Faculty

Janet Broughton (Ph.D., Princeton University). Her research interests lie in the history of modern philosophy; since completing Descartes's Method of Doubt, she has been working mainly on Hume. Her teaching during the past five years has included courses and seminars on topics in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy as well as several introductory courses. She is Dean of Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters and Science.

John Campbell (On Leave) (D.Phil, University of Oxford). His main interests are in theory of meaning, metaphysics, and philosophy of psychology. He is currently working on causation in psychology. He is the author of Past, Space and Self (1994) and Reference and Consciousness (2002).

Hubert Dreyfus (Ph.D., Harvard University). His research interests bridge the analytic and Continental traditions in 20th-century philosophy. He recently completed On the Internet (Routledge); Heidegger and Foucault on the Ordering of Things is forthcoming from University of California Press. Over the past several years his teaching has included a seminar on ethics after humanism and courses on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. He teaches two or three courses each year.

Branden Fitelson (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin). His research interests lie mainly in the philosophy of science, logic, and epistemology. His recent papers have focused largely on the role of probability in inductive logic and epistemology. He also has active interdisciplinary projects involving the psychology of probability and confirmation judgment and applications of automated reasoning to formal philosophy. He is currently working on a book on confirmation theory, which will trace both its historical and philosophical development.

Hannah Ginsborg (Undergraduate Advisor) (Ph.D., Harvard University). Her research focuses on Kant and on issues in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind. Her work on Kant includes articles on Kant's aesthetic theory, philosophy of biology, and theory of judgment. Recent articles on contemporary issues have been concerned with the content of perceptual experience and the question of whether experiences can be reasons for belief. Much of her teaching has been on 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, but she has also taught courses dealing with the philosophy of biology, with philosophical issues regarding race and culture, and with various topics in theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind.

Niko Kolodny (Ph.D., University of California–Berkeley). His main interests are in moral and political philosophy. He is currently working on papers about partiality, rationality, promises, and Rousseau. His publications include "Why Be Rational?" (Mind, 2005) and "Love as Valuing a Relationship" (The Philosophical Review, 2003).

John MacFarlane (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh). His primary research interests lie in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and related issues in metaphysics and epistemology; he also maintains a serious secondary interest in ancient philosophy. In the past few years he has taught seminars on reference, vagueness, logicism, inferentialism, and context sensitivity, and undergraduate courses on ancient philosophy, Aristotle, philosophical logic, and intentionality.

Paolo Mancosu (Ph.D., Stanford University). His interests lie in the philosophy of mathematics and its history, in philosophy of logic, and in mathematical logic. His written work is currently focused upon the notion of mathematical explanation; he has also recently completed papers on 20th-century explorations of the foundations of mathematics and on Tarski's philosophical engagement.

Alva Noë (On Leave) (B.Phil, University of Oxford, Ph.D., Harvard University). The main focus of his work is the theory of perception and consciousness. In addition to these problems in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, he interested in Phenomenology, the theory of art, Wittgenstein, and the origins of analytic philosophy.

Sherrilyn Roush (On Leave) (Ph.D., Harvard University). Her philosophical interests are mainly in general philosophy of science, epistemology, probability, and logic. She has recently published Tracking Truth: Knowledge, Evidence, and Science (2006), which develops a tracking theory of knowledge, a likelihood-ratio-based view of evidence integrated with it, and a novel approach to scientific realism. She is now working on the evolution of knowledge and logic, the function of reasoning, and a tracking-based account of justified belief.

Samuel Scheffler (Ph.D., Princeton University). His research interests lie mainly in moral and political philosophy. He is the author of The Rejection of Consequentialism, Human Morality, and Boundaries and Allegiances. In recent years he has written articles on egalitarian liberalism, justice and desert, the value of equality, Rawls and utilitarianism, projects and relationships as sources of reasons, morality and self-interest, terrorism, and the distinction between doing and allowing. During this period he has taught undergraduate courses on ethics and political philosophy and graduate seminars on contractualism, egalitarianism, the foundations of political philosophy, and valuing.

