Greetings! My name is Thomas Nadelhoffer. I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I went on to earn degrees in philosophy from The University of Georgia (BA), Georgia State University (MA), and Florida State University (PhD). Since 2006, I have been an assistant professor of philosophy and a member of the law and policy faculty at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. More recently, I spent 2009-2010 at The SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind (U.C. Santa Barbara) as a post-doctoral fellow with the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project, and I spent 2010-2011 at The Kenan Institute for Ethics (Duke University) finishing out the two-year post-doc.
My main areas of research include moral psychology, free will, punishment theory, and neurolaw. Lately, I have been especially interested in the relevance of the gathering data on psychopathy to the philosophy of punishment, and the potential promise and perils of using neuroscience to make better predictions of future dangerousness for the purposes of the law. My articles have appeared in journals such as Analysis, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Mind & Language, Neuroethics, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Moreover, I recently edited Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings with Eddy Nahmias and Shaun Nichols, and I am presently editing The Future of Punishment (Oxford University Press)--which includes contributions from Derk Pereboom, John Martin Fischer, Al Mele, Michael Corrado, Stephen Morse, Shaun Nichols, and others.
During the upcoming two years (2011-2013), I will be working on a project with philosopher Eddy Nahmias and psychologists Jonathan Schooler and Kathleen Vohs that is entitled, "The Psychology of Free Will." Our project is part of The John Templeton Foundation's Big Questions in Free Will grant that is being administered by Alfred Mele. We will be working not only to develop a new scale for measuring folk intuitions and attitudes about free will, dualism, determinism, and responsibility, but we will also be running several studies that explore how these intuitions and attitudes (or lack thereof) get expressed behaviorally. One of our central goals is to examine how future advances in neuroscience might influence our moral and legal beliefs and practices.
When I am not thinking, writing about, and teaching philosophy, I enjoy spending time with my dog, running, cycling, rock climbing, and participating in the grappling arts (e.g., Brazilian jiu jitsu and catch wrestling). I also love to cook and listen to live music. If you have any questions about my professional or personal interests, please feel free to email me at: tnadelhoffer@gmail.com
