Exploring the Diverse Research Landscape of the UCLA Philosophy Department
The UCLA Philosophy Department stands as a vibrant hub of intellectual inquiry, fostering cutting-edge research across a wide spectrum of philosophical domains. From core areas like epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics to specialized fields such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy, the department's faculty members are engaged in innovative and impactful scholarship. This article aims to provide an overview of the diverse research interests and contributions of the UCLA Philosophy Department faculty.
Ethical and Moral Philosophy: Navigating Norms and Values
Several faculty members contribute significantly to the field of ethical and moral philosophy, exploring a range of topics from Kantian ethics to contemporary moral issues. Their work delves into the foundations of morality, the nature of obligation, and the complexities of moral judgment.
One area of focus is Kantian ethics, with faculty exploring various aspects of Kant's moral philosophy. This includes examining the challenges of Kantian beneficence, as seen in "Making Others’ Ends our Own: The Challenges of Kantian Beneficence,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, vol. They also explore the role of motives in ethical action, as explored in “Being Prepared: From Duties to Motives,” in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, vol. 9, ed. Faculty also consider the application of Kantian ethics to contemporary issues, such as the moral status of animals in “We are Not Alone: A Place for Animals in Kant’s Ethics” in Kant on Persons and Agency, ed.
Other works in this area include:
- "Religion and the Highest Good: Speaking to the Heart of Even the Best of Us" in Kant on Freedom and Spontaneity, ed.
- "A Mismatch of Methods," in Derek Parfit’s On What Matters, Volume II, ed.
- "Embracing Kant’s Formalism," Kantian Review, vol.
- "The Difference that Ends Make," in Perfecting Virtue: Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics, ed.
- "Morality and Moral Theory," John Dewey Lecture, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 83, No.
- "A Habitat for Humanity," in Kant’s Idea for A Universal History, eds. A. O Rorty and J.
- "Contingency at Ground Level," in Moral Universalism and Pluralism, eds.
- "Reasoning to Obligation," Inquiry 49 no.
- "Bootstrapping," in Contours of Agency: Essays for Harry Frankfurt, eds. S. Buss & L.
- "Rethinking Kant?s Hedonism," in Facts and Values: Essays for Judith Thomson, eds. R. Stalnaker, R. Wedgwood, & A.
- "Morality and Everyday Life," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, Nov.
- "Training to Autonomy: Kant and the Question of Moral Education," in Philosophers on Education, ed.A. O.
- "A Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends," in Reclaiming the History of Ethics, eds. A. Reath, C. Korsgaard, & B.
- "Making Room for Character," in Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, eds. S. Engstrom & J.
- "Pluralism and the Community of Moral Judgment," in Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, ed.
- "Could It Be Worth Thinking About Kant on Sex and Marriage?" in A Mind of One’s Own, eds.
Mind, Language, and Cognition: Exploring the Foundations of Thought
Another prominent area of research within the UCLA Philosophy Department is the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and cognitive science. Faculty members working in these areas investigate the nature of mental representation, the relationship between mind and brain, and the foundations of language and meaning.
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One faculty member's research focuses on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Their current research investigates the nature of mental representation, often drawing on cognitive science, computability theory, probability theory, and other neighboring disciplines.
Key publications in this area include:
- “Non-Factive Kolmogorov Conditionalization,” The Review of Symbolic Logic 18 (2025): pp.
- “Bayesian Defeat of Certainties,” Synthese 203 (2024): pp.
- “Neural Implementation of (Approximate) Bayesian Inference,” Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World, eds.
- “Reflecting on Diachronic Dutch Books,” Noûs 57 (2023): pp.
- “An Improved Dutch Book Theorem for Conditionalization,” Erkenntnis 87 (2022): pp.
- “Bayesian Modeling of the Mind: From Norms to Neurons,” WIREs Cognitive Science 12 (2021): p.
- “On the Proper Formulation of Conditionalization,” Synthese 198 (2021): pp.
- “Reifying Representations,” What Are Mental Representations?, eds. Joulia Smorthchkova, Tobias Schlicht, and Krzysztof Dolega. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020): pp.
