Philosophical Psychology

Our approach to mind is multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary. We conceive of 'mind' as irreducibly social and cultural dimensions of individual organisms in interaction with their environments, and we seek to understand what it means to be human in the most profound sense of the term. We therefore draw from a broad range of perspectives, including physiology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, phenomenology, race and gender studies, and the entire field of social sciences. Faculty members have strong ties to members of the UO Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences and have offered team-taught collaborative courses through the Institute.

Faculty interests in the Philosophy Department currently revolve around three principal topics. The first concerns personal identity and the development of a sense of self, as seen from the perspective of the biological sciences, cognitive science, phenomenology, psychoanalysis and hermeneutics. What does it mean to be a person and how do we develop our mature sense of selfhood? A second orientation focuses on the psychology of human and animal conceptualization and reasoning. This encompasses our study of the roots of cognition in patterns of sensory and motor experiences and activities as well as the way in which the mind is necessarily embedded in a network of social relations. Faculty members have brought in perspectives from developmental research to enrich philosophical reflection on this problematic of embodied social cognition; they also have been doing work on how people think and on problems of cognitive dissonance. The third focus in on issues of character formation, especially in the development of moral understanding and deliberation. This involves the study of such topics as virtue, moral development, character and moral reasoning.

Selected Courses Related to Issues in Philosophical Psychology

Undergraduate Courses:

Philosophy and Feminism
Philosophy and Cultural Diversity

Graduate and Advanced Courses

Philosophy of Language
Dewey
Hume
James
Merleau-Ponty
Nietzsche
Sartre
Wittgenstein
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Mind
Seminar: Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Seminar: Issues in Ethics
Seminar: Psychoanalysis

Philosophy Faculty in this Concentration

Mark Johnson (cognitive science, philosophy of language, moral psychology)

John Lysaker (phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory)

Beata Stawarska (phenomenology, psychoanalysis, philosophical psychology)

Ted Toadvine (continental, phenomenology, environmental).