Alexander Pruss
| Alexander Pruss | |
|---|---|
| File:Alexander Pruss.png | |
| Born | Alexander Robert Pruss January 5, 1973 |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Western Ontario (BSc, 1991) University of British Columbia (PhD, 1996) University of Pittsburgh (PhD, 2001) |
| Theses | Possible Worlds: What They Are Good For and What They Are (2001) Symmetrization, Green’s Functions, Harmonic Measures and Difference Equations (1996) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
| Institutions | Baylor University |
| Main interests | Metaphysics, philosophy of religion, applied ethics |
| Notable ideas | Gale–Pruss cosmological argument |
Alexander Robert Pruss (/prʌs/; 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 in Waco, Texas.
His best known book is The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (2006).[1] 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.[2] He maintains his own philosophy blog and contributed to the Prosblogion philosophy of religion blog.
He is currently the Guinness World Record holder for the "greatest vertical distance climbed on a climbing wall in one hour (individual)"[3] and the "fastest mile on climbing wall (male)."[4]
Biography
Alexander Pruss first lived in Poland, but emigrated to Canada.[5] He went to the University of Western Ontario, studying physics and mathematics and graduating with a B.Sc. in these fields in 1991.[5][6]
He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of British Columbia with a dissertation on Symmetrization, Green’s Functions, Harmonic Measures and Difference Equations, under John J. F. Fournier in 1996, and published several papers in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society and other mathematical journals.[2][6] Afterwards, he began graduate work in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his dissertation, Possible Worlds: What They Are and What They Are Good For, under Nicholas Rescher in 2001.[6]
Pruss began teaching philosophy at Georgetown University in 2001, earning tenure in 2006.[6] In 2007, he began to teach philosophy at Baylor University. 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, the cosmological and ontological arguments for the existence of God, modality, free will, and history of philosophy.[6]
Work
Pruss's philosophical thought reflects Christian orthodoxy. He is a Roman Catholic and a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers.
Pruss defends the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), claiming that it is self-evident, and arguing that the rejection of PSR creates problems in epistemology, modality, ethics, and evolutionary theory.[7]
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 worlds as thoughts in the mind of God.[8]
See also
References
- Back to citation Review by Joshua C Thurow, Religious Studies Review, 33, no. 3 (2007): 222-223; Review, by D Rickles Philosophy In Review, 27, no. 5, (2007): 370-372; Review by D Werther, Faith and philosophy: journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers. 27, no. 1, (2010): 94-97
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 WorldCat author listing
- Back to citation "Greatest vertical distance climbed on a climbing wall in one hour (individual)". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2023-04-17.
- Back to citation "Fastest mile on a climbing wall (male)". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2024-06-30.
- Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 Pruss, Alexander. "Bio". Right Reason. Archived from the original on 13 January 2008. Retrieved 19 Jun 2025.
- Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 Back to citation occurrence 6.2 Back to citation occurrence 6.3 Back to citation occurrence 6.4 Pruss, Alexander R. (2025). "CV". Alexander R. Pruss Home Page. Archived from the original on November 26, 2025.
- Back to citation Pruss, Alexander R. (2012). "The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument". The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 24–100. doi:10.1002/9781444308334.ch2.
- Back to citation Pruss, Alexander R. (2002). "The Actual and the Possible". The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 317–333. doi:10.1002/9780470998984.ch16. ISBN 9780631221210.
Bibliography
- The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- Actuality, Possibility and Worlds. Continuum Studies in Philosophy of Religion (Continuum, 2011)
- One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics. Notre Dame Studies in Ethics and Culture (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)
- Necessary Existence (with Joshua L. Rasmussen) (Oxford University Press, 2018)
- Infinity, Causation, and Paradox (Oxford University Press, 2018)
External links
- Pruss's Homepage, including CV, Selected Articles and Course Syllabi.
- Personal Philosophy Blog.
- The Website for the Baylor Department of Philosophy.
- Alexander R. Pruss at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- Alexander Robert Pruss at the Mathematics Genealogy Project