Vanderbilt University

Faculty Member, Philosophy

About

I am Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.  My work focuses on topics in contemporary political philosophy, with special interest in epistemic approaches to democratic theory.  This interest is most evident in my *Democracy and Moral Conflict* (Cambridge University Press, 2009), but it also drives my new book, *Pluralism and Liberal Politics* (Routledge 2012).

I also write about pragmatism.  My 2007 book, *A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy* (Routledge) argues against Deweyan democracy and for a social epistemic conception of democracy rooted in Charles Peirce's epistemology.  I am co-author (with Scott Aikin) of *Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed* (Continuum 2008) and co-editor (with Aikin) of *The Pragmatism Reader*  (Princeton University Press, 2011). Aikin and I have also published *Reasonable Atheism* (Prometheus, 2011) and are currently writing a book on argumentation theory.  We are regular columnists at the blog 3 Quarks Daily. 

I post papers-in-progress on my SSRN page: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=849817

I am co-host (with Carrie Figdor) of the podcast, New Books in Philosophy:
http://newbooksinphilosophy.com/about/

And, for reasons that are still not clear to me, I post various stuff of a mostly nonacademic and silly nature on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/RobertTalisse

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