Research

Professor Cokelet's research focuses on virtue, moral character, rational agency, and responsibility. He has interests in analytic, historical, cross-cultural, and empirical discussions of these topics.

Representative Publications

• Schwitzgebel, E., Cokelet, B., & Singer, P. (2020). Do ethics classes influence student behavior? Case study: Teaching the ethics of eating meat. Cognition, 203, 104397.
• "Dispositions, Character, and the Value of Acts" in Christian Miller, R. Michael Furr, Angela Knobel & William Fleeson (eds.), Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. Oxford University Press..
• "Buddhism, Confucianism, and Virtue Ethics" in European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 8 (1):187-214.
• "Virtue Ethics and the Demands of Social Morality" in Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 4.​​
• "Ideal Agency and the Possibility of Error" in Ethics, 118 (2):315-323.​

Professor Dorsey works on the nature and content of well-being, practical reason, and morality and the way in which these concepts interact.

Representative Publications

• “Moral Distinctiveness and Moral Inquiry” in Ethics.
• "Subjectivism without Desire” in Philosophical Review.
• “The Significance of a Life’s Shape” in Ethics.
• The Limits of Moral Authority, OUP.​​

Professor Eggleston’s research interests include contemporary forms of consequentialism, the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, expected-utility theory, and moral reasoning in judicial decision-making.

Representative Publications

• The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (co-edited with Dale E. Miller). Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life (co-edited with Dale E. Miller and David Weinstein). Oxford University Press, 2011.
• "Practical Equilibrium: A Way of Deciding What to Think about Morality." Mind, 119(475), 549–584.​

Professor Frykholm works on the British Moralists, with particular focus on Hume's first-order moral theory and philosophical issues that arise therein.

Representative Publications

• “The Ontology of Character Traits in Hume.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 42:sup1 (2012), 82-97.
• “A Humean Particularist Virtue Ethic.” Philosophical Studies. 172:8 (2015), 2171-2191.
• "Narrative and History in Hume's Moral Epistemology." Journal of Scottish Philosophy, forthcoming (14.1, Spring 2016).
• "Associative Virtues and Hume's Narrow Circle." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming.

Professor Jenkins is working on a book about Friedrich Nietzsche’s engagement with philosophical pessimism—the view that things are a lot worse than we typically take them to be. He is also interested in questions about self-consciousness and self-knowledge, truth and truthfulness, aesthetic experience, and philosophical methodology, especially as these issues are articulated in Nineteenth-Century German philosophy.

Representative Publications

• “Nietzsche’s Questions Concerning the Will to Truth.” Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 50 (2) (April 2012), 265-289.
• “Hegel’s Concept of Desire”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Jan. 2009), 103-130.

Professor Maley works on how the notions of computation and function are used to explain the way the mind/brain works in psychology and neuroscience. He is also interested in the nature of emotions—particularly guilt and shame—and how to understand their role in mentality.

Representative Publications

• “Is consciousness a spandrel?" Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1(2), 365–383, (2015)
• “The ontology of functional mechanisms." In Kaplan, D. M. (ed.) Integrating Neuroscience and Psychology, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• “Analog and digital, continuous and discrete," Philosophical Studies, 155(1), 117–131, (2011).

Professor Nutting's current research primarily examines constraints on mathematical cognition, both those imposed by philosophical considerations and those imposed by mathematical considerations. Her current projects also extend into related issues in the ontology of mathematics and in contemporary epistemology.

Representative Publications

• "To Bridge Gödel's Gap," forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.

Professor Robins works at the intersection of philosophy and psychology and she’s primarily interested in memory. Her interests include both the metaphysical requirements for remembering and the implications of various kinds of memory errors—including the kinds of errors we all make every day and those that scientists have recently discovered are possible in animals, too​.

Representative Publications

• "Optogenetics and the mechanism of false memory."Synthese, forthcoming.
• "Representing the past: memory traces and the causal theory of memory."Philosophical Studies, forthcoming.
• "Misremembering."Philosophical Psychology, forthcoming.

Professor Schulz is investigating (a) how and when evolutionary biological considerations can be useful for illuminating questions in other sciences (such as psychology, social science, and philosophy), and (b) how and when considerations from other sciences can be useful for illuminating questions in evolutionary biology​.

Representative Publications

• "Altruism, Egoism, or Neither: A Cognitive-Efficiency-Based Evolutionary Biological Perspective on Helping Behavior.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, forthcoming.
• "Firms, Agency, and Evolution.” Journal of Economic Methodology, forthcoming.
• "Niche Construction, Adaptive Preferences, and the Differences between Fitness and Utility.” Biology and Philosophy, 2014, 29: 315-335.
• "The Benefits of Rule Following: A New Account of the Evolution of Desires.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2013, 44: 595-603.
• "The Adaptive Importance of Cognitive Efficiency: An Alternative Theory of Why We Have Beliefs and Desires”; Biology and Philosophy, 2011, 26: 31-50.

Profssor Tuozzo's research has three major foci: the nature of argument in Platonic dialogue, moral psychology in Plato and Aristotle, and ancient theories of causation.

Representative Publications

• "‘Appearing Equal’ at Phaedo 74 B 4 – C 6: an Epistemic Interpretation" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 54 (2018) 1-26.
• “Grasping Moral Principles in Aristotle's Ethics” in Jan-Ivar Lindén (ed.), Aristotle on Logic and Nature. Peeters, forthcoming.
• “Aristotle and the Discovery of the Efficient Cause” in T. Schmalz (ed.), Oxford Philosophical Concepts. Efficient Causation. Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Plato’s Charmides. Positive Elenchus in a “Socratic” Dialogue. Cambridge University Press, 2011.