The UMSL Philosophy Department has a vibrant and fruitful faculty, and also supports its graduate students as they present and publish works.
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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 (2025).
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”.
Billy Dunaway was interviewed by U.S. News & World Report on why majoring in philosophy and other humanities can be a great career move.
Billy Dunaway and David Plunkett coedited their Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard is out and available open access through Michigan Publishing Services.
Graham Renz (M.A. alumnus) wrote Being One’s Self, Trusting One’s Gut for the Blog of the American Philosophical Association about his philosophical journey through UMSL and WUSTL.
Lauren Olin's article "Comic Disagreement" appears in Dunaway's volume.
Jill Delston has published " Morality versus Mortality: The Meaning of (After)Life in The Good Place" in Better Living through TV (2022) and "The Ethics and Politics of Microaffirmations", Philosophy of Management vol. 20, 411–429 (2021).
Delston hosted the Philosophy and Activism conference at UMSL.
Delston was part of a dialogue at the APA Blog about the Dobbs decision.
Delston wrote a piece about abortion in the The Philosophers’ Magazine.
Delston presented “The Ethics of Precision Health” at the Eastern Division of the APA in 2022.
Eric Wiland is Visiting Research Professor at Tulane University in 2023-24.
Wiland presented "Moral Testimony and Moral Memory" at the APA-Central and at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress in 2023.
Wiland's article " What is Group Well-being?" appeared in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy in 2022.
Wiland presented "Intensifying Well-Being" at the Bled Philosophy Conference and at the Edinburgh Workshop on Well-Being in 2022.
Wiland participated in an Author-Meets-Critics session on his book Guided By Voices: Advice, Moral Testimony, and the Forging of a "We" at the meeting of the Eastern Division of the APA in 2023.
Gualtiero Piccinini's “An Egalitarian Account of Composition and Realization,” is appearing in The Monist, invited submission to a special issue edited by Meir Hemmo and Orly Shenker.
Piccinini's "Physicalism: Flat and Egalitarian,” is forthcoming in Levels of Reality, eds. Meir Hemmo, Stavros Ioannidis, Orly Shenker, and Gal Vishne. Berlin: Springer.
Piccinini was interviewed with Glen Wright Colopy on first person data, and posted in the podcast Pod of Asclepius, August 2021.
Jill Delston was interviewed on the Stories of Our Time podcast about whether medicine is sexist.
Gualtiero Piccinini's "Knowledge as Factually Grounded Belief" was published in American Philosophical Quarterly.
Daniel Grasso presented "Rational Resolve as Magnification: A Response to Holton" at the 2021 New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society.
Gualtiero Piccinini gave the Barwise Prize Lecture at the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in April 2021.
Jon McGinnis's “A Continuation of Atomism: Shahrastānī on the Atom and Continuity,” was named one of the best 10 articles of 2019 by The Philosopher’s Annual. The article also received Honorable Mention by the Journal of the History of Philosophy for the best article in the history of philosophy for 2019.
Billy Dunaway and Jon McGinnis co-wrote "Knowledge and Theological Predication: Lessons from the Medieval Islamic Tradition", which is forthcoming in Res Philosophica.
Dunaway's "Realism, Meta-Semantics and Risk" is forthcoming in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.
Dunaway's book, Reality and Morality, is published with Oxford University Press (2020).
Gualtiero Piccinini's book, Neurocognitive Mechanisms: Explaining Biological Cognition , is published with Oxford University Press (2021).
Eric Wiland's book, Guided by Voices: Moral Testimony, Advice, and Forging a 'We' is published with Oxford University Press (2021).
Wiland's "Irrationality, Charity, and Ambivalence" appears in The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence (2021), edited by Brogaard & Gatzia.
Jill Delston was named a Presidential Engagement Fellow for the UM System for this year. She was also selected for this year's class of the Early Career Research Network (ECRN).
Delston's new book Medical Sexism (2020) has been featured at UMSL, St. Louis on the Air twice, St. Louis Magazine, and the APA Blog. It was reviewed by Choice Reviews, which called it "essential for all readers." It was a finalist for the North American Society for Social Philosophy book award.
Delston's article “The Body Politic Is of Two Minds: Political Ambivalence on Norms of Justice” appears in The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence (2021), edited by Brogaard & Gatzia.
Stephanie Ross's book, Two Thumbs Up: How critics aid appreciation, is published with University of Chicago Press. The APA Blog featured the book:
Michelle Ciurria's (visiting scholar) book, An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility, is published with Routledge.
Gualtiero Piccinini won the 2019 Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creativity.
Piccinini's “Quantum-like Behavior without Quantum Physics III. Logic and Memory” (with Stephen A. Selesnik) appeared in Journal of Biological Physics.
Jill Delston won the College of Arts and Sciences Non-Tenure Track Faculty Member of the Year Award.
Billy Dunaway won UMSL's Junior Investigator of the Year Award.
Gualtiero Piccinini was promoted to Curators' Professor.
This year's Ronald Munson Essay Prizes in Philosophy were awarded to:
Undergraduate: Sadie Harris, "In Search of a Meaningful Life"
Graduate: Tomy Ames, "Systems of Memory and the Self"
Samuel Filby (MA student) presented his "Can there be an analytic, existential philosophy?" at the Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Existentialism.
