Member Profiles
Travis Dumsday
Associate Professor, Concordia University of Edmonton
Education
Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Calgary (2010)
M.A. Philosophy, University of Waterloo (2006)
B.A. Philosophy and Political Science, Carleton University (2005)
Diploma, Liberal Arts, Augustine College (2001)
AMA Presentations
(2025) “Jacques Maritain and H. D. Lewis on the Problem of Conflicting Mystical Experience.”
(2024) “God as a Bird? A Scholastic Engagement with Wallace’s Christian Animism.”
(2023) “Ecumenical Neo-Scholasticism: An Anglican Thomist’s Take on Palamism and the Essence/Existence Distinction.”
(2020) “Alexander of Hales on the Irremediable Demons.”
(2019) “Transubstantiation Through the Lens of Spacetime Substantivalism.”
(2018) “Alexander of Hales on Panentheism.”
Publications
Books
(2024) Alternative Conceptions of the Spiritual: Polytheism, Animism, and More in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion. Bloomsbury Academic.
(2022) Assisted Suicide in Canada: Moral, Legal, and Policy Issues. University of British Columbia Press.
(2018) Dispositionalism and the Metaphysics of Science. Cambridge University Press.
Edited Books
(2022) The Wisdom of Youth: Essays Inspired by the Early Work of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. Catholic University of America Press.
Select Academic Articles
(2024) “Is the abstract vs concrete distinction exhaustive & exclusive? Four reasons to be suspicious,” Analytic Philosophy 65 (3): 393-405.
(2023) “Platonism as a Path to Palamism: Arguing from Abstracta to Uncreated Divine Energies,” Journal of Analytic Theology 11: 41-66.
(2021) “A Bonaventurean Approach to the Problem of Divine Hiddenness,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 95: 39-52.
(2021) “Platonism about Abstracta,” Philosophia Christi 23 (1): 141-58.
(2021) “A Cosmological Argument from Moderate Realism,” Heythrop Journal 61 (5): 732-6.
(2020) “Thomist vs Scottish Perspectives on Ontic Structural Realism,” International Philosophical Quarterly 60 (3): 323-37.
(2020) “How to Be a Pluralist in Substance Ontology,” Erkenntnis 85 (4): 995-1022.
(2019) “The Internal Unity of Natural Kinds,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4): 587-610.
(2019) “Can a relational substance ontology be hylomorphic?” Synthese 198 (Suppl. 11): 2717-34.
(2017) “How Modern Biological Taxonomy Sheds Light on the Incarnation,” Journal of Analytic Theology 5: 163-74.
(2017) “‘It is Right and Just’: Ontological Poverty and the Duty of Religion,” in Engaging the Times: TheWitness of Thomism, ed. Joshua Schulz. Catholic University of America Press.
(2016) “Atoms, Gunk, and God: Natural Theology and the Debate over the Fundamental Composition of Matter,” The Thomist 80 (2): 227-71.
(2016) “Spatial Extension as a Necessary Condition for Being a Physical Object and Why It Matters for Philosophy of Religion,” Philosophia Christi 18 (1): 29-46.
(2016) “Evidentially Compelling Religious Experiences and the Moral Status of Naturalism,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (3): 123-44.
(2016) “Natural-Kind Essentialism, Substance Ontology, and the Unity Problem: Two Dispositionalist Solutions,” Dialectica 70 (4): 609-26.
(2016) “Non-Mereological Pluralistic Supersubstantivalism: An Alternative Perspective on the Matter-Spacetime Relationship,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2): 183-203.
(2016) “Lowe’s Unorthodox Dispositionalism” Res Philosophica 93 (1): 79-101.
(2015) “How Divine Hiddenness Sheds Light on the Problem of Evil,” International Philosophical Quarterly 55 (3): 315-23.
(2015) “Atoms vs Extended Simples: Towards a Dispositionalist Reconciliation,” Philosophia 43 (3): 1023-33.
(2014) “Dispositionalism, Categoricalism, and Metaphysical Naturalism,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 88: 101-12.
(2014) “E. J. Lowe on the Unity Problem,” Studia Philosophica Estonica 7 (2): 195-218.
(2014) “Maritain on Art and Faith Conspiring Towards Heaven,” in A Piercing Light: Beauty, Faith, and Human Transcendence, ed. James M. Jacobs. Catholic University of America Press.
(2013) “A Thomistic Response to the Problem of Divine Hiddenness,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3): 265-77.
(2013) “Using Natural-Kind Essentialism to Defend Dispositionalism,” Erkenntnis 78 (4): 869-80.
(2013) “Contemplata aliis tradere: The Universal Call to Contemplation and Its Implications,” in Human Nature, Contemplation, and the Political Order: Essays Inspired by Jacques Maritain’s Scholasticism and Politics, ed. Peter Koritansky. Catholic University of America Press.
(2012) “Laws of Nature Don’t Have Ceteris Paribus Clauses, They Are Ceteris Paribus Clauses,” Ratio 26 (2): 134-47.
(2012) “Dispositions, Primitive Activities, and Essentially Active Objects,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (1): 43-64.
(2012) “A New Argument for Intrinsic Biological Essentialism,” Philosophical Quarterly 62 (248): 486-504.
(2010) “Divine Hiddenness and the Responsibility Argument,” Philosophia Christi 12 (2): 357-71.
(2010) “Divine Hiddenness, Free-Will, and the Victims of Wrongdoing,” Faith and Philosophy 27 (4): 423-38.
(2008) “Religious Experience,” International Philosophical Quarterly 48 (3): 371-9.
(2008) “Locke on Competing Miracles,” Faith and Philosophy 25 (4): 416-24.