Philosophy Department

Research & Teaching

Paul Davies received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994. That same year he joined the Philosophy Faculty at William & Mary. His main research and teaching interests are in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, with special interests in philosophy of biology and psychology. In 1996-97, he held a Taft Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cincinnati, where he was engaged in research for a book on evolutionary theory and the mind. Davies has published articles on evolutionary theory, evolutionary psychology, and theories of functions in Nous, Biology and Philosophy, Analysis, Minds and Machines, and Philosophyof Science. His book Norms of Nature was published by MIT Press in 2001.

James Harris previously taught at Transylvania University and the University of Georgia before coming to William & Mary in 1974. He received his BA in philosophy and religion from the University of Georgia and his PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford (1973-74 and 1977-78) and Dartmouth College (1985-86). He is the author of numerous articles in domestic and foreign journals, and he is the author of Against Relativism: A Philosophical Defense of Method(LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company,1992), Philosophical at 33 rpm: Themes of Classic Rock Music (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company,1993), and, most recetnly, Analytic Philosophy of Religion(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academiic Publishers, 2002). He has also edited Analyticity (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1970) and Logic, God, and Metaphysics (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992). Harris is also an associate editor of The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. He is currently beginning work on a book on human nature.