Philosophy Department

Education

• Ph.D.: University of Pittsburgh, 1979

Research Focus

17th and 18th century European philosophy, epistemology, logic

Publications

• Mattey, G. J. (1983) Kant’s conception of Berkeley’s idealism, Kant-Studien, Vol. 74, No. 2, 161-175
• Mattey, G. J. (1983), Lehrer’s personal coherentism and the KK thesis, Philosophical Studies 43, 423-438
• Mattey, G. J. (1986) Kant’s theory of propositional attitudes, Kant-Studien, Vol. 77, No. 4, 423-440
• Mattey, G. J. (1989) Personal coherence, objectivity and reliability, The Current State of the Coherence Theory, John W. Bender (Ed.), Dordrecht, 38-51
• Mattey, G. J. (2003) Self-trust and the reasonableness of acceptance, in Erik J. Olsson (Ed.) The Epistemology of Keith Lehrer, Dordrecht, 173-193

Teaching

George Mattey’s primary area of emphasis in teaching is history of modern philosophy. Most of his courses in this area are devoted to important single authors, such as Descartes, Hume and Kant, although he teaches survey courses in European philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also teaches theory of knowledge and logic, as well as history of ancient philosophy and ethics when needed. He has developed extensive on-line course materials, including lecture notes and commentaries on the texts, which can be found on his website http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/index.html.

Awards

• Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, 1983
• Outstanding Adviser, College of Letters and Science, 1988-9
• Philosophy Department Award for Outstanding Service, 2013
• Charles P. Nash Prize, 2016