John Foster

John Andrew Foster (5 May 1941 – 1 January 2009) was a British philosopher and tutorial Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1966 to 2005 (and then an Emeritus Fellow until his death in 2009). He authored several books, including The Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism (2008). His A. J. Ayer (1985) was described by Anthony Quinton as "the only serious monograph" about Ayer's philosophy.

Biography Foster was born in North London on 5 May 1941 and grew up in Southgate. He studied at Mercers' School, but had to transfer to the City of London School to do A-levels after Mercers' closure (about which he wrote a letter to The Times in protest). He argued against analytic reductionism.

In his book The Immaterial Self: A Defence of Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind, Foster defended Cartesian dualist arguments but ended supporting an idealistic conception of the mind, similar to George Berkeley's view. Charles Taliaferro has commented that "some idealists, such as the late, great Berkeleyan John Foster, have defended Cartesian dualism as a kind of provisional or conditional position: given that there are mind-independent physical objects and processes, Foster argued that we have good reason for not identifying the mental and the physical".

His 2002 paper A Defense of Dualism defined dualism as "the thesis that the mind and its contents are radically nonphysical". Under this definition, he argued that dualism is compatible with idealism.

In his 2008 book A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism, he put forward a thesis called phenomenalistic idealism , which combines phenomenalism and idealism. The book is dedicated to George Berkeley. Foster's arguments against physical realism for Berkleyan idealism influenced Howard Robinson.

Works

Books authored (1982) The Case for Idealism. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. . (1985) A. J. Ayer. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston. . (1991) The Immaterial Self: A Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of Mind. Routledge, New York. . (2000) The Nature of Perception. Oxford University Press, Oxford. . (2004) The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God. Oxford University Press, Oxford. . (2008) A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Select papers/chapters (1976) "Meaning and Truth Theory" in: Gareth Evans, John McDowell (eds.) Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics Oxford (1985) "Berkeley on the physical world" In John Foster & Howard Robinson (eds.), Essays on Berkeley: A Tercentennial Celebration. Oxford University Press. (1985) "Personhood and the Ethics of Abortion" in: (ed.). J. H. Channer, Abortion and the Sanctity of Human Life, Paternoster Press, (1992) "The Construction of the Physical World." In L. E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of A J Ayer. Open Court. (1993) "The Succinct Case for Idealism." In Howard Robinson (ed.), Objections to Physicalism. Clarendon Press. pp. 293–313.

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