Welcome


During the spring semester, I can be found in Morton Hall 334 between the hours of 12:45-2:15 on Mondays and Wednesdays and from 1:15-2:15 on Tuesdays. I may also be in my office on Thursdays form 1:15-2:15, but only when Faculty Senate does not meet. If my door is open, you are welcome to come in. You may also make an appointment to see me outside of these hours.

The most reliable and quickest way to contact me is email at heikesd [at] uah [dot] edu, but if you must phone, my number is 824-2335.

About me

October 2011

I have been at UAH since 1998. Before that, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, my M.A. from Baylor University, and my B.A. from the University of Kansas. I also spent some time at the University of Houston, during which time my primary studies were in art and not philosophy.

When I am not doing philosophy, I like to be outdoors with my cat and my very old, but beloved, dog. And when I'm not outdoors taming the forest or installing 9 foot tall scrap metal roosters in my yard, my latest hobbies are cooking, canning, and sewing.

Research

My research focuses around problems with rationality and objectivity. I am a defender of both. I am fond of saying things like, “that’s just wrong” or “one ought to think this.” These statements are not necessarily absolutist (there can be grey area in both ethics and epistemology), but I’m not ready to give into relativism just yet. So, I toil away at trying to argue for a conception of objectivity that can allow for subjectivity and to argue for a conception of rationality that can be substantively normative and allow for a great deal of flexibility in empirical content. I have just finished two books on the nature of reason. I also have some papers that do things such as taking philosophical lessons from the empirical sciences of anthropology and psychology and that argue for a virture conception of rationality as a feminist theory of rationality. The bool length treatment of this latter project is in press and will be published during the spring/summer of 2012. I also have this weird idea about Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason having a certain mystical element that results from his bumping up against the limits of philosophy. It's getting less weird over time, but it may take me another decade to work through what bugs me about Kant's Transcendental Dialectic.

 

Teaching

If you are interested in taking any of my courses, please check out the class links on the left hand side of the page. I try to post syllabi and other information that students may find helpful in signing up for classes. Keep in mind that while I try to keep the syllabi accurate and updated, none of the syllabi posted on this site are official. Official syllabi are those handed out during the first day of class.