- “How Particular is Perception?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2020): pp. 721-727.
- “A Realist Perspective on Bayesian Cognitive Science,” Inference and Consciousness, eds. Anders Nes and Timothy Chan. Routledge (2020): pp.
- “Perceptual Co-Reference,” The Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (2020): pp.
- “Motor Computation,” The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, eds. Matteo Colombo and Mark Sprevak. Routledge (2018): pp.
- “A Dutch Book Theorem and Converse Dutch Book Theorem for Kolmogorov Conditionalization,” The Review of Symbolic Logic 11 (2018): pp.
- “Levels of Computational Explanation,” Philosophy and Computing: Essays in Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, Logic, and Ethics, ed. Thomas Powers.
- “An Interventionist Approach to Psychological Explanation,” Synthese 195 (2018): pp.
- “From Ockham to Turing - and Back Again,” Turing 100: Philosophical Explorations of the Legacy of Alan Turing, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History, eds. Alisa Bokulich and Juliet Floyd. Springer (2017): pp.
- “Maps in the Head?”, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, eds. Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck. Routledge (2018): pp.
- “Bayesian Sensorimotor Psychology,” Mind and Language 31 (2016): pp.
- “The Representational Foundations of Computation,” Philosophia Mathematica 23 (2015): pp.
- “Some Epistemological Ramifications of the Borel-Kolmogorov Paradox,” Synthese 192 (2015): pp.
- “Bayesian Perceptual Psychology,” The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception, ed. Mohan Matthen. Oxford University Press (2015): pp.
- “Computational Modeling of the Mind: What Role for Mental Representation?”, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 6 (2014): pp.
- “Can Perception Halt the Regress of Justifications?”, Ad Infinitum, eds. Peter Klein and John Turri. Oxford University Press (2014): pp.
- “The Causal Relevance of Content to Computation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2014): pp.
- “Perceptual Constancies and Perceptual Modes of Presentation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2014): pp. 468-476.
- “Against Structuralist Theories of Computational Implementation,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (2013): pp.
- “Rationality as a Constitutive Ideal,” A Companion to Davidson, eds. Ernie Lepore and Kirk Ludwig. Wiley-Blackwell (2013): pp.
- “Millikan on Honeybee Navigation and Communication,” Millikan and Her Critics, eds. Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury, and Kenneth Williford. Wiley-Blackwell (2013): pp.
- “How to Integrate Representation into Computational Modeling, and Why We Should,” The Journal of Cognitive Science 13 (2012): pp.
- “Are Computational Transitions Sensitive to Semantics?”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2012): pp.
- “Copeland and Proudfoot on Computability,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science A 43 (2012): pp.
- “Predication and Cartographic Representation,” Synthese 169 (2009): pp.
- “Shifting the Burden of Proof?”, The Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2009): pp.
- “Epistemic and Dialectical Regress,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (2009): pp.
- “Assertion and its Constitutive Norms,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (2009): pp.
- “Chrysippus’s Dog as a Case Study in Non-Linguistic Cognition,” The Philosophy of Animal Minds, ed. Robert Lurz. Cambridge University Press (2009): pp.
- “Cognitive Maps and the Language of Thought,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2009): pp.
- “A Linguistic Reason for Truthfulness,” Truth and Speech Acts, eds. Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart. Routledge (2007): pp.
- “Church’s Thesis and the Conceptual Analysis of Computability,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 48 (2007): pp.
- “Bayesianism,” Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, eds. Michael Frank and Asifa Majid.
- “The Language of Thought Hypothesis,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published in Summer 2019; substantive revision in Winter 2023), ed.
- “The Computational Theory of Mind,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published in Fall 2015; substantive revisions in Spring 2020 and Winter 2024), ed.
- “Review of Dominic Gregory’s Showing, Sensing, and Seeming,” Mind 124 (2015): pp.
- “Review of Gary Hatfield’s Perception and Cognition,” The Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2011): pp.
