BOB FISCHER
[email protected] Department of Philosophy bobfischer.net Texas State University orcid.org/0000-0001-9605-393X 601 University Drive 512.245.2403 San Marcos, TX 78666
EMPLOYMENT
Texas State University: Associate Professor of Philosophy 2019-present Texas State University: Assistant Professor of Philosophy 2013-2019 Texas State University: Senior Lecturer 2011-2013
EDUCATION
University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D., Philosophy 2006-2011 Dissertation: Modal Knowledge, in Theory Director: W. D. Hart State University of New York at Geneseo, B.A., English & Philosophy 2001-2004
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS AUTHORED
What Do We Owe Other Animals? Under contract with Routledge. (w/ Anja Jauernig) Wildlife Ethics: Animal Ethics in Wildlife Management and Conservation. Under contract with Blackwell. (w/ Christian Gamborg, Jordan Hampton, Clare Palmer, and Peter Sandøe) Animal Ethics — A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2021. The Ethics of Eating Animals: Usually Bad, Sometimes Wrong, Often Permissible. New York: Routledge, 2020. Modal Justification via Theories. Synthese Library. Cham: Springer, 2017.
BOOKS EDITED
A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox, 5th Edition. Under contract with Oxford University Press. (w/ Anthony Weston) Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues That Affect You, 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. (1st Edition: 2017) The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2020. Modal Epistemology After Rationalism. Synthese Library. Cham: Springer, 2017. (w/ Felipe Leon) The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. (w/ Ben Bramble)
ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS
“Animal Agriculture, Wet Markets, and COVID-19: A Case Study in Indirect Activism.” Food Ethics, forthcoming. (w/ Alyse Spiehler) “Disgust and the Logic of Contamination: Biology, Culture, and the Evolution of Norm (Over)Compliance.” Mind & Language, forthcoming. (w/ Isaac Wiegman) “The Freegan Challenge to Veganism.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, forthcoming. (w/ Josh Milburn) “Morality on Holiday: Inspiring Ethical Behavior in Animal-based Tourism through Nonmoral Values.” Tourism Recreation Research, forthcoming. (w/ Carol Kline) “Who Should Do What for the Wild Animals We Abandoned?” Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research, forthcoming. “Animal Harms and Food Production: Informing Ethical Choices. Animals 11.5 (2021): 1-39. (w/ Jordan Owen Hampton, Timothy Hall Hyndman, and Benjamin L. Allen) “Boycotting and Public Mourning.” Res Publica 26 (2020): 89-102. “In Defense of Neural Disenhancement to Promote Animal Welfare” in Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals, edited by Andrew Fenton, L. Syd M. Johnson, and Adam Shriver, pp. 135-150. Cham: Springer, 2020. “Keep Your Cats Indoors: A Reply to Abbate.” Acta Analytica 35.3 (2020): 463-468. “Quantifying the Valuation of Animal Welfare among Americans.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 33 (2020): 261–282. (w/ Scott Weathers, Lindsay Jaacks, L. A. Scherer, Lucius Caviola, Jess Boardman Bump, and Stephan Pfister) “Rawls Goes to Church,” Theologica 4.1 (2020): 1-15. “Be a Professional: Attend to the Insects.” American Entomologist 65.3 (2019): 176-179. (w/ Emily Sandall) “Collecting Insects to Conserve Them: A Call for Ethical Caution.” Insect Conservation and Diversity 12 (2019): 173-182. (w/ Brendon Larson) “Don’t Demean ‘Invasives’: Conservation and Wrongful Species Discrimination.” Animals 9.11 (2019): 1-14 (w/ C. E. Abbate)
2 “How Lewis Can Meet the Integration Challenge.” Journal of Philosophical Research 44 (2019): 129-144. (w/ Eric Gilbertson) “How to Reply to Some Ethical Objections to Entomophagy.” Annals of the Entomological Society of America 112.6 (2019): 511-517. “Nonideal Ethics and Arguments against Eating Animals.” Environmental Values 28.4 (2019): 429-448. “In Defense of Backyard Chickens.