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Epistemology & 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.  Additional resources can be found on our LEMMings site.

Core Faculty

Sanford Goldberg

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

Jennifer Lackey

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

Peter van Elswyk

(Philosophy): The epistemology of testimony, norms of assertion, contextualism and invariantism, inquiry, personal ontology, scientific laws

Baron Reed

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

Additional Faculty

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

Sean Ebels Duggan

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

Corey Barnes

(Philosophy): Africana Philosophy, philosophy of race, social and political philosophy

Lance Rips

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

Sandy Zabell 

(Statistics): probabilistic epistemology

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

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

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

Grad course: “Epistemology” (Reed, Lackey)

Grad course:  “Metaphysics” (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Belief" (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: “Contextualism and Invariantism” (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Descartes" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Early Modern Belief and Doubt" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Epistemic Agency" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Epistemic Normativity" (Reed)

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

Grad Seminar: "Epistemology of Emotions" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Fallibilism" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: "Group Epistemology" (Lackey)

Grad Seminar: “Higher-Order Evidence” (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: "History of Skepticism" (Reed)

Grad Seminar: “New Work on Speech Acts” (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: “Normative Clash: The Epistemic and the Interpersonal” (Goldberg)

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

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