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
★ achievement (including: fulfillment, effort, worthwhile goals)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
★ 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)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
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
meaning of life (including existentialism, why bother, larger and higher purposes)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
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)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
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)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
Professor George Sher
The Mind, Consciousness, Mental Disorder
★ addiction (including blaming addicts, behavioral additions, neuroscience of)
Professor Tim Schroeder
cognitive science (including its history, current movements, theoretical basis)
Assistant Professor Alex Morgan
★ 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)
Assistant Professor Alex Morgan
Professor Tim Schroeder
pain (including its neuroscience, its badness, suffering, displeasure)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
Professor Tim Schroeder
★ plant mentality (including the science of representations in plants, feelings, awareness)
Assistant Professor Alex Morgan
Other Philosophical Topics
art (including what is art, the value of art, the nature of fiction, music)
Associate Professor Gwen Bradford
Professor Elizabeth Brake
Professor Tim Schroeder
biology and the biological sciences (including intellectual foundations, evolution, concepts of health and well-functioning in)
Assistant Professor Alex Morgan