Areas of Research

Our department has a wide range of research interests and we also work in areas that intersect with disciplines outside philosophy. Here are some of our areas of specialization.

Feminist Philosophy

The University of Guelph has the largest concentration of feminist philosophers in Canada. In 2019 we hosted the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy (CSWIP).  

Faculty

Representative Publications

• Samantha Brennan (2020), "Feminism's Love/Hate Relationship with Consequentialism," in the Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism, Douglas Portmore, ed. Oxford University Press. 
• Monique Deveaux (2006), Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States. Oxford University Press.
• Monique Deveaux (2016), "Exploitation, Structural Injustice, and the Cross-Border Trade in Human Ova," Journal of Global Ethics vol. 12(1): 48-68.
• Karyn Freedman (2014), One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery. University of Chicago Press.
• Maya Goldenberg (2013),"How can Feminist Theories of Evidence Assist Clinical Reasoning and Decision-Making?" Social Epistemology.
• Karen Houle (2014), Responsibility, Complexity and Abortion: Toward a New Image of Ethical Thought. Lexington Books.
• Patricia Sheridan (2018), "Virtue, Affection, and the Social Good: The Moral Philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn and the Bluestockings", Philosophy Compass 13.3: 1-11.

Philosophy of Science and Medicine

Several Guelph philosophers have ongoing research collaborations with scientists in the departments of Psychology, Integrative Biology, and Computer Science.

Faculty

Don Dedrick-  Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Psychology
Maya Goldenberg - Feminist issues in Philosophy of Medicine and Philosophy of Science
Stefan Linquist - Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Science
Gus Skorburg - AI Ethics, Moral Psychology
Andrew Wayne - Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Science
Ryan Gregory (Adjunct) - Evolutionary Biology, Genomics

Representative Publications

• Don Dedrick (2020), "Colour, colour language, and culture." Routledge Handbook to the Philosophy of Colour. Ed. D. Brown and F. Macpherson. Routledge.
• Maya Goldenberg (2021) Vaccine Hesitancy: Public Trust, Expertise and the War on Science. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Stefan Linquist (2019), "Why ecology and evolution occupy distinct epistemic niches". Philosophical Topics 47: 143-166. .
• Skorburg, J.A. (2017), "Lessons and new directions for extended cognition from social and personality psychology." Philosophical Psychology, 30(4), 458-480.  
• Andrew Wayne (2017), "Explanatory Integration," European Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8(3): 347-365.
• Linquist, S. Gregory, T.R. Elliott, T.A. Saylor, B. Kremer, S.C. Cottenie, K. (2016). Yes! There are resilient generalizations (or "laws") in ecology. Quarterly Review of Biology, 91(2): 119-131.
• Newman, J.A. Varner, G. and Linquist, S. (2017). Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Cambridge University Press.

Ethics, Social, and Political Philosophy

Our faculty investigate issues in political philosophy and ethics from a variety of traditions. Our department is host for the Canadian Research Chair in Ethics & Global Social Change. We are the home of the Journal of Value Inquiry. 

Faculty

Representative Publications: 

• Samantha Brennan (2018), “The Structure of Thresholds for Options,” Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Chapter 9 in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 8, Mark Timmons.
• Monique Deveaux (2021), Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements. Oxford.
• John Hacker-Wright (2018), Philippa Foot on Goodness and Virtue. Palgrave MacMillan.
• Karen Houle (2015), "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics as Extension or Becoming?" in Symposium 19,2: 37-56.
• Omid Payrow-Shabani (2017), "The Ineliminability of the Idea of Progress," Value Inquiry, Vol. 53, No. 4, 217, 663-680.
• Skorburg, J.A. (2019), "Where are virtues? Philosophical Studies, 176(9), 2331-2349.

History of Philosophy

Faculty

Peter Eardley - Medieval Philosophy, Ethics
John Russon - Phenomenology, Ancient Philosophy
Patricia Sheridan - Early Modern Philosophy, Early Modern Women Philosophers, History of Ethics

Representative Publications

• Peter Eardley (2021), "Medieval Theories of Conscience," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Peter Eardley (2020), "Rhetoric and the Epistemic Status of Theology in the Late-Thirteenth Century," in The Origin and Nature of Language and Logic: Perspectives in Medieval Islamic, Jewish and Christian Thought. Eds. N. Germann and S. Harvey (Turhout: Brepols).
• John Russon (2020), Adult Life: Aging, Responsibility, and the Pursuit of Happiness, (Albany: State University of New York Press).
• John Russon (2020) "To Account for Appearances: Phenomenological Method and Existential Change in Aristotle and Plato," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2020.1796515.
• Patricia Sheridan (2018), "Virtue, Affection, and the Social Good: The Moral Philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn and the Bluestockings", Philosophy Compass 13.3 (2018).

Philosophy of Mind and Language; Epistemology & Metaphysics

Our faculty are active in the philosophy of language, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Guelph is home to the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Faculty

Andrew Bailey - Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics & Epistemology
Don Dedrick - Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Psychology
Karyn Freedman - Epistemology, Feminist Philosophy
Mark McCullagh - Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind

Representative Publications

• Andrew Bailey (2014), ""Horgan and Tienson on Phenomenology and Intentionality." Philosophical Studies 167: 313–326.
• Don Dedrick (2015), "Some philosophical questions about colour." Handbook of colour psychology. Andrew J. Elliot, Mark Fairchild and Anna Franklin, (Eds.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Karyn Freedman (2017), "Quasi-evidentialism: Interests, Justification and Epistemic Virtue,” Episteme, Vol. 14, No.2, 147-160.
• Mark McCullagh (2017), "Scare-quoting and incorporation." In The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation, edited by Paul Saka and Michael Johnson, 3–34. Dordrecht: Springer.