Alan Nelson works primarily in early modern philosophy. He has concentrated on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, but in recent years he has also been developing interpretations of British philosophers. He periodically teaches graduate seminars on Wittgenstein, Davidson, and other 20th century philosophers. Representative publications include: "Cartesian Actualism in the Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence," Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1993); "How Could Scientific Facts be Socially Constructed?" Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (1994); "Micro-chaos and Idealization in Cartesian Physics," Philosophical Studies (1995); "The Falsity in Sensory Ideas: Descartes and Arnauld," Interpreting Arnauld, ed. by Kremer (1996); "Descartes' Ontology of Thought," Topoi (1997); "Circumventing Cartesian Circles," (with Lex Newman) Noûs (1999); "Cognition and Modality in Descartes," (with David Cunning) Acta Philosophica Fennica (1999); "Two Concepts of Idealisation in Economics," The Economic World View, ed. by Maki (2001); "The Rationalist Impulse," "Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression," and "Proust and the Rationalist Conception of the Self," A Companion to Rationalism, ed. by Nelson (2005); "Proofs for the Existence of God," (with Larry Nolan) A Guide to Descartes' Meditations ed. by Gaukroger (2005); "Cartesian Innateness," A Companion to Descartes ed. by Broughton and Carriero (2008), "Qualities and Simple Ideas in Hume's Theory of Ideas" (with David Landy; forthcoming in an Oxford UP volume edited by L. Nolan), "Descartes on Logic and Knowledge" (forthcoming in an Routledge volume edited by D. Kaufman), "Divisibility and Cartesian Extension," (with Kurt Smith) Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, 2009.