The Department of Philosophy has established a new research group, incorporating philosophers and scientists interested in ordinary concepts that are of central philosophical concern. Click for more details.

Rawling and Wilson edit a new volume, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy. Find out more about it and where to get it.

Mark LeBar's edited volume, Justice, has been published with Oxford University Press. Find out more about the book and where to get it.

Thanks to the support of the Templeton Foundation, Associate Professor of Philosophy John Schwenkler has been awarded $217,400 to spend three years taking graduate coursework and conducting laboratory research in psychology and neuroscience.

The Florida State University Philosophy Department is pleased to announce four new faculty hires for Fall 2018: Andrea Westlund, Edward Hinchman, Michael Bokoski, and Sarah Vincent.

Larson, E. J., & Ruse, M. (2017). On Faith and Science. Yale University Press.
Mele, A. R. (2017). Aspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will. Oxford University Press.
Ruse, M. (2016). Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution. Oxford University Press.

Over the last decade, "New Atheists" such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have pushed the issue of atheism to the forefront of public discussion. Yet very few of the ensuing debates and discussions have managed to provide a full and objective treatment of the subject.

Does free will exist? The question has fueled heated debates spanning from philosophy to psychology and religion. The answer has major implications, and the stakes are high. To put it in the simple terms that have come to dominate these debates, if we are free to make our own decisions, we are accountable for what we do, and if we aren't free, we're off the hook.

Philosophical theories of agency and responsibility have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. Omitting or refraining, like acting, can have consequences, good and bad. And we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for omitting or refraining. However, omitting and refraining are not simply special cases of action; they require their own distinctive treatment. 

Since the middle of the twentieth century, virtue ethics has enriched the range of philosophical approaches to normative ethics, often drawing on the work of the ancient Greeks, who offered accounts of the virtues that have become part of contemporary philosophical ethics. But these virtue ethical theories were situated within a more general picture of human practical rationality, one which maintained that to understand virtue we must appeal to what would make our lives go well. This feature of ethical theorizing has not become part of philosophical ethics, although the virtue theories dependent upon it have.