Underwood International College

Professor of Philosophy

• TWCF Research Associate, University of Cambridge, 2014-2016
• Research Fellow, University of Notre Dame, 2013-2014
• Collaboratrice Scientifique, Université de Genève, 2010-2013

Profile

I’m a Professor of Philosophy at Underwood International College. I have a B.A. and a M.Sci. in Natural Sciences (Theoretical Physics) from the University of Cambridge, and a B.Phil. and D.Phil. in Philosophy from the University Oxford. Before coming to UIC in 2017, I worked as a postdoc at the University of Cambridge (UK), the University of Notre Dame (USA) and the University of Geneva (CH). From 2020 to 2023, I served as President of the Philosophy of Time Society (PTS), one of the member societies of the International Association for Philosophy of Time (IAPT). In June 2018, I organized their first Asia-based annual conference. In 2019, I was the recipient of a Yonsei Outstanding Research Award. During my 2023/2024 sabbatical, I was able to visit the Freie University in Berlin on a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, and the University of Sydney on an Anderson Visiting Fellowship.

Originally, I’m from Dorsten, which is in the northwest of Germany. I enjoy a variety of dance styles and play the piano or the guitar when I get a chance. I rarely refuse chocolate or conversations about Harry Potter.

Education

D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in Philosophy, St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, supervised by Dr. Oliver Pooley: ‘Time, experience, and the A versus B debate’, 2010.
B.Phil. in Philosophy, St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, 2006.
B.A. and M.Sci. in Physics (Class I), Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, 2004.

Courses and Current Research Areas

I’m puzzled about many things. For instance, how do beings like us fit into the natural world described by physics (particularly when it comes to time and temporal experience)? Is the present special somehow? Is death nothing to us? Why do we sometimes enjoy portrayals of tragedy? Can an atheist believe in God? My work has appeared in a variety of venues, including Philosophical Studies, Australasian Philosophical Review, The Monist, Inquiry, Ratio, Erkenntnis, Journal of the APA, Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophia, and Religious Studies. My Cambridge Element God and Time came out in 2019, and I’m maintaining the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Eternity in Christian Thought.

I’ve taught Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Physics, Asian Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology, General Philosophy, Logic, Critical Reasoning, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Time, Ethics, Meta-ethics, and Philosophy of Death.

Selected Publications

Selected Peer-reviewed Journal Articles:

• ‘Is present-bias a distinctive psychological kind?’, with Kristie Miller, Andrew Latham and Jordan Lee-tory, forthcoming in Inquiry
  
  
•  ‘Self-reference, tenseless passage, and squaring the (philosophy of) time circle’ forthcoming in the Australasian Philosophical Review
  
  
•  ‘Do religious fictionalists face a problem of evil?’ Religious Studies 60 (2), 258-268
  
  
•  ‘What is temporal ontology?’ Philosophical Studies 175/3: 793-807
  
  
•  ‘Making sense of the growing block view’ Philosophia 45/3: 1113-1127
  
  
•  Religion for Naturalists International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78/2: 195-214
  
  
•  On Explaining Why Time Seems to Pass Southern Journal of Philosophy 51/3: 367-382
  
  
•  Our Experience of Passage on the B-theory Erkenntnis 78/4: 713-726
  
  
•  Acknowledgement and the Paradox of Tragedy, with Daan Evers Philosophical Studies 173/2: 337-350
  
  
•  On whether B-theoretic Atheists should Fear Death Philosophia 43/4: 1011-1021
  
  
•  How A-theoretic Deprivationists should respond to Lucretius Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1/3: 417-432
  
  
•  Questions about ‘Internal and External Questions about God’ Religious Studies 48/2: 257-268

 
Selected Replies and Invited Contributions:

• ‘One thing after another: why the passage of time is not an illusion’
  In The Illusions of Time: Philosophical and Psychological Essays on Timing and Time-Perception, Palgrave, ed. by A. Bardon, A. Vatakis, S. Power, and V. Arstila
  
  
•  ‘Commentary: “Physical Time within Human Time” and “Bridging the Neuroscience and Physics of Time”’
  Frontiers in Psychology 14-2023
  
  
•  Does Physics make us Free? Review of J. T. Ismael ‘How physics makes us free’ (OUP), with Klaas Landsman
  Metascience 26/1: 127-130
  
  
• ‘Philosophical questions about the arrow of time’ 
  Journal of Physics: Conference Series, HAPP Centre 10th Anniversary Commemorative Volume (2877)
  
  
•  ‘On metaphysical explanations of psychological asymmetries’
  In Temporal Asymmetries in Philosophy and Psychology, OUP, ed. by C. Hoerl, T. McCormack and A. Fernandes
  
  
•  ‘What Quine (and Carnap) might say about contemporary metaphysics of time’
  In Quine, Structure, and Ontology, OUP, ed. by Frederique Janssen-Lauret
  
  
•  ‘Religion for Naturalists and the Meaning of Belief’
  European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 11/3: 157-174
  
  
•  ‘God and Time’
  Philosophy Compass 19 (9/10)
  
  
•  ‘God, time and freedom’
  forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time (Routledge), ed. by N. Emery
  
  
•  Metaphysics, Science, and Religion: a Response to Hud Hudson
  Journal of Analytic Theology 5/1: 613-620

More Information

For more information, please visit my website: nataljadeng.weebly.com