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Introduction

I went to school in the suburbs of Toulouse and then studied in Classes Préparatoires at the Lycées Saint-Sernin (Toulouse) and Henri IV (Paris). After admission to the École Normale Supérieure, I completed a BA in Economics and a Masters in Philosophy at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, as well as a Masters in Economics at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. I then moved to New York where I earned my PhD in Philosophy as part of a joint supervision agreement between The Graduate Center (City University of New York) and the École Normale Supérieure. Before joining Queen’s, I was in Montreal, working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University and the Center for Research in Ethics.

Teaching

I teach philosophy to undergraduates in all years at Queen’s. I teach the ‘General Philosophy’ and ‘Introduction to Logic’ first-year papers, and the option papers ‘Ethics’ and ‘Knowledge and Reality’.

Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of ethics, philosophy of action, and social philosophy. Informed by feminist philosophy, my work focuses on agency and responsibility, whether individual or shared, in our conflictual and unjust social world. I am currently engaged in two research projects. One focuses on complicity under conditions of structural injustice and oppression. The other examines the burden that our own agency might become when our social world forces us to do things we’d rather not do. A grounding assumption behind both projects is that our complicated social world significantly shapes our normative landscape and, accordingly, the way we exercise our agency when navigating this landscape as well as the responsibility we bear when navigating this landscape poorly.

Publications

“Shared Agency and Mutual Obligations: A Pluralist Account,” Forthcoming. The Philosophical Quarterly.

“Cooperation: With or Without Shared Intentions,” 2022. Ethics 132 (2): 414-444.

For a complete list of my publications, please visit www.jsalomone-sehr.com


Introduction

I read Literae Humaniores as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, where I also took an MSt in ancient philosophy.  I subsequently moved to Oriel College, Oxford, where I completed my DPhil in philosophy and taught as a college lecturer.  I then spent five years as Career Development Fellow in Ancient Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford, following which, in 2019, I took up my current position at Queen’s.

Teaching

Ancient philosophy.

Research

My research interests are in ancient philosophy, with a focus to date on Hellenistic epistemology and scepticism.

Publications

‘Proof Against Proof: A Reading of Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Logicians 8.463-481’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 61 (2022), pp.263-304.

‘The Sceptic’s Art: Varieties of Expertise in Sextus Empiricus’ in Johansen, T. (ed.) Productive Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy: The Concept of Technê, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp.226-244.

Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. x + 204.


Research

My main research interests are in epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, philosophy of art, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. In my most recent book, Action, Knowledge, and Will, I argue that human behaviour has four irreducibly different dimensions—physical, psychological, intellectual, and ethical—which were amalgamated or confused in the traditional idea of a ‘will’. My work in philosophy of art has focused mainly on the visual arts. My book The Objective Eye is about the nature of colours and shapes, their representation in pictorial art, and the concept of realism in art theory. I have also written about art and neuroscience.

Publications

Links to some of my recent publications:

Introduction

I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. I did my undergraduate degree in philosophy and French at the University of Adelaide, followed by Honours in philosophy. I then did a PhD in philosophy at Flinders University. After temporary lectureships at Macquarie University and the University of Adelaide, I started a permanent lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2006. Shortly afterwards, I took leave to complete a three-year Macquarie University Research Fellowship in Sydney. After returning to the UK, I was Senior Lecturer then Reader at Manchester before moving to Oxford to take up my current position at Queen’s in 2019. I have held visiting appointments at the EHESS in Paris, the University of Sydney, and the University of British Columbia.

Teaching

I teach philosophy to undergraduates in all years at Queen’s. I teach the ‘General Philosophy’ first-year paper, and the option papers ‘Knowledge and Reality’ and ‘Aesthetics’. I am happy to supervise graduate work in a broad range of areas in the philosophy of art and aesthetics.

Research

My research addresses issues at the intersection of the philosophy of art, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Much of it concerns fundamental issues about the representational arts, including the nature of depiction, and of cinematic and photographic representation. I am also interested in the nature and value of art, the expression of emotion, and the nature of genre. In my recent book, Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2020), I develop an account of fiction as a social practice, providing original explanations of the nature of fiction, the norms governing its understanding and interpretation, and the nature of fictional entities. I have recently embarked on a new research project, the aim of which is to determine the nature of artistic media and styles and their interpretative and evaluative roles.

Publications

For a list of my publications, please see my PhilPeople website.

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