About the Department
The Department of Philosophy at Florida State University was organized in September 1965, following the dissolution of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies into two distinct academic programs, the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Religion. Effective that same year, the Department of Philosophy implemented its bachelor's and master's degree programs, and instituted for the first time in the state of Florida a doctoral degree program in Philosophy. In 2018, the Department of Philosophy started the FSU Experimental Philosophy Research Group, consisting of philosophers and scientists from around the world.
The department hosts the annual Werkmeister Conference (recent topics include Debunking Arguments, Cosmopolitanism, Form & Function in Biology, and Folk Concepts), the annual Minorities in Philosophy Conference, the Minds Online Conference, the annual Florida State University Free Will, Responsibility, and Agency Conference, the bi-annual UF-FSU Philosophy conference, a Colloquium Series, a Friday Lunchtime Talk series, various reading groups, a graduate student writing group and FSU’s public philosophy series, Brain Freeze. In addition, the department features the Bayles Ethics Lectures and various Departmental Workshops. Further, the department publishes Social Theory and Practice, a leading journal in social and political philosophy founded by the department in 1970, and Berkeley Studies, a web-based journal dedicated to promoting the scholarly understanding of the life and philosophy of George Berkeley.
The department has also been privileged to be the home of the generously funded Big Questions in Free Will Project and Philosophy and Science of Self-Control Project. These projects have funded dozens of research grants, multiple series of conferences, and many publications.
The department is committed to maintaining an exceptionally strong faculty, and new appointments are made regularly. The faculty has a diverse set of interests, with special strengths in ancient and modern philosophy, ethics, logic, action theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of biology.