Matthew J. Brown

I am a Professor of Philosophy and the Jo Ann & Donald N. Boydston Chair of American Philosophy at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale); I am also the Director of the Center for Dewey Studies, which focuses both on the study of John Dewey’s life and works as well as carrying on the living legacy of John Dewey.

The main areas of my research and teaching are the history of philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and cognitive science. In the history of philosophy, I focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly on the history and legacy of John Dewey and American pragmatism, as well as the history of philosophy of science. I also work on topics in history and philosophy of science including the role of values in science and engineering, the role and authority of science in politics and policymaking, feminist science, scientific evidence, models, objectivity, the social structure of science, climate science, the history of psychology and cognitive science, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Finally, I am interested in contemporary theory and methods in cognitive science, particularly related to the emergence of theories of cognition called social, distributed, extended, etc. I conduct research using the methods of cognitive ethnography, especially to the study of laboratory research and education in science and engineering. I am also broadly interested in issues in the theoretical or philosophical foundations of psychology and cognitive science. I also do research and teach in the field of comics studies.