Professor, Philosophy
B.A. Toronto
Dr. Phil. Freiburg
Office: MC D350C
905-688-5550 x6080
mmiles@brocku.ca
Area of specialization:
History of philosophy, in particular the early modern period (Descartes to Kant), and twentieth-century Continental philosophy (Husserl and Heidegger)
Teaching:
Introductory philosophy (using Inroads), the rationalists, Kant, and various offerings in epistemology, metaphysics, and phenomenology on themes related to the research programme described above.
A book on the second great turning point in modern philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Book publications:
Inroads. Paths in Ancient and Modern Western Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2003, xxiv + 666pp.), Insight and Inference. Descartes’s Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 1999, xx + 564pp.), Leibniz Lexicon (co-editor, Georg Olms Verlag, 1988, vii + 419), Logik und Metaphysik bei Kant (Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 1978,307pp.) Click here for images.
Some More Recent Papers:
“Plato on Suicide (Phaedo 60c-63c).” Phoenix. Vol. 55 (2001) 3-4, pp. 244-258. “Ueberlegungen zum Metaphysik-Begriff Kants.” Perspektiven der Philosophie. Neues Jahrbuch. Band 30, (2004), pp. 37-62. “Kant’s Copernican Revolution: Toward Rehabilitation of a Concept and Provision of a Framework for the Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason.” Kant-Studien. Vol. 97, Issue 1 (2006), pp. 1-32. “Descartes’s Method.” In: Janet Broughton and John Carriero, eds. Companion to Descartes. Blackwell Publishing (2007). “Analytic Method, the Cogito, and Descartes’s Argument for the Innateness of the Idea of God.” Epoché. Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 289-320. « Connaissance de Dieu et conscience de soi chez Descartes ». Dialogue: Revue canadienne de philosophie, 49 (2010), pp. 1-24. Entries “Existence,” “Essence,” “Deduction,” and “Common Notions” in The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2015). “Kant’s ‘Five Ways’: Transcendental Idealism in Context.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2018), pp. 137–161. “The Three Faces of the Cogito: Descartes (and Aristotle) on Knowledge of First Principles.” Roczniki Filozoficzne (Philosophical Annals), Vol. 68, Issue 2 (2020), pp. 63-86. “Kant’s Radicalization of Cartesian Foundationalism: Thought Experiments, Transcendental Arguments, and Level Circularity in the Paralogisms.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, Volume 61, Issue 3, December 2022, pp. 493 – 518.