John R. Searle (D. Phil., University of Oxford). His work ranges broadly over philosophical problems of mind and language. Recent books include The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World (1998), Rationality in Action (2001), Mind (2004), and Liberté et Neurobiologie (2004). He teaches philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of social science; recent seminars topics include consciousness, free will, and rationality.

Hans Sluga (Graduate Advisor) (B. Phil., University of Oxford). His interests lie mostly in recent European philosophy from Frege to Foucault and he is currently working on a book on the concept of the political with the title The Care of the Common. His teaching over the past few years has included courses or seminars on Frege, Russell, early and late Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, political philosophy, and Foucault.

Barry Stroud (Ph.D., Harvard University). In his work he is engaged with issues in epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the history of modern philosophy. He has recently published The Quest for Reality, Understanding Human Knowledge, and Meaning, Understanding, and Practice (all Oxford University Press). In recent years he has taught courses on Wittgenstein, theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, and seminars on subjectivism and on intentionality.

R. Jay Wallace (Chair) (B. Phil., University of Oxford; Ph.D., Princeton University). His interests lie mainly in moral philosophy and the history of ethics. His research has focused on responsibility, moral psychology, and the theory of practical reason. Recently he has written on promising, freedom, rational agency, normativity, contractualism, instrumental reason, resentment, and Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. His publications include Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Harvard) and Normativity and the Will (Oxford). During the past few years he has taught courses on ethics, moral psychology, and free will and seminars on moral contractualism, practical reason, the virtues, and work by Darwall and Parfit.

Daniel Warren (M.D., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., Harvard University). His work focuses on Kant and on the history and philosophy of science in the 17th and 18th centuries. Recent papers have concerned Kant and the apriority of space, Kant's conception of things in themselves, and Kant's dynamics. He teaches courses on introductory logic, bioethics, personal identity, and Kant; recent seminars have been about Leibniz, transcendental arguments, and self-knowledge.

Mills Visiting Professors

The department's Mills endowment makes possible regular visits to Berkeley from a number of distinguished philosophers.

Dorothea Frede (Dr. phil., Göttingen University). Professor, University of Hamburg. In recent years her main focus has been on ethics and methodology in Plato’s later works and on ethics and politics in Aristotle. Currently she is working on a translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for the Berlin Academy Series. A serious side-interest of hers lies in phenomenology, especially the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger. She was in residence at Berkeley for the academic year 2006-2007, and is teaching one course each semester in 2007-2008; she will return in 2008-2009.

Michael Martin (D.Phil., University of Oxford). Professor, University College London. His main interests lie in the philosophy of mind and psychology. He is currently finishing a book on naïve realism in the theory of perception, provisionally titled Uncovering Appearances. He has also been working on the relation between emotions and phenomenal experience and the nature of pain. Recent publications include, "The Limits of Self-Awareness", Philosophical Studies, 2004 and "On Being Alienated", in Perceptual Experience (OUP), eds. Gendler & Hawthorne. He was in residence in the Fall semester of 2005, and again in the Fall semester of 2007.

Véronique Munoz-Dardé (Ph.D., European University Institute). Professor, University College London. Her main interests lie in moral and political philosophy. In recent years she has written articles on the importance of numbers in practical reasoning, on the political ideal of equality, on responsibility, and on distributive justice. During this period she has taught seminars on contractualism, equality, Hume’s Treatise, and values and practical reasoning. She is the author of La justice sociale (2001), and is currently finishing a book on the way that the political is personal, provisionally called Bound Together. She was in residence in Berkeley during the Fall semester of 2005, and returned for the Fall semester of 2007.

Visiting Faculty

Andreas Anagnostopoulos (Ph.D., UC Berkeley 2007)

Rolf Horstmann

Marleen Rozemond

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows

David Ebrey (Ph.D., University of California — Los Angeles). His main interests are in ancient philosophy. His dissertation, Aristotle’s Motivation for Matter, focuses on issues in ancient metaphysics and the foundations of natural science, but he also has strong interests in ancient epistemology and ethics. He is currently writing about Socratic ethics and Plato's Meno. In the past few years he has taught introductory courses on ethics, the philosophy of mind, and Socrates and an advanced course on ancient philosophy.

