Faculty at a glance

Bradley Armour-Garb philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, philosophical logic
Rachel Cohon ethics, history of ethics, philosophy of action
Jason D'Cruz ethics, especially moral psychology
Lisa Fuller applied ethics, political philosophy, feminism, philosophy of law
Kristen Hessler global justice, agricultural bioethics
Robert Howell Kant, history of modern philosophy, philosophy of art
P.D. Magnus philosophy of science
Jon Mandle [chair] political philosophy, ethics, and their history
Ron McClamrock philosophy of mind and psychology
Robert Meyers epistemology, empiricism, pragmatism
Nathan Powers ancient philosophy
Bonnie Steinbock bioethics, genetics and reproduction
Adjunct Instructors
Emeritus Faculty

Faculty office hours

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Faculty bios

Permanent Faculty:

Bradley Armour-Garb Associate Professor, received his PhD from CUNY and is a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. His primary interests are in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and metaphysics, though recently he has also been working in epistemology, where he has developed a version of contextualism without pragmatic encroachment. Much of his work has regarded truth and paradox. For a complete list of his papers and books, see his website.

e-mail: armrgrb at albany.edu
armour-garb.posterous.com/

Rachel Cohon Professor, received her PhD from U.C.L.A. Her fields of interest are ethics, the philosophy of action, and the history of ethics. She is the author of Hume's Morality: Feeling and Fabrication (Oxford University Press, 2008), a book reinterpreting Hume's meta-ethics and virtue ethics. She has also written a number of articles on Hume's moral and political philosophy and theory of the passions, and on systematic topics related to normative reasons for action. She edited a volume of articles on Hume's ethics, Hume: Moral and Political Philosophy (2001), and wrote the entry on Hume's moral and political philosophy in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. She is also interested in applied ethics and wrote the article on ethical issues pertaining to disability for the Encyclopedia of Bioethics (2003). She teaches graduate courses in moral theory, including such topics as consequentialism vs. deontology vs. virtue ethics, moral realism, the normativity of ethics, and eighteenth century moral philosophy.

e-mail: rcohon at albany.edu
website: www.albany.edu/philosophy/cohon

Jason D'Cruz Assistant Professor, received his PhD from Brown University. Prior to that, he worked at the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, and taught at Zhejiang Institute of Science and Technology in Hangzhou, China. His present research focuses on a constellation of questions relating to the imagination in ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. He is also interested in topics in bioethics (particular patient autonomy and informed consent) and political philosophy (particularly the political obligations of refugees). He teaches courses in ethics and aesthetics.

e-mail: jdcruz at albany.edu
website: www.jasondcruz.com

Lisa Fuller Assistant Professor, received her PhD from the University of Toronto. From Sept. 2006 - July 2008 she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sheffield. Her main areas of interest are applied ethics (especially global justice), political philosophy, feminism and philosophy of law. She has published on various aspects of global justice, including the obligations of international aid agencies to both beneficiaries and donors.

e-mail: lfuller at albany.edu
website: www.albany.edu/philosophy/fuller

Kristen Hessler Assistant Professor, received her PhD from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on political philosophy (especially issues in global justice, human rights, and international law) and bioethics (with a focus on environmental and agricultural issues). She has published articles on human rights law, international justice, and ethical issues concerning biotechnology in agriculture. She teaches courses in ethics, applied ethics, political philosophy, and feminist philosophy.

e-mail: khessler at albany.edu

Robert Howell Professor, received his PhD from the University of Michigan. His research and teaching focus on the history of modern philosophy (especially Kant), analytical metaphysics, and aesthetics. He is particularly interested in questions about our representation of and reference to objects, as these questions emerge in the Critique of Pure Reason and related works and in the philosophy of art. He has published essays on Kant's theoretical philosophy and is the author of Kant's Transcendental Deduction (1992). He also has published on representation in the arts and on fictional objects. He teaches graduate courses in Kant, nineteenth century philosophy, aesthetics, and metaphysics. He has held ACLS and NEH grants and in 1982-83 was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies (and a visitor, fall 1983 and summer 2006). During 2007-08 he held a Fulbright fellowship at Moscow State University, where he taught and did research on Kant and on aesthetics.

