Keith DeRose – Allison Foundation Professor of Philosophy, Yale University

Allison Foundation Professor of Philosophy, Yale University

office: 451 College St. (the “Yale Philosophy Building”), room 302
(203) 432-1674
keith.derose@yale.edu

I’ve been a member of the Yale Philosophy department since the fall of 1998. I did my undergraduate work at Calvin College (1980-84), graduating with a major in philosophy, and did my graduate studies at UCLA, receiving my Ph.D. in philosophy in 1990. I then taught in the philosophy departments at New York University (1990-1993) and at Rice University (1993-1998) before coming to Yale. My primary areas of research and interest are epistemology (especially skepticism), philosophy of language (especially epistemological language and also conditionals), history of modern philosophy (especially Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid) and philosophy of religion (especially the problem of evil and religious epistemology).

For a list of my philosophical publications, and other info, see my CV.
For a list of my philosophy papers that are available on-line, click here.
Pages for classes I am teaching or have taught are here.
See the sidebar to the left for other material available on this site.

What I’m working on

a book whose title gives you a good idea of its topic (though of the 3 Hs before the colon, the emphasis is very much on the first one in a way the title doesn’t indicate): Horrific Suffering, Divine Hiddenness, and Hell: The Place of Freedom in a World Governed by God. A very partial and drafty partial draft (of Sept. 16) is up on my list of works available on-line (top item) here. But I am hoping to have a draft that’s complete through the end of Part Five (actually, through the first section of Part Six) up some time in January (2021).
I’m also working on a paper that draws together some material I’ve been teaching for years (some of which has seeped into my last book and the book (immediately above) that I’m currently working on): “Phenomenal Conservatism in Epistemology and in Philosophical Methodology”
3/24/24: Working on writing up a quick personal piece, “Why God Allows Three-Year-Olds to Be Burned to Death in House Fires.” Got much of it written; a bit to go (but the most important part): pdf .

thinking-HF — I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” -Huckleberry Finn

I scanned this drawing, by E.W. Kemble, from the 1885 edition (New York: Charles L. Webster and Company) of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, p. 271. To see the other drawings by Kemble from the first edition (and another scanning of “Thinking”), see Virginia H. Cope’s Huckleberry Finn site at the University of Virginia.