Gualtiero Piccinini's "Nonnatural Mental Representation" is forthcoming in What Are Mental Representations?, Oxford University Press.
Billy Dunaway is the new Book Review Editor for the journal Ethics.
Billy Dunaway's " Epistemological Motivations for Anti-realism" is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.
Jon McGinnis's “A Continuation of Atomism: Shahrastānī on the atom and continuity” is forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy.
Billy Dunaway and Jon McGinnis won a nearly $1 million grant from John Templeton Foundation to apply medieval Islamic philosophy to contemporary questions about the epistemology of religion.
Gualtiero Piccinini has won the K. Jon Barwise Prize for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing by an APA member.
Eric Wiland's "The Problem of Evil and the Grammar of Goodness" appeared in Religions 9 (2018).
Eric Wiland's "Psychologism and Anti-psychologism about Motivating Reasons" appeared in Oxford Handbook on Reasons and Normativity, ed. D. Star, Oxford University Press (2018).
Eric Wiland's "Peer Disagreement: Special Cases" appeared in Logos & Episteme (2018).
Eric Wiland's "Should Children Have the Right to Vote?" appeared in Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, ed. D. Boonin, Palgrave MacMillan (2018), 215-224.
Eric Wiland's "Moral Advice and Joint Agency" will appear in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, ed. M. Timmons, Oxford University Press (forthcoming in 2018).
Jill Delston won The Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award.
Gualtiero Piccinini's “The Ways of Altruism” (with Armin Schulz), appeared in Evolutionary Psychological Science (2018).
Gualtiero Piccinini's "Conceived This Way: Innateness Defended" (with Robert Northcott) is in Philosophers’ Imprint
Gualtiero Piccinini's "Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account" is the subject of an Author Meets Critics session at the Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in January 2019.
Gualtiero Piccinini and Robert Northcott's "Conceived This Way: Innateness Defended" is in Philosophers’ Imprint.
Jill Delston's " Does a Sense Of Benevolence Influence Volunteering and Caregiving Among Older People?" appeared in Social Work Research , Volume 41, Issue 3, 1 September 2017, Pages 155–166.
Jill Delston's chapter, "Public Reason and Its Limits: The Role of Truth in Politics" appeared in Ethics in Politics: The Rights and Obligations of Individual Political Agents
Jill Delston's " When Doctors Deny Drugs: Sexism and Contraception Access in the Medical Field," has been published in Bioethics
Billy Dunaway won a UM Research Board grant for project titled Knowing Reality.
Billy Dunaway is co-editing Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard with David Plunkett. It will be published open-access with Maize Books, and imprint of Michigan Publishing and is (as far as we know) the first open-access edited volume of this kind in philosophy.
Billy Dunaway's chapter 'Realism and Objectivity' has been publishing in the Routledge Handbook of Metaethics.
Billy Dunaway's chapter 'Scepticism' (co-authored with John Hawthorne) has been published in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology
Gualitero Piccinini has won an NSF Scholars Award for "Explaining Cognition Mechanistically".
Billy Dunaway's "Luck: Evolutionary and Epistemic" is forthcoming in Episteme and is available online.
Jill Delston collaborated with Huei-Wern Shen, & Yi Wang on "Does Sense Of Benevolence Influence Volunteering and Caregiving Among Older People?" in Social Work Research (in Press).
Eric Wiland's "Peer Disagreement and the Dunning-Kruger Effect" is forthcoming in Episteme and can be found online, while his "Moral Testimony: Going on the Offensive" appeared in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, volume 12 (2017).
Lauren Olin's "Questions for a Theory of Humor" is forthcoming in Philosophy Compass, and her "Is Every Epistemology a Virtue Epistemology?" is forthcoming in Epistemic Situationism, Oxford University Press.
Lauren Olin, Thomas Ames, and Şerife Tekin served as critics of Philip Gerrans' The Measure of Madness at the upcoming APA Central.
Laura Miller presented "Adaptive Value: Finding Rationality in the Risks of the Global Poor" at the VIII Braga Meetings on Ethics and Political Philosophy in Braga, Portugal on June 8-9, 2017.
Jill Delston has won the 2016 Legendary Triton Award for outstanding faculty or staff member.
Ronald Munson’s Intervention and Reflection , the most widely used bioethics text in the U.S., has appeared in its 10th edition.
Billy Dunaway's "Ethical Vagueness and Practical Reasoning" appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly.
Dunaway will also spoke on "Epistemological Motivations for Anti-Realism" at the Language, Epistemology, and Metaphysics seminar at the Institute of Philosophy in London, 29 November 2016.
Jill Delston & Larry May's Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach has appeared in its 6th edition.
Delston planned the 12th Annual Philosophy of Management International Conference at Webster University.
Delston was also interviewed in the Blog of the American Philosophical Association.
Stephanie Ross's "Criticism" has appeared in The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Literature.
Thomas Ames (MA student) presented "Intentionality and Aesthetics as Art in Nature" at the Gonzaga Graduate Philosophy Conference.
Thomas Ames presented "Trusting the Group in Pursuit of an Incognizant Common Good" at the Arizona State University Graduate Philosophy Conference and the Midsouth Philosophy Conference.
Ames also presented "The Population Desideratum" at the Southeast Philosphy Congress, where it will also be published in its proceedings.