e-mail: bobh at albany.edu

P.D. Magnus Associate Professor, received his PhD from UC San Diego. His primary research is in the philosophy of science, motivated by a fallibilist but non-sceptical conception of scientific knowledge. Much of his work has addressed underdetermination and natural kinds. He also has interests in the history of philosophy, especially Thomas Reid and C.S. Peirce. He is the author of Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds: From Planets to Mallards (2012) as well as dozens of articles. A complete list of his publications is available on his website.

e-mail: pmagnus at albany.edu
website: www.fecundity.com/job

Jon Mandle Department Chair and Professor, received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. His primary interests are in political philosophy and ethics and their history. He is the author of Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (2009), Global Justice (2006), What's Left of Liberalism? An Interpretation and Defense of Justice as Fairness (2000). He has published articles on the work of John Rawls, Rousseau's political philosophy, globalization, naturalism, and other topics. He teaches courses on contemporary ethical and political philosophy, global justice, 17th-19th century ethical theory, and the history of political philosophy. He is also a contributor to the blog crookedtimber.org.

e-mail: mandle at albany.edu

Ron McClamrock Associate Professor, received his PhD from M.I.T. He works in the philosophy of psychology, including the foundations of artificial intelligence and cognitive science, as well as more broadly in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. He is the author of Existential Cognition: Computational Minds in the World (1995) which argues for the centrality of interactivity with the world for a scientific theory of mind. He also teaches and writes on higher-level causation and explanatory pluralism in the sciences, bounded rationality, and the relationship between phenomenology and the sciences of mind.

e-mail: ron at albany.edu
website: www.albany.edu/~ron

Robert Meyers Professor, received his PhD from the State University of New York, Buffalo. He is interested in the theory of knowledge, and the history of modern empiricism, especially American pragmatism and Hume. He is currently working on Peirce's view of knowledge and realism. His publications include: The Likelihood of Knowledge (1988) and extensive work on topics including the philosophy of CS Peirce.

e-mail: rgm95 at albany.edu
website: rgm95.tripod.com/homepage/

Nathan Powers Assistant Professor, received his PhD from Princeton University. His research focuses on ancient philosophy, and he has published articles on various aspects of Greek philosophy in the Hellenistic period.

e-mail: npowers at albany.edu

Bonnie Steinbock Professor, received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in biomedical ethics, particularly reproduction and genetics. She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center and has served on a number of working groups in the United States and Europe. Recent articles have been on advance directives, dementia, and physician-assisted death, the appeal to nature, and wrongful life and procreative decisions. She is the author of Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses (2011), and the editor or co-editor of several books, including Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine, now in its 8th edition (2012). She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in ethics and bioethics. She is the director of the interdisciplinary minor in bioethics.

e-mail: steinbock at albany.edu
website: www.albany.edu/philosophy/steinbock

Adjunct Instructors:

Ted Mehl: wmehl at albany.edu

Emeritus Faculty:

Robert Garvin, Associate Professor Emeritus

e-mail: garvermont at yahoo.com

Josiah Gould, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus

e-mail: GouldAristotle at aol.com

John Kekes, Professor Emeritus

e-mail: jonkekes at nycap.rr.com

Berel Lang, Professor Emeritus

e-mail: Berel.Lang at trincoll.edu

Harold Morick, Associate Professor Emeritus

e-mail: vanderluyd at aol.com

William Reese, Professor Emeritus

e-mail: reesewl at cs.com

Kenneth Stern, Professor Emeritus

e-mail: stern at albany.edu

Anthony Ungar, Associate Professor Emeritus

e-mail: amu78 at albany.edu

Naomi Zack, Professor Emeritus

e-mail: nzack at darkwing.uoregon.edu