Recent Faculty Accomplishments

Our faculty actively publish and deliver talks around the world and receive top honors and awards.

Ben Caplan was visiting professor at Umeå University in Sweden in May, 2015. While there, he presented his paper, “The Extraordinary Impossibility of Sherlock Holmes,” a paper now forthcoming in the journal, Res Philosophica. Ben also co-authored a paper, “Brutal Identity, ” with Ohio State PhD graduate Cathleen Muller (now at Marist College), which appeared in print this year in the edited volume, Fictional Objects.

Justin D'Arms gave a keynote lecture in Geneva, where he spoke to approximately 500 faculty and graduate students at a conference held by the interdisciplinary International Society for Research on Emotions. Justin also presented at conferences in New Orleans, Montreal and Edinburgh, and was interviewed for a forthcoming profile in the journal, Emotion Researcher.

Lisa Downing adds to the list of international faculty talks: she spoke at a summer workshop in early modern philosophy at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver, Canada, as well as the Either Nordic Early Modern Philosophy Workshop, at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden; as well as giving talks at numerous domestic institutions. Additionally, Lisa's paper, “Locke’s Choice Between Materialism and Dualism,” was published this year in the edited collection, Locke and Leibniz on Substance and Identity.

When she wasn't busy organizing the Leibniz Society of North America Conference, Julia Jorati published four articles about Leibniz and his views on causation, free will, and desires and appetitions. . Julia also gave talks at the Spinoza-Leibniz Workshop at Michigan State University, the Central meeting of the American Philosophical Association Division Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and a colloquium at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

Robert Kraut published three articles in edited volumes on themes related to the work of Simon Blackburn, Wilfrid Sellars and Rudolf Carnap. Robert's current project, in collaboration with graduate student Aly Massof, is a critical study of the epistemics of aesthetic testimony. He presented portions of this work to the Aesthetics Work Group at the College of Charleston in November of this year. Next February, Robert will travel to the University of Oslo to deliver two lectures on pragmatism.  

Stewart Shapiro is spending autumn semester at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies on a project to study computability. Earlier this year, an article that Stewart coauthored with Ohio State PhD graduate Salvatore Florio (now a tenure-track faculty member at Kansas State University), “Set Theory, Type Theory, and Absolute Generality,” was published in Mind.

Declan Smithies received a research award from the Templeton Project, “New Insights in the Study of Mind,” to support work through the present semester on his project on the epistemic role of consciousness. Last summer, Declan was a Professorial Fellow at the London Institute of Philosophy.

He was keynote speaker at the Northwestern and Notre Dame Graduate Epistemology Conference, as well as, the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association Workshop, in addition to delivering numerous other talks and presentations throughout the United States, Canada, England and Norway.

Several of Declan’s papers were published this year, including, “Perception and the External World, ”Philosophical Studies; “Ideal Rationality and Logical Omniscience,” Synthese; and, “Reflection On: On Reflection,”Analysis.

William Taschek was keynote speaker at the 4th International Symposium on Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics: The Historical Roots of Analytic Philosophy, held in May at the Fluminese Federal University in Niteroi, Brazil. William's international professional travels continued the next month, when he delivered his paper, “Frege on Sense and the Normativity of Logic,” that the workshop on Sense-Identity and the Status of Definitions in Frege held at the University of Sterling in Scotland.

Neil Tennant won the Ivor Grattan Guiness Award -- awarded annually to the best paper published in the journal, History and Philosophy of Logic, for his paper “Aristotle’s Syllogistic and Core Logic.” This year saw the publication of Neil’s textbook, Introducing Philosophy: God, Mind, World and Logic, which has since been seen not only in the philosophy classroom, but on the coffee table in popular coffee shop, Boston Stoker. Neil also published several papers this year, among them, “A New Unified Account of Truth and Paradox,” which recently appeared in Mind.

Piers Norris Turner—who was awarded tenure this year—has been prolific in his contributions to scholarship on John Stuart Mill. His articles, “Rules and Right in Mill,” Journal of the History of Philosophy; “Punishment and Discretion in Mill’s Utilitarianism,” Utilitas; and, “Mill and the Liberal Rejection of Legal Moralism,”History of Philosophy Quarterly; all appeared in print in 2015. He currently is at work on a book on Mill’s moral and political philosophy, as well as co-editing, Public Reason in Political Philosophy: Classic Sources and Contemporary Commentaries, Routledge Press, to which he is contributing the chapter on Mill.