Contact
David Godden
Department of Philosophy
Old Dominion University
9019 Batten Arts and Letters
Norfolk, Virginia
U.S.A. 23529
dgoddenatodudotedu
http://www.davidgodden.ca
About Me
Academic Bio
David Godden is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he teaches Introductory Philosophy and Epistemology. His areas of research interest include epistemology, theories of rationality, reasoning and argument, the theory of evidence, the history and philosophy of logic, and 20th century analytic philosophy. Dr. Godden has published on a wide variety of topics including psychologism, Quine's holism, common knowledge, presumption and argumentation schemes. His articles have appeared in journals such as Synthese, History and Philosophy of Logic, Argumentation, Ratio Juris, Philosophy & Rhetoric and Informal Logic.
Dr. Godden graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in 2004. His dissertation, supervised by Nicholas Griffin, was a historical and conceptual study of psychologism which addressed the theoretical question of the foundation of logical principles by considering their subject matter and semantics. Subsequently Godden and Griffin coauthored a paper on psychologism in Russell's account of propositions.
In 2005 and 2006, Dr. Godden held a post-doctoral research fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada at the University of Windsor Philosophy Department. His post-doctoral research focussed on the intersection of theories of justification and accounts of rationality and doxastic change. This work examined how our theories of rational argument connect with human reasoning and the actual factors which influence individuals to adopt, hold or change a view, especially in cases where there is an apparent break-down in the rational structure of those beliefs.
In 2004, upon completing his Ph.D., Dr. Godden was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Winnipeg, where he worked with Douglas Walton on projects concerning dialectical approaches to argumentation, especially as they apply to theoretical issues in defeasible inference, argumentation schemes and fallacies, evidence law and computing. Walton and Godden have published several papers together and continue to collaborate on a variety of projects. In 2007, Dr. Godden guest edited a volume of Informal Logic on the work of Douglas Walton.
Prior to his appointment at Old Dominion University, in the academic year 2007-08 Dr. Godden returned to the University of Winnipeg Philosophy Department as a visiting assistant professor where he taught courses in Philosophy of Mind, and Abduction and Inference to the Best Explanation, as well as Introductory Philosophy and Introductory Reasoning.
In addition to the courses already mentioned Dr. Godden has taught undergraduate level courses in Modern Philosophy (Descartes to Hume), Formal Logic, and Reasoning and Argument.
August 2009