Faculty
John Bengson
Assistant Professor (University of Texas, Ph.D. 2010)
Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: bengson@wisc.edu
Office: 5169 Helen C. White
Professor Bengson's research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of action, including perception, intuition, knowing how, intelligence and intelligent action, and understanding. His recent work includes "Grasping the Third Realm" (Oxford Studies in Epistemology, 2014), "Experimental Attacks on Intuitions and Answers" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2013), and "A New Framework for Conceptualism" (Nous, 2011). He is also co-editor of Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action (Oxford University Press, 2011).
John Bengson’s Web site
Harry Brighouse
Professor (USC, Ph.D. 1991)
Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Education
Phone: 608-263-8136
Email: mhbrigho@wisc.edu
Office: 5119 Helen C. White
Harry Brighouse works on issues in political philosophy, philosophy of education, and educational policy. His recent books include On Education (Routledge 2006), Educational Equality (2010) and (edited with Ingrid Robeyns) Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities (Cambridge 2010). His book with Adam Swift, Family Values will be published by Princeton University Press in summer 2014. He teaches 341 Contemporary Moral Issues and 555 Political Philosophy, among other classes. He also co-directs the Spencer Foundation's Initiative on Philosophy in Educational Policy and Practice.
Harry Brighouse’s Web site
Claudia Card
Emma Goldman Professor (Harvard, Ph.D. 1969)
Ethics, Feminist Philosophy
Phone: 608-263-3726
Email: cfcard@wisc.edu
Office: 5139 Helen C. White
Professor Card's research in ethics and social/political philosophy focuses on evil and injustice -- conceptual issues, normative issues, and practical issues arising in the areas in which she has teaching affiliations: Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies, and LGBT Studies. Her books include Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide (Cambridge 2010); Genocide's Aftermath (ed. with Armen Marsoobian, Blackwell 2007); The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (2003); The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford 2002); and The Unnatural Lottery: Character and Moral Luck (Temple 1996). In 2011 she received the UW Hilldale Award in the Arts and Humanities Division. In 2010-11 she was President of the American Philosophical Association Central Division. In 2008 she delivered the John Dewey Lecture at the Central APA convention. From 2002-2007 she was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities (UW-Madison). She is currently at work on the third volume, Surviving Atrocities, of her trilogy on evil.
Claudia Card’s Web site
Emily Fletcher
Assistant Professor (University of Toronto, Ph.D. 2012)
Mellon Chair in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: erfletcher@wisc.edu
Office: 5173 Helen C. White
Professor Fletcher’s research interests lie primarily in Ancient Greek Philosophy, especially ethics and moral psychology. She is currently working on several articles on pleasure and the good life in Plato’s Philebus, as well as a project on disease and the relationship between the soul and the body in Plato's Timaeus. She recently published the article "Plato on Pure Pleasure and the Best Life" (Phronesis 2014).
Emily Fletcher's Web site
Malcolm Forster
Professor (University of Western Ontario, Ph.D. 1984)
General Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Statistics, Philosophy of Physics
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: mforster@wisc.edu
Office: 5137 Helen C. White
Professor Forster's research has focused on issues in the methodology of science, particularly the role of simplicity and unification in confirmation and in statistics, as well as William Whewell's methodology of science applied to planetary astronomy (the latest publication being M. Forster (2011) "The Debate between Whewell and Mill on the Nature of Scientific Induction", in Stephan Hartmann (ed.), The Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 10: Inductive Logic (Elsevier Science, pp. 91-113.). In 2010, he also applied Whewell's consilience of inductions to quantum physics ("The Miraculous Consilience of Quantum Mechanics", in Ellery Eells and James Fetzer (eds.), 2010, Probability and Science), and he is now expanding and developing an earlier project applying the method of Bayes Causal Nets to understanding various results in the foundations of quantum mechanics (2014 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews publication). This may shed light on the meaning of many new technical results in quantum mechanics, including the startling new discovery by Colbeck and Renner (Nature Physics 2011) (which significantly strengthens Bell's famous theorem, as explained in Professor Forster's 2014 Physics Archives publication, submitted to PSA 2104).
Malcolm Forster’s Web site
Martha Gibson
Senior lecturer (UW Madison, Ph.D. 1989)
Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind
Phone: 608-263-3747
Email: migibson@wisc.edu
Office: 5117 Helen C. White
Professor Gibson’s current research concerns the issue of atomist vs. holist theories of meaning and the role that idealizations such as “the principle of charity” and “optimality conditions” play in such theories. Her recent publications include From Naming to Saying (Blackwell, 2004) and “The Unity of the Sentence and the Connection of Causes” Philosophy & Phenomenological Research (1998).
