UCSD Philosophy Department Chair

David O. Brink, Ph.D. Email Web
Cornell University, 1985
Office: HSS 7010 Phone: (858) 822-1655
Office Hours: Monday & Thursday 11:00am-12:00pm and by appointment

My research interests are in ethical theory, history of ethics, and jurisprudence. Within ethics, I am especially interested in historical and systematic perspectives on practical reason, moral demands, and the normativity of ethics. Within jurisprudence, I am especially interested in issues in analytical jurisprudence about the nature of law and legal interpretation and in substantive areas of constitutional and criminal jurisprudence.

UCSD Philosophy Faculty

Georgios Anagnostopoulos, Ph.D. Email Web
Brandeis University, 1971
Office: HSS 8034 Phone: (858) 534-3072
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 3:30-5:00 pm

Georgios Anagnostopoulos's research is in ancient philosophy and centers around ethics, metaphysics, science, technology and human values.

Richard Arneson, Ph.D. Email Web
University of California, Berkeley, 1975
Office: HSS 8057 Phone: (858) 534-6810
Office Hours: TBA

Richard Arneson conducts research in political and social philosophy, ethics, philosophy and literature, 19th century philosophy, and philosophy and economics.

Saba Bazargan, Ph.D. Email
Rutgers University, expected 2009
Office: HSS 7043 Phone: (858) 522-2685
Office Hours: Wednesday & Friday 2:00pm to 3:00pm

My primary interests are Applied Ethics and Normative Ethics. I am currently working on an account of individual responsibility for collectively committed harms.

William Bechtel, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Chicago, 1977
Office: HSS 8076 Phone: (858) 822-4461
Office Hours: Tuesdays 3.30pm to 5pm

William Bechtel conducts research in the history and philosophy of the life sciences (biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, neurobiology, psychology, and cognitive science), with a special emphasis on the strategies of mechanistic explanation employed and the invocation of active (cyclic, autocatalytic) mechanisms to explain how biological systems maintain themselves far from equilibrium.

Craig Callender, Ph.D. Email Web
Rutgers University, 1997
Office: HSS 8077 Phone: (858) 822-4911
Office Hours: Thursday 2:30-3:30pm and by appointment

My work focuses primarily on topics in philosophy of physics, the metaphysics of science, and philosophy of science in general.

Nancy Cartwright, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Illinois
Office: HSS 7023 Phone: (858) 534-3073
Office Hours: TBA

Nancy Cartwright conducts research in the philosophy of the natural, social and policy sciences, where she has specialized in physics and economics. She is working now on questions of causality, objectivity in science, and evidence, especially for evidence-based policy.

Patricia Churchland, B. Phil., LLD (hon) Email Web
Oxford University, 1969
Office: HSS 7010 Phone: (858) 534-6811
Office Hours: TBA

I focus on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy. I explore the impact of neuroscientific evelopments on our understanding of consciousness, the self, free will, decion making, ethics, learning, and religion.

Paul Churchland, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Pittsburgh, 1969
Office: HSS 8016 Phone: (858) 534-4883
Office Hours: TBA

Paul Churchland's research is in the philosophy of science (neurosciences, physics, astronomy); philosophy of mind (psychology); epistemology (cognitive science, artificial intelligence); philosophy of language; and the history of philosophy.

Jonathan Cohen, Ph.D. Email Web
Rutgers University, 2000
Office: HSS 8072 Phone: (858) 534-6812
Office Hours: Tuesday 10:00-11:30 am and by appointment

I work and teach on topics in philosophy of mind, language, and perception, particularly as these are informed by the cognitive sciences. Much of my work in recent years has concerned color and color vision.

Gerald Doppelt, Ph.D. Email Web
Johns Hopkins University, 1969
Office: HSS 7013 Phone: (858) 534-2933
Office Hours: Monday 1:00-2:00pm and by appointment

Jerry Doppelt's current research falls into two main areas: Philosophy of Science, in particular topics such as Thomas Kuhn, scientific change and progress, scientific realism, scientific rationality, the place of values in scientific inquiry, the role of standards of evidence in scientific change. The second area is Political Philosophy, including theory of justice, Rawls work, political liberalism, multiculturalism, the role of self-respect in political theory, communitarianism, and issues of gender and race.

Rick Grush, Ph.D. Email Web
UCSD, 1995
Office: HSS 7038 Phone: (858) 822-4440
Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00-3:45 at the Grove Cafe

I work primarily in theoretical cognitive neuroscience, the metaphysics of mind and representation, and I have significant interests in linguistics and early modern. Recently I have focused on the emulation theory of representation, and spatial and temporal representation. These topics and others will be treated in more detail in The Machinery of Mindedness, my in-progress book.

Michael Hardimon, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Chicago, 1985
Office: HSS 8084 Phone: (858) 822-0473
Office Hours: Monday Noon-1:00pm; Friday 1:00-2:00pm and by appointment

Michael Hardimon's research focuses on post-Kantian philosophy: Hegel's social and political philosophy; Nietzsche's moral philosophy and moral psychology; and racial identity.

Monte Johnson, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Toronto, 2003
Office: HSS 7054 Phone (858) 822-4515
Office Hours: Wednesdays 3:00-5:00pm and by appointment

Monte Johnson teaches classical and hellenistic philosophy. His research focuses on Aristotle and Democritus, and their immense subsequent influence on philosophy and science. He is currently working on a reconstruction of Aristotle's lost work the Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy).

Dana Nelkin, Ph.D. Email Web
University of California, Los Angeles, 1995
Office: HSS 8004 Phone: (858) 822-0472
Office Hours: TBA

I work mainly in moral psychology, ethics, and philosophy of action.

