Dan Goldstick - Academic Biography

Academic Biography

Goldstick was born in Toronto. He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1962, and went on to graduate studies at Oxford University, where he received a B.Phil in 1964 and D.Phil. in 1969, although he returned to Canada in 1965; his thesis, under the supervision of Alfred Jules Ayer, attempted to refute empiricism. In 1965, he took a position as a lecturer at Carleton University, and in 1967, became an assistant professor there, but in the same year he moved back to Toronto after philosophy department members David Savan and David Gauthier persuaded the other faculty to overlook his radical politics.

At Toronto, Goldstick taught Marxism, synthetic apriority, and ethics. His work in philosophy centres on topics in metaphysics and epistemology. His philosophical work consists of approximately 75 papers, including:

• "Methodological Conservatism" (Am. Phil. Quart. 1971);
• "Dialectics versus Metaphysics" (Explorations in Knowledge, 1988);
• "Cognitive Reason" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1992)

He is the author of Reason, Truth, and Reality, a "defense of pre-Kantian rationalism". The book asks what sort of world do we inhabit? and what moral obligations do we have? According to reviewer Peter Tramel, his effort culminates in arguments for universal impermanence, continuous deterministic causality, and utilitarianism. Others claim that, "at its core, this book is addressing the Marxian concern with relating theory to practice."