Alexander Robert Pruss (born January 5, 1973) is a Canadian philosopher and mathematician. He is currently a professor of philosophy and the co-director of graduate studies in philosophy at

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the ...

Waco, Texas Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the st ...

. His best known book is ''The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment'' (2006). He is also the author of the books, ''Actuality, Possibility and Worlds'' (2011), and ''One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics'' (2012), and a number of academic papers on religion and theology.WorldCat author listing
/ref> He maintains his own philosophy blog and contributed to the Prosblogion philosophy of religion blog.

Biography

Pruss graduated from the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames R ...

in 1991 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and physics. After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

in 1996 and publishing several papers in ''Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society'' and other mathematical journals, he began graduate work in philosophy at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

. He completed his dissertation, ''Possible Worlds: What They Are and What They Are Good For'', under

Nicholas Rescher Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was fo ...

in 2001. Pruss began teaching philosophy at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

in 2001, earning tenure in 2006. In 2007, he moved to

to teach philosophy at

. He is now the director of graduate studies for the Baylor Philosophy Department. He has taught various courses, including graduate seminars on the philosophy of time,

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

, the

cosmological Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

and ontological arguments for the

existence of God The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorize ...

, modality,

free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...

, and history of philosophy.

Work

Pruss's philosophical thought reflects Christian orthodoxy. He is a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

and a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers. Pruss defends the

principle of sufficient reason The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhau ...

(PSR), claiming that it is self-evident, and arguing that the rejection of PSR creates problems in epistemology, modality, ethics, and even evolutionary theory. Pruss is a critic of David Lewis's "extreme modal realism," and instead gives "a combined account" of Leibnizian and Aristotelian modality, which integrates the "this-worldly capacities" of the Aristotelian view and Leibniz's account of

possible world A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their me ...

s as thoughts in the mind of God.Pruss, "The Actual and the Possible"

Bibliography

* ''The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment'' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

, 2006) * ''Actuality, Possibility and Worlds'' ( Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) * ''One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics'' (

University of Notre Dame Press The University of Notre Dame Press is a university press that is part of the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. The press was founded in 1949, and is the largest Catholic university Catholic higher education i ...

, 2012) * ''Necessary Existence'' with Joshua L. Rasmussen (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2018) * ''Infinity, Causation, and Paradox'' (

, 2018)

Notes

References

*Pruss, Alexander. ''Curriculum Vitae'' Accessed March 2013. *Pruss, Alexander. "Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments" in ''Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology'', Oxford: Blackwell, 2009 *Pruss, Alexander. "The Actual and the Possible" In Richard M. Gale (ed.), ''Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics'', Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

External links