Arnold vander Nat, PhD - on leave Fall 2024

Associate Professor

Bio

Arnold vander Nat received his college education at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he earned a BS in Mathematics. As a Woodrow Wilson Fellow he continued his studies at the University of Pittsburgh, working especially in modal and many-valued logics, with Nuel Belnap, Nicholas Rescher, Storrs McCall, and Alan Ross Anderson. His doctoral dissertation was on possible world semantics for weak systems of strict implication.

After finishing his studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. vander Nat joined Loyola's Philosophy Department. He has taught courses at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels in logic, epistemology, and early modern philosophy. During 1991–97 Dr. vander Nat was chairperson of the department (and was assistant chairperson of the department for the six years before that).

Dr. vander Nat's areas of research and expertise include British Empiricism, especially the epistemology (and metaphysics) of John Locke, formal and applied logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

Dr. vander Nat has been engaged in a large research project: a theoretical analysis of the neurological basis of conceptual representations. This project, titled, "Neurons, Concepts, and Connections in Thinking," is available online.

Education

PhD, University of Pittsburgh

Research Interests

British empiricism, especially John Locke, formal logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology