VII—Faculty

George J. Agich
B.A. Duquense University
M.A. University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
F.J. O’Neil Chair in Clinical Bioethics and Chairman, Department of Bioethics, Cleveland Clinic

Dr. Agich holds appointments in clinical medicine at Ohio State University and in bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic Transplant Center and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.  He is the author of Autonomy and Long-Term Care (Oxford University Press, 1993) and over fifty articles and over thirty book chapters on medical ethics.  He has also edited two books, Responsibility in Health Care (D. Reidel, 1986) and The Price of Health (D. Reidel, 1986).  Dr. Agich is the chair of the International Association of Bioethics’ Network on Bioethics Education, the past president of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry and the past chair of the Association for Faculty in Medical Humanities.  His current research interests include the ethical issues involved in organ donation and transplantation, and the process of ethics consultations in a clinical setting.

Marvin Belzer
Associate Professor of Philosophy
B.A.  Northwest Nazarene College
Ph.D.  Duke University

Professor Belzer joined the philosophy faculty in 1991, and served as Chair from 1995 to 1999.  He is a specialist in deontic logic and its applications in ethics, especially to reasoning with defeasible normative principles.  Current research interests also include metaphysics, especially personal identity and Buddhist philosophy.  Recent and forthcoming publications include "Notes on Relation R" (Analysis, 1995), "Parfit and the Budda: Do They Agree About Personal Identity?" and "Logics of Defeasible Normative Reasoning," co-authored with Barry Loewer in Defeasible Deontic Logic,  edited by Donald Nute.  Professor Belzer teaches graduate courses in modal logic and in metaphysics, and undergraduate courses in philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and meditation.

Michael Bradie
Professor of Philosophy
B. S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M. A. Boston University
PhD University of Hawaii

Since coming to Bowling Green in 1968, Professor Bradie has taught courses in a wide range of areas.  His primary interests are in the philosophy of science, epistemology and logic.  He has been involved in developing interdisciplinary courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of physics. Professor Bradie has published numerous articles on the philosophy of science and epistemology.  His most recent publications include "Assessing Evolutionary Epistemology," "Darwin and the Moral Status of Animals," "What Does Evolutionary Biology Tell Us About Philosophy and Religion," and "Models, Rhetoric and Science."   A book on evolution and ethics, The Secret Chain: Evolution and Ethics, was published by SUNY Press in 1995.  In addition to his professional roles in Bowling Green, Professor Bradie has been a Visiting Scholar at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (1984), the History and Philosophy of Science Department, Indiana University (1986) and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (1992-93).

Donald Callen
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
B.A. Roberts Wesleyan College
M.A. SUNY, Brockport
Ph.D. Temple University

Professor Callen's teaching and research interests are the philosophy of art, Continental philosophy, and post-modern theory.  In addition to courses in aesthetics and philosophy of film, he also teaches courses in contemporary French philosophy, focusing especially on Derrida, Lacan and new thinkers such as Lipovetsky and Nancy.  Currently his research is focused on continental approaches to environmental philosophy.  He has published many articles on the philosophy of art including a recent article, "Stories of Sublimely Good Character" (Philosophy and Literature).  He has also co-edited a volume of papers in aesthetics by Monroe Beardsley, The Aesthetic Point of View, and volumes of proceedings from the BGSU conferences in Applied Philosophy.  Recent publications include an article on Beardsley which appeared in the Oxford Companion to Aesthetics.

Christian Coons
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
B.A. University of California, Davis
Ph. D. University of California, Davis

Christian Coons was recently hired to a tenure-track position in philosophy at BG.  He came to BG from the University of California at Davis. Christian has already published in Ethics, perhaps the top journal for work in ethics and related areas. He was awarded the prestigious Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship for the 2003-4 year and he was also awarded the Michael V. Wedin Teaching Award in 2003 by the UC, Davis philosophy department.   His research interests include population ethics, moral epistemology, theory selection in normative ethics, and axiology.  He hopes to one day justify a substantive normative claim without using any substantive normative assumptions.

R. G. Frey
Professor of Philosophy
B.A. College of William and Mary
M.A. University of Virginia
D. Phil. Oxford University

Professor Frey is the author of numerous articles and books in ethical theory, applied ethics, the history of ethics, and social/political theory.  New works of his awaiting publication are books on Joseph Butler (Oxford University Press), a critical edition of Butler's ethical writings, a volume of essays on topics in applied ethics entitled Ethics, Animals and Medicine, and the first of two volumes on utilitarianism.  He recently published Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide (Cambridge University Press), with Gerald Dworkin and Sissela Bok.  Professor Frey teaches courses in all the areas of his research.  Previously, he tutored students at Oxford and taught in the Universities of Liverpool and Toronto.  He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center in Bowling Green, a Fellow of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, and a Fellow of the Westminister Institute of Ethics and Public Policy at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Louis I. Katzner
Professor of Philosophy
A.B.      Brown University
M.A.    University of Michigan
Ph.D. University of Michigan

Professor Katzner has been at Bowling Green since 1968.  A member of the department during the 1970s and early 1980s, he played a central role in developing the applied philosophy focus and the Ph.D. program.  From 1985-98 he continued teaching on a limited basis while serving as Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate College.  His research, publications, and teaching have focused on ethics and social philosophy.  He is best known for his work on affirmation action and discrimination -- "Is the Favoring of Women and Blacks in Employment and Educational Opportunities Justified?" (Feinberg & Gross, Philosophy of Law).  He has also taught philosophy to children and published in this area as well.  Most recently, his scholarship has focused on issues in graduate education.

