“How do I know if what I see is real?” “What makes an action good?” Big questions like these inspired new Department of Philosophy Assistant Professor Tamara Fakhoury to pursue a career in philosophy from her home in Lebanon to classrooms at the University of Minnesota. Fakhoury discusses how she came into philosophy, the nature of her research, and how philosophy fits into all aspects of her life.

When you find yourself wondering, for instance, how best to respond to a friend’s need for guidance, you might refer to Valerie Tiberius’s recent book, Well-Being as Value Fulfillment: How We Can Help Each Other to Live Well, which presents her value-fulfillment theory.

Women have historically and systematically been excluded from the philosophical canon. Where modern survey courses exalt a handful of kingpin thinkers, academics are now faced with the task of correcting the discipline by including the influential women philosophers and emphasizing their contributions.

People sometimes think that philosophy is opposed to science. But scrutinizing scientific methodology and investigating what it takes for an idea to become scientific fact are important topics for the contemporary philosopher. And this philosophical interrogation can have an unexpected outcome—helping to advance science.

While biologists and psychologists might seek to replicate an experiment, mathematicians might seek to reproduce a proof. Alan Love contends that reproducibility failures should not be taken to undermine the reliability or trustworthiness of science: “We should be confident precisely because scientists sometimes get it wrong, since they know how to process their errors and take advantage of situations when they fail.”

Academics have said that all philosophy created in the last 200 years is a response to Immanuel Kant. The influence of his work, however, has spread much further than the realm of philosophy. Today, chemists and politicians alike grapple with the ideas of this poor Prussian boy and how his century-old writings are still shaping modern thought.

PhD student in philosophy Grace Joy Cebrero talks about her experience transitioning into the philosophy graduate program and her philosophical work on disability.

Scientific fields such as chemistry, psychology, anthropology, and biology are deeply interwoven in countless complex ways. Philosophy professor Bennett McNulty looks at these disciplines through the lens of Immanuel Kant’s writings to better understand how these “inexact sciences” relate to each other and to our investigation of the empirical world.

Philosophy Professor Jessica Gordon-Roth analyzes the work of 17th-century philosopher Anne Finch Conway, overlooked in part because of her gender. How does her perspective differ from other major thinkers of the time period, like Hobbes and Descartes?