Philosophy Department Faculty

• Dorit Bar-On (UCLA) specializes in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaethics.  In her book S peaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge (Oxford Nov 2004), she develops a 'neo-expressivist' view of so-called first-person authority, drawing on insights from philosophy of language, mind, theory of action, and epistemology.  She has published articles on Quine, Davidson, Dummett, Grice, meaning and interpretation, conceptual relativism, deflationism, realism and truth, externalism and self-knowledge, introspection, and ethical expressivism.  More recently, she has been working on the topic of continuities between linguistic and non-linguistic communication and expressive behavior, with two forthcoming papers: “Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean’?”, Mind & Language, 2013, and “Expressive Communication and Continuity Skepticism”, the Journal of Philosophy, 2013.  In 2009, Bar-On received a 4-year NSF grant for collaborative research with Mitchell Green, for the project: Communication, Expression, and the Origins of Meaning.  For up-to-date CV, current projects, publications, and link to her “ECOM” research group please visit Bar-On’s personal webpage. 
• Donald L. M. Baxter (Pittsburgh) is the head of the philosophy department, and has research interests in metaphysics and early modern philosophy. He is the author of  Hume's Difficulty: Time and Identity in the  TREATISE  (Routledge, 2008). Forthcoming publications include "Hume on Space and Time" in The Oxford Handbook of David Hume, edited by Paul Russell, as well as a metaphysics anthology for OUP entitled Composition as Identity,  co-edited with Aaron Cotnoir (St. Andrews).
• JC Beall (UMass) works mainly in philosophical logic and the philosophies of logic, language, and mathematics, but also has interests in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and environmental philosophy. In addition to various papers in Analysis, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Nous, and other journals, Beall wrote Spandrels of Truth  (OUP, 2009), Logic: The Basics  (Routledge, 2010), Logical Pluralism  (OUP, 2005) with Greg Restall, Possibilities and Paradox: An Introduction to Modal and Many-Valued Logic (OUP 2003)  with Bas van Fraassen, and is editor of various collections in philosophical logic and the philosophy of logic, including, among others, Revenge of the Liar (OUP, 2007) and Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox (OUP, 2004). Beall is currently working on a monograph on truth. Beall is the Director of the UConn Logic Group, and the Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy. For more information about Beall's work, go to his website. 
• Paul Bloomfield (Syracuse) has broad research interests ranging across analytic philosophy, while specializing in moral philosophy and metaphysics. His publications include:  Moral Reality, Oxford University Press (2001); "Let's Be Realistic about Serious Metaphysics", in  Synthese (2005); as editor, Morality and Self Interest, Oxford University Press (2008); "Justice as a Self-Regarding Virtue", in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2011); and A Theory of the Good Life, Oxford University Press (under contract).
• Thomas D. Bontly (Wisconsin) specializes in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. His current research concerns mental causation, intentional content, and methodological questions in both philosophy and psychology. Recent publications include: "Individualism and the Nature of Syntactic" The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49(1998) and "Should Intentionality be Naturalized?" in D. Walsh (ed.) Naturalism, Evolution, and Mind, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
• Austen Clark (Oxford) specializes in philosophy of psychology and philosophy of mind. Recent publications include A Theory of Sentience (Oxford UP 2000); Sensory Qualities (Oxford UP 1993), "Color Perception" in A Companion to Cognitive Science, edited by William Bechtel and George Graham (Blackwell, 1998); and "Perception, Philosophical Issues About", in Lynn Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science Macmillan, forthcoming.
• Lewis Gordon (Yale), a specialist in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of science (particularly the human sciences and physics), existentialism, and phenomenology, joins the department in summer 2013. He previously taught at Temple University, Brown University, and Purdue University.  Professor Gordon has also held several distinguished visiting appointments across the globe and is currently Visiting Professor in the French-German Summer School at the University of Toulouse, France.  His books include Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanity Books,1995, 1999), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (Routledge, 1995), Her Majesty’s Other Children (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), Existentia Africana (Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence (Paradigm, 2006), and An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008), and he has published more than 100 articles, many of which have been translated into French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, in such journals as Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Continental Philosophy Review, differences, Diogenes, French and Francophone Philosophy, Journal of Contemporary Thought, Philosophia, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophical Studies in Education, Sartre Studies International, and Social Identities.  He is the founding editor of Radical Philosophy Review.  The URL for Professor Gordon’s website, which contains an elaborated biography, list of publications, international lectures, audio and video presentations, and his blog, is: http://lewisrgordon.com/
• Mitch Green (Pittsburgh) joins the UConn faculty from the University of Virginia in the fall of 2013.  His research interests are in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and Aesthetics. He is author of _Self-Expression_, _Engaging Philosophy: A Brief Introduction_, and co-editor of _Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person_.  His articles have appeared in _Mind_, _Nous_, _Linguistics and Philosophy_, _Philosophical Studies_, _Mind and Language_, and many edited volumes. He has written on implicature, reference, speech act theory, emotions, expressive behavior, the structure of conversation, and the epistemic value of works of art. In recent years Green's research has focused on developing an account of communication and meaning that is evolutionarily plausible. In 2009, Green received a 4-year NSF grant for collaborative research with Dorit Bar-On, for the project: Communication, Expression, and the Origins of Meaning. He has also held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Green is also director of Project High-Phi (high-phi.org), which supports philosophical inquiry in American high schools.
