Professor and Chair Professor
Professional interests: Philosophy of Science, Applied Ethics, Philosophy of Medicine, Philosophy & Popular Culture
Dr. John E. Huss is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and is on the Integrated Bioscience faculty at The University of Akron. He specializes in the philosophy of science, applied ethics, and the philosophy of popular culture. Dr. Huss is the editor of Planet of the Apes and Philosophy: Great Apes Think Alike, which explores philosophical themes in the iconic film series. Dr. Huss is a former recipient of the Outstanding Researcher Award as well as a Fulbright Fellowship.
Planet of the Apes and Philosophy
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What makes humans different from other animals, what humans are entitled to do to other species, whether time travel is possible, what limits should be placed on science and technology, the morality and practicality of genetic engineering--these are just some of the philosophical problems raised by Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes and Philosophy looks at all the deeper issues involved in the Planet of the Apes stories. It covers the entire franchise, from Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel Monkey Planet to the successful 2012 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The chapters reflect diverse points of view, philosophical, religious, and scientific. The ethical relations of humans with animals are explored in several chapters, with entertaining and incisive observations on animal intelligence, animal rights, and human-animal interaction. Genetic engineering is changing humans, animals, and plants, raising new questions about the morality of such interventions. The scientific recognition that humans and chimps share 99 percent of their genes makes a future in which non-human animals acquire greater importance a distinct possibility. Planet of the Apes is the most resonant of all scientific apocalypse myths.
Associate Professor
Professional Interests: Medieval Philosophy, Aquinas, Metaphysics, Logic, Epistemology
Dr. Joseph P. Li Vecchi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akron. He completed his PhD at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, in Rome, Italy. His previous degrees are from UCLA and Columbia University. His research is speculative in nature, juxtaposing the thought of Thomas Aquinas and contemporary philosophers, to address topics in Metaphysics, Theory of Intentionality, and Philosophical Logic.
The Philosophy of Being in the Analytic, Continental, and Thomistic Traditions
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This book provides a discussion of the philosophy of being according to three major traditions in Western philosophy, the Analytic, the Continental, and the Thomistic. The origin of the point of view of each of these traditions is associated with a seminal figure, Gottlob Frege, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Aquinas, respectively. The questions addressed in this book are constitutional for the philosophy of being, considering the meaning of being, the relationship between thinking and being, and the methods for using thought to access being. On the one hand, the book honors diversity and pluralism, as it highlights how the three traditions may be clearly and distinctly differentiated regarding the philosophy of being. On the other hand, it honors a sense of solidarity and ecumenism, as it demonstrates how the methods and focal points of these traditions constitute, and continue to shape, the development of Western philosophy. This book contributes toward an essential overview of Western metaphysics and will be of particular interest to those working in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of being.
Professor
My area of specialization is in philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. My dissertation and much of my later work has been on color and color perception and focuses on the question of how cognitive psychology and neuroscience can inform our philosophical theories of the relation between perception and cognition.
Dr. Dimitria Electra Gatzia is Professor of Philosophy and Integrated Bioscience, and former Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Akron. Her interdisciplinary research seamlessly integrates philosophy, psychology, and biosciences, with a particular focus on the intersection of perception and cognition. Dr. Gatzia is the editor of two influential volumes: The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception (OUP, 2020) and The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds (Routledge, 2021). She has also been honored with prestigious Research Fellowships at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp.
The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception
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Most of the research on the epistemology of perception has focused on visual perception. This is hardly surprising given that most of our knowledge about the world is largely attributable to our visual experiences. The present volume is the first to instead focus on the epistemology of non-visual perception - hearing, touch, taste, and cross-sensory experiences. Drawing on recent empirical studies of emotion, perception, and decision-making, it breaks new ground on discussions of whether or not perceptual experience can yield justified beliefs and how to characterize those beliefs.The Epistemology of Non-Visual Perception explores questions not only related to traditional sensory perception, but also to proprioceptive, interoceptive, multisensory, and event perception, expanding traditional notions of the influence that conscious non-visual experience has on human behavior and rationality. Contributors investigate the role that emotions play in decision-making and agential perception and what this means for justifications of belief and knowledge. They analyze the notion that some sensory experiences, like touch, have epistemic privilege over others, as well as perception's relationship to introspection, and the relationship between action perception and belief. Other essays engage with topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, exploring the role that artworks can play in providing us with perceptional knowledge of emotions. The essays collected here, written by top researchers in their respective fields, offer perspectives from a wide range of philosophical disciplines and will appeal to scholars interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophical psychology, among others.
The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence
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This book collects original essays by top scholars that address questions about the nature, origins, and effects of ambivalence. While the nature of agency has received an enormous amount of attention, relatively little has been written about ambivalence or how it relates to topics such as agency, rationality, justification, knowledge, autonomy, self-governance, well-being, social cognition, and various other topics. Ambivalence presents unique questions related to many major philosophical debates. For example, it relates to debates about virtues, rationality, and decision-making, agency or authenticity, emotions, and social or political metacognition. It is also relevant to a variety of larger debates in philosophy and psychology, including nature vs. nature, objectivity vs. subjectivity, or nomothetic vs. idiographic. The essays in this book offer novel and wide-ranging perspectives on this emerging philosophical topic. They will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and social cognition.
Associate Professor
Area of Specialization: Philosophy of Law, Jurisprudence.
Areas of Competence: Social/Political Philosophy, Ethics, Applied Ethics, Logic.
Dr. Travis Hreno is an Associate Professor of philosophy at The University of Akron and an affiliated research scholar with the University of Akron School of Law. His research focuses on philosophy of law, legal reasoning, and political philosophy. He is the author of Jury Nullification: The Jurisprudence of Jurors’ Privilege (Ethics International Press, 2024), which examines the role of juries in shaping legal outcomes. His work challenges common misconceptions about jury nullification and explores its implications for legal authority and the role of jurors in the justice system. In addition to his scholarship, he has given talks and presentations on legal philosophy and jury decision-making. He is also actively involved in academic discussions on legal interpretation and the philosophy of criminal law.
Jury nullification : The jurisprudence of jurors' privilege
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"Jury nullification, in its simplest definition, occurs when a jury returns a not guilty verdict for a defendant it believes to be legally guilty of the crime charged. To put this explicitly, a jury nullifies when, despite believing both a) that the defendant did, beyond a reasonable doubt, commit the act/omission in question, and b) that such behavior is, in fact, prohibited by law, nevertheless declares the defendant innocent. This book explores the specifically philosophical aspects of the phenomenon. Is jury nullification a right? A power? A mere ability? A privilege? A pernicious form of juror malfeasance? Is a system that allows for jury nullification more, or less just, than one that does not?"