john tilley

Department of Philosophy, IUPUI, 425 University Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140, USA.

Office: Cavanaugh 344A, Telephone and Voice Mail: (317) 274-4690, Fax: (317) 278-4579 or 274-2347

E-mail: jtilley@iupui.edu

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Research interests: Ethical theory; practical reason.

Graduate education: M.A., University of Georgia, 1983; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1988.

Representative articles: "Inner Judgements and Moral Relativism," Philosophia 18(2-3) (1988): 171-90. "Altruism and The Prisoner's Dilemma," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69(3) (1991): 264-287. "Moral Relativism, Internalism, and the 'Humean' View of Practical Reason," Modern Schoolman 69(2) (1992): 81-109. "Accounting for the 'Tragedy' in the Prisoner's Dilemma," Synthese 99(2) (1994): 251-76. "Two Kinds of Moral Relativism," Journal of Value Inquiry 29 (1995): 187-92. "Prisoner's Dilemma from a Moral Point of View," Theory and Decision 41(2) (1996): 187-93. "Motivation and Practical Reasons," Erkenntnis 47(1) (1997): 105-27. "The Problem for Normative Cultural Relativism," Ratio Juris 11(3) (1998): 272-90. "Hedonism," Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Academic Press, 1998), vol. 2: 551-59. "Cultural Relativism, Universalism, and the Burden of Proof," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27(2) (1998): 275-97. "Moral Arguments for Cultural Relativism," Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 17(1) (1999): 31-41. "Cultural Relativism," Human Rights Quarterly, 22(2) (2000): 501-47. "Desires, Reasons, and Reasons to be Moral," American Philosophical Quarterly 41(4) (2004): 287-98. "Justifying Reasons, Motivating Reasons, and Agent Relativism in Ethics," Philosophical Studies 118(3) (2004): 373-99. "Is 'Why Be Moral?' a Pseudo-Question?: Hospers and Thornton on the Amoralist's Challenge," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87(4) (2006): 549-66. "Reasons, Rationality, and the Putative Pseudo-Question 'Why Be Moral?'," Synthese 161(2) (2008): 309-23.

Awards: FACET Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1993; Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (TERA), 1997 and 2000; Indiana University President's Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1997; SLA Distinguished Faculty Service Award, 1999; Trustees Teaching Award, 2001; listed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers, 2002, 2005.

Frequently taught courses: Logic (P162); Philosophy of Human Nature (P322); Ethical Theory (P326); Hume's Skeptical Philosophy (P418). (**For course descriptions, see below.)

Other courses: Introduction to Philosophy (P110); Symbolic Logic (P265); Society and State in the Modern World (P323); Topics in Philosophy (P383).

Course descriptions:

P162: Logic (3 cr.):
Official description (from the course bulletin): A study of the principles of logic. The course covers a variety of traditional topics, selected for their practical value, within formal and informal logic. Among the topics typically covered are fallacies, syllogisms, causal hypotheses, logic diagrams, argument analysis, and truth-functional reasoning.
A second description (from a recent syllabus): A course on reasoning skills. The term "reasoning" includes both practical reasoning (reasoning designed to produce rational choices) and theoretical reasoning (reasoning designed to produce rational beliefs). We'll cover the following topics, each of which is relevant to theoretical or practical reasoning: decision theory; argument analysis; categorical logic; propositional logic; fallacies; definitions; and causal analysis. Grades are based on three noncumulative tests.

P322: Philosophy of Human Nature (3 cr.):
Official description (from the course bulletin): Theories of human nature and their philosophical implications.
A second description (from a recent syllabus): Are humans by nature selfish? Do they have souls as well as bodies? Are they born good, and then corrupted by society? Are they controlled by their genes? These are some of the questions addressed in this course. Readings are from Rene Descartes (substance dualism), Thomas Hobbes (egoism), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (romanticism), Baron d'Holbach (hard determinism), Charles Darwin (natural selection), Simone de Beauvoir (existentialism), B. F. Skinner (behaviorism), E. O. Wilson (sociobiology), and Susan Blackmore (memetics). Grades are based on papers, tests, and class participation.

P326: Ethical Theory (3 cr.):
Official description (from the course bulletin): A variable title course. Advanced consideration of one or more ethical theories or theoretical issues about the nature and status of ethics.
A second description (from a recent syllabus): Morality is a bit mysterious. We all have moral convictions, but we often have trouble justifying them, and we frequently disagree over them. Faced with this, we find ourselves with questions like these: "Just what is morality, anyway?" "Is anything objectively right or wrong, or is it all just a matter of custom, preference, or personal taste?" "What do we mean by the words 'good,' 'bad,' 'right,' and 'wrong'?" "What, if anything, really makes an action right or wrong, good or bad?" Such questions are addressed by ethical theory (also called moral philosophy), the topic of this course. Readings are from classical and contemporary sources, e.g., the works of David Hume, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, W. D. Ross, A. J. Ayer, Ruth Benedict, Philippa Foot, J. L. Mackie, Gilbert Harman, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Grades are based on papers, tests, and class participation.

P418/P525: Hume’s Skeptical Philosophy (3 cr.):
Central to much of the Western philosophical tradition is the view that reason is the divine spark in human beings, something that makes humans not so much parts of nature as semi-divine spectators of nature. The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) vigorously opposed this traditional view, partly by arguing that reason provides no foundation for our most basic or important beliefs. Hume’s efforts to deflate the pretensions of reason shocked many readers of his time and produced some of the most challenging skeptical arguments in history. In this course we’ll study some of those arguments. For instance, we’ll examine Hume’s criticism of induction, his argument against miracles, his skepticism about the external world, and his argument that moral beliefs have no basis in fact. Many of Hume’s critics, e.g., George Campbell (1719–1796), Thomas Reid (1710–1796), and C. D. Broad (1887–1971), will receive attention as well.