Fred D. Miller, Jr.
Professor of Philosophy
B.A.  Portland State University
M.A.  University of Washington
Ph.D.  University of Washington

Professor Miller came to Bowling Green in 1972 with a specialization in ancient Greek Philosophy, especially Aristotle.  His interests include social philosophy, philosophy of law, business ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy in science fiction.  Currently he is the Executive Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center which he, along with other members of the Department, founded in 1981. He is the author of Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford University Press, 1995). He has published articles on Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers in Philosophical Review, the Review of Metaphysics, Philosophical Quarterly, and Ancient Philosophy.  His recent essays on classical philosophy include "Aristotle on Rationality in Action," "Aristotle on Natural Law and Justice,"  “Aristotle’s Philosophy of Soul,” and "Plato on the Parts of the Soul."  He also contributed the article "Aristotle's Naturalism" to The Cambridge History of Ancient Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2000), "Aristotle's Political  Philosophy," to the Stanford (Internet) Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu), and "Classical Political Thought" to The Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy (Greenwood Press, 1997).  He is currently at work on A History of Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Later Scholastics.  In October, 1998 he was elected President of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy.

 Jeffrey Moriarty
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
A.B. Princeton University
Ph.D. Rutgers University

Professor Moriarty joined the department in 2005, having previously taught for three years at CaliforniaState University at Long Beach, where he also served as Graduate Director from 2004-2005 and the Director of the Center for Applied Ethics, from 2003 to 2005. He completed a PhD at Rutgers University where he wrote his dissertation on "Just Deserts: The Significance of Desert to Distributive Justice". Beside social and political philosophy and normative ethics, his research interests also include business ethics and its intersection with political philosophy, especially in relation to issues of justice and wages, and the works of W.D. Ross.  His most recent publications include: “Ross on Desert and Punishment,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87:2 (2006), “The Epistemological Argument Against Desert,” Utilitas 17:2 (2005), and “Do CEOs Get Paid Too Much?” Business Ethics Quarterly 15:2 (2005).  

Jeffrey Paul
Professor of Philosophy
B.A. University of Cincinnati
Ph.D. Brandeis University

Jeffrey Paul founded the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green with Fred Miller, Jr. in 1981.  He is presently Associate Director of the Center.  Professor Paul joined the Department in 1980.  He has also taught philosophy at Northern Kentucky University and the University of Cincinnati.  In 1981 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  Professor Paul is the co-editor, with Richard Epstein, of Labor Law and the Employment Market (Transaction, 1985).  He has published essays on ethics and political philosophy in The Monist, The Personalist, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, The Review of Metaphysics, Reason Papers, Orbis, Philosophical Review, The Journal of Medical Ethics, The History of Political Thought, The Hastings Center Report, and in John Gray and Z.A. Pleczynski’s collection Conceptions of Liberty in Political Theory.  His collection, Reading Nozick, was published by Rowman and Allenheld in 1981.  Professor Paul is an Associate Editor of Social Philosophy & Policy as well as co-editor of many collections of essays on moral and political philosophy for Cambridge University Press and Basil Blackwell.

 David Shoemaker
Associate Professor of Philosophy
B.A. Houghton College
M.A. University of California, Irvine
Ph.D. University of California, Irvine

 Professor Shoemaker joined us in the Fall of 2004, coming from the sunny climes of Northridge, California, where he taught at California State University.  His PhD dissertation was entitled “Persons, Selves, and Ethical Theory.”   He teaches courses in contemporary ethical theory, metaphysics (with a particular focus on questions about personal identity and agency), and social & political philosophy.  He also has interests in the areas of applied ethics, especially bioethics, and in moral psychology.  His publications include: “Caring, Identification and Agency,” Ethics, October 2003; “The Irrelevance/Incoherence of Non-Reductivism About Personal Identity,” Philo, Fall/Winter 2002; “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along: Human Variety and Game Theory in Hobbes’s State of Nature,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Fall 2002; “Disintegrated Persons and Distributive Principles,” Ratio, March 2002.

 Michael Weber
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
B.A. Williams College
M.A. Oxford University
Ph.D. University of Michigan

Michael Weber joined the BGSU Philosophy Department in 2008.  He previously taught at Yale University, having earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1998.  His dissertation was a defense of the rationality of satisficing – choosing what is simply “good enough” instead of what is best.  Since then, his work has focused on the role of emotions in ethical life and ethical theory, and on rational choice theory.  More recently he has been working on issues in egalitarian theory.  His recent publications include the following: “Is Equality Essentially Comparative?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (2007): 209-226; "More on the Motive of Duty," Journal of Ethics 11 (2007): 65-86; "'Tough-Minded' Theories in Ethics," Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review XLV (2006): 747-54; “Are Terrorists Cowards?” Public Affairs Quarterly 19 (2005): 331-42; "Compassion: An Evaluation of Nussbaum’s Analysis and Defense," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (2004): 487-511.

 Sara Worley
Associate Professor of Philosophy
B. A.  Reed College
Ph.D University of Pittsburgh

Professor Worley came to Bowling Green in 1991 after completing her graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh.  Her research and teaching interests are primarily in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and feminism.  With respect to the philosophy of mind, she is especially interested in questions of mental causation, and in finding a way of reconciling the "manifest image" of human beings, according to which we are rational agents, responsible for our actions, with the "scientific image" of human beings, according to which we are mere physical objects whose behavior can be completely explained by the laws of nature.  Related interests in the philosophy of science and metaphysics include questions about causation, explanation, and realism (both scientific and metaphysical).  Recent publications include "Belief and Consciousness" (Philosophical Psychology, 1997), and Determination and Mental Causation" (Erkenntnis, 1997),  "Mental Causation and Explanatory Exclusion" (Erkenntnis, 1993) and "Feminism, Objectivity and Analytic Philosophy" (Hypatia, 1995).  She is currently doing research on consciousness, mental causation and agency.