John Doris, who has been one of the leaders in bringing empirical psychology in to contact with moral philosophy (perhaps the liveliest development in the field in recent years), will leave the University of California at Santa Cruz for Washington University, St. Louis, starting in January 2005, and with appointments in both Philosophy and the Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience Program.
This caps a dramatic couple of years for the Wash U Department. After a series of departures and retirements in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Department didn't even make the top 50 in the fall 2002 PGR surveys. Since then, they've added at the tenured ranks Jose Bermudez (philosophy of mind) from the University of Stirling and Dennis Des Chene (early modern) from Emory University, as well as (this year), four more tenured faculty: Doris, John Heil (philosophy of mind) from Davidson College, Clare Palmer (environmental ethics) from Lancaster, and Kit Wellman (political philosophy) from Georgia State University. (Wellman's father, Carl, was a longtime member of the Wash U Department [now retired], who also specialized in moral/political philosophy. Kit has emerged as one of the leading political philosophers in the U.S. of his generation.) In addition, they appointed this year Gillian Russell (philosophy of language) from Princeton at the junior level.
With this infusion of philosophical talent, I should be astonished if Wash U were not solidly back in the top 50 at least. If, as I hear is likely, the Department continues to enjoy strong administrative support on a par with what they have recently enjoyed, I would bet on Wash U to establish itself in the top 25 over the next few years.
On the flipside, it is striking that not long ago UC Santa Cruz had on its faculty David Chalmers (now at Arizona, and recent recipient of an Australian Federation Fellowship), Alva Noe (now at Berkeley), as well as Doris. What might have been....
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