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I'm a Professor of Philosophy at Underwood International College, Yonsei University, Seoul/Incheon*, South Korea.
I've been a postdoc in Cambridge (as part of Sarah Coakley's TWCF project ‘Theology, philosophy of religion, and the sciences’), at the Center for Philosophy of Religion, Notre Dame, and at eidos, the Centre for Metaphysics in Geneva. My PhD thesis, directed by Oliver Pooley in Oxford, was entitled 'Time, experience, and the A versus B debate'. I studied physics at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, where I’ve also been a postdoctoral Bye-Fellow. Originally, I'm from Dorsten, in North Rhine-Westphalia. 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). Here's my CV. Email me: nmdeng[at]gmail[dot]com. |
Research
I work (mostly) in metaphysics and philosophy of religion. In metaphysics, I'm interested in how best to think about time’s passing and about philosophical questions about it, whether we experience time as passing in some sense, and whether if we do, this means that our experience of time has illusory aspects. In philosophy of religion, one thing I'm curious about is the relation between ontology, (dis)belief and religion. It seems to me that there is an experiential remainder to religious practice that is open to naturalists who feel inclined to participate in religious activities.
I also have interests in philosophy of physics, philosophy of death, and aesthetics.
I'll be on sabbatical from July 2023 for a year. July - Sep 2023 and Dec 2023 - Feb 2024, I will visit the Freie University in Berlin on a Humboldt Research Fellowship. In Oct and Nov 2023, I will visit the University of Sydney on an Anderson Visiting Fellowship.
I work (mostly) in metaphysics and philosophy of religion. In metaphysics, I'm interested in how best to think about time’s passing and about philosophical questions about it, whether we experience time as passing in some sense, and whether if we do, this means that our experience of time has illusory aspects. In philosophy of religion, one thing I'm curious about is the relation between ontology, (dis)belief and religion. It seems to me that there is an experiential remainder to religious practice that is open to naturalists who feel inclined to participate in religious activities.
I also have interests in philosophy of physics, philosophy of death, and aesthetics.
I'll be on sabbatical from July 2023 for a year. July - Sep 2023 and Dec 2023 - Feb 2024, I will visit the Freie University in Berlin on a Humboldt Research Fellowship. In Oct and Nov 2023, I will visit the University of Sydney on an Anderson Visiting Fellowship.
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Book God and Time Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Religion Papers, commentaries and book chapters Self-reference, tenseless passage, and squaring the (philosophy of) time circle forthcoming in the Australasian Philosophical Review , comment on J. Ismael's 'The open universe: totality , self-reference and time' Is present-bias a distinctive psychological kind? with Kristie Miller, Andrew Latham and Jordan Lee-tory forthcoming in Inquiry God, time and freedom forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Time, ed. by N. Emery On moving past the ABCs Metaphysica There's no time like the present: present-bias, temporal attitudes and temporal ontology (with Kristie Miller, Andrew Latham and James Norton) forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, ed. by J. Knobe and S. Nichols Commentary: 'Physical Time within Human Time' and 'Bridging the Neuroscience and Physics of Time' Frontiers in Psychology 14-2023 (published version here) Do religious fictionalists face a problem of evil? forthcoming in Religious Studies Time, grounding, and esoteric metaphysics The Monist, 106/3: 287-300, (published version here) The contours of religious fictionalism in Moral and Religious Fictionalism (OUP), ed. by R. Joyce and S. Brock Plenty to come: making sense of Correia's and Rosenkranz's growing block Disputatio, 13/63: 363-372 Making sense of the growing block view Philosophia (published version here) On metaphysical explanations of psychological asymmetries in Temporal Asymmetries in Philosophy and Psychology (2022), ed. by C. Hoerl, T. McCormack & A. Fernandes, OUP What is temporal ontology? Philosophical Studies (published version here) What Quine (and Carnap) might say about contemporary metaphysics of time Quine, Structure, and Ontology (2021) ed. by Frederique Janssen-Lauret, OUP 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 (2019), ed. by Adrian Bardon, Valtteri Arstila, Sean Power & Argiro Vatakis, Palgrave Macmillan Agnosticism and fictionalism: reply to Le Poidevin European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 12/3: 183 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 (published version here) How A-theoretic Deprivationists should respond to Lucretius Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1/3: 417-432 (published version here) On Explaining Why Time Seems to Pass Southern Journal of Philosophy 51/3: 367-382 (published version here) Our Experience of Passage on the B-theory Erkenntnis 78/4: 713-726 (published version here) Fine’s McTaggart, Temporal Passage, and the A versus B debate Ratio 26/1: 19-34 (published version here) 'Beyond A- and B-time’ Reconsidered Philosophia 38/4: 741-753 (published version here) Religion for Naturalists International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78/2: 195-214 (published version here) Questions about ‘Internal and External Questions about God’ Religious Studies 48/2: 257-268 (published version here) Response to 'Fear of Death and the Symmetry Argument' Manuscrito 39/4: 297-304 Response to Jeffrey Bishop Studies in Christian Ethics 29/3 (published version here) On 'Experiencing time': a response to Simon Prosser Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61(3): 281-301 (published version here) Religion for Naturalists and the Meaning of Belief European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 11/3: 157-174 Metaphysics, Science, and Religion: a Response to Hud Hudson Journal of Analytic Theology Vol.5 (published version here) On timelessness and mystery in The Divine Nature: Personal and A-personal Perspectives (2021), ed. by Simon Kittle & Georg Gasser, Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion Temporal Experience and the A versus B debate in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience (2017), ed. by Ian Phillips Religion für Naturalisten in the Handbuch Analytische Religionsphilosophie (2019), ed. by K. Viertbauer and G. Gasser, Metzler Encyclopedia Entries Time, Metaphysics of Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published version here) Eternity in Christian Thought Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |
Some past and future talks Workshop on 'Death and Self', Goethe University Frankfurt, July 2025, TBA University of East Piedmont, Italy, March 2025, TBA Workshop on 'Naturalizing Philosophy of Time', Wake Forest University (NC), 4/5 June 2024: Moving through the ABCs, to the other side Workshop on 'Divine Attributes', University of Pamplona (Spain), 27-8 June 2024: God and time - methodological musings Humboldt University (Feb 13 2024), Human Abilities Centre (Berlin, Jan 30 2024), University of Cologne (Jan 30 2024), University of Sydney (Nov 17 2023): The ineffability of time University of Manchester (Feb 6 2024): Ineffability and the flowing block Zoom workshop (University of Cologne), 'The direction of time in a physical world' 30/31 Aug 2023: The psychological arrow, tenseless passage, and self-reference Yonsei Veritas Center hybrid workshop on 'Philosophy of Religion in Asia' (co-organized with Helen De Cruz), March 31/April 1 2023: Do religious fictionalists face a problem of evil? SOPhiA-workshop, University of Salzburg/online on 'Metaphysics of Space-Time: The End of Time?’ Sept 8 2022: Tenseless passage and the limits of theorizing about time Keynote speech IAPT 7, Barcelona July 5-7, 2022; 3rd Online Meeting of the Eastern Hemisphere Language and Metaphysics Network (EHLM) Sept 7 2022: What if time were ineffable? Workshop on Physics, Time and Agency, TC Dublin June 28-29, 2022: 'Are Heracliteans and Parmenideans both right?' Workshop on Time and Experience, Geneva June 8-11, 2022: An experience-based interpretation of the A versus B distinction Weekend seminar Philosophie der Physik (Schwerpunkt Zeitphilosophie), Köln/online 11 Dec 2021: Die Probleme der Zeitphilosophie Workshop on Fictionalism, Victoria University of Wellington/online Sept/Oct 2021: The contours of religious fictionalism MindGrad Warwick 2021, Warwick/online 26 June 2021; Departmental Colloquium, University of Macau/online March 2022: Temporal experience, metaphysics, and metametaphysics, or: on philosophising about temporal experience Joint Session 2021, Hertfordshire/online 16-18 July 2021: Plenty to come - making sense of Correia's and Rosenkranz's growing block International Association for Philosophy of Time (IAPT) 6th Annual Meeting, University of Colorado, Boulder June 23-26 2019; Joint Session, University of Durham July 19-21 2019: On moving past the ABCs Zoom workshop 'Analytic Philosophy of Religion in Asia', National Taiwan University Nov 16-18 2020: Religion for naturalists Workshop on 'The nature of God: personal and a-personal concepts of the divine', University of Innsbruck Aug 5-8 2018; God and Time III, University of Lugano Aug 23-24 2019: On mystery, timelessness, and being apersonal Joint Session, University of Oxford July 6-8 2018: A normative approach to temporal ontology First International Workshop on Time, Osaka City University Nov 3-5 2018; 19th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics, Utrecht University July 10-13 2018; University of Innsbruck June 27 2018; Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London Jan 30 2018; Eidos 10th year anniversary celebration, University of Geneva Nov 23-24 2017: What is temporal ontology? Fine-tuning workshop, University of Oxford Oct 6 2017: What kind of a fine-tuner? Workshop on God and Time, University of Bonn Aug 12 2017: Eternity 13th Syracuse Philosophy Annual Workshop and Network (SPAWN): Metaphysics, Syracuse University June 26-28 2017: Making sense of the growing block view General audience talks and public outreach Anderson Public Lecture, with Sam Shpall and Luke Russell, Sydney, 17 Oct 2023: Love, death, and the meaning of life (Video) Bridging the divide: philosophy meets science A video on the TWCF project How is the experience of time related to death? Video interview, The Nature of God: Personal and a-personal concepts of the divine, Innsbruck Aug 6-8 2018 Eternity (podcast) God and Time, Bonn 2017 Can cosmological fine-tuning constitute an argument for God's existence? (video ad; slides) TWCF Big questions about science and religion, Ely, Oct 15 2016 Philosophical questions about the arrow of time (video) St. Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Oxford, Nature of Time Conference, June 11 2016 What happened to the logical argument from evil? Hills Road Sixth Form College Philosophy Society, Cambridge, Nov 13 2015 Book Reviews Review of D. Ingram's 'Thisness Presentism: An Essay on Time, Truth, and Ontology' Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Does Physics make us Free? Review of J. T. Ismael ‘How physics makes us free’ (OUP), with Klaas Landsman Metascience 26(1): 127-130 (published version here) Review of 'Debates in the Metaphysics of Time', ed. by N. Oaklander International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 29/3 (published version here) |
Teaching
My courses at Yonsei include Topics in the Philosophy of Science (UIC seminar); Metaphysics; Self, Identity, and Free Will (UIC seminar); The good life: the time(s) of our lives (UIC seminar on time biases and death); Critical Reasoning; World Philosophy: Philosophy in the East and West, World Philosophy: Science, Religion and Metaphysics; World Philosophy: what's right and wrong (Intro course on ethics and meta-ethics)
I’ve supervised General Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology (1st to 4th yr undergrads in Oxford and Cambridge) and given classes in Logic (1st yr undergrads in Oxford).
I’ve lectured on Philosophy of Religion (1st yr undergrads in Cambridge), Philosophy of Physics (2nd and 3rd yr undergrads in Cambridge), and Philosophy of Time (3rd yr undergrads in Geneva).
In Geneva I also co-convened MA Seminars on Metaphysics and Ontology.
My courses at Yonsei include Topics in the Philosophy of Science (UIC seminar); Metaphysics; Self, Identity, and Free Will (UIC seminar); The good life: the time(s) of our lives (UIC seminar on time biases and death); Critical Reasoning; World Philosophy: Philosophy in the East and West, World Philosophy: Science, Religion and Metaphysics; World Philosophy: what's right and wrong (Intro course on ethics and meta-ethics)
I’ve supervised General Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology (1st to 4th yr undergrads in Oxford and Cambridge) and given classes in Logic (1st yr undergrads in Oxford).
I’ve lectured on Philosophy of Religion (1st yr undergrads in Cambridge), Philosophy of Physics (2nd and 3rd yr undergrads in Cambridge), and Philosophy of Time (3rd yr undergrads in Geneva).
In Geneva I also co-convened MA Seminars on Metaphysics and Ontology.
Other stuff...
Yonsei Veritas Center hybrid workshop on 'Philosophy of Religion in Asia' (co-organized with Helen De Cruz), Yonsei University (Sinchon campus), March 31/April 1 2023, including a publication seminar by Helen De Cruz aimed at early career philosophers of religion. Here is the schedule.
What is it like to work as a philosopher in South Korea? (Philosophers' Cocoon)
Here's my academia page and my faculty page, and some of my philosophy colleagues: Nikolaj Pedersen, Mandel Cabrera, Bennett Holman, Michael Michael, and Casey McCoy.
Together with our literature and history colleagues at UIC, we ran a weekly reading group on Eastern Classics 2020-2023.
In June 2018, I organized the IAPT's fifth annual conference in Seoul, which was a lot of fun.
*Yonsei has three campuses, one in Seoul, one in Incheon (more specifically, Songdo), and one in Wonju; UIC runs classes in both Seoul and Incheon. My office is in Incheon:
Natalja Deng, Veritas Hall B Room 418, Underwood International College, Yonsei University, 85 Songdogwahak-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 21983, South Korea
Yonsei Veritas Center hybrid workshop on 'Philosophy of Religion in Asia' (co-organized with Helen De Cruz), Yonsei University (Sinchon campus), March 31/April 1 2023, including a publication seminar by Helen De Cruz aimed at early career philosophers of religion. Here is the schedule.
What is it like to work as a philosopher in South Korea? (Philosophers' Cocoon)
Here's my academia page and my faculty page, and some of my philosophy colleagues: Nikolaj Pedersen, Mandel Cabrera, Bennett Holman, Michael Michael, and Casey McCoy.
Together with our literature and history colleagues at UIC, we ran a weekly reading group on Eastern Classics 2020-2023.
In June 2018, I organized the IAPT's fifth annual conference in Seoul, which was a lot of fun.
*Yonsei has three campuses, one in Seoul, one in Incheon (more specifically, Songdo), and one in Wonju; UIC runs classes in both Seoul and Incheon. My office is in Incheon:
Natalja Deng, Veritas Hall B Room 418, Underwood International College, Yonsei University, 85 Songdogwahak-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 21983, South Korea
