Note from the Chair:

I am pleased to bring you the 2025-26 Newsletter for the Sage School of Philosophy. The department has had a great year. I’ll report a few of the highlights.

We are delighted to welcome a new member to the department, Nilanjan Das, who joins us as an associate professor. Nilanjan is a leading figure in epistemology and in Sanskrit philosophy.  He has a new book on the 12th-century Indian philosopher, Śrīharṣa, The Instability of Reason: Śrīharṣa on the Foundations of Epistemology.  Combined with Larry McRae, Nico Silins, and Rachana Kamtekar, the arrival of Nilanjan makes the Sage School one of the premier institutions in North America to study Indian philosophy.

In January, the Sage School welcomed Allison Barrett as our new manager. Allison replaces Melissa Totman, who had been with the department since 2024. Pam Hanna, our Graduate Field Assistant, retired in 2026 after more than a decade of service to the department. We are happy to have Allison on the team but miss Melissa and Pam.

In other departmental news, I am pleased to announce that Rachana Kamtekar was honored with an endowed professorship, the Bryce & Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies.

John M. Doris ’86 received the 2025 Joseph B. Gittler Award from the American Philosophical Association for his book “Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality,” (Oxford University Press, 2022). The award honors an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences. 

Kate Manne received the 2024 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for philosophical achievement and contribution, awarded by the Phi Beta Kappa Society in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association (APA).

Migdalia Arcila-Valenzuela, a doctoral candidate in philosophy, was awarded the Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships, administered by the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, for the 2025-26 academic year, selected from nearly 600 applicants.

The Program on Ethics & Public Life (EPL) had a busy year with the Ethics Colloquium Series and the hugely successful Law & Society minor. EPL also continued to sponsor the annual Mind and Value conference, organized by Emad Atiq.

Moral Psychology continues to thrive at Cornell. Led by John Doris and Laura Niemi (Cornell Psychology), Cornell hosted 300 attendees at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology annual meeting in June. This is the pre-eminent society in the field. Doris is currently President of the society. In addition, Doris, Niemi, and I, along with 3 others outside Cornell, developed a proposal for advancing moral psychology at Cornell and beyond. We won a $250K award for “Connecting, advancing, and nurturing moral psychology”, from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, to found the International Society for Moral Psychology and Moral Psychology Mentoring program, both to be based at Cornell.  Finally, our young moral psychology minor, capped by the community engaged Moral Psychology in Action fieldwork course, will graduate 15 minors this year.

Our ancient philosophers have also organized and hosted several major intellectual events. In summer 2025 Charles Brittain organized the 16th triennial meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum, an international collaboration that has been the principal engine for study of Hellenistic philosophy over the last 40 years, at Cornell. For a week in June, eminent historians, political theorists, and philosophers from Europe and North America presented new work on such topics as law, religion, money and trust, and political order and change in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Over Labor Day Weekend 2025, Alessandro Peiris Pattiyage organized the Cornell Ancient Philosophy Graduate Student workshop, a close study of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s On Fate, with presentations by PhD students from ancient philosophy programs at Cornell, Yale, Harvard, University of Toronto and University of Pittsburgh. Cornell’s ancient philosophers are active in Mellon Corridor Ancient Philosophy Workshops, and in November 2025 participated in a close study of Plato’s fiendishly difficult dialogue Parmenides at Union College, with presentations by Tad Brennan and Alessandro Peiris Pattiyage.

Finally, we turn to our role in Cornell’s educational mission. Philosophy courses attract students from Arts & Sciences but also from across the university. This reflects the great interest and significance philosophy continues to carry despite all the changes in our world. The value of thinking better is enduring. And getting our students to think better is one of our main pedagogical objectives.  Of course, much of our pedagogical success is due to our excellent students! The always amazing Logos, our Undergraduate Philosophy Club again hosted the wildly popular Apocalypse debate where professors from different disciplines argue which discipline should be preserved in the apocalypse.  Logos also continues to run the best undergrad philosophy journal in the country. We are lucky to have such students.

Shaun Nichols

Chair & Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in Philosophy

LOGOS Spring Update:

LOGOS is kicking off the spring semester with work on our annual undergraduate philosophy journal. Each year, we receive submissions from students across the country and meet weekly to carefully review and edit selected pieces for publication. This year, we were thrilled to receive over 100 submissions! This is truly a testament to the vibrant community of undergraduate philosophers engaged with LOGOS.

