My work in philosophy centers on questions at the intersection of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of science, logic and philosophy of language, and aesthetics. I have spent a lot of time thinking about color and the philosophy of color, but recently I have become interested in issues in the philosophy of time, and in the understanding of human freedom. I am interested in the weakness of arguments for determinism. In the history of philosophy, I have worked most on Wittgenstein and on Leibniz. I spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, and have published a little on Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost. I also write poetry, and try to paint and play the piano. Recently I have become interested in optical logic and in diagrammatic logic systems, and since 2004 I have been the ISU Director of the Conservative Optical Logic Devices program. I have been a Humboldt Fellow at the Institut für Statistik und Wissenschaftstheorie in the University of Munich. I was an undergraduate at Harvard, where I studied with Hilary Putnam, and I did my graduate work at the University of London, with David Wiggins as my supervisor. In 1984 I was elected a Permanent Member of the Senior Common Room at University College, Oxford. I am married to Stephanie, who works as an RN at Portneuf Medical Center, and we have four wonderful children.

Selected Publications

“The Future and the Truth-Value Links: a Common Sense View”, Analysis, 66, 1 (2006).

“Logic as a Vector System”, with Jim Hardy, Journal of Logic and Computation, 16, 1 (2006).

“Optical Vector Logic Theorem-Proving”, with H.J. Caulfield, Jim Hardy and Lei Qian, Proceedings of the 2005 Joint Conference on Information Systems, Photonics, Networking and Computing Division, Salt Lake, 2005.

“Conflicting Appearances, Necessity and the Irreducibility of Propositions about Colours”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, February (2005).

“The Logic of Optics and the Optics of Logic”, with H.J. Caulfield, Information Sciences, 162, 1 (2004).

 “A New Way with the Consequence Argument, and the Fixity of the Laws”, Analysis, 63, 3 (2003).

“The Retrenchability of ‘the Present’”, Analysis, 62, 1 (2002).

 “Leibniz and the Problem of Other Minds”, Studia Leibnitiana, 23, 2 (2001).

Philosophical Propositions, London and NY, Routledge, 1998.

“Colour: Physical or Phenomenal?” Philosophy 73 (1998), with Russell Wahl.

Review of B. Maund, Colours: their Nature and Representation, in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48 (1997).

“Ernst Mach: An Immediate Joy in Seeing”, Times Literary Supplement, April 18 (1997).

Ed., Justice, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, MA, 1996.

“Sources of Error in the Metaphysics of Time”, Philosophical Investigations, 19 (1996).

Ed., Certainty, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, MA. 1994.

“A Problematic Phrase in Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do Not Go Gentle . . .”, The Explicator 92 (1994).

 “On Value and value: a Reply to Quentin Smith”, with Chris Cherry, Philosophy 4 (1993).

Colour: A Philosophical Introduction, 2nd ed., Aristotelian Society Series Vol. VII, Blackwell,  Oxford, 1991.

“Universals and Creativity”, Philosophy 4 (1990).

“Is Life Absurd?” Philosophy 2 (1990).

“Black”, Mind 99 (1990).

Review of David Armstrong, Universals, in Mind 99 (1990), with Lenn Goodman.

“Whose Hue?” Times Literary Supplement, July 13 (1990), review of Charles Landesman, Color and  Consciousness.

“Leibniz and the Problem of Induction”, Studia Leibnitiana 2 (1989).

Review of C.L. Hardin, Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, in Mind 98 (1989). “Reply  to Gilbert”, Mind 97 (1988).

 “The Pardshaw Dialogues: Sense-Awareness and the Passage of Nature”, with R.B. Braithwaite, C. Clarke, Dorothy Emmet, Margaret Masterman and Rupert Sheldrake, Process Studies 2 (1987).

 “White”, Mind 95 (1986).

“The Complexity of Quality”, Philosophy 54 (1984).

“Brown”, Inquiry 28 (1982).

“White in All Possible Worlds”, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, ed. P. Weingartner and C. Czermak, Vienna 1983.

 “The Logic of the Spectrum”, Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 18 (1978), review of L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour.

 “Neo-Darwinism”, Theoria to Theory 11 (1977), dialogue with R.B. Braithwaite, D. Charlesworth, B. Goodwin and G. Webster.

Editorials for Theoria to Theory 1977-1981.

PATENTS

“Devices and Techniques for Logical Processing” (2003).

“Multilevel Minimization Techniques with Multiple Outputs” (2006).

Courses Taught

Introduction to Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Logic, Aesthetics, and (for the Harvard Summer School) Introduction to Philosophy, and Logic.

Office: LA 252
Office Phone: 282-3160
westjona@isu.edu

COLD Project
Business & Technology Center,
ISU Research Park
Idaho State University
Pocatello, Idaho 83209
Tel. 208-282-6683