Paula Gottlieb
Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Classics (B.Phil, Oxon. 1983; Ph.D., Cornell 1988)
Ancient Greek Philosophy; Ethics
Phone: 608-263-0253
Email: plgottli@wisc.edu
Office: 5161 Helen C. White
Professor Gottlieb’s research concerns ancient Greek philosophy, especially issues in Aristotle’s ethics and metaphysics. Her work includes a book-length analysis of and commentary on Books I and II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for Project Archelogos (2001), “The Practical Syllogism” in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics ed. Richard Kraut (Blackwell, 2006), a recent book The Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics (Cambridge, 2009, pbk 2012) and the chapter on Aristotle’s Ethics for the Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford, forthcoming, 2013). She is writing another book, tentatively entitled "Aristotle on Reason and Feeling", for Cambridge University Press. She also writes the entry on Aristotle on non-contradiction for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (last updated, 2011). She is currently Central Divisional Representative to the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association.
Paula Gottlieb’s Web site
Daniel M. Hausman
Herbert A. Simon Professor (Columbia, Ph.D. 1978)
Philosophy of Economics, Metaphysics
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: dhausman@wisc.edu
Office: 5197 Helen C. White
Professor Hausman’s research focuses on ethical, epistemological, and foundational issues at the boundaries between economics and philosophy, and on related questions concerning causation and health measurement. His main work on economic methodology is his The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Cambridge, 1992). Other books include Causal Asymmetries (Cambridge, 1998), Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy and Public Policy (with Michael S. McPherson, Cambridge, 2006), and Preference, Value, Choice and Welfare 2011. In 2009 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Daniel M. Hausman’s Web site
Lester H. Hunt
Professor (UCSB, Ph.D. 1976)
Ethics, Political Philosophy, Nietzsche
Phone: 608-263-5956
Email: lhhunt@wisc.edu
Office: 5165 Helen C. White
Professor Hunt’s research has touched on ethics (both theoretical and applied), political philosophy, and the philosophy of Nietzsche. His recent publications include Character and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), and “Nussbaum on Emotion” Ethics (2006). He is currently at work on several projects in the area of aesthetics and on the presentation of ideas in particular works of art.
Lester H. Hunt’s Web site
Paul Kelleher
Assistant Professor (Cornell, Ph.D. 2008)
Political Philosophy, Bioethics
Phone: 608-263-8561
Email: jkelleher@wisc.edu
Offices: 5175 Helen C. White & 1430 Medical Sciences Center
Professor Kelleher's research focuses on philosophical and ethical issues relevant to health-related public policy. His publications include "Energy Policy and the Social Discount Rate" (Ethics, Policy & Environment 2012), "Emergency Contraception and Conscientious Objection” (Journal of Applied Philosophy 2010), and “Real and Alleged Problems for Daniels’s Account of Health Justice” (Journal of Medicine & Philosophy forthcoming).
Paul Kelleher's Web site
John Mackay
Assistant Professor (Princeton, Ph.D. 2011)
Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Philosophical Logic
Phone: 608-890-4361
Email: jmackay2@wisc.edu
Office: 5167 Helen C. White
Professor Mackay works in the philosophy of language and associated areas of metaphysics, epistemology and philosophical logic. His current research is focused on modality and conditionals. His article "Quantifying over Possibilities" is forthcoming in the Philosophical Review.
John Mackay’s Web site
James Messina
Assistant Professor (UCSD, Ph.D. 2011)
Kant, Early Modern Philosophy, German Idealism
Phone: 608-263-0252
Email: jmessina@wisc.edu
Office: 5115 Helen C. White
Professor Messina’s research deals with issues in Kant’s mature theoretical philosophy (such as his views on space, philosophical methodology, modality, and the role of the understanding in perception). He also works on earlier German philosophers who had a strong influence on Kant (such as Leibniz, Wolff, and Crusius) and later German philosophers who were strongly influenced by Kant (such as Reinhold, Schulze, Fichte, and Hegel). His recent publications include “Answering Aenesidemus: Schulze’s Attack on Reinholdian Representationalism and its Importance for Fichte” (Journal of the History of Philosophy 2011) and (with Don Rutherford) “Leibniz on Compossibility” (Philosophy Compass 2009).
James Messina's Web site
Steven Nadler
William H. Hay II Professor (Columbia, Ph.D. 1986)
Evjue-Bascom Professor in HumanitiesEarly Modern Philosophy
Phone: 608-263-3741
Email: smnadler@wisc.edu
Office: 5109 Helen C. White
Professor Nadler’s research focuses on philosophy in the seventeenth century. He has written extensively on Descartes and Cartesianism, Spinoza, and Leibniz. He also works on medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy. His publications include Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999); The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008; paperback, Princeton 2010); and The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century (2009), co-edited with Tamar Rudavsky. His two most recent books are A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, 2011); and The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013). He has held visiting professorships at the University of Amsterdam, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris), Stanford University, and the University of Chicago. He is currently the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy.
