Department News

The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce a graphic design contest for UB undergraduate students to create an original poster to advertise one of our selected courses. The top prize is a UB 2021-22 tuition waiver valued at $5,000. The contest is open to all UB Undergraduate students currently enrolled in any program. All undergraduate students at UB are invited to enter the poster design contest. 

The University at Buffalo Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that James R. Beebe,  Professor of Philosophy, has been awarded a $234,000 research grant from the John Templeton Foundation  to study the philosophy and psychology of intellectual autonomy. The three-year project aims to deepen understanding of how to balance a healthy reliance upon our own reasoning and decision making with a robust awareness of the fallibility of our cognitive capacities. On the one hand, overestimating our intellectual abilities and achievements can lead us to dismiss the testimony of peers and experts when they disagree with us, closing us off to potentially valuable information. On the other hand, focusing too much on our intellectual limitations and weaknesses can result in insufficient self-trust and an excessive deference toward the opinions and reasoning of others. Knowing how to balance intellectual self-reliance with intellectual humility can be especially difficult when navigating contentious public debates that are marked by increasing polarization and massive amounts of misinformation that are disguised as fact.

Research at the University at Buffalo’s National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR) is leveraging ontology to assist in the efforts to control the current outbreak, accelerate data discovery in future pandemics, and promote reproducible infectious disease research. Read the news story by Bert Gambini. Also see the related paper, The Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), a community-based ontology for coronavirus disease knowledge and data integration, sharing, and analysis, here.

Although much has been written about Cuba after Castro, relatively little has been written about Cuba before Castro. The political reality of Castro’s Revolution has created a historical void about this period, paying insufficient attention to an important century before 1959. Cuba has become a political punching bag, between supporters and critics of Castro and the Revolution, making it difficult to understand real life in Cuba because of the disproportionate preoccupation with, and monopoly of, the political reality on the island. In spite of some attempts, it continues to be easier and perceived as more pressing, to write about politics rather than the reality that Cubans experienced in their daily lives— their sufferings and celebrations, successes and failures, lives and deaths, and beliefs and disbeliefs. Going for and against the avalanche of information about the political authenticity in and out of Cuba, most Cubans have tended to forget that Cuba is much larger than the perceived reality after Castro’s Revolution. Too many have failed to remember the Cubans who have lived and worked in Cuba in the century before an important period of Cuban history where the nation was forged. Indeed, even limited attention reveals a rich and sophisticated society that calls for study. 

Oxford University Press (OUP) has announced that Dr. Ryan Muldoon is co-editor of its new book series, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Dr. Muldoon, Associate Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program, University at Buffalo Department of Philosophy, is an expert in social political philosophy. As one of five co-editors of the book series, Muldoon enjoys the support and advice of OUP's Editorial Advisory Board. 

Philosophy, Politics and Economics begins with a wide-angle view of the inherent tools found in these three disciplines. It considers their strengths and blind spots, and then pulls the various instruments together to create a robust mechanism that can creatively inform, explain and evaluate those systems and forces influencing organizations and societies. UB’s three-dimensional PPE design also includes an early course in model-based reasoning, which has been developed specifically for the program. “The idea is to help students think about the world using models that allow them to consider complicated problems, Ryan Muldoon, associate professor, Department of Philosophy.