Affiliated Faculty

Meir Dan-Cohen (LL.M., JSD, Yale University). He is a faculty member at the law school where he holds the Milo Reese Robbins Chair in Legal Ethics. His main interests are in legal, moral, and political philosophy, with a special emphasis on the relevance to those areas of conceptions of self. This range of interests is exhibited in his recent book, Harmful Thoughts: Essays on Law, Self, and Morality (2002, Princeton University Press).

G. R. F. (John) Ferrari (Ph.D. Cambridge University, Classics). Professor Ferrari teaches in the Classics department, where he specializes in ancient philosophy. His philosophic interests are in the areas of aesthetics, hermeneutics, and political thought. He has published primarily on Plato, with books on the Phaedrus and the Republic, and has collaborated on a new translation of the Republic.

Alison Gopnik (D. Phil Oxford University). She is a professor in the psychology department and works on problems of causal knowledge and learning, intuitive theory formation, and "theory of mind." Her work explores the relation between empirical work in cognitive development and classical philosophical problems in epistemology and philosophy of mind. She is coauthor of Words, Thoughts and Theories (MIT Press, 1997) and The Scientist in the Crib (Harper Collins, 2000).

Jodi Halpern (M.D., Ph.D., Yale University). She is Associate Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities in the School of Public Health/Joint Medical Program. She works mainly on emotions and the imagination, with a longstanding focus on empathy. She is the author of From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice (Oxford University Press). Halpern recently received a Greenwall Faculty Scholar career development award to write about emotions and envisioning future well-being, and the impact of this on serious health decisions.

Kinch Hoekstra (D.Phil., Oxford University). Hoekstra is a faculty member in the Political Science Department and in the Law School's program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. He works in the history of political, moral, and legal philosophy, particularly in ancient Greece and early modern Europe.

Christopher Kutz (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley; J.D., Yale University). He is a faculty member in the Law School's program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. He works mainly in moral, legal, and political philosophy. He is author of Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age (Cambridge University Press).

Tania Lombrozo (Ph.D., Harvard University). She is a faculty member in the psychology department, where she specializes in cognitive psychology. Her current research examines the structure and function of explanations, categories, and causal claims. In a second line of work, she studies moral reasoning. Her philosophical interests center on the philosophy of science, but also include issues in philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and moral philosophy.

Anthony A. Long (Ph.D., University of London). His main field of teaching and research is ancient philosophy. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy and his other books include Hellenistic Philosophy (University of California Press) and Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford University Press).

Line Mikkelsen (Ph.D., U.C. Santa Cruz). Mikkelsen is a faculty member in the Linguistics Department who works on the syntax, semantics, and morphology of natural languages and the relations between these. She maintains an interest in philosophy of language and participates in the Bay Area Philosophy of Language Discussion Group. She is the author of Copular Clauses: Specification, Predication and Equation (2005, John Benjamins).

Stephen Palmer (Ph.D., U.C. San Diego). He is a faculty member in the Psychology Department (in the Cognition, Brain and Behavior group) and has strong ties to the Cognitive Science program on campus. He works mainly on organizational issues in visual perception but also is interested in color. He is the author of Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology (1999, MIT Press) and is currently writing a book about color.

Eric Rakowski (B.Phil., D.Phil., Oxford University; J.D., Harvard Law School). He is a law professor who works on questions of moral and political philosophy and bioethics, besides teaching and writing on federal tax issues and trust and estate law. Professor Rakowski directs the Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs. He is the author of Equal Justice (Oxford University Press).

John R. Steel (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley). He is a professor in the mathematics department. Most of his work lies in set theory, and in particular in Gödel's program for strengthening the set-theoretic foundation of mathematics through the addition of strong axioms of infinity. Broader philosophical issues concerning meaning and evidence for mathematical statements come to the fore here. Steel's paper "Mathematics Needs New Axioms" (Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. 6 (2000), 422-433) discusses Gödel's program, with special attention to questions of meaning and evidence.

Emeriti

Ernest Adams

Charles Chihara

Thompson Clarke

Alan Code

William Craig

Benson Mates

Wallace Matson

David Rynin

Frits Staal

Bruce Vermazen