Michael is a philosopher interested in the ethics and epistemology of the "inner life" (emotion, perception, personality, etc.). His main research project at the moment aims to vindicate the unorthodox view that one person can be directly aware of another's personality traits, rather than having to infer them from known behavior, thought, or feeling. On this view, one person's kindness, aloofness, or gullibility can, through intuition, co-constitute another person's mind, similar to how an apple's redness, smoothness, or sweetness does through sensory perception. There are metaphysical obstacles to this idea, but it also promises ethical and epistemological rewards; Michael strives to overcome the obstacles and reap the rewards. Alongside this project, he is also thinking about a cluster of related topics like resentment and love, blame and forgiveness, gossip and acquaintance.
For more information, please visit: www.michaelbruckner.org.
Select Publications
- Bruckner, Michael. 2022. "Internal Identity Is (Partly) Dispositional Identity." Synthese 200: 1-23.
- Bruckner, Michael and Angela Kallhoff. 2018. "Biozentrismus." In J. S. Ach and D. Borchers (eds.) Handbuch Tierethik. J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart: 161-166.
- Bruckner, Michael. 2016. "Do You Really Want to Know? Challenging Pragmatism and Clearing Space for the Intrinsic Value View." Kriterion 30: 1-22.
Education
- PhD, Philosophy
University of Wisconsin-Madison - MA, Philosophy
University of Wisconsin-Madison - BPhil, Philosophy
University of Oxford - BA, Philosophy
University of Vienna
- Moral judgment
- Character judgment
- Reasons for belief
- Reasons for emotion
- Perception and intuition
- Blame and forgiveness
- Love and friendship