• Suzy Killmister (University of Melbourne) specialises in moral and political philosophy, with particular interests in the concept of autonomy, and multiculturalism.  Recent publications include "Autonomy, Liberalism and Anti-Perfectionism" in Res Publica (forthcoming); "Resolving the Dilemma of Group Membership" in Why Groups Matter, Routledge (forthcoming); "Autonomy and the Problem of Socialisation" in Social Theory and Practice (2013); and "Autonomy and False Beliefs" in Philosophical Studies (2012).  She is currently working on a monograph on autonomy and its political implications. 
• Hallie Liberto (Wisconsin) specializes in moral and political philosophy. She researches topics related to markets, rights, and sex, and is particularly interested in moral questions at the intersection of these areas. Some publications include: "The Moral Specification of Rights: A Restricted Account" in Law and Philosophy (forthcoming); “Normalizing Prostitution versus Normalizing the Alienation of Sexual Rights” in Ethics (2009).
• William Lycan (Chicago) (fall semesters, beginning in fall 2012) specializes in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but also contributes to epistemology.  He is author of: Logical Form in Natural Language (MIT, 1984); Knowing Who (with Steven Boër) (MIT, 1986); Consciousness (MIT, 1987); Judgement and Justification (Cambridge, 1988); Modality and Meaning (Kluwer, 1994); Consciousness and Experience (MIT, 1996); Real Conditionals (Oxford, 2001); and 170-odd articles on assorted topics.
• Michael P. Lynch (Syracuse) is primarily interested in problems within the intersection of epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language, although he has abiding interests in the history of philosophy and the theory of value. He is the author of forty articles and book chapters, as well as Truth as One and Many (2009, OUP), Truth in Context (1998, 2001; MIT), and True to Life (2004, MIT). He edited The Nature of Truth (2001, MIT) and (with Patrick Greenough) Truth and Realism (2006, OUP) as well as (with Heather Battaly) Perspectives on the Philosophy of William Alston (2005, Rowman & Littlefield).  Lynch’s work has been translated into Italian, Portuguese and Spanish; he is a past recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Bogliasco Foundation, and the University of Connecticut Humanities Center. In 2011 he was awarded the College of Liberal Arts Research Excellence Award.
• David Ripley (UNC) has reasearch interests in logic and philosophy of language. Recent publications include "Revising up" in Philosophers' Imprint (forthcoming), "Paradoxes and failures of cut" in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming), and "Structures and circumstances" in Synthese (2012). His recent joint publications with Pablo Cobreros, Paul Égré, and Robert van Rooij include "Reaching transparent truth" in Mind (forthcoming) and "Tolerant, classical, strict" in the Journal of Philosophical Logic (2012). He is currently working on a monograph on nontransitive logic and paradoxes.
• Marcus Rossberg (St Andrews) works primarily in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, but also has research interests in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art, metaphysics, philosophical logic, and the history of analytic philosophy. Some specific topics that occupy his mind currently are higher-order logic, inferentialism, ontological commitment, truth, plural quantification, and the role of model theory in philosophy.  He is the author of several articles, co-authored a book on Nelson Goodman (with Daniel Cohnitz, 2006) and is about to finish (in collaboration with Philip Ebert and Crispin Wright) the first complete translation of Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik [Basic Laws of Arithmetic, OUP]. Together with Philip Ebert he is the editor of a collection of essay, Abstractionism, forthcoming with OUP.  Rossberg is associate fellow of the Northern Institute of Philosophy, Aberdeen, and associate editor of Erkenntnis.
• Susan Schneider (Rutgers) works primarily in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and
  philosophy of cognitive science. Her books include The Language of Thought: a New Direction, The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (with Max Velmans), and Science Fiction and Philosophy. In a book she is currently working on, The Mind-­Body Problem, she urges that neglected issues in metaphysics should lead us to revise, or even discard, leading approaches to the mind and person, and she advances a different sort of approach, one that is grounded in metaphysics. Her papers
  have appeared in journals such as Nous, Mind and Language, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophical Studies. (For more information see her website.)
