Philosophy Research

The faculty members of the department of philosophy are actively involved in research.  Please visit the Faculty page to access and view their faculty profiles for more detail.  

Some recent highlights:

Simon Feldman will present a paper, "What's Bad About Bad Faith," at an upcoming conference, exploring the implications of having false beliefs about oneself.  He's also at work on two larger projects, one investigating arguments against racism that are premised on the claim that race is a morally arbitrary basis for structuring our social relations, and the other exploring some new competing ideas about the nature of the self in relationship to the "good life."

Andrew Pessin recently published an article called "Descartes on Ideas" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and is currently at work on a book on Descartes's notorious doctrine that God freely created even the necessary truths (such as those of mathematics), and "could have done otherwise."

Kristin Pfefferkorn is writing a book on the philosophy of film, analyzing Jane Campion's influential film The Piano.

Derek Turner's book, Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.  He was awarded a visiting fellowship at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh for the Spring 2008 semester.

Larry Vogel has four articles coming out this year in various journals. The articles are related to his work on Heidegger's Jewish students, including Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as on the question of whether aging is a gift.

Last Modified: Thursday, January 24, 2008 16:02