Epistemology and Metaphysics

Northwestern has a large and lively community of scholars working in epistemology and metaphysics. If you have any questions about the program, do not hesitate to contact one of the faculty members listed below. Additional resources can be found on our LEMMings site.

Core Faculty

Fabrizio Cariani

(Philosophy): epistemic rationality, decision theory, judgment aggregation, probabilistic epistemology

Sanford Goldberg

(Philosophy): reliabilism, internalism/externalism, the epistemology of testimony, self-knowledge, semantic responses to skepticism

Michael Glanzberg

(Philosophy) truth and paradox, as well as many issues currently discussed in metametaphysics (such as the nature of quantification and the status of unrestricted quantification)

Jennifer Lackey

(Philosophy): the epistemology of testimony, the epistemology of disagreement, norms of assertion, the value of knowledge, and the epistemology of memory

Peter Ludlow

(Philosophy): epistemic contextualism; the metaphysics of time

Baron Reed

(Philosophy): skepticism, fallibilism, certainty, the Gettier problem, contextualism and invariantism, history of epistemology; agency, personal identity

Jennifer Lackey in the audience at the Graduate Epistemology Conference.

April 2010.

Additional Faculty

Faculty with a very strong, secondary interest in epistemology and metaphysics:

Sean Ebels Duggan

(Philosophy): the epistemology of disagreement, the a priori

David Ebrey

(Philosophy): Ancient Greek Epistemology, theory of knowledge, the value of knowledge

Stefan Kaufmann

(Linguistics): epistemic modals

Lance Rips

(Psychology): Reasoning, epistemic modals, experimental philosophy (especially regarding ordinary judgments regarding personal identity, ontology, and persistence)

Sandy Zabell

(Statistics): probabilistic epistemology

Grad student Ezra Cook and Prof. Peter Ludlow at Michael Titelbaum's Epistemology Brownbag.

April 2010.

Recent Graduate Course Offerings in Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Related Fields

Grad course: “Philosophy of Mathematics” (Cariani, Ebels Duggan)

Grad course: "Logic and Anti-Realism" (Ebels Duggan)

Grad course: “Epistemology” (Reed, Lackey)

Grad course: “Metaphysics” (Reed, Ludlow)

Grad course: “Practical Reasoning and Choice” (Cariani)

Grad Seminar: “Contextualism and Invariantism” (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Fallibilism" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: “The Epistemology of Disagreement and Expertise” (Lackey)

Grad Seminar: "Reasoning and Rationality" (Cariani)

Grad Seminar: “Skepticism Ancient and Modern” (Reed)

Grad Seminar: “Social Epistemology: The Epistemology of Groups” (Lackey)

Grad Seminar: “Time: Semantics and Metaphysics” (Ludlow)

Grad Seminar: “Truth” (Glanzberg)
Grad Seminar: "Descartes" (Reed)
Grad Seminar: "Group Epistemology" (Lackey)
Grad Seminar: "Epistemic Value of Deliberation" (Cariani)