In the fall, LOGOS hosts philosophical discussions and events that bring students together to explore a wide range of topics. In the spring, our focus turns to the journal, where members collaborate closely to develop and showcase outstanding undergraduate philosophical work.

If you are interested in supporting LOGOS and the continued development of undergraduate philosophy, you can find more information about contributing to the Philosophy Department on Cornell Giving Day (March 12) by clicking here. We are grateful for your continued interest in and support of LOGOS!

Faculty: 

Emad Atiq’s paper “The Normative Profile of Knowledge by Acquaintance” is forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and his paper “Justice as Law’s Constitutive Virtue: A Functional Assessment” is forthcoming as the lead article in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, Vol. 7. He has presented these and related work at the Harvard Law and Philosophy Workshop, the Northeastern University Ethics Institute Speaker Series, the Safra Center for Ethics, the New England Workshop on Metaphysics, and the Value of Consciousness Workshop Series, with upcoming lectures at the University of Chicago and Bocconi University. His current projects include work on moral objectivity, Iris Murdoch’s epistemology, and the moral and legal implications of algorithmic capture of attention. He is spending his sabbatical year as a Faculty Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Rachana Kamtekar published ‘Aristotle on Learning by Doing Voluntary Actions’, the lead paper for a special issue of the Australian Philosophical Review on ancient ethics (DOI: 10.1080/24740500.2025.2573908) and ‘The Problems of Legislation in Plato’s Laws III’ in a special issue of Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought on ancient philosophy of law (vol. 43.2). With Peggy Zhu, she co-wrote “Knowledge of Soul in Plato’s Phaedrus” and presented it at workshops at University of Pittsburgh and Princeton University.

Kate Manne gave the Lebowitz Prize lecture at the Pacific APA in 2025 and revised the paper, "Ordinary Cruelty: Explaining Misogyny without Dehumanization" for publication. It is now forthcoming in the Journal of the APA. She gave the same paper in the Elton Lecture Series at George Washington University, as a public lecture at California State University, Fresno, as a keynote talk at the Feminist Ethics and #MeToo Conference at the University of Iceland, as the annual Lippin Lecture at Penn State, and as a keynote speaker for the department retreat at the University of Virginia. Her Substack More to Hate has a readership of 35k subscribers, making it the #3 substack in philosophy worldwide.

Andrei Marmor edited, along with K. Brownlee and D. Enoch, and contributed to, “Engaging Raz: themes in normative philosophy”, Oxford University Press (2025). His book The Language of the Law is forthcoming in a new Arab edition from Dar Konoz press (Egypt). He finished a draft of ‘The Ontology of Legal Facts, commissioned for the Cambridge Companion to Metaphysics of Law, to be presented at Bologna University in April 2027. His paper ‘Legal Positivism and Interpretation’, is forthcoming in International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: from text to semiotics (A. Wagner ed. ), and ‘How Art is Like Law?’, forthcoming in the Journal of Social Ontology. He was interviewed by Alba Loji & Virginia Pressi on the topic of ‘from concepts to Metaphysics’. He gave presentations at faculty seminars at Autonoma University in Madrid and Roma Tre University, in Rome. He presented in a workshop on “morality and social conventions” at the University of Munich, Germany, at the Singapore symposium in legal theory where he also participated in roundtable discussion at the University of Singapore, and at the conference on “Law, Morality & The Public”, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. 

Nico Silins was awarded a seed grant with James Collin from to do an international conference on Buddhist philosophy at VinUni in Hanoi. “Speak, Memory: Dignāga, Consciousness, and Awareness” was published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy. “Blindsight, Blingsight, and Blandsight: Unconscious Perception, Attention, and the Epistemology of Perception" was published by Synthese Online First. “The Mirror and the Lamp: Buddhist Theory and Zhu Xi’s Critical Tradition” was presented at Knowledge and Truth in Chinese Philosophy Conference, NUS, Singapore. “Trauma, Memory and Narrative Selves” was presented at Bled Epistemology Conference, Slovenia. “The Lamp that Illuminates Itself: Consciousness and Inner Awareness” was presented in Hokkaido, and “Attention and Aesthetic Experience” was presented at Workshop on Consciousness, Tokyo University Komaba Campus.