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 36.1 (2019): 108-123. (w/ Josh Milburn) “Moral Bioenhancement Probably Won’t Improve Things for Animals (and May Make Them Worse).” Topoi 38 (2019):141-151. “The Problem with Person-rearing Accounts of Moral Status.” Thought 8 (2019): 119-128. (w/ Travis Timmerman) “Animal Rights and Incredulous Stares.” Between the Species 21.1 (2018): 216-231. “Animals as Honorary Humans” in Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism, edited by Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, pp. 51-61. New York: Routledge, 2018. “Arguments for Consuming Animal Products” in The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, edited by Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson, and Tyler Doggett, pp. 241-266. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. “C. I. Lewis and the Benacerraf Problem.” Episteme 15.2 (2018): 154-165. “Categorical Desires and the Badness of Animal Death.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 52 (2018): 97-111. (w/ Matt Bower) “Dignitarian Hunting: A Rights-based Defense.” Social Theory and Practice 44.1 (2018): 49- 73. (w/ Dan Demetriou) “Disassociation Intuitions.” Southwest Philosophy Review 34.1 (2018): 85-92. (w/ Isaac Wiegman) “Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31.4 (2018): 409-428. (w/ Andy Lamey) “Is Abolitionism Guilty of Racism? A Reply to Cordeiro-Rodrigues.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31.3 (2018): 295-306. “Speech and War: Rethinking the Ethics of Speech Restrictions.” The Value and Limits of Academic Speech: Philosophical, Political, and Legal Perspectives, ed. Donald Alexander Downs and Chris W. Surprenant, pp. 187-204. New York: Routledge, 2018. (w/ Burkay Ozturk) “Facsimiles of Flesh.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 34.4 (2017): 49-497. (w/ Burkay Ozturk) “Focus on Fish: A Call to Effective Altruists.” Essays in Philosophy 18.1 (2017): 1-23. (w/ Max Elder) “Modal Empiricism: Objection, Reply, Proposal” in Modal Epistemology After Rationalism (Synthese Library), edited by Bob Fischer and Felipe Leon, pp. 263-280. Cham: Springer, 2017.
3 “The Moral Objection to Modal Realism.” Erkenntnis 82.5 (2017): 1015-1030. “Wild Fish and Expected Utility.” Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 8.1 (2017): 1-6. “A Theory-based Epistemology of Modality.” The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2016): 228-247. “Bugging the Strict Vegan.” Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics 29.2 (2016): 255-263. “Disgust as Heuristic.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (2016):679-693. “Hale on the Architecture of Modal Knowledge.” Analytic Philosophy 57.1 (2016): 76-89. “The Modal-Knowno Problem.” Southwest Philosophy Review 32.1 (2016): 225-232. (w/ Felipe Leon) “You Can’t Buy Your Way Out of Veganism.” Between the Species 19.1 (2016): 193-209. “Against Blaming the Blameworthy” in The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat, edited by Ben Bramble and Bob Fischer, pp. 185-198. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. “Theory Selection in Modal Epistemology.” American Philosophical Quarterly 52.3 (2015): 289-304. “Disgust and the Collection of Bovine Fetal Blood” in Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy, edited by Elisa Aaltola and John Hadley, pp. 151-164. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014. “Salvaging Serviceability in Metaphysics.” Southwest Philosophy Review 30.1 (2014): 105- 115. (w/ Eric Gilbertson) “Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether the Virtues Are Truth-Conducive.” Synthese 191 (2014): 1059-1073. “Modal Knowledge, in Theory.” Southwest Philosophy Review 28.1 (2012): 227-236. “Why Incest Is Usually Wrong.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 18.2 (2012): 17-31.
COMMENTS & REFERENCE
“Comments on J. P. Andrew’s ‘The Insignificance of Taste’.” Southwest Philosophy Review, forthcoming. “Are Meat-Eaters Epistemically Unlucky?” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 9.9 (2020): 10-14. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-5kC. “Just Policy Paralysis.” Animal Sentience 2019.282. (w/ Clare Palmer) “Individuals in the Wild.” Animal Sentience 2018.170. “Modal Epistemology.” 1000-Word Philosophy. December 5, 2017. https://1000wordphilosophy.com/modal-epistemology/ “What If Barron and Klein Are Right About Insect Sentience?” Animal Sentience 2016.115. “Meat: Ethical Considerations” in Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, edited by Paul B. Thompson and David M. Kaplan, pp. 1365-1371. New York: Springer, 2014.
BOOK REVIEWS
4 “Kenneth Asher’s Literature, Ethics, and the Emotions.” Philosophy in Review, forthcoming. “Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck’s The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds.” Metapsychology 22.22 (2018). “Nathan Nobis’s Animals & Ethics 101.” Between the Species 20.1 (2018): 2-5. “Chauncey Maher’s Plant Minds: A Philosophical Defense.” Metapsychology 21.39 (2017). “Chignell, Cuneo, and Halteman’s Philosophy Comes to Dinner.” The Philosophical Review 126.2 (2017): 295-300. “J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals.” Metapsychology 21.2 (2017). “Steven McMullen’s Animals and the Economy.” Between the Species 20.1 (2017): 153-158. “Ellen K. Silbergeld’s Chickenizing Farms & Food.” Metapsychology 20.51 (2016). “David Kaspar’s Intuitionism.” Philosophy in Review 34.1-2 (2014). “Lance Rips’ Lines of Thought: Central Concepts in Cognitive Psychology.” Philosophical Psychology 27:3 (2014): 445-449. “Timothy O’Connor’s Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency.” Faith and Philosophy 27.4 (2010): 236-238. “Louise Antony’s Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life.” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 66.2 (2009): 119-123. “Amy Thomasson’s Ordinary Objects.” Metaphilosophy 40.2 (2009): 296-302. “Joseph LaPorte’s Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change.” Erkenntnis 69 (2008): 415-419.
OP-EDS & POPULAR WRITING
“Beyond the Neighborhood: Mister Rogers and Global Problems” in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, edited by Eric J. Mohr and Holly K. Mohr. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2019. (w/ Jennifer Fischer) “Why Writing Better Will Make You a Better Person.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 4, 2019. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Writing-Better-Will-Make/246406 “Insider Talk: Challenging Food Choices.” The Prindle Post. August 20, 2018. https://www.prindlepost.org/2018/08/insider-talk-challenging-food-choices/ “Teaching for Our Good” in Philosophers in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching, edited by Steven Cahn, Alexandra Bradner, and Andrew Mills, pp. 159-169. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2018. “What Can You Build?” in LEGO and Philosophy, edited by Roy T. Cook and Sondra Bacharach, pp. 207-216. New York: Blackwell, 2017. “When Vegans Won’t Compromise” (w/ James McWilliams) The New York Times. August 16, 2015. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/when-vegans-wont- compromise/ (Reprinted in Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley. New York: Liveright, 2017.) “From Outrage to Integration.” The Prindle Post. July 20, 2015. http://www.prindlepost.org/2015/07/from-outrage-to-integration/ “Why Act When It Doesn’t Make a Difference?” The Prindle Post. May 26, 2015.
5 http://www.prindlepost.org/2015/05/why-act-when-it-doesnt-make-a-difference/ “For What Shall We Be Blamed — and Why? The New York Times’s “Ethics of Eating Meat” Essay Contest www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/tell-us-why-its-ethical-to-eat-meat-a- contest.html
PEER-REVIEWED PRESENTATIONS
“Can Extreme Sport Be Valuable for Nonhuman Animals?” Sport, Animals, and Ethics University of New Brunswick and Miami University May 2021 “Utilitarianism for Animals, Kantianism for People” Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder CO August 2019 “The Problem with Person-Rearing Accounts of Morality” (w/ Travis Timmerman) APA Eastern Division Meeting, New York NY January 2019 “The Disassociation Intuition” (w/ Isaac Wiegman) Southwestern Philosophical Society Meeting, Waco TX November 2017 “An Epistemic Argument for Veganism” Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder CO August 2017 “Vegetarianism and the Collapse Question” Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Baltimore MD June 2017 “Boycotting as Public Mourning” Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder CO August 2016 “Animals as Honorary Persons” Third Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School, Oxford UK July 2016 “You Can’t Buy Your Way Out of Veganism” New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society, San Marcos TX March 2016 “The Modal-Knowno