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On a U of T blue background, two photo vignettes, the one on the left showing Zifan Nameer, a young brown man with shoulder-length, wavy black hair and a beard wearing a black shirt under a black leather jacket, while the one on the right shows Matthew DeKock, a white person with straight blond hair smiling broadly into the camera and wearing glasses and a lumberjack shirt.

2025 Philosophy Undergraduate Essay Award Winners: Zifan Nameer & Matthew DeKock

Published: November 21, 2025

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Undergraduate Essay Awards: Zifan Nameer claimed the Hypatia Award for advanced undergraduates with his essay titled “How Is Metaphysics Metaphysically Possible?” The Spinoza Award, which recognizes excellence in undergraduate philosophy writing for early-year students, went to Matthew DeKock for his paper titled “Do … Read More

On a U of T blue background, three photo vignettes, from left to right: Yiwen Mao, an Asian person with short hair wearing an anorak; Sophie Zhang, an East Asian girl with long hair in a school uniform; and Diksha Mehta, a South East Asian young woman with long hair and glasses sitting on a bench wearing a pink blouse.

The 2025 Aristotle Contest Winners Revealed

Published: November 7, 2025

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Yiwen (Molly) Mao, Sophie Zhang, and Diksha Mehta–they emerged victorious, but “competition was exceptionally tough this year” in the 2025 Aristotle Contest edition, says Jim John, the Department of Philosophy’s high school coordinator and lead of the Aristotle Contest adjudicating committee. Rising above the crowd in a highly competitive field, … Read More

On a U of T blue background, headshots of, from left to right, John Miller, David Rattray, and Kristen Beard. Miller is a bearded Metis man standing in front of a vast shore landscape, while w=Rattray, a white man with short brown hair, sits full frame in a blue button down, and Beard sports long blonde hair, glasses, and a big smile standing in front of a primarily yellow bookcase.

Recent PhDs

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The Department of Philosophy congratulates its three most recent PhDs: In September, John R. Miller successfully defended his dissertation titled “Wahkootowin Ethics: A Métis Approach to the Ethics of Kinship,” supervised by Andrew Franklin-Hall. Miller currently holds the position of lecturer at the University of Victoria. David Rattray and Kristen Beard … Read More

On a U of T blue background, a headshot of Munema Moiz, a young hijabi wearing a black top and a salmon-colored head scarf. She as a Mona Lisa smile in the photo.

“The Privacy of First-Personal Perspective”: A Piece of Public Philosophy by Munema Moiz

Published: September 30, 2025

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In “The Privacy of First-Personal Perspective: Engaging with Indian Philosophy of Cosmopsychism,” published on the Blog of the APA, Philosophy graduate student Munema Moiz discusses one of contemporary philosophy’s most pertinent challenges–the so-called hard problem of consciousness–and then critically examines it through the lens of non-Western thought, specifically, that of … Read More

On a medium blue background, a magenta illustration of a stack of books, surrounded by the U of T blue words "On the Bookshelf"

New Book Publications

Published: September 17, 2025

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Congratulations to Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen and Bob Gibbs on the publications of their latest books: Larsen’s Psychopathy Unmasked: The Rise and Fall of a Dangerous Diagnosis, published by MIT Press, brings to the fore the scientific wrongheadedness of society’s fascination with psychopaths and examines how the criminal justice system has misused … Read More