Recent Accomplishments

• Author, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays (Parmenides Publishing, 2007)
• Presenter, "Being and Essence in Parmenides," at "Parmenides, Venerable and Awful," a conference hosted by the Centro de Estudios de Filosophia Antigua (CEFA) at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina, October 2007.

• Named the Murray and Celeste Fasken Chair in Distinguished Teaching, January 2007, an award of more than $45,000.00 per year for five years to enhance teaching in the College of Liberal Arts
• One of two faculty members named as a Texas A&M University PresidentialProfessor for Teaching Excellence, May 2007, an appointment that comes with a $25,000.00 award
• During the 2006-2007 academic year, selected as one of six "master teachers" who served as mentors in the University's Faculty Teaching Academy. In conjunction with this role, in November 2006 he spoke to the the Faculty Teaching Academy, and in March 2007 he addressed theGraduate Teaching Academy
• Selected to serve on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Center for Teaching Excellence, September 2007
• Editor, Reexamining Berkeley's Philosophy (University of Toronto Press, 2007)
• Editor, New Interpretations of Berkeley's Thought (Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Series: Humanity Books, 2007)
• Author, "The Harmony of the Leibniz-Berkeley Juxtaposition," in Leibniz and the English-Speaking World, ed. Stuart Brown and Pauline Phemister (Springer/Kluwer, 2007)
• Author, "Berkeley's Stoic Notion of Spiritual Substance," in New Interpretations of Berkeley's Thought (see above)
• Author, "Edwards as Philosopher," in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
• Forthcoming article, "Berkeley's Semantic Treatment of Representation," History of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (2008)
• Invited lecturer, "Berkeley Society Initiatives," International Berkeley Society session at the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, in Washington, D. C., December 2006
• Presenter, "How Berkeley's Works Are Interpreted," at the International Conference on George Berkeley in Gaeta, Italy, September 2007
• Presenter, "The Pervasiveness of Stoic Elements in Berkeley's Thought," at the International Berkeley Conference in Helsinki, Finland, August 2007
• Presenter, "Toland's Stoic (Im)materialism," at the Conference on John Toland: Tolerance, Reason, and Religion in London, England, June 2007
• Presenter, "Toland's Metaphysics and the Leibniz-Berkeley Connection," Colloquium in the History of Philosophy in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 2007
• Presenter, "Berkeley's Semantic Treatment of Representation," New England Colloquium in Early Modern Philosophy, Yale University, June 2007
• Senior Editor of Berkeley Studies and editor of Berkeley Briefs, the newsletter of the International Berkeley Society
• Re-elected to a three-year term as president of the International Berkeley Society, January 2007
• Co-organizer of meetings of the South Central Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Arkansas in October of 2006 and at the University of Tulsa in November 2007

• Awarded the Ray A. Rothrock Fellowship for Newly Promoted Associate Professors, Spring 2007
• Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, September 2007
• Forthcoming essay, "Giorgio Agamben and the Bequest of German Idealism and Romanticism," in Bare Lives: A Philosophical Companion to Giorgio Agamben (State University of New York Press)
• Faculty member of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citt di Castello, Italy, July 2007
• Secretary of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics

• Recently recognized for his 40 years of service to Texas A&M University
• Presentation to approximately 200 faculty, students and local professionals at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, November 2007. During his stay, he will also be involved for a number of days in other activities at the University of Alaska College of Engineering

• Author, "Gender and Sexuality in the History of Western Philosophy" (5000 words), in Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas (Macmillan, 2007)
• Author, "Educating the Solitary Man: Levinas, Rousseau, and the Return to Jewish Wisdom," in Levinas Studies: An Annual Review, Vol. 2 (Duquesne University Press, 2007)
• Forthcoming articles: "On a word and a prayer: Education, Prayer, and the Affirmation of Faith," in Journal of Textual Reasoning; "Levinas between Agape and Eros," in Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy; "Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Thus Listened the Rabbis: Philosophy, Education, and the Cycle of Enlightenment," another version reprinted in Nietzsche and Levinas: "After the Death of a Certain God", eds. Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo (Columbia University Press) and "'The Eternal Irony of the Community': Prophecy, Patriotism, and the Dixie Chicks," Shofar
• Invited to give the keynote address at the Levinas Research Seminar at the University of Montreal in May 2008
• Recently appointed to the AAUP Professional Ethics Committee

