Michael O'Rourke
College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences
Department of Philosophy
Professor of Philosophy
With UI Since 1996
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Ph.D. Philosophy, Stanford University, 1995
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M.A. Philosophy, Stanford University, 1991
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B.A. Philosophy, University of Kansas, 1987
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Philosophy of Language
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Epistemology
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Philosophy of Action
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Interdisciplinary Theory
Michael O’Rourke is Professor of Philosophy and faculty in Neuroscience and Environmental Science at the University of Idaho. His research interests include the nature of epistemic integration and communication in collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and the nature of linguistic communication between intelligent agents. He is PI on the NSF-funded project, “Improving Communication in Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration” (NSF SES-0823058), which combines information science, sociology, and philosophy in an effort to develop mechanisms that enable collaborators to achieve mutual understanding about research assumptions. He has published extensively on the topic of communication within philosophy, interdisciplinary theory, and robotic agent design.
Since 2004, he has been a collaborator and co-PI on several funded projects involving autonomous underwater vehicles. O’Rourke has had substantial administrative experience, including work at the departmental and college level. Since 1998, he has served as co-director of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, an interdisciplinary conference on philosophical themes held annually on the campuses of UI and WSU, and since 2000, as co-editor of the
Topics in Contemporary Philosophy series published by the MIT Press.
- “Language and Logic to Enable Collaborative Behavior among Multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles,” with T. Bean, G. Beidler, J. Canning, D. Odell, R. Wall, M. Anderson, and D. Edwards, International Journal of Intelligent Control and Systems, 13:1, 2008, pp. 67-80.
- “It’s Alive! The Life Span of an Interdisciplinary Course in the Humanities,” with T. Drake, D. Panttaja, and I. Peterson, JGE: The Journal of General Education, 57:4, 2008, pp. 223-243.
- Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry, with C. Washington, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2007).
- “Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science,” with S. Eigenbrode, J. D. Wulfhorst, D. M. Althoff, C. S. Goldberg, K. Merrill, W. Morse, M. Nielsen-Pincus, J. Stephens, L. Winowiecki, and N. A. Bosque-Pérez, BioScience, 57, 2007, pp. 55-64.
- “The Scope Argument,” The Journal of Philosophy, 100, 2003, pp. 134-155.
*See CV for full listings of publications, research, outreach and awards.