Problem” (w/ Felipe Leon) Southwestern Philosophical Society Meeting, Nashville TN November 2015 “Disgust as Heuristic” APPE Twenty-fourth Annual International Conference, Costa Mesa CA February 2015 “How to Eat Meat Blamelessly” APA Pacific Division Meeting (Society of Applied Philosophy Group Session), San Diego CA April 2014 “Salvaging Serviceability in Metaphysics” (w/ Eric Gilbertson) Southwestern Philosophical Society Meeting, Fredericksburg TX November 2013 Northwest Philosophy Conference, Forest Grove OR October 2013 “A Different Route to the Necessity Model” International Workshop on the Epistemology of Modality (LanCog Research Group), Lisbon Portugal August 2013
6 New Mexico West Texas Philosophical Society, San Antonio TX March 2013 “A Meta-epistemology of Modality” APA Pacific Division Meeting, San Francisco CA March 2013 “Disagreement about Servant Leadership: A Diagnosis” (w/ C. D. McNiven) Midwest Scholars Conference, Indianapolis IN March 2013 “Rawlsian Ecumenism” 2015 AAR-WR Meeting, Santa Clara CA March 2015 2013 SCP Mountain-Pacific Region Conference, Boulder CO March 2013 “TRUE Is False and Why It Matters” PSA 2012, San Diego CA November 2012 Central States Philosophical Association Meeting, Columbia MO September 2012 “A Debate on the Purpose of Introductory Philosophy Courses” (w/ Jeff Gordon) AAPT Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, Austin TX July 2012 “Why Incest Is Usually Wrong” Sixth Annual Felician Ethics Conference, Rutherford NJ April 2012 New Mexico West Texas Philosophical Society, Las Cruces NM March 2012 “Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether Simplicity Is Truth-Conducive” APA Pacific Division Meeting, San Diego CA April 2012 “The Theory Theory: A Neglected Modal Epistemology” APA Eastern Division Meeting, Washington DC December 2011 Indiana Philosophical Association Spring Meeting, Muncie IN April 2011 “Modal Knowledge, in Theory” Southwestern Philosophical Society Meeting, Austin TX November 2011 “Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether the Virtues Are Truth-Conducive” The Second Midwest Workshop in the Philosophy of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, Fort Wayne IN November 2011 “On Hawthorne on Lewis on the Case for Modal Realism” Central States Philosophical Association Meeting, St. Louis MO September 2011 “A Better Basis for Modal Skepticism” Joint Meeting of Illinois and Indiana Philosophical Associations, Charleston IN November 2010 Alabama Philosophical Society’s 48th Annual Conference, Pensacola FL September 2010
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
“It/He/They/She: On Pronoun Norms for All, Human and Nonhuman” Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich May 2021 Harvard-Yale Animal Ethics Faculty Seminar May 2021 “Two Challenges to Johannsen on Habitat Destruction”
7 APPLE Symposium on Kyle Johannsen’s Wild Animal Ethics April 2021 “Why Is Phylogenetic Diversity Valuable?” The Mass Extinction Workshop, Fort Collins CO February 2021 “One Cheer for Cheating” Texas Community College Teachers Association Conference February 2021 Ashoka University February 2021 “Defending the Public Trust Doctrine” Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder CO August 2020 “The Ethics of Bycatch” Entomology 2019, St. Louis MO November 2019 “Comments on J. P. Andrew’s ‘The Insignificance of Taste’” Southwestern Philosophical Society Meeting, Ft. Worth TX November 2019 “Utilitarianism for Animals, Kantianism for People” University of Nevada, Las Vegas November 2019 Workshop on Utilitarian Approaches in Animal Ethics, Oxford UK September 2019 “The Ethics of Eating Animals” 2019 Food Ethics Workshop, Burlington VT May 2019 “Eating in an Ugly World” APA Central Division Meeting, Denver CO February 2019 “Comments on Strawson” 2019 Texas Ethics Workshop February 2019 “Collecting Insects to Conserve Them” Entomology 2018, Vancouver BC November 2018 “How Lewis Can Meet the Integration Challenge” Texas Epistemology Extravaganza, New Braunfels TX April 2018 “Veganism, Vegetarianism, and the Duty to Signal” Kline Workshop on Animal Ethics, Columbia MO April 2018 Iowa State University, Ames IA March 2018 “Comments on Kasperbauer’s Subhuman” APA Pacific Division Meeting, San Diego CA March 2018 “Nonideal Ethics and Arguments against Eating Animals” 2017 Food Ethics Workshop, Burlington VT May 2017 “An Epistemic Argument for Veganism” UTSA, San Antonio TX April 2017 “Veganism and/as Lament” Animals and the Kingdom of God, Grand Rapids MI April 2017 “Comments on Milburn’s ‘Death-free Dairy’” A&M Workshop on Engineering and Animal Ethics, College Station TX March 2017 “The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat” Texas State Author Series, San Marcos TX March 2016 “In Defense of Aggregating Corporate Intent: A Reply to Tierny”