- “Convention,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (published in Fall 2007; substantive revisions in Fall 2011, Winter 2015, Summer 2019, and Spring 2024), ed.
- “Review of Christopher Gauker’s Words without Meaning,” The Philosophical Review 115 (2006): pp.
Furthermore, John Duff, a linguist, studies the process of language comprehension, using experimental methods to explore how humans go from sequences of words to an understanding of what a speaker was trying to communicate. He has a particular focus on how we accomplish this task differently across the world’s languages, and he frequently collaborates with speakers of Zapotec languages in California and Oaxaca.
History of Philosophy: Reinterpreting the Great Thinkers
The history of philosophy is another area of strength within the UCLA Philosophy Department. Faculty members engage in rigorous historical scholarship, reinterpreting the works of major philosophers and shedding new light on the development of philosophical thought.
Karolina Hübner, a philosopher, works primarily in the history of metaphysics and the history of philosophy of mind, and she is particularly interested in the history of idealism, intentionality and panpsychism. She is currently finishing a monograph on Spinoza’s philosophy of mind.
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Interdisciplinary Initiatives: Bridging Philosophy and Other Fields
The UCLA Philosophy Department also fosters interdisciplinary research and collaboration. Faculty members actively engage with scholars from other disciplines, bringing philosophical insights to bear on a wide range of social and cultural issues.
The Cultural Analysis and Social Ethics (CASE) Lab is a collaborative, experimental, and problem-centered space for bringing humanistic inquiry to bear on pressing questions of social justice. The lab is composed of an evolving team of faculty researchers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and affiliate scholars from outside UCLA. The “Clearing the Ground in EDI” (CGEDI) Project is a meta-study of the diversity industry funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Higher Learning initiative on race and racialization in the United States. Faculty Director: Professor Paul C. Paul C.
Aditya Bahl, works at the intersections of literary studies, political economy and anthropology, with a particular interest in the longue durée of South Asia. His current project recovers the lost fragments of small and underground magazines published in Punjab (India) during the Cold War.
Aliya Ram, studies the connections between social coercion and aesthetic innovation, especially in the modern literatures and cultures of the Global South. She is currently working on one project on literary address and another on the emergence of the refugee as an exemplary narrator. Her research centers the complexities of social identity, narratability and intersubjectivity as illuminated by acts of linguistic concealment. She will teach courses such as Narrating the Refugee; Other Englishes; Non-Reproductive Futures; and Opacity, Ambiguity, Misdirection.
Ana Ugarte, examines the intersections between Health Humanities and Caribbean and Latin/x American studies. She analyzes literary and cultural representations of illness and disability through biopolitical theory and posthumanism.
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Jonathan Winnerman, studies kingship and sacred power in ancient Egypt and from a comparative perspective. He specializes in the texts and visual culture of the New Kingdom through Late Periods, and teaches all phases of the ancient Egyptian language, including Greco-Roman and Enigmatic hieroglyphs.
Doctoral Program: Shaping the Next Generation of Philosophers
The UCLA Philosophy Department is committed to training the next generation of philosophers. The department's doctoral program is highly regarded, attracting talented students from around the world. The program provides students with rigorous training in core philosophical areas, as well as opportunities to specialize in their areas of interest.
