Dr. Nicholaos Jones

Professor

Contact

1310 Ben Graves Drive
Morton Hall
Room 222
Huntsville, AL 35899
Campus Map

256.824.2338
nick.jones@uah.edu

Biography

Dr. Jones' interests range widely, and focus most often on understanding explanatory strategies from the biological sciences, metaphysical aspects of East Asian philosophical traditions, and issues at the intersection of ethics and technology. His most recent research efforts focus on understanding the varieties of different explanatory strategies in systems biology, and on explicating metaphors about interdependence from the Huayan tradition of Chinese Buddhism. He also collaborates, on occasion, with faculty from science and engineering in efforts to construct ethical constraints for autonomous technologies.

Curriculum Vitae

Personal Website

Education

  • Ph.D., Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2006
  • M.A., Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004
  • B.A., Philosophy, Saint Francis College, 2000

Honors & Awards

  • John Rogers Prize, British Society for the History of Philosophy, Best Article of 2019 in British Journal for the History of Philosophy
  • Outstanding Faculty Member, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, 2016-2017
  • Visiting Fellowship, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 2014
  • Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award, Alabama Humanities Foundation, 2011
  • Phi Kappa Phi, University of Alabama in Huntsville Chapter, 2010
  • William H. Fink Prize, Best Philosophy Graduate Student Paper, OSU, 2002

Affiliations

  • Alabama Philosophical Society
  • Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy
  • American Philosophical Association
  • Philosophy of Science Association
  • Ohio Philosophical Association

Expertise

  • Philosophy of Science (Representation and Explanation)
  • Asian Philosophy (Chinese Buddhism)

Recent Publications

  • Metaphors for Interdependence: Fazang's Buddhist Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2025), https://doi.org/10. 1093/9780197807224.001.0001

  • "A Probabilistic Semantics for Defeasible Argumentation in Systems Validation," with Daniel Shapiro, Bryan Mesmer, and Jennifer Stevens, IEEE Open Journal of Systems Engineering 4 (2026): 1-16, https://doi.org/10.1109/OJSE.2026.3668147 

  • "Prolegomenon for Fazang's Essay on the Golden Lion," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 33.1 (2025): 48-63, https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2024.2373131

  • "Emptiness in Chinese Buddhism," in Routledge Companion to Chinese Philosophy, eds. Brook A. Ziporyn and Stephen C. Walker (Routledge: 2025)

  • "Mereological Composition in Analytic and Buddhist Perspective," Journal of the American Philosophical Association, forthcoming.

  • "An Account of Generous Action and Esteem in P ?ali Buddhism," International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture 30.2 (2020), 195-225.

  • "A Russellian Analysis of the Buddhist Catuskoti," Comparative Philosophy 11.2 (2020), 63-89.

  • "The Architecture of Fazang's Six Characteristics," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27.3 (2019), 468-491. [Winner, 2019 John Rogers Prize]

  • "Huayan Numismatics as Metaphysics: Explicating Fazang's Coin-Counting Metaphor," Philosophy East and West 68.4 (2018), 1155-1177.

  • "Strategies of Explanatory Abstraction in Molecular Systems Biology," Philosophy of Science, 85 (December 2018), 955-968.