• Lionel Shapiro (Pittsburgh)  has research interests in the philosophy of language and mind, philosophical logic, and early modern philosophy.  Recent publications include "Objective Being and 'Ofness' in Descartes" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2012), "Deflating Logical Consequence" in  The Philosophical Quarterly  (2011), "Expressibility and the Liar's Revenge" in the  Australasian Journal of Philosophy  (2011), "Two Kinds of Intentionality in Locke" in the  Pacific Philosophical Quarterly  (2010), and "Naïve Truth-Conditions and Meaning" in  The Philosophical Quarterly  (2008).
• Keith Simmons (UCLA) specializes in logic, the history and philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and Kant’s ethics. His book on truth and the liar paradox, Universality and the Liar, appeared in hardback in 1993 and in paperback in 2008. He is the co-editor (with Simon Blackburn) of Truth, in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy Series (1999). His published and forthcoming articles explore the semantic and set-theoretical paradoxes, contextual theories of truth, deflationism, dialetheism, assertion, omniscience, medieval logic, Tarski’s logic, Poincaré and Richard on paradox, and Kant on moral worth. Works in progress include a monograph in which he develops a singularity solution to the paradoxes of definability, Russell’s paradox, and the truth paradoxes, and a monograph (with Dorit Bar-On) on theories of truth, which develops an extended critique of deflationism and a defense of a form of substantivism about truth. For an up-to-date CV, a full draft of the monograph on the paradoxes, and a prospectus for the monograph on truth, please visit homepage.
• Samuel C. Wheeler III (Princeton) writes in philosophy of language. metaphysics, ethics, deconstruction, and ancient philosophy. He has just completed a book, Neo-Davidsonian Metaphysics and Meta-ethics. Recent publications include “Texts With Too Many Authors,” in nonsite, July, 2012, “Remembering Donald Davidson: His 1967 Undergraduate Philosophy of Language Course” in Donald Davidson: Life and Words, e dited by Maria Baghramian, Routledge 2012, pp65-70, “Davidson, Derrida and Differance” in Dialogues with Davidson (MIT 2011), “Pure Realism” Annales Philosophici 2010, “Naturalist Structuralism’s Aporia? Essentialism, Indeterminacy, and Nostalgia”, Konturen, January 2010, His book Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy, was published in 2000 by Stanford University Press.

Emeritus Faculty

• Susan Anderson (Professor Emeritus) has interests in the Self, applied ethics, critical reasoning/logic, 19th century philosophy and philosophy in literature. She has published articles on the Self, free will and applied ethics and has co- authored logic software. She is author of three books in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series: On Kierkegaard, On Mill, and On Dostoevsky; and she is currently working on a book titled Equal Opportunity Individualism: An Interpretation of the American Dream. She was one of the creators of the Stamford Campus Upper Division Scholars Program. (Ph.D., UCLA) Garry M. Brodsky (Professor Emeritus) In the summer of 1997 I and my wife moved to Pawtucket R. I.and in the spring semester of 2000 I taught my last class. Shortly after I retired I joined  a discussion group made up of psychiatrists interested in the relations of philosophy and psychiatry and at roughly the same time I met a few people who loved classical music and they also welcomed me into their discussion group.  In addition I have been able to maintain my interest in philosophy alive, by using the time I have to read philosophical works..  So I've read Peter E. Gordon's superb work, Continental Divide which deals with the meeting of Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos in 1929.  That work put me back in touch with Cassirer, a thinker I very much admired.  So all in all I find my retirement a good thing,  perhaps a mixed good as Don Baxter would say, but nevertheless good.  Crawford Elder (Professor Emeritus) is interested in metaphysics broadly construed--a form of metaphysics, that is, that encompasses issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and even philosophy of biology. His recent publications include *Familiar Objects and Their Shadows* (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011); “Millikan, Realismus und Selbigkeit”, *Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie*, 58 (2010), pp. 955-73; "Biological Species Are Natural Kinds”, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 46 (2008), pp. 339-92; and Real Natures and Familiar Objects (Cambridge, Mass.:  M.I.T. Press, 2004).Margaret Gilbert (Professor Emeritus) has been Melden Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, since September 2006. She continues to teach and write on the philosophy of social phenomena, political philosophy, and moral philosophy, among others. Her most recent book is A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society.Robinson Grover (Professor Emeritus) Anne Hiskes (Professor Emeritus) is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Grand Valley State University in Allendale Michigan. Her specialties include interdisciplinary perspectives on the history and philosophy of science, gender and science, philosophy of physics, bioethics, and science and human rights. Publications include “Venture Smith and Philosophical Theories of Human Rights”, in Venture Smith and the Business of Slavery and Freedom, J. Stewart,ed.