About

Edwin McCann is a Professor of Philosophy and English at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College. Born in Ventura, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley, he earned his B.A. in Philosophy from UC Santa Cruz in 1971 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. His academic career includes positions as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1975 to 1978, and at MIT from 1978 to 1983, before joining USC in 1983, where he has held roles as Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor. He has also held visiting professorial appointments at UCLA, UCI, Claremont Graduate University, Harvard, and UC Berkeley. McCann's research specializes in the history of early modern philosophy, focusing on figures such as Locke, Kant, Descartes, Hume, Leibniz, Newton, Boyle, and Galileo. He is also exploring Wittgenstein's philosophy and contemporary philosophy of mind and action. His scholarly interests include early modern philosophy, Wittgenstein, and philosophy of mind, and he has been recognized with awards such as the USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Senior Faculty Award in 2012-2013 and the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997. McCann has served as President of the USC Academic Senate and as Faculty Master of North Residential College, contributing significantly to university service.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Sociology
• Humanities
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• Lockean Mechanism

  2013-09-13 · 17 citations

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  In this chapter, the author argues that John Locke is in fact a consistent mechanist. Locke subscribed to the Mechanical Philosophy, in Pierre Gassendi's and Robert Boyle's version of it. On this view, all of the powers and qualities of bodies, and all the changes in these powers and qualities which result from the actions of these bodies one upon the other, issue entirely from the "two grand principles of bodies, matter and motion". The author identifies more precisely the obstacle to a straightforward reading of Locke as a mechanist. Locke is giving a reductio argument against the Scholastic doctrine of substantial forms, which he interprets as holding, in effect, that the real essence of a body is its nominal essence. Even given the high standards Locke set for explanation in natural philosophy, then, there is no inconsistency between his commitment to mechanism and his treatment of secondary qualities, or of superadded qualities in general.

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• Locke's Distinction between Primary Primary Qualities and Secondary Primary Qualities

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011-04-01 · 7 citations

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• John Locke

  Blackwell Publishing Ltd eBooks · 2008-01-14

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• Locke on Substance

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2007-03-05 · 36 citations

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  The category of substance is a venerable philosophical concept. It was the first and most fundamental of Aristotle's logical categories, and even though it underwent a bewildering set of changes as it came down through the later Scholastic tradition, and was often the subject of heated disputes between various metaphysical camps, it remained a concept of central importance even into the seventeenth century. Descartes, for example, needs the notion of substance (although he understood it quite differently from Aristotle and the tradition) to formulate his famous claim that the mind is a substance that is really distinct from the body, which is also a substance; and he makes central use of it as well in his cosmological argument for God's existence (where the dependence relations of modes on substances, and of finite substances on an infinite substance, are taken to correspond to "degrees of reality," so that the ideas we have of these entities exhibit similar degrees of reality).

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• Locke's Theory of Substance under Attack!

  Philosophical Studies · 2001-11-01 · 18 citations

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• The empiricists : critical essays on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume

  Medical Entomology and Zoology · 2000-01-01 · 34 citations

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  Part 1 Introduction Part 2 Acknowledgements Chapter 3 1 and Objects: Locke on Perceiving Things Chapter 4 2 The Foundations of Knowledge and the Logic of Substance: The Structure of Locke's General Philosophy Chapter 5 3 Locke, Law, and the Law of Nature Chapter 6 4 Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness Chapter 7 5 Berkeley's Ideas of Sense Chapter 8 6 Did Berkeley Completely Misunderstand the Basis of the Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction in Locke? Chapter 9 7 Berkeleian Idealism and Impossible Performances Chapter 10 8 Berkeley's Notion of Spirit Chapter 11 9 The Representation of Causation and Hume's Two Definitions of Cause Chapter 12 10 Hume's Inductive Scepticism Chapter 13 11 The Soul and the Self Chapter 14 12 Hume's Scepticism: Natural Instincts and Philosophical Reflection Part 15 Selected Bibliography Part 16 Authors

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• Locke's philosophy of body

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 1994-06-24 · 89 citations

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  Locke's treatment of such central philosophical issues as substance, qualities, identity, natural kinds, and the structure and limits of scientific explanation was fundamentally shaped by the conception of body (or as we would say it nowadays, the basic nature of material things) that he inherited from Gassendi and Boyle. This conception of body was part of what Boyle called the corpuscularian hypothesis, or corpuscularianism. This doctrine, a form of mechanistic atomism, had the following core tenets:

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• Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness

  Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie · 1987-01-01 · 65 citations

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  L'A. montre la coherence de la theorie de l'identite de Locke (et en particulier ses racines dans les discussions medievales du principe d'individuation), et soutient qu'elle est le fondement d'une theorie mecaniste de la matiere, des organismes vivants, et des personnes conscientes

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• Cartesian Selves and Lockean Substances

  The Monist · 1986-01-01 · 8 citations

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  Journal Article Cartesian Selves and Lockean Substances Get access Edwin McCann Edwin McCann University of Southern California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar The Monist, Volume 69, Issue 3, 1 July 1986, Pages 458–482, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist198669335 Published: 17 December 2014

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• Lockean Mechanism

  1985-01-01 · 13 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Ian Tipton

  1 shared

• George S. Pappas

  Johannes Kepler University of Linz

  1 shared

• Barry Stroud

  1 shared

• Margaret D. Wilson

  1 shared

• Georg Henrik von Wright

  1 shared

• G. A. J. Rogers

  1 shared

• Charles J. McCracken

  1 shared

• Phillip D. Cummins

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Senior Faculty Award (2012-2013…
• USC Associates Award For Excellence In Teaching (1997)
• Mortar Board Faculty of the Month (01/1993)