Samuel Rickless, Ph.D. Email Web
University of California, Los Angeles, 1996
Office: HSS 8009 Phone: (858) 822-4910
Office Hours: Tuesday 12:00-1:00pm (HSS); Tuesday 1:00-2:00pm (Solis) and by appointment

My interests are primarily in ancient philosophy (particularly Plato), early modern philosophy (particularly Locke and Berkeley), ethics, and jurisprudence.

Donald Rutherford, Ph.D. Email Web
University of California, Berkeley, 1988
Office: HSS 8046 Phone: (858) 534-6802
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 3:30pm-4:30 pm and by appointment

I work mainly on early modern philosophy and on the reception of ancient philosophy in the early modern period. Other areas of interest are Kant's critical philosophy and its development, and Nietzsche.

Gila Sher, Ph.D. Email Web
Columbia University, 1989
Office: HSS 8042 Phone: (858) 534-8504
Office Hours: TBA

I do research in epistemology, metaphysics (truth) & the philosophy of logic. Current topics include: Epistemology - "epistemic friction", foundation without foundationalism, new directions in Quinean epistemology. Truth - the possibility of a substantive theory of truth, unity & plurality of truth, nature of correspondence. Philosophy of Logic - the problem of foundation, logic & reality, structuralism in logic.

Clinton Tolley, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Chicago, 2007
Office: HSS 8061 Phone: (858) 822-2686
Office Hours: Thursday 1:30-3:30pm and by appointment

I work primarily on the history of modern European philosophy (especially German Idealism, Anglo-Austrian anti-Idealism, and Phenomenology), with a focus on topics in theoretical philosophy (in particular: philosophy of logic and mathematics, ontology, and theory of knowledge). I also work on more recent French philosophy, especially its (critique of) metaphysics and its semantics.

Eric Watkins, Ph.D. Email Web
University of Notre Dame, 1994
Office: HSS 8018 Phone: (858) 822-0082
Office Hours: Monday 9:30-11:00pm and by appointment

My research focuses on Kant's theoretical philosophy and its place within modern philosophy and science. I am also interested in early modern philosophy (esp. Leibniz), German Idealism and the history of philosophy of science.

Christian Wüthrich, Ph.D., Email Web
University of Pittsburgh, 2006
Office HSS 8047 Phone (858) 534-6548
Office Hours: None

My research focuses on foundational issues in physics, partiularly in general relativity and quantum gravity. I am also working on the implications of philosophy of physics for general philosophy of science and metaphysics, including issues such as space and time, persistence, laws of nature, determinism, and causation.

UCSD Philosophy Affiliates

Henry Allison, Ph.D. Email - Emeritus

Henry went to Yale University as an undergraduate and received his B.A. in Philosophy in 1959. He did his M.A. at Columbia University in a joint program in Religion with the Union Theological Seminary in 1961. He then received his Ph.D. at the New School for Social Research in 1964. His dissertation was titled, "Lessing and the Enlightenment: A Study of G.E. Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and of its Place within the Context of Eighteenth Century Thought." Henry's areas of specialization include Kant, Spinoza, German idealism, eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophy. Henry was a Philosophy Professor at UCSD from 1973-94, Department Chair from 1978-1982 and a Research Professor from 1995-97. His latest publication is a revised and enlarged edition of KantÕs Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (2004).

Edward Lee, Ph.D. Email - Emeritus

Edward received his B.A. in Philosophy at Cornell University in 1956, studying Wittgenstein with Norman Malcolm and Rogers Albritton, and Greek with Friedrich Solmsen. After two years in the Army, he received a Ph.D. at Princeton University, writing a thesis on Plato under Gregory Vlastos and Richard Rorty. He taught at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1961 to 1968, then at the University of Texas at Austin from 1969 to 1971, and finally here at UCSD from 1971 to 1996. Since then, he has also taught briefly at the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 and held the Knapp Visiting Chair at the University of San Diego in Spring 2008. Since leaving UCSD, Ed has mainly enjoyed being retired and working on a book about Plato's Symposium.

Frederick Olafson, Ph.D. Email - Emeritus

Fred's philosophical interests are in ethics and social philosophy and philosophy of mind. Fred received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1951. His thesis was titled, "A Study in the Physicalistic Theory of Mind." His influences are Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Husserl. Some of his major works include, Society, Law and Morality (1961), Justice and Social Policy (1961), Principles and Persons: An Ethical Interpretation of Existentialism (1967), Ethics and Twentieth Century Thought (1973), The Dialectic of Action: A Philosophical Interpretation of History and the Humanities (1979), Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind (1987), and What Is a Human Being? A Heideggerian View (1995). He has a book forthcoming in 2008 titled Humanism & Philosophy: The Relationship Past, Present and Future.

Avrum Stroll, Ph.D. Email - Emeritus

Avrum received his Ph.D. from UC, Berkeley. He joined the Philosophy Department as a professor in 1963 and became chair in 1965 and 1968. His areas of specialization are philosophy of language, epistemology, history of 20th century analytic philosophy, and Wittgenstein studies. He is the author and co-author of twenty books and about 150 articles. Seven of the books were co-authored with Richard H. Popkin. Avrum's latest publications are "Searle on Knowledge, Certainty and Skepticism" in Searle's Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, "Philosophy in the Future" in Rescher Studies, and Much Ado About Non-Existence: Fiction and Reference (with A.P. Martinich, University of Texas at Austin). His forthcoming works for 2008 include "Richard Popkin and Philosophy Made Simple" in Essays in Honor of Richard Popkin, "Metaphysics Revived" in A Companion to Philosophy, and MooreÕs Paradox Revisited. Avrum has also written referee reports for Cambridge University Press and for Blackwell Pubishing. He has also written reviews for Mind and for the Internet Publications in Philosophy.