(Amherst: UMass Press, 2010); “Unscrambling the Eggs: Cybrid Research Through an ESCRO Lens”, with A. Chapman, American Journal of Bioethics (December 2008); and “Van Fraassen's Constructive Empiricist Philosophy of Science and Religious Belief: Prospects for a Unified Epistemology",in Realism and Antirealism,W. Alston, ed.(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002). Leonard I. Krimerman (Professor Emeritus) has research interests in recent political philosophy, theory and prospects of democracy,  philosophy and social science, and philosophy of education . Recent publications include From the Ground Up (with F. Lindenfeld) South End Press 1992, and "Should Social Inquiry Be Conducted Democratically?" (2001).  He is co-editor of  GEO, the Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter , in which he utilizes philosophical theory to clarify and foster democatic transformation. He is working on a book tentatively entitled, "Democracy's Dangerous Dream: Reclaiming Citizen Sovereignty", the heart of which builds on a deep analogy between fully democratic priorities and those characteristic of education. Joel Kupperman (Professor Emeritus) works mainly in ethics and aesthetics, with a strong interest in classic Asian philosophy. Current work includes Six Myths About the GoodLife (Hackett Books, 2006), Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts, 2 nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2006), Ethics and Qualities of Life (Oxford University Press, Spring 2007), and also "A New Look at the Logic of the 'Is'-'Ought' Relation" (Philosophy, 2005) and "The Epistemology of Non-Instrumental Value", Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 2005. "Half Truths" is forthcoming in RATIO. Scott Lehmann (Professor Emeritus) specializes in logic, foundations of economics, policy analysis, and environmental ethics. Recent publications include Privatizing Public Lands (Oxford UP 1995); "More Free Logic" (Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 2nd edn., Vol. 5, Kluwer, 2002).Robert Luyster (Professor Emeritus) specializes in the history and philosophy of religion. Most of his publications concern religious mythology and symbolism. He is also the founder and director of the Council on Peace Education, a faculty organization promoting awareness concerning global peace and justice on campus, and directs students in the field of peace studies. His most recent publication is "Nietzsche/Dionysus: Ecstasy, Heroism and the Monstrous," Journal of Nietzsche Studies, XXI (Spring 2001), p. 1-26. A.S. McGrade (Professor Emeritus) Diana Tietjens Meyers (Professor Emeritus) is Ignacio Ellacuría SJ Chair of Social Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago. In Spring 2003, she was the Laurie Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She works in three main areas of philosophy – philosophy of action, feminist ethics, and human rights theory. Her monographs are Inalienable Rights: A Defense (1985, Columbia University Press), Self, Society, and Personal Choice (1989, Columbia University Press; also at http://orion.it.luc.edu/~dmeyers/ ), Subjection and Subjectivity: Psychoanalytic Feminism and Moral Philosophy (1994, Routledge), and Gender in the Mirror: Cultural Imagery and Women’s Agency (2002, Oxford University Press; also available through Oxford Scholarship Online). Being Yourself: Essays on Identity, Action, and Social Life is a collection of her (mostly) previously published essays (2004, Rowman and Littlefield). She has edited seven collections and published many journal articles and chapters in books. She is currently writing on three topics: victims’ stories and human rights, art and politics, and psychocorporeal identity and agency. Ruth Millikan (Professor Emeritus) works in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of language, philosophy of biology, ontology, and natural epistemology. Besides her books, Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (MIT 1984), White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice (MIT 1993), On Clear and Confused Ideas (Cambridge 2000), Varieties of Meaning (MIT 2004) and Language: A Biological Model (Oxford 2005) she has published articles in The Philosophical Review, Mind, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenal Research and other journals and given many lectures on topics in Philosophy and Cognitive Science throughout the world. She gave the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in 2002. She is currently working on replies to papers for a Millikan and her Critics volume (Blackwells forthcoming).Robert Phillips (Professor Emeritus) specializes in moral issues connected with wars and with other aspects of contemporary politics. He is author of War and Justice (Oklahoma) and co-author of Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). He is Director of the War and Ethics Program at UConn's Hartford campus. (D. Phil., Oxford) Jerome A. Shaffer (Professor Emeritus) spent his philosophical career trying to crack the mind-body nut. But it ended up cracking his nut. So, in 1994, he retired, went back to school and got an M. A. in Marital and Family Therapy, and is now a practicing psychotherapist, uncracking others undone by mind-body problems. However he occasionally relapses and can be seen lurking in the halls of philosophy, keeping up with others still trying to crack that damnable mind-body nut.
• John Troyer (Professor Emeritus) has research interests in normative theory, Early Modern Philosophy, and Wittgenstein. Recent publications include an edited volume of Roderick Firth's writings, In Defense of Radical Empiricism (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) and "Human and Other Natures" (in Evolutionary Origins of Morality, Imprint Academic, 2000).