John Martin Fischer

John Martin Fischer (born December 26, 1952) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and a leading contributor to the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility.^[1]

Education and Career

Fischer received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1982.^[2] He began teaching career at Yale University, where he taught for almost a decade before joining the faculty at the University of California, Riverside.

In June 2011, Fischer was elected Vice-President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and became President of the Pacific Division in 2013.^[3]

Philosophical Work

While Fischer's work centers primarily on free will and moral responsibility, where he is particularly noted as a proponent of semi-compatibilism^[4] (the idea that regardless of whether free will and determinism are compatible, moral responsibility and determinism are),^[5] he also has worked on the metaphysics of death and philosophy of religion and currently leads a multi-year research projection on "Immortality" funded by the John Templeton Foundation.^[6]

Books

• Moral Responsibility (editor) (Cornell University Press, 1986)
• God, Foreknowledge and Freedom (editor) (Stanford University Press, 1989)
• Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (co-editor with Ravizza) (Cornell University Press, 1993)
• The Metaphysics of Death (editor) (Stanford University Press, 1993)
• The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (Blackwell, 1994)
• Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (co-authored with Ravizza) (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2006)
• Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2009)

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References

External links

• Information Philosopher on John Martin Fischer
• List of papers by John Martin Fischer
• The Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies video interview with John Fischer