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This fall, the Philosophy Department welcomes Dr. Elyse Oakley in the role of Assistant Professor. Dr. Oakley’s research specializes in philosophical issues in health and healthcare, with particular emphasis on mental health. I am especially interested in the nature of mental disorders—my work focuses on whether we can provide an account of these disorders that adequately captures both the normative and metaphysical elements central to them. Areas of Concentration: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Science

This fall she will be teaching General Ethics.

For the Fall 2023 semester we are welcoming Dr. Justin Caouette as a VAP Faculty member. Dr. Caouette has an active research program in many areas of ethics and applied ethics including: the nature of moral obligation; moral responsibility, the reactive attitudes; agency, punishment, enhancement in sport, psychiatric disorders and agency, achievement, and virtue theory. He also has a long-standing research program in the free will debate where he focuses on the moral ramifications of hard incompatibilism. The working title of the project is ‘Free Will and Why it Matters’. There, he connects various moral concepts to different notions of free will in an effort to uncover which concepts rely on a notion of free will and what that notion amounts to. Roughly, he argues that we would lose quite a bit if it turned out that we do not have free will given the role the concept plays in understanding our relationships and our role within them.

This fall, the Philosophy Department welcomes Dr. Robert Miner in the role of Full Professor. Dr. Miner’s research specializes in Emotions and Passions, The Virtues, Philosophical Psychology, Theories of History, and Conceptions of the Self. This fall he will be teaching general ethics and medieval philosophy.