Dr. Deborah Heikes Professor, Philosophy Contact 1310 Ben Graves DriveMorton HallRoom 221Huntsville, AL 35899 Campus Map 256.824.2335deborah.heikes@uah.edu Biography Dr. Heikes is an expert on Immanuel Kant, though her research focuses primarily on contemporary shifts away from Kantian approaches to understanding the mind and knowledge. As an alternative, she has developed a concept of rationality as a virtue concept. In particular, she is interested in building an account of rationality that more completely includes subjective and social elements while still maintaining an objective ground for reason and for moral concepts like equality and justice. While her earlier work focused on broadening our understanding of knowledge, her current work considers how efforts to understand the social nature of knowledge also function to undermine the responsibility each of us has for what we believe. She also argues that there can be genuinely unresolvable disagreement over which beliefs we ought to hold. Her latest project explores the role trust plays in our development of beliefs. Heikes has published five books on the topic of rationality and knowledge: Epistemic Responsibility and Undesirable Beliefs (Palgrave-Macmillan 2023), Toward a Liberatory Epistemology (Palgrave-Macmillan 2019), Rationality, Representation and Race (Palgrave Macmillan 2016); The Virtue of Feminist Rationality (Continuum 2012), and Rationality and Feminist Philosophy (Continuum 2010). She has also published articles in such journals as Synthese, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, and Southwest Philosophy Review. Curriculum Vitae Education Ph.D., Philosophy, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1998 M.A., Philosophy, Baylor University, 1992 B.A., Philosophy, University of Kansas, 1991 Honors & Awards Outstanding Faculty Member, College of Liberal Arts, UAH, 2011-12 Study Sphere Award of Excellence Lightspan Study Web Academic Excellence Award American Philosophical Association, Central Division, Graduate Student Travel Stipend, 1996 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fellowship, 1995-1996 Clifford P. Osborne Fellowship, University of Kansas, 1993 Phi Kappa Phi Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Research at the Master's Level (nominee) 1992 Edward S. Robinson Essay Contest winner, University of Kansas, 1991 Affiliations American Philosophical Association Southwestern Philosophical Society Society for Women in Philosophy Society for Analytic Feminism International Association of Women Philosophers Expertise Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind Kant Wittgenstein Recent Publications "Epistemic Ignorance and Moral Responsibility," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2020 (36: 1): 93-100. "Don't Be Ignorant," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2018 (34: 1): 49-57. "Rationality as an Epistemic Virtue," The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism, ed. Pieranna Garavaso, forthcoming. "On Being Reasonably Different," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2017 (33:1): 53-62. "Race and the Copernican Turn," Journal of Mind and Behavior, Summer and Autumn 2015 (36. 3&4): 137-156. "Can Mind Be a Virtue," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2015 (31.1):119-128. "Being Reasonable," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2012 (28.1): 187-196. "Out of the Cave: Understanding Rationality," Journal of Mind and Behavior, Autumn 2010 (31.2): 237-252. "Let's Be Reasonable: Feminism and Rationality," Southwest Philosophy Review, January 2009 (25.1): 127-134. "Wittgenstein and the Private Language of Ethics," Southwest Philosophy Review, July 2004 (20.2): 27-38.