Steven Nadler’s Web site
Sarah Paul
Assistant Professor (Stanford, Ph.D. 2009)
Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Mind
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: skpaul@wisc.edu
Office: 5163 Helen C. White
Professor Paul’s research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics that concern intention, agency, and practical reason. Her publications include “How We Know What We're Doing” (Philosophers’ Imprint 2009) and "Intention, Belief, and Wishful Thinking: Setiya on ‘Practical Knowledge’" (Ethics 2009).
Sarah Paul’s Web site
Russ Shafer-Landau, Department Chair
Professor (Arizona, Ph.D. 1992)
Ethics, Philosophy of Law
Phone: 608-263-3727
Email: shaferlandau@wisc.edu
Office: 5185 Helen C. White
Professor Shafer-Landau’s research focuses primarily on issues in metaethics. He is the organizer of the Annual Metaethics Workshop, held each fall in Madison, and is editor of the series Oxford Studies in Metaethics. His recent publications include The Fundamentals of Ethics, 2ed (Oxford, 2012) and its companion volume, The Ethical Life, 2ed (Oxford, 2012). Other publications include Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford, 2005 — Honorable Mention, APA Book Prize), and Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (Oxford, 2004). He is also the editor of Reason & Responsibility (Cengage, 2010), Ethical Theory (Blackwell, 2007) and co-editor, with Terence Cuneo, of The Foundations of Ethics (Blackwell, 2006).
Russ Shafer-Landau’s Web site
Lawrence Shapiro
Professor (University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. 1992)
Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Psychology
Phone: 608-265-4637
Email: lshapiro@wisc.edu
Office: 5111 HC White Hall
Professor Shapiro’s research spans philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. Within philosophy of mind he has focused on issues related to reduction, especially concerning the thesis of multiple realization. His The Mind Incarnate (MIT, 2004), as well as articles in The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research examine these issues. His interests in philosophy of psychology include topics in computational theories of vision, evolutionary psychology, and embodied cognition. He’s published numerous articles on these topics in journals such as The Philosophical Review, British Journal for Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Science. His most recent book, Embodied Cognition (Routledge Press, 2011), received the American Philosophical Association's Joseph B. Gittler Award for best book in philosophy of the social sciences (2013).
Lawrence Shapiro’s Web site
Alan Sidelle
Professor (Cornell, Ph.D. 1986)
Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Epistemology
Phone: 608-263-3724
Email: asidelle@wisc.edu
Office: 5121 Helen C. White
Professor Sidelle's research focuses centrally on the metaphysics of material objects, modality, and personal identity. He is also interested in questions at the interface of philosophy of language and metaphysics, and in questions about the nature and extent of verbal disputes (which he believes to be widely prevalent in both philosophy and everyday life). His recent publications include: "Modality and Objects," Philosophical Quarterly (2010); "Conventionalism and the Contingency of Conventions," Nous (2010) and "The Method of Verbal Dispute," Philosophical Topics (2007).
Elliott Sober
Hans Reichenbach Professor & William F. Vilas Research Professor (Harvard, Ph.D. 1974)
Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Mind
Phone: 608-263-7478
Email: ersober@wisc.edu
Office: 5199 Helen C. White
Professor Sober’s current research concerns metaphysical and epistemological issues raised by evolutionary biology. His publications include Did Darwin write the Origin Backwards? (Prometheus Books 2011), Evidence and Evolution — the Logic Behind the Science (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Unto Others — The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with David Sloan Wilson, Harvard University Press, 1998) and Philosophy of Biology (Westview Press, 1993).
Elliott Sober’s Web site
Hank Southgate
Lecturer, Managing Editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy (Northwestern, Ph.D. 2010)
Kant, 19th century philosophy
Phone: 608-890-3743
Email: southgate@wisc.edu
Office: 5137 Helen C. White
Dr. Southgate specializes in Kant and German Idealism. His current research is focused on Kant and Hegel’s responses to the Rationalist thesis that reality is intelligible to reason.
Hank Southgate's Web site
Jesse Steinberg
Faculty Associate and Assistant to the Chair (University of California Santa Barbara, Ph.D. 2006)
Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science
Phone: 608-263-5162
Email: jrsteinberg2@wisc.edu
Office: 5185 Helen C. White
Professor Steinberg's research primarily focuses on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. He is especially interested in the nature of dispositions and dispositional accounts of various kinds (e.g., of mental states, causation, and free will). He also works on moral philosophy and has lately been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about environmental issues having to do with food. His publications include: "Dispositions and Subjunctives" (Philosophical Studies, 2011); "Dispositions, Moral Judgments, and What We're Motivated To Do" (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2011); a co-authored paper entitled, "Ceteris Paribus Causal Generalizations and Scientific Inquiry in Empirical Psychology" (Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2011); a co-authored paper entitled, "Disembodied Minds and the Problem of Identification and Individuation" (Philosophia, 2007); and "Leibniz, Creation, and the Best of All Possible Worlds" (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2007).
