Media and Community

The media, our colleagues at Rice, and interested Rice students are all invited to reach out to us if you need to consult with an expert. Below we outline some of the topics on which we can offer regionally distinguished or internationally-distinguished (marked with a star, ★) expertise. This list is not exhaustive, but it does hit most of the highlights. In any case we welcome all questions meant for philosophers. If we can’t help, we might know someone who can.

Morality, Ethics, and Politics

★ blame and responsibility (including excuses, nonculpable ignorance, praise)
Professor Tim Schroeder
Professor George Sher

★ disaster response (including price gouging, rebuilding, and relocation)
Professor Elizabeth Brake

★ equality (including its importance, limitations as a moral principle, role in politics)
Professor Elizabeth Brake
Professor George Sher

ethical and moral theory (including right and wrong, better and worse actions, grey areas, dilemmas)
Professor Elizabeth Brake
Professor George Sher

free will (including the neuroscience of, and physics)
Professor Tim Schroeder

★ marriage (including same-sex, polyamorous, rights, liberalization of)
Professor Elizabeth Brake

medical ethics (including ethical conduct by practitioners, ethics of various medical procedures, treatments, enhancements)
Professor Elizabeth Brake

★ motives (including kindness, indifference, malice, trying to do the right thing)
Professor Tim Schroeder

★ political correctness (including nasty thoughts, outward expression, slurs)
Professor George Sher

sex and love (including dating, marriage, changing norms, consent)
Professor Elizabeth Brake

★ taxation (including redistribution, baseline welfare, inequality, rewarding good choices)
Professor George Sher

value (including objective goodness, subjective goodness, and emotion, and consciousness)
Professor Uriah Kriegel

virtue and vice (including attribution of, specific virtues and vices, relation to feelings, beliefs, actions)
Professor Tim Schroeder

well-being (including welfare, being badly off, objective and subjective ideas of)
Professor George Sher

The Mind, Consciousness, Mental Disorder

★ addiction (including blaming addicts, behavioral additions, neuroscience of)
Professor Tim Schroeder

★ consciousness (including materialism, its scientific study, self-awareness, the senses, thought)
Professor Uriah Kriegel
Professor Tim Schroeder
Professor Charles Siewert

★ desires (including dopamine's role, neuroscience of, unconscious)
Professor Tim Schroeder

emotions (including psychology of, neuroscience of, morality, and appropriate)
Professor Tim Schroeder

mental disorder (including mood disorders, Tourette's Syndrome, responsibility and neuroscience of antipsychiatry)
Professor Tim Schroeder

neuroscience (including its significance for human life and morality, its interpretation, remaining weaknesses)
Professor Tim Schroeder

pain (including its neuroscience, its badness, suffering, displeasure)
Professor Tim Schroeder

Department of Philosophy