensurability, Relativism, Scepticism: Reflections on Acquiring a Concept” with Matthew Rellihan, Ratio 21 (2008): 147-67
• “Davidson’s Return to Kant,” in José María Torralba, ed., Doscientos Años Después: Retornos y Relecturas de KantTwo Hundred Years After: Returns and Re-Interpretations of Kant), Publication Services of the University of Navarra, Spain, 2005, 33-48
• “Do Principles of Reason Have ‘Objective but Indeterminate Validity’?,” Kant-Studien 95 (2004): 405-25
• "E Pluribus Unum: Arguments against Conceptual Schemes and Empirical Content," Southern Journal of Philosophy 42 (2004): 411-38
• “Is Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mind Functionalist?,” Philosophical Writings 26 (2004): 47-69
• “McTaggart on Time,” Logic and Logical Philosophy 13 (2004): 71-6
• “The Principle of Charity,” Dialogue 43 (2004): 671-83
• “Actually v. Possibly the Case: On Davidson’s Omniscient Interpreter,” Acta Analytica 18 (2003): 143-60

COMMENTS AND REVIEWS

• Comment on Mosser’s “Kant and the Logic of Aristotle,” Proceedings of the Ohio Philosophical Association 3 (2006), permanent link: http://proceedings.ohiophilosophy.org/003010
• Review of Roger Gibson’s The Cambridge Companion to Quine (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine (Harvard University Press, 2004) in The Review of Metaphysics 58 (2005): 660-2
• Review of Predrag Cicovacki’s Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), in The Review of Metaphysics 57 (2004): 832-3
• Review of Marc Lange’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), in The Review of Metaphysics 57 (2004): 631-3
• Review of Meir Buzaglo’s Logic of Concept Expansion (Cambridge University Press, 2002), in The Review of Metaphysics 57 (2003): 141-3

Previous Employment

Assistant Professor, Washington and Lee University, Fall 2008-Spring 2011
Assistant Professor, Ohio University, Fall 2005-Spring 2008
Visiting Assistant Professor, Mount St. Mary’s University, Fall 2004-Spring 2005
Adjunct Professor, The George Washington University, Fall 2003
Graduate Instructor, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, Summer 2002-Spring 2004

Professional Activity

Referee for

• Dialogue
• European Journal of Philosophy
• International Studies in the Philosophy of Science
• Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy
• Logique et Analyse
• Philosophical Frontiers
• Principia

Reader for

• Catholic University of America Press
• Cengage
• Oxford University Press
• Wiley-Blackwell