Howard WettsteinHoward Wettstein

Ph.D., City University of New York, 1976
Professor of Philosophy
HMNSS 3211
951-827-1503 (message phone)
howard.wettstein@ucr.edu

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Professor Wettstein holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yeshiva College, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. He has published two books—The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Has Semantics Rested On a Mistake?, and Other Essays (Stanford University Press, 1991)—and a number of papers in the philosophy of language, for many years the focus of his research. During the last decade he has also worked in the philosophy of religion, publishing papers on topics like awe, doctrine, the problem of evil, and the viability of philosophical theology. He is currently at work on a book in the philosophy of religion. Among his central teaching interests is a freshman level introduction to philosophy, which raises the central questions in the field by way of issues in the philosophy of religion. In recent years he has taught graduate seminars on the meaning of life (with John Fischer) and on Kripke (with Paul Hoffman). He has also taught philosophy of language seminars at UCLA. He is a senior editor (with Peter French) of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, and has edited a number of other volumes including Themes From Kaplan (Oxford University Press, 1989, co-edited) and Diasporas and Exiles (University of California Press, 2002).

Research Interests

  • Philosophy of Language
  • Philosophy of Mind
  • Philosophy of Religion

Selected Publications and Talks

The Magic PrismBooks and Collections:

  • The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, 2004. (To read the Introduction, click here. Click here for a discount on the hardback and here for a discount on the paperback from Oxford University Press.)

  • Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity (editor), University of California Press, 2002. (For further information, click here.)

  • Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?, And Other Essays, Stanford University Press, 1990

  • Themes from Kaplan, (co-editor) Oxford, 1989

  • Midwest Studies in Philosophy (co-editor), 1977–present

Selected Articles

  • “God’s Struggles,” forthcoming 2010 in Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham, eds. Michael Bergmann, Michael Murray, Michael Rea (Oxford University Press). This paper derives from “Concluding Remarks” I gave at the September 2009 conference at the University of Notre Dame, “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible.” I’m told by friendly critics that the written version does not quite capture the oral presentation, available here.

  • “Forgiveness and Moral Reckoning,” forthcoming in Philosophia.

  • “The Significance of Religious Experience,” forthcoming in The Modern Schoolman.

  • "Referents and Fixing Reference" in Richard Schantz (editor), Prospects for Meaning (deGruyter, Berlin and New York), forthcoming 2010.

  • "Against Theology" in Robert Eisen and Charles Manekin (eds.) Philosophers and the Bible: General and Jewish Perspectives (University Press of Maryland, 2009).

  • "Against Theodicy," Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, 1999. Reprinted in Judaism, 2001 and in Philosophia, 2003.

  • "Doctrine," Faith and Philosophy, 1997

  • "Terra Firma," The Monist, 1995

  • "Frege-Russell Semantics?", Dialectica, 1990

  • "Cognitive Significance Without Cognitive Content," Mind, 1988

  • "Turning the Tables on Frege," Philosophical Perspectives, 1987

  • "Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?", Journal of Philosophy, 1986