Neil E. Williams - Associate Professor of Philosophy

Neil E. Williams

About Me

I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo, where I have been working since the fall of 2005. Prior to starting at Buffalo I was a philosophy PhD student at Columbia University (in the city of New York), graduating with distinction in 2005. Before that I received a Masters degree in philosophy from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) and an honours BA in philosophy from the University of Calgary (also in Canada).

My primary interests fall at the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, where I am concerned with issues of causation, powers, dispositions, natural kinds, and the laws of nature. My wider metaphysical interests extend to properties, possibility, persistence, and time, especially with regards to how these issues combine within a systematic metaphysic. Outside of metaphysics and science I have interests in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and language, as well as modern rationalism. Most recently I have been working on a book project concerning the nature of causal powers and the wider metaphysic within which they operate.

As you might haved guessed from the picture above, I'm a fan of the Sabres. (But not quite as pretentious a fan as the picture makes me look).