Robert Streiffer
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Bioethics, Agricultural & Applied Economics, and Veterinary Medical Science (MIT, Ph.D. 1999)
Bioethics, Ethical Theory
Phone: 608-263-3700
Email: rstreiffer@wisc.edu
Office: 5123 Helen C. White
Professor Streiffer's research encompasses bioethics (both medical and agricultural), ethical theory, and political philosophy, with a focus on ethical and policy issues arising from modern biotechnology. His recent publications include "Ethical Issues in the Application of Biotechnology to Animals in Agriculture," with John Basl, in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics (forthcoming), "Chimeras, Moral Status, and Public Policy: Implications of the Abortion Debate for Public Policy on Human/Nonhuman Chimera Research," The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (2010), "Human/Non-Human Chimeras," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009), "Informed Consent and Federal Funding for Stem Cell Research," Hastings Center Report (2008), and "Genetically Engineered Animals and The Ethics of Food Labeling," with Alan Rubel, in The Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods (2007).
Robert Streiffer’s Web site
Michael G. Titelbaum
Associate Professor (University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. 2008)
Epistemology, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Logic, Decision Theory
Phone: 608-263-6708
Email: titelbaum@wisc.edu
Office: 5113 Helen C. White
Professor Titelbaum’s research focuses on rationality, primarily as it comes up in epistemology and ethics but also as it arises in decision theory, political philosophy, logic, and the philosophy of science. His publications include Quitting Certainties: A Bayesian Framework Modeling Degrees of Belief (Oxford University Press 2013), "Rationality's Fixed Point (Or: In Defense of Right Reason)" Oxford Studies in Epistemology (2014), and "How to Derive a Narrow-Scope Requirement from Wide-Scope Requirements" Philosophical Studies (2014). His book Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Michael G. Titelbaum’s Web site
Peter B. M. Vranas
Professor (MIT, Sc.D. 1992; Michigan, Ph.D. 2001)
Philosophical Logic, Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Formal Epistemology, Metaphysics
Phone: 608-263-3740
Email: vranas@wisc.edu
Office: 5171 Helen C. White
Professor Vranas’s research in philosophical logic focuses on imperative and deontic logic. He is also currently working on moral dilemmas, time travel, and the implications of situationist psychology for ethics. His recent publications include “The indeterminacy paradox: Character evaluations and human psychology” Nous (2005), "I ought, therefore I can" Philosophical Studies (2007), “New foundations for imperative logic I: Logical connectives, consistency, and quantifiers” Nous (2008), “Against moral character evaluations: The undetectability of virtue and vice” The Journal of Ethics (2009), “In defense of imperative inference” Journal of Philosophical Logic (2010), and “New foundations for imperative logic: Pure imperative inference” Mind (2011).
Peter B. M. Vranas’s Web site
Emeritus Faculty
James Anderson
Started at UW: 1990
Retired from UW: 2012
Email: jcander1@wisc.edu
Michael Byrd
Started at UW: 1972
Retired from UW: 2004
Email: mebyrd@wisc.edu
Mike retired from the Philosophy Department in 2004, after 32 years of service, and two years after his son David disappeared in the Ecuadorean Andes. Because of their experiences in Ecuador, Mike and his wife Maggie have spent much of their time since 2004 working in Ecuador. They have served as teachers at The Working Boys Center, a mission to the poor, in Quito. They are also the founding directors of David’s Educational Opportunity Fund, which offers mentoring and university scholarships to some of the talented students whom they have taught while working there. David’s Educational Opportunity Fund is a 501(c)(3) public charity. You can read about its work at davidsedfund.org.
Donald Crawford
Started at UW: 1968
Retired from UW: 1992
Fred Dretske (1932-2013)
Started at UW: 1960
Retired from UW: 1990
Haskell Fain
Started at UW: 1956
Retired from UW: 1991
Email: hfain2306@prodigy.net
Terry Penner
Started at UW: 1970
Retired from UW: 2003
Email: tmpenner@wisc.edu
Marcus Singer
Started at UW: 1952
Retired from UW: 1999
Email: mgsinger@wisc.edu
Ivan Soll
Started at UW: 1965
Retired from UW: 2011
Email: aisoll@wisc.edu