The department's Ph.D. graduates have gone on to successful careers in academia and other fields. The list of Ph.D. graduates, reaching back to 2000, includes: Devon Page, Ph.D., Esther Nikbin, Ph.D., Tim Buchanan, Ph.D., Tristen Cardwell, Ph.D., Kyle Scott, Ph.D., Daniel Ranweiler, Ph.D., Catherine Hochman, Ph.D., Nefeli Ralli, Ph.D., David Jonathan Pederson, Ph.D., Aaron West, Ph.D., Torsten Odland, Ph.D., Sevcan Gugumcu, Ph.D., Saraliza Anzaldúa, Ph.D., Piera Maurizio, Ph.D., Zachary Biondi, Ph.D., Ian Boon, Ph.D., Christian De Leon, Ph.D., Kim Johnston, Ph.D., Melissa Retwka, Ph.D., Ayana Samuel, Ph.D., Jenna Donohue, Ph.D., Andrew Flynn, Ph.D., Emily Page, Ph.D., Ally Peabody Smith, Ph. D., Trent Teti, Ph.D., Milo Crimi, Ph.D., William Kowalsky, Ph.D., Jordan Wallace-Wolf, J.D. 2017, Ph.D., Gabriel Dupre, Ph.D., Michael Hansen, Ph.D., Antti Hiltunen, Ph.D., Gabbrielle M. Johnson, Ph.D., Andrew Lavin, Ph.D., Lauren Schaeffer, Ph.D., Michael Skiles, Ph.D., Eric Tracy, Ph.D., Jonathan Gingerich, Ph.D., Brian Hutler, J.D. 2014, Ph.D., Kevin Lande, Ph.D., Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò, Ph.D., Sabine Tsuruda, J.D. 2016, Ph.D., Laura Gillespie, Ph.D., Skef Iterum, Ph.D., William Reckner, Ph.D., Tamar Weber, Ph.D., Gregory Antill, Ph.D., Lee-Ann Chae, Ph.D., Lindsey Chambers, Ph.D., Ashley Feinsinger, Ph.D., David Attanasio, Ph.D., Justin Jennings, Ph.D., Andrew Jewell, Ph.D., Aaron Mead, Ph.D., Ingrid Steinberg, Ph.D., Joshua Blander, Ph.D., Denis Bühler, Ph.D., David Friedell, Ph.D., Adam Masters, Ph.D., Paul Nichols, Ph.D., Janelle DeWitt, Ph.D., Jeffrey Helmreich, Ph.D., Rachel Johnson, Ph.D., Diane Kierce, Ph.D., Michael Lopez, Ph.D., Yannig Luthra, Ph.D., Youichi Matsusaka, Ph.D., Eliot Michaelson, Ph.D., Eileen Nutting, Ph.D., Gabriel Rabin, Ph.D., Ira Richardson, Ph.D., Luca Struble, Ph.D., Mandel Cabrera, Ph.D., Tilda Cvrkel, Ph.D., David Goldman, Ph.D., Sarah Jansen, Ph.D., Ari Lev, Ph.D., Jessica Pepp, Ph.D., Alexandru Radulescu, Ph.D., Stephen White, Ph.D., Sarah Coolidge, Ph.D., Kristina Gehrman, Ph.D., Christopher Ba-Thi Nguyen, Ph.D., Jesse Summers, Ph.D., Thomas Ward, Ph.D., Julie Wulfemeyer, Ph.D., Jorah Dannenberg, Ph.D., Sonny Elizondo, Ph.D., Robert Hughes, Ph.D., Dawn Starr, Ph.D., Ben Chan, Ph.D., Brent Kious, Ph.D. 2009, M.D., James Winter, Ph.D., Joe Hwang, Ph.D., Matthew Lockard, Ph.D., Erin Taylor, Ph.D., David Ebrey, Ph.D., Mikkel Gerken, Ph.D., Brad McHose, Ph.D., Collin O’Neil, Ph.D., Oliver James Rocha, Ph.D., Susan Castro, Ph.D., Phil Corkum, Ph.D., Homero Del Pino, Ph.D., Imran Razi, Ph.D., Katherine Dunlop, Ph.D., Dave Jensen, Ph.D., Margaret Scharle, Ph.D., Franklin Bruno, Ph.D., Jonathan Garthoff, Ph.D., Louis DeRosset, Ph.D., Stavroula Glezakos, Ph.D., Tim Hall, Ph.D., Larry Herzberg, Ph.D., Ben Caplan, Ph.D., Erin Eaker, Ph.D., Philip Nickel, Ph.D., Julie Tannenbaum, Ph.D., Roberta Ballarin, Ph.D., Paul Hovda, Ph.D., Daniel Krasner, Ph.D., Tim Bays, Ph.D., Keith Kaiser, Ph.D., Alexander Rajczi, Ph.D.
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