Education:
- Ph.D., Boston University, 1978
Research Interests:
Owen Flanagan (Ph.D. 1978, Boston
University) came to Duke as Chair of department in 1993, a post he held until 2000. Since then he has returned to teaching and research full time. He
also holds appointments in Psychology and
Neurobiology and is a Faculty Fellow in
Cognitive Neuroscience. He was
previously Class of 1919 Professor of
Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy
Department at Wellesley College. During the
1985-86 academic year, he was a visiting
member of the Department of Philosophy at
Duke University. He has also had visiting
positions at Brandeis, Princeton, Harvard, and
La Trobe in Australia as well as several
fellowships from the National Endowment for
the Humanities. In 1993-94 Flanagan was
President of the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology. In 1998, he was recipient of the
Romanell National Phi Beta Kappa award,
given annually to one American philosopher
for distinguished contributions to philosophy
and the public understanding of philosophy. In
1999, he was invited by the Mind and Life
Institute to attend a small conference in
Darhamsala, India with the Dalai Lama on the
topic of "Destructive Emotions." A book on the
meetings, Beyond Destructive Emotions: A
Scientific Collaboration With the Dalai
Lama narrated by Daniel Goleman,
appeared in 2003. Besides writing many
articles, reviews, and
contributions to colloquia, Flanagan has
written or edited the following books:
- The
Science of the Mind (MIT press, 1984; 2nd
edition, 1991)
- Identity, Character, and
Morality:
Essays in Moral Psychology, edited with
Amelie O. Rorty (MIT Press, 1990)
- Varieties of
Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological
Realism (Harvard University Press, 1991),
- Consciousness Reconsidered (MIT
Press,
1992)
- Self Expressions: Mind, Morals, and
the
Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press,
1996)
- The Nature of
Consciousness
edited with Ned Block and Güven Güzeldere
(MIT Press, 1998)
- Dreaming Souls: Sleep,
Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious
Mind (Oxford University, 1999)
- Narrative
and Consciousness: Literature, Psychology,
and the Brain Co-edited with Gary Fireman and Ted
McVay (Oxford University Press, 2002)
The Problem of the
Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to
Reconcile Them (Basic 2002).
His most recent book is *The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World* (MIT Press 2007).
He
was awarded a Fulbright Research Award
in 2001-2002 to study Buddhist and Hindu
conceptions of the self. In 2006 he gave the Templeton research Lectures at USC in Los Angeles on *Human Flourishing in the Age of Mind Science.*
Recent Publications (More Publications)
Articles and Chapters
Curriculum Vitae |