Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, Patrick is a faculty member, as a Chancellor's Fellow, at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in philosophy (December 2011) at the University of California, Riverside. He is interested in metaphysics, ethics, free will and moral responsibility, and philosophy of religion.
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 am 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 .
Upcoming talks (as of February 2, 2023):
Lund University (Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy): February 16
Stockholm University: February 28
Uppsala University (Seminar in Practical Philosophy): March 3
Southern Methodist University: March 30
University of Texas at Austin: April 7
The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are all False, Oxford University Press, 2021.
Author-meets-critics session at the Pacific APA, Vancouver, April 16. (Critics: John MacFarlane/Mitchell Green.)
Planned 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
Freedom, Fatalism, and Foreknowledge, co-edited with John Martin Fischer, Oxford University Press, 2015. This is an anthology of previously published material, together with a substantive (20,000 word) new introduction.
33. “Future Contingents, Openness, and the Possibility of Omniscience: Defending an Argument Against Relativism and Supervaluationism", forthcoming, Theoria.
32. “Strawsonian Moral Responsibility, Response-Dependence, and the Possibility of Global Error,” forthcoming, Midwest Studies in Philosophy.
31. “Defending The Open Future: Replies to MacFarlane, Green, Wasserman, and Bigg & Miller,” forthcoming, Analytic Philosophy
30. “On The Open Future: Replies to Rhoda and Rubio,” forthcoming, IJPR.
29. “Critical Notice of The Modal Future,” forthcoming, Philosophical Quarterly.
28. “It Would be Bad if Compatibilism Were True; Therefore, It Isn’t,” Philosophical Issues 33: 270 - 284. (special issue: Free will), eds. Michael McKenna and Carolina Sartorio. (2023).
27. “Resisting the Epistemic Argument for Compatibilism,” with Brian Rabern, forthcoming, Philosophical Studies.
26. “The Consequences of Incompatibilism,” forthcoming, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility (ed. M. Kiener).
25. “Let’s See You Do Better,” forthcoming, Ergo.
24. “A puzzle about scope for restricted deontic modals,” with Brian Rabern, Snippets 44: 8 - 10. (2023)
23. “Foreknowledge requires determinism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107: 125 - 146. (2023)
22. “The Paradox of Self-Blame,” with Brian Rabern, American Philosophical Quarterly 59: 111 - 125. (2022)
21. “Future Contingents and the Logic of Temporal Omniscience,” (with Brian Rabern), Noûs 55: 102-127. (2021)
20. 'The Problem of Future Contingents: Scoping out a solution,” Synthese 197: 5051 - 5072. (2020)
19. 'The Replication Argument for Incompatibilism,” Erkenntnis 84: 1341 - 1359. (2019)
18. 'A Unified Account of the Moral Standing to Blame', Noûs 53: 347 - 374. (2019)
17. 'Does God have the moral standing to blame?', Faith and Philosophy 35(1) (2018): 33 - 55.
16. 'Manipulation Arguments and the Freedom to do Otherwise', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95(2) (September 2017): 395 - 407).
15. 'Strawson, Moral Responsibility, and the "Order of Explanation": An Intervention', Ethics 127(1) (October 2016): 208 - 240. (Reply by Beglin.)
14. 'Future Contingents are all False! On Behalf of a Russellian Open Future', Mind 125 (July 2016): 775 - 798.
13. 'On Behalf of a Mutable Future', Synthese 193 (July 2016): 2077 - 95.
12. 'The Greatest Possible Being Needn't be Anything Impossible', Religious Studies 51 (4) (December 2015): 531 - 542.
11. 'Against Limited Foreknowledge', Philosophia 42 (2) (June 2014): 523 - 538.
10. 'Prepunishment and Explanatory Dependence: A New Argument for Incompatibilism About Foreknowledge and Freedom', The Philosophical Review 122(4) (October 2013): 619 - 639. (But see Philip Swenson's paper [AJP] for a reply.)
9. 'Soft Facts and Ontological Dependence', Philosophical Studies 164 (3) (July 2013): 829 - 844.
8. 'Defending (A Modified Version Of) The Zygote Argument', Philosophical Studies 164 (1) (May 2013): 189 - 203.
7. 'The Truth About Foreknowledge', (with John Martin Fischer), Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 30, No. 3 (July 2013): 286 - 301.
6. 'Manipulation and Moral Standing: An Argument for Incompatibilism', Philosophers' Imprint, Vol. 12, No. 7 (March 2012): 1 - 18. (But see this reply by Matt King, and this reply by Michael McKenna.)
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, No. 1 (January 2011): 127-133. (But see this for a reply by Justin Capes, this reply by Hannah Tierney, this reply by Andrew Khoury, and this further reply by Tierney.)
3. 'Geachianism', Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Volume III), ed. Jonathan Kvanvig. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): Ch. 11, pp. 222 - 251.
2. 'Engaging with Pike: God, Freedom, and Time' (with John Martin Fischer and Neal Tognazzini), Philosophical Papers, Vol. 38, No. 2 (July 2009): 247-270.
1. 'A Problem for Guidance Control', (with Neal Tognazzini), The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 233 (October 2008): 685-692.
Review of The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence: A Time-Ordering Account by T. Ryan Byerly, forthcoming, Sophia.
Review of Rethinking Responsibility by K.E. Boxer, Ethics 125 (1) (October 2014): 244 - 249.
'Fatalism', entry for Oxford Bibliographies Online.
'Manipulation', entry (3000 words) for the International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Feb 2013.
B.A., philosophy, Baylor University, 2001 - 2005
M.A., philosophy, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005 - 2007
Ph.D., philosophy, University of California-Riverside, 2007 - 2011
For the 2010/2011 academic year, I was on a dissertation year fellowship at the University of Notre Dame.