Profile

I have been fortunate to teach topics in several areas of philosophy and to be involved in a considerable amount of interdisciplinary collaboration. One cluster of courses centers on issues of cognition, meaning, and language and includes courses on Philosophy of Language, Metaphor, Concepts, and Philosophy and Cognitive Science. My Philosophy of Language course includes speech act theory and recent work on the embodied and imaginative character of meaning and language. The seminar on Philosophy and Cognitive Science is an ongoing investigation into the implications of empirical research from the cognitive sciences for our understanding of the nature of mind, self, thought, meaning, and values. I take an “embodied cognition” approach to issues of mind, thought, and language, and I have twice taught courses on Embodiment, and another on Sources of the Self.

One offshoot of this exploration of mind and values is my ongoing concern with the nature of moral understanding and thinking. For years I have taught Kant’s Moral Theory, but more recently I’ve become more interested in all of the exciting empirical work that is currently reconfiguring recent moral theory. In my course on Naturalized Ethics, I examine naturalized approaches ranging from Aristotle and Dewey up to a broad range of contemporary empirical studies of moral judgment.

A third growing interest over the past two decades has been American philosophy, especially in its Pragmatist manifestations. I have offered courses on Dewey’s Experience and Nature and also his Human Nature and Conduct, James’ Principles of Psychology, Putnam, and Rorty’s neo-pragmatism.

A fourth focus is aesthetics, including courses in Philosophy of Art and Music and Meaning. I also regularly teach Kant’s Aesthetic Theory, with an emphasis on his treatment of imagination.