8 New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society, San Marcos TX March 2016 “Modal Empiricism” Stirling Conference on Modal Empiricism, Stirling UK October 2015 “Boycotting as Public Mourning” Lynchburg College, Lynchburg VA March 2015 “On ‘The Epistemology of Modality and Epistemology of Mathematics’” Epistemology of Modality International Conference, Aarhus Denmark September 2014 “Galoob’s ‘Intentions, Compliance, and Fiduciary Obligations’” APA Pacific Division Meeting (Main Program), San Diego CA April 2014 “The Place of Disgust in Animal Ethics” SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo NY October 2013 “May We Eat (Nonhuman) Animals?” University of Texas Project on Conflict Resolution, Austin TX June 2013 “Comments on Muntean’s ‘Genetic Numerical Simulation’” Indiana Philosophical Association Spring Meeting, Muncie IN April 2011 “Comments on Lee’s ‘Analyticity and the Necessary a Posteriori’” Joint Meeting of Illinois and Indiana Philosophical Associations, Charleston IN November 2010
HONORS & AWARDS
Presidential Distinction Award for Excellence in Scholarship 2017 Liberal Arts Golden Apple Award for Scholarship 2017 Presidential Distinction Award for Excellence in Teaching 2014 Liberal Arts Golden Apple Award for Teaching 2014 Honors College Professor of the Year 2012-2013
TEACHING
COURSES TAUGHT
HON 2304A/3395J: The Meaning of Death HON 2304B/3396Z: Eating Animals in America: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives PHIL 1320: Ethics and Society (Correspondence and Face-to-Face) PHIL 3317/5388: Science and Religion PHIL 3321 Contemporary Moral Problems (Animal Ethics) PHIL 3322/5322 Professional Ethics PHIL 3324/5324: Meaning of Life PHIL 4301/5301: Applied Philosophy (Religion in the Public Square)
9 PHIL 4355/5355: Philosophy of Science PHIL 4388: Problems in Philosophy: Teaching Ethics PHIL 3323/5323/7323: Environmental Ethics PHIL 5329: Food Ethics PHIL 5388: Problems in Philosophy: Modal Epistemology PHIL 5388: Problems in Philosophy: The Pairing Problem PHIL 5388: Problems in Philosophy: Contemporary Virtue Ethics PHIL 5399A Thesis REL 2315: Introduction to the New Testament
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
HON 3359J: The Meaning of Death HON 3396Z: Eating Animals in America: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives PHIL 1320: Ethics & Society (Correspondence: v.1, 2013; v.2, 2015) PHIL 5329: Food Ethics
SERVICE
IACUC Member (Fall 2019-present) Graduate Advisor (Summer 2019-present) Advisor for Texas State’s Animal Rights Club (Spring 2016-present) Assessment Coordinator for Texas State’s Philosophy Department (Summer 2012-present) Organizer: Texas Ethics Workshop (Winter 2017-present) Director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals (2016-present) Reviewer for Acta Analytica, American Philosophical Quarterly, Analysis, Animals, Les Ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum, Australian Zoologist, Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics, Between the Species, Christian Scholar’s Review, Conservation Biology, Essays in Philosophy, Ethics, Policy & Environment, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Philosophical Research, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, MIT Press, New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society, Noûs, Oxford University Press, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophia, Problemos, Public Affairs Quarterly, Res Publica, Routledge, Rowman & Littlefield, Social Epistemology, Society for Philosophy & Psychology, Southwest Philosophy Review, Springer, Synthese, TexasPhilosophical, Utilitas, and Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
10 11