C. P. "Scott" Ragland (Ph.D. Yale, 2001) serves on the graduate admissions committee. His main philosophical interests are in the history of modern philosophy (especially Descartes), philosophy of religion (especially the problem of evil), and issues surrounding free will.

His historical research in recent years deals with the nature of Descartes' theodicy in the Fourth Meditation, as well as Descartes understanding of human freedom and its relation to divine providence. He argues that (as Leibniz and Spinoza thought) Descartes was an incompatibilist: he thought that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and that the ability to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. On the non-historical side, Ragland has begun exploring a conception of freedom according to which we could be free in a world fully determined by mindless forces like natural laws or fate, but not in a world fully determined by intentional agents like God or super-powerful social controllers. He is also writing on the relation between grace and freedom in Christian theology.

With Sarah Heidt, Ragland is co-editor of What is Philosophy? (Yale Press, 2001), a collection of papers on the nature of philosophy by Barry Stroud, Karsten Harries, Robert Brandom, Allen Wood, Martha Nussbaum, and Karl-Otto Apel.

Published articles:

• "Scotus on the Decalogue: What Sort of Voluntarism?" (Vivarium 36:1 (1998))
• "Critical Study: William Alston's A Realist Conception of Truth" (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73:2 (1999))
• "Descartes on Divine Providence and Human Freedom" (Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 87:2 (2005))
• "Descartes on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities" forthcoming from Journal of the History of Philosophy
• "Alternative Possibilities in Descartes' Fourth Meditation" forthcoming from British Journal for the History of Philosophy
• "Was Descartes a Libertarian?" forthcoming in vol. 3 of Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Dan Garber and Steve Nadler
• "The Trouble with Quiescence: Stump on Grace and Freedom" (Philosophia Christi 8:2 (2006))
• "Descartes' Theodicy" (Religious Studies 43:2 (2007))

Articles in Progress:

• "Soft Compatibilism and Ultimate Control" (under review)
• "Hell" entry for Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Seventeeth-Century view of Free Will" article for the forthcoming volume, Routledge Companion to Seventeeth-Century Philosophy, ed. Dan Kaufman