Kevin Morris
Research and personal page
Kevin Morris
Research and personal page
I am associate professor of philosophy at Tulane University. I previously taught for one year at Northern Arizona University, and at Bridgewater State University during graduate school.
I am a world class fisherman and played hockey until I moved to New Orleans. Update: I have resumed my hockey career. At present, I would be the 9th oldest NHL player of all time.
I've collected cats since 2003 and started letting a dog live with me in 2019.
I received my BA in Philosophy from The College of NJ in 2003 and my PhD in Philosophy from Brown University in 2011. Some things:
Supervenience, realization, and physicalism
Nonreductive physicalism and mental causation
Consciousness, panpsychism, and physicalism
Fundamentality, grounding, levels of reality
History of analytic philosophy (Bradley, Moore, metaphysics of mind)
Relations and monistic metaphysics
I was faculty advisor for the Tulane Philosophy Club from 2012-2016, then from 2018-2020, and now from 2023-Present. Since 2021, I am also faculty advisor for the Tulane Juggling Club.
From Fall 2018 to COVID time, I collaborated with Project Lazarus, an HIV/AIDS residency in New Orleans, on courses for its residents taught by Tulane graduate students. We resumed this collaboration in Fall 2024. Here is a student describing his experience with this project.
I've taught courses in elementary logic; intermediate/advanced logic; philosophy of mind; early analytic philosophy. I've led seminars on phenomenalism, panpsychism, and neutral monism; realization and emergence; consciousness and fundamentality; language and ontology; levels of reality; monism and relations; etc.
CV, philpapers page, faculty page.
I can be reached at kmorris4 AT tulane DOT edu.
Check out all of the great Fall 2025 philosophy courses!
Why don't you adopt a dog or cat friend from Animal Rescue New Orleans??? Or just give them your money and/or time???
I am the author or coauthor of the following books:
Early Analytic Philosophy: An Inclusive Reader with Commentary (with C. Preti) (Bloomsbury, 2023), has about 25 readings from roughly 1890-1950, along with about 150 pages of original discussion and commentary aimed at making this challenging material more accessible for students. Table of Contents (draft)
Elementary Symbolic Logic: Concepts, Techniques, and Context (Kendall Hunt, 2021, 2023) provides a rigorous but accessible introduction to symbolic logic, suitable for students who will just take a single course in logic as well as students who aim to pursue further formal studies. Table of Contents and Index (drafts).
Physicalism Deconstructed: Levels of Reality and the Mind-Body Problem (Cambridge, 2018) offers a critique and diagnosis of contemporary approaches to the metaphysics of physicalism, especially nonreductive or levels-based accounts. Table of Contents.
I am the author or coauthor of the following articles:
The Hope and Horror of Physicalism: Comments and Critique, Philosophia (2025) (part of a symposium on C.D. Brown's The Hope and Horror of Physicalism) (online first)
Are Phenomenal Properties Determinables of Physical Determinates? Erkenntnis (2025) (online first)
Metaphysical Dependence and the Subset Relation Between Powers, The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2025) (online first)
F.H. Bradley and the Metaphysics of Nonreductive Physicalism, The Review of Metaphysics (2024) (published version)
Della Rocca's Relations Regress and Bradley's Relations Regresses, Acta Analytica (2024) (published version; penultimate draft)
What's Wrong With Nonreductive Physicalism? The Exclusion Problem Reconsidered, ProtoSociology (2023) (issue on the philosophy of J. Kim) (penultimate draft; final draft; full issue)
The Super Justification Argument for Phenomenal Transparency, Inquiry (2022) (online first published version here and here; penultimate draft)
Phenomenal Transparency and the Transparency of Subjecthood, Analysis (2021) (online first; penultimate draft)
Multiple Realization and Compositional Variation, Synthese 197 (2020) (online first published version and here; penultimate draft)
Truthmaking and the Mysteries of Emergence, in E. Vintiadis and C. Mekios (eds.), Brute Facts (Oxford, 2018; BJPS review) (penultimate draft)
Physicalism, Truthmaking, and Levels of Reality: Prospects and Problems, Topoi 37 (2018) (issue on physicalism) (published version; penultimate draft)
What's Wrong With Brute Supervenience? A Defense of Horgan on Physicalism and Superdupervenience, Analytic Philosophy 59 (2018) (published version; penultimate draft)
The Combination Problem: Subjects and Unity, Erkenntnis 82 (2017) (published version; penultimate draft)
Issues in Phenomenalist Metaphysics, Analysis 76 (2016) (part of a symposium on Michael Pelczar's Sensorama; Pelczar's Precis and Replies) (published version; penultimate draft)
Russellian Physicalism, Bare Structure, and Swapped Inscrutables, Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (2016) (published version; penultimate draft)
How to Read Moore's "Proof of an External World" (with C. Preti), Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (2015) (here and here)
Against Disanalogy-Style Responses to the Exclusion Problem, Philosophia 43 (2015) (published version; penultimate draft)
Supervenience Physicalism, Emergentism, and the Polluted Supervenience Base, Erkenntnis 79 (2014) (published version; penultimate draft)
Causal Closure, Causal Exclusion, and Supervenience Physicalism, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (2014) (published version; penultimate draft)
On Two Arguments for Subset Inheritance, Philosophical Studies 163 (2013) (published version; penultimate draft)
A Defense of Lucky Understanding, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2012) (here)
Theoretical Identities as Explanantia and Explananda, American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2011) (here)
Subset Realization, Parthood, and Causal Overdetermination, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2011) (published version; penultimate draft)
Subset Realization and Physical Identification, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (2011) (published version; penultimate draft)
Guidelines for Theorizing About Realization, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 48 (2010) (published version; penultimate draft)
Does Functional Reduction Need Bridge Laws? A Response to Marras, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2009) (here)