We are a lively community of philosophers with a wide range of theoretical and practical interests. We offer a Master of Arts in Philosophy, a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, a minor in Philosophy, and a minor in Law and Philosophy. Our traditional strengths in ethics and epistemology are central to the Department. Our students operate the Philosophers' Forum, an organization for discussing philosophers, philosophical ideas, and career choices for philosophy graduates.
Department News
Robert M. Gordon, Emeritus Professor, passed away in April 2025. Bob was known for his work in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of the emotions, and in particular his development of simulation theory. He is the author of The Structure of Emotions: Investigations in Cognitive Philosophy (1987). Gordon joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Missouri–St. Louis in 1970.
Spencer Ivy joined the Department as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Fall 2025.
Annie Corbitt joined the Department as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Fall 2024.
Billy Dunaway published "Moral Naturalism, Naturalism, and Moral Disagreement" in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement, edited by Maria Baghramian, J. Adam Carter, Rach Cosker-Rowland.
Jill Delston published “The Ethics of Precision Medicine” in Implementation of Personalized Precision Medicine Expanding the Clinical Vision towards Prevention, Early Detection and Precision Treatment of Disease to Drive Extended Healthspan, Academic Press (2024).
She published “Do Virtue Ethicists Parent Poorly? The threat of developmental psychology for moral education and responsibility in virtue ethics,” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly vol. 10, issue 1/2 (May 2024).
She published The Ethics of Precision Health,” Bioethics vol. 37, no. 5 (June 2023): 440-448.
She published a post at the Blog of the APA called “Medical Bias as Hierarchy” (2025).
She gave the keynote at the 27th annual Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, and gave a second talk at Pacific U (2025).
She gave the keynote at the St. Louis Undergraduate Philosophy conference (2025)I
She presented “No divorce while pregnant in Missouri? A Dangerous double bind for survivors of Intimate Partner Violence” (2025) with Annah Bender at the American Philosophical Association Central Division.
She presented “Restorative Justice: Intimate Partner Violence and a Theory of Justice,” with Annah Bender at the WashU Political Theory Workshop (2025), and at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (2025). They co-authored an APA blog postabout the topic in 2025.
She was co-PI with Rob Paul of a research project funded by the NIH called Multimodal Integrated Analysis and Assessment Development for NeuroHIV Outcomes (MIAAD NHIV) with the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, where she contributed on the ethics of precision health.
She was profiled in the UM NextGen Precision Health's biannual report.
She won the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching to a Tenured or Tenure Track Faculty Member (2025) and the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Excellence in Teaching Award (2024).
She facilitated an APA Live event “Mixed Emotions: Confronting Feelings that Get a Bad Rap”
Waldemar Rohloff coauthored (with Alex Schumm and Gualtiero Piccinini) “Composition as Trans-Scalar Identity” in Acta Analytica, June 2025.
Eric Wiland published "The True, the Good, and their Fusion" in Practical Truth, eds. J. Frey & C. Frey, Oxford University Press (2025).
He published "Well-Being and Approximation" in Philosophy 100 (2025), 249-269.
He published "The Circularity of Welfare Judgments in Journal of Ethics (forthcoming).
He edited a special issue of Res Philosophica 102 (3) (2025) on Rationality and the First Person featuring papers by Eric Marcus, Keshav Singh, Ernesto Garcia, Adam Katwan, Michael J. Hegarty, Derek Lam, and Nick Byrd.
He presented “Moral Testimony, First-Person Testimony, and Realism”, an invited Symposium Paper at the American Philosophical Association, Central Division (2023).
He presented “Joint Activity and Well-Being”, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society, New Orleans, 2024.
He presented “An Alternative to Welfare Perfectionism”, Bled Philosophical Conference, 2024. (Also at the Helsinki Workshop on Well-Being, Helsinki, 2024).
He presented "Withholding Advice”, Ethics of Advice-Giving Workshop, the Ethics of AI Group, LMU Munich, 2024. (Also at the New Directions in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence Conference, Washington University, St. Louis, 2025; Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2025).
He presented “Infinite Desires” at the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 2024.
He presented “Well-being as Actualization: A Sketch”, Tulane University, 2024.
He presented “Moral Testimony and Moral Memory”, Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, 2023.
Howie Parkes (philosophy major) won the Honors College Excellence in Writing Award at the 3000-level for his essay “The Portrait of Military Life in Victor Nekrasov’s Senka and Dmitry Bykov’s Christ’s Coming”.
Jacob Stein (philosophy major) won the Honors College Excellence in Writing Award at the 2000-level for his essay “Lions not Lambs: Jewish Resistance During the Shoah”.
Sarah Boslaugh won an award at the UMSL Undergraduate Research Symposium for her presentation, Stigma Toward PrEP is Higher Among Men & on Subscales Referencing Sexual Behavior and Substance Abuse (Sarah E. Boslaugh, Brandon Park, & Dr. Rachel P. Winograd).
Maxi Glamour won the Excellence in Civic Engagement Award at UMSL’s Student Leadership Banquet.
Eleanor Grissom won the UMSL Philosophy Undergraduate Munson Essay Prize for her paper, “Rationalityism: A Hierarchy of Discrimination and Oppression”.
DeWitt 'Witt' Spiller won the UMSL Philosophy Graduate Munson Essay Prize for his paper, “Protecting the Partity: In Defense of Companions in Guilt”.
The Department now offers a Bioethics Graduate Certificate
More Philosophy Department news can be found on the News page .
