mike burke

Research interests: Metaphysics, Informal Logic.

Graduate education: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1976.

Representative articles: "Cohabitation, Stuff, and Intermittent Existence," Mind 89(355) (1980): 391-405. "Essentialism and the Identity of Indiscernibles," Philosophy Research Archives 9 (1983): 223-43. "The Infinitistic Thesis," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 22(3) (1984): 295-305. "Hume and Edwards on 'Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?'" Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62(4) (1984): 355-62. "Spatial Analogues of 'Annihilation and Re-creation'," Analysis 45(1) (1985): 24-29. "Unstated Premises," Informal Logic 7(2/3) (1985): 107-18. "Theodicy with a God of Limited Power: a Reply to McGrath," Analysis 47(1) (1987): 57-58. "Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account," Analysis 52(1) (1992): 12-17. "Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle," The Journal of Philosophy 91(3) (1994): 129-39. "Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Among Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54(3) (1994): 591-624; reprinted in Material Constitution: A Reader, ed. Michael Rea (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 236-69. "Denying the Antecedent: A Common Fallacy?" Informal Logic 16(1) (1994): 23-30. "Sortal Essentialism and the Potentiality Principle," Review of Metaphysics 49(3) (1996): 491-514. "Tibbles the Cat: A Modern Sophisma," Philosophical Studies 84(1) (1996): 63-74. "Coinciding Objects: Reply to Lowe and Denkel," Analysis 57(1) (1997): 11-18. "Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism," American Philosophical Quarterly 34(4) (1997): 457-67. "Benardete's Paradox," Sorites: Electronic Quarterly of Analytical Philosophy 11 (Dec. 1999): 82-85. "The Impossibility of Superfeats," The Southern Journal of Philosophy 38(2) (2000): 207-220. "The Staccato Run: A Contemporary Issue in the Zenonian Tradition," The Modern Schoolman 78(1) (2000): 1-8. "Is My Head a Person?" in Klaus Petrus, editor, On Human Persons (Frankfurt, London: Ontos Verlag, 2003), pp. 107-25. “Dion, Theon, and the Many-Thinkers Problem,” Analysis vol. 64, no. 3, July 2004, pp. 242-50. “What We Are” (in progress). “Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle,” reprinted in Michael Rea, ed., Critical Concepts in Philosophy: Metaphysics, Routledge, forthcoming 2008. (A reference work collecting “100 of the most important 20^th Century articles on central topics in metaphysics.”)

Awards: SLA Distinguished Faculty Award, 1997; Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (TERA), 1997.

Frequently taught courses: Logic (P162); Introductory Symbolic Logic (P265); Theory of Knowledge (P369); Metaphysics (P385). (**For course descriptions, see below.)

Other courses: Introduction to Philosophy (P110); Ethics (P120); Inductive Logic (taught under P280: Problems in Philosophy); Philosophy of Human Nature (P322); Philosophy of Science (P331); Intermediate Symbolic Logic (P365); The Existence of God (taught under P383: Topics in Philosophy).

Course descriptions:

P162: Logic (3 cr.): A study of the principles of logic. The course covers a variety of traditional topics, selected for their practical value, within formal and informal logic. Among the topics typically covered are fallacies, syllogisms, causal hypotheses, logic diagrams, argument analysis, and truth-functional reasoning.

P265: Introduction to Symbolic Logic (3 cr.): A study of the most important and widely applicable parts of modern symbolic logic: propositional logic and predicate logic. No prerequisite.

P369: Theory of Knowledge (3 cr.): Knowledge and justified belief: their nature, structure, sources, and limits.

P385: Metaphysics (3 cr.): A study of several of the principal problems of metaphysics, such as identity through time, the self, the mind-body problem, freedom and determinism, fate, causation, the problem of universals, and the existence of God. No prerequisites.