Dave Shoemaker was Was YTL Visiting Professor/Fellow at King’s College London, Winter 2025. The Architecture of Blame and Praise (OUP), published in US in 2025. Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 9, which Dave edited, was published. “From Function to Fit: On the ‘Inappropriateness’ of Emotions,” was written with Shaun Nichols and presented at Cornell Conference on Mind and Value, September 2025. “‘I didn’t know it was you!’ On an Unexplored Type of Excuse, written with Gus Turyn, was presented at Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, Austria, Conference in the Future of Responsibility Project, July 1, 2025. “Finding Funny”  was presented at: King’s College London, Poon Law School, January 29, 2025, Oxford, The Uehiro Institute of Ethics, February 18, 2025, Keynote Address, March 7, 2025, University of Arkansas Grad Conference, University of Rochester Department Colloquium, March 28, 2025, University of Texas, Austin, Kickoff Address, Royal Conference, April 4, 2025, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, April 18, 2025.  “Anger vs. Amusement” was presented as the Keynote Address, 20th Annual Research Forum, Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Geneva, February 13, 2025. “Finding Funny” was  accepted and forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy. “Personal Identity au Naturale,” written with Shaun Nichols, appears in Alfonso Munoz-Corcuera and Nils-Frederic Wagner, eds., Conventionalism About Personal Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), Ch. 10. “Quarrels and Cracks: On the Values of Comic Distraction” (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2025: DOI: 10.5840/msp202541869).

Lyu Zhou's paper "Specious Present and Its Place in Spacetime: Towards a Non-Spatiotemporalist Account for Human Consciousness," was published in Synthese, 207, No. 59, and his paper "Representational Adequacy, Natural Selection, and Quantum Ontology: Against a 3-Dimensionally Spatial Reality," is forthcoming in Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Graduate Students:

Lanxin Shi’s paper paper “The Challenge to the Self: On Kierkegaard’s Account of Anfægtelse as Existential Trial” has been published in Journal of Modern Philosophy (link here: https://jmphil.org/article/id/2849/). She also presented “Becoming Subjective: Pursuing Eternal Happiness as a Regulative Ideal” at Princeton’s 3PR Workshop on Kierkegaard, Objectivity, and Subjectivity, and another paper “Kierkegaardian Faith as Venture and Taking Responsibility” at Central APA.

Geoff Weiss was invited to and participated in a community event on Trolley Problems and Moral Dilemmas. He also presented his paper, "The Price is Right: A Costly-Signal Theory of Making Amends" (Co-authored with Eric Brown, UC Boulder) at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress.

Gus Turyn presented papers at NOWAR and the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA and published a paper called 'Masked abilities and the four-case manipulation argument' in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. He spent the fall semester visiting King's College London as a Malcolm fellow.

Migdalia Arcila Valenzuela won the Charlotte M. Newcombe Fellowship and was selected as the Robert M. Adams Fellow in Philosophy. Her paper Agonistic Pride: Black Struggles for Social Justice in Colombia is now forthcoming in the edited volume, Philosophy of Black Experience(s): Caribbean and Latin American Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Her paper Finding One's Own Word: Hermeneutical Injustice and the Silent Network of Oppression is forthcoming in the edited volume: Oppression, Agency and Crime. Madrid: Marcial Pons. She also presented her paper The Ongoing Struggle: Mehdi Ben Barka and the Broken Hopes of Political Independence at the Tricontinental Conference: Context, Impact, Legacy, and Future (2026), in the Universidad de la Habana, Cuba. 

Hannah Winckler-Olick published her paper “The Range of Moral Responsibility: A Beauvoirian Model” in the European Journal of Philosophy.

Guyu Zhu’s paper “Abilities as Modal Ties” is accepted for publication in Analysis, and he presented his paper “Fundamentality in Ability Modals” at the first Cornell-Syracuse Graduate Workshop and the Central APA.

Itay Melamed presented his paper, "The Fear of Death is neither Rational nor Irrational - it is Arational! at the Eighth International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life, and at the University of Vilnius Philosophy Graduate Conference, and he will present his paper, "On the Rationality of the Religious Believer's Grief," at the Philosophy of Religion Workshop Group at Rutgers University.

Giving Day

The College of Arts & Sciences Giving Day is on Thursday, March 12 and we hope the whole Cornell community can join in to support the work and growth of our students and faculty. 

Your gifts help support many aspects of the Sage School of Philosophy and its mission. Click here to make a gift online in support of our department.

Newsletter Archive

Please visit our collection of Sage School newsletters if you would like to read a previous edition ~ enjoy!

Compiled and Published by Melissa Totman and Tenzin Kunsang
philosophy@cornell.edu

Don't forget to follow us on Instagram
@philosophycornell