John P. Wright was a faculty member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Windsor from 1983 to 1997 when he resigned to take up a position at Central Michigan University. He held a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from York University. He chaired the program committee for the annual conference of the Canadian Philosophical Association in 1986. Wright was Acting Chair of the Department of Philosophy in 1988-9 and attained the rank of Full Professor in 1990. He had taught previously at the University of Saskatchewan, University of Toronto, and Simon Fraser University.
Wright’s central interests were in the Early Modern Philosophy with particular interests in Descartes, Locke and Hume. Books published while at the University of Windsor included his The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Manchester and Minnesota University Presses, 1983) and Hume and Hume’s Connections, edited with M.A. Stewart (Edinburgh University Press, 1994). He published 16 articles and book chapters while at the University of Windsor including the following:
- "Hume's Academic Scepticism: A Reappraisal of his Philosophy of Human Understanding", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 16 (1986), pp. 407-36.
- "Hume vs. Reid on Ideas: The Significance of the New Hume Letter", Mind, 96 (1987), pp. 392-98.
- "Association, Madness, and the Measures of Probability in Locke and Hume", ed. Christopher Fox, Psychology and Literature in the Eighteenth Century (New York: AMS Press, 1987), pp. 103-28.
- “Metaphysics and Physiology: Mind, Body and the Animal Economy in 18th-Century Scotland”, Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment , ed. M.A. Stewart (Oxford: O.U.P. 1990), pp. 251-301.
- "Locke, Willis and the Seventeenth-Century Epicurean Soul", ed. Margaret Osler, Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 239-258.
- "The Embodied Soul in Late Seventeenth-Century French Physiology", Canadian Bulletin for the History of Medicine, 8 (1991), pp. 21-42.
Dr. Wright taught undergraduate courses in numbers of areas including “The Rationalists” and “The Empiricists.” He was active in the graduate program and supervised the following Master’s theses:
- Kevin Fanick, The Informal Logic of John Locke, 1987
- Darryl Fanick, John Locke’s Moral Person, 1988
- Henderik van der Breggen, Hume, Miracle Reports, and Credibility, 1994
- Jordan Kotick, The Birth of Agnosticism in the Philosophy of Thomas Henry Huxley, 1994
- Terry Myers, Religion and Morality in the Philosophy of David Hume, 1996
- Tamara Sugunasiri, Hume and Feminism, 1996
- Janis Pearson, The Hobbesian State of Nature, 1997
- Giovanni Battista Grandi, Berkeley’s Theory of Vision: Optical Origins and Ontological Consequences, 1997
John Wright won numbers of research awards including the following:
- 1976-78: Canada Council Killam Post Doctoral Fellowship (held at the University of Paris-Sorbonne & the University of Oxford)
- 1978-80: Hannah Post-Doctoral Fellowship in History of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Ontario
- 1986-87: Visiting Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey (IAS Grant-in-Aid)
- 1991:(Winter) Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Institute for Medical Humanities, University of Texas
- 1992-93:Hannah Visiting Professor, Department of History of Medicine, University of Western Ontario
- 1994:(Spring) Visiting Professor, Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Bologna, Italy