• Forthcoming articles: "Spinoza's Normative Ethics," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (Sept 2007); and "The Anatomy of the Passions," The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics (Cambridge University Press)

• Author of collected and new writings, The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture, ed. Douglas Anderson (Fordham University Press, 2007)
• Subject of edited volume dedicated to his life and work, Experience as Philosophy: On the Work of John J. McDermott, eds. James Campbell and Richard E. Hart (The American Philosophy Series, Fordham University Press, 2006). This volume includes an Afterword by Professor McDermott and a complete bibliography of his writings through 2006
• Presenter of keynote address, "Ever Not Quite," at "William James and Josiah Royce a Century Later: Pragmatism and Idealism in Dialogue," Harvard University, May 2007
• Presenter, "Can You Help Me? Medicine as a Sacred Calling," at The McGovern Award Lectureship in the Art and Science of Medicine, Texas A&M University, October 2006
• Selected as Piper Professor of 2005 by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation for outstanding scholarly and academic achievement
• Presented the Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch Lecture, "Old is Sometimes Better," at the Annual Conference of the American Montessori Society, Houston, Texas, April 2006
• General Editor of The Correspondence of William James, Volume I-XII, eds. Ignas Skrupskelis and Elizabeth Berkeley (The University Press of Virginia, 1992-2004)
• Recipient, Texas A&M University Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching from the Association of Former Students, May 2004
• One of two faculty members named as a Texas A&M University Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence, May 2004
• Recently recognized for his 30 years of service to Texas A&M University

• Forthcoming articles: "Political Reconciliation, the Rule of Law, and Genocide," in The European Legacy; (co-authored with Paolo Gardoni), "The Acceptability and the Tolerability of Societal Risks: A Capabilities-based Approach," Science and Engineering Ethics; and (co-authored with Paolo Gardoni), "Determining Public Policy and Resource Allocation Priorities for Mitigating Natural Hazards: A Capabilities-based Approach," Science and Engineering Ethics
• During her tenure as a Glsscock fellow, she will engage the Center's theme, How do we keep knowing?, by examining why and in what way the past must be known for reconciliation to be possible. One goal of this examination is to develop a theoretical framework for assessing the effectiveness of promoting political reconciliation through alternative ways of defining, preserving, and communicating the past.

• Awarded funding in the amount of $500.00 for his Latin American Proposal from the ICDG review Committee
• Author, John Dewey's Ethics: Democracy as Experience (Indiana University Press, 2008)
• Forthcoming articles: "John Dewey and the 'Deliberative Turn' in Political Theory," Southwest Philosophical Studies; and "El Desafio Norteamericano: La Tension entre los Valores del Mundo Anglosajon y del Hispano," La Torre Del Virrey
• Recipient of a 2006-07 Enhancing Excellence in Research Grant: "American Pragmatism and the Hispanic World"
• Invited speaker at the Philosophy Department of the UNED, Madrid, Spain, and at the Philosophy Department of the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, April 2007

• Two forthcoming articles: "Countering Kauffman with Connectionism: Two Views of Gene Regulation", will appear in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science; and "The Connectinionist Framework for Gene Regulation", will appear in Biology and Philosophy
• The collection Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice, co-edited by Roger Sansom and Robert Brandon, has just been released by MIT Press
• Forthcoming from MIT Press, Ingenious Genes: How Gene Regulation Networks Evolve to Control Ontogeny

• Elected Secretary-Treasurer of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, for the three-year term 2007-2010

• Recently recognized for his 40 years of service to Texas A&M University

• Faculty member of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citt di Castello, Italy, July 2007
• Earned her doctoral degree from Loyola University Chicago in December 2006

• Awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation's Ethics and Values Studies in Science, Engineering and Technology Program to complete his current book project, tentatively entitled, Persons, Near-Persons and the Merely Sentient: An Empirically Grounded Approach to Animal Welfare and Animal Rights
• Forthcoming articles: "Utilitarianism and the Evolution of Ecological Ethics," Science and Engineering Ethics; and "Personhood, Memory, and Elephant Management," in Never Forgetting: Elephants and Ethics, eds. Christen Wemmer and Catherine Christen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
• Invited to contribute his essay, "Sustaining Animals: Envisioning Humane Sustainable Communities," to a special issue of Ethics and Environment on agricultural ethics; originally invited to present this work at the conference on Agriculture and Environmental Ethics hosted by the Bioethics Program at Iowa State University, June 2007
• Invited to present "Personhood and Biography: Distinguishing Persons from 'Near-Persons' and 'The Merely Sentient,'" at Amherst College, sponsored by the Pick Readership in Environmental Studies, March 2007
• Commentator on Thomas White's presentation, "DeGrazia, MacIntyre and Dolphins," American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division Meeting, April 2007
• Book reviews of Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, in The Philosophical Review 116 (2007); and Byran Norton, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management, in Environmental Ethics 29 (2007)

Staff News

• Congratulations to Rosalie Glenn, who was selected to receive a 2007 College of Liberal Arts Superior Staff (CLASS) Award. The award, which consists of an engraved plaque and a check in the amount of $500, will be presented at the College of Liberal Arts Staff Appreciation Reception on Thursday, December 6th, at 11:30 in the Allen Building Atrium.

Graduate Student News

• Joined the doctoral program in the Fall 2007 as an Association of Former Students University Merit Fellow
• Earned M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Mississippi, May 2007
• Awarded prize for best paper at March 2007 Graduate Student Conference at Gonzaga University

• Presented a paper at a conference entitled "Repraesentare and Exhibere:Descartes' Theory of Representation in the Third Meditation," South Central Seminar in the History of Early Modern Philosohy, University of Tulsa, November 2007.

• Association of Former Students University Diversity Fellowship recipient
• Presenter, "Cosmopolitan Identity and Human Rights" at the annual conference of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Universidad Latina de America, Morelia, Mexico
• Presenter, "Art, Identity, and Everyday Experience" at a Verge Art Series Conference, Trinity West University, Langley, BC, Canada, 2006

• Presented a paper in March 2007 at Loyola University's Brennan Conference entitled "Rights and Their Critical Potential." He was awarded $300.00 for this trip.

Muhammad Haris

• Congratulations to Muhammad Haris, who defended his doctoral dissertation on November 14. He is the fourth student to earn a PhD in Philosophy at Texas A&M University.

• Inducted into the Alpha Chi Honors Society, February 2007
• B.A. Honors Thesis received the J.P. Boyce Theology and Philosophy Award at Union University, 2006

• Has been working over the past six months on her interactive art installation, "The Greenhouse Project," which explores themes of alienation, freedom and bondage, sustainability, and engaged living. "The Greenhouse Project" has been exhibited in various forms across the country at events including Art Outside (Austin, TX), Austin Green Art's Earth Day, Lightning in a Bottle (Santa Barbara, CA), and Burning Man (Black Rock City, NV). At Burning Man, she and her work were filmed as part of a feature length French documentary and for a documentary vignette series for the Sundance channel

• Presenter, "A Libertarian Response to Thomas Pogge," Midsouth Philosophy Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, February 2007; granted support for the conference from a Graduate Travel Grant provided by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University

• Presenter, "How Hierarchical Ethics Can Be Virtuous," San Diego Evangelical Society, November 2007
• Presenter, "A Divided Community: the Postmodern Impact on 'Conservative' Evangelicalism," International Studies Institute for Christian Studies, Kansas City, Missouri, July 2007
• Adjunct Professor of Theology at Jake Memorial College in Monrovia, Liberia, 2006
• Guest lecturer at Sekolah Tinggi Theologia Baptist Indonesia in Semarang, Indonesia, 2006

• Author, "Hegel's Realism: The Implicit Metaphysics of Self-knowledge," Review of Metaphysics 61 (Sept 2007)
• Presenter, "Pragmatism and the Normative Theory of Rationality," Western Canadian Philosophical Association Meeting, University of Saskatchewan, October 2007
• Working with Professor C.E. Harris on a project to examine the possibility of incorporating the concept of "professional virtues" into the Engineering Ethics course taught at Texas A&M University
• In addition to pursuing M.A. degree in philosophy, also studying for a Certificate in Advanced International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service