ProfessorDavid Macarthur

Liberal naturalism, skepticism, metaphysical quietism, pragmatism and philosophy of art – especially concerning architecture, photography and film.

David Macarthur (PhD Harvard, 1999) is a Professor in the Discipline of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He adopts a skeptical approach to metaphysics using tools borrowed from contemporary pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and psychology; and he explores the ways in which aesthetic experience provides orientation for our thinking about the world and others. He edited Hilary & Ruth-Anna Putnam, Pragmatism as a Way of Life: The Lasting Legacy of William James and John Dewey (Harvard, 2017); and with Mario De Caro (Roma Tré) co-edited Naturalism in Question (Harvard, 2004), Naturalism and Normativity (Columbia, 2010), Hilary Putnam, Philosophy in an Age of Science: Physics, Mathematics and Skepticism (Harvard, 2012), and Hilary Putnam, Philosophy as Dialogue (Harvard, 2022). He also co-edited with Stephen Hetherington Living Skepticism (Brill, 2022).