Robert Barnard

Professor of Philosophy

Email:
rwbjr@olemiss.edu
Office Location:
18 Bryant Hall
Phone:
662-915-5723
Website:
Personal Website
Research Lab:
Google Scholar

Professor of Philosophy working primarily on topics in Metaphysics, Epistemology, History of Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Technology, and Philosophical Methodology.

Research Interests

Barnard's research focuses on metaphysical and conceptual problems in the theory of truth (e.g., do ordinary people understand truth in the same way in all contexts?), the history of analytic philosophy (e.g., how should we make sense of the work of Russell, Wittgenstein, Frege, Tarski, Naess, etc.?), and questions about philosophical methodology (Is there more than one way to do philosophy?)

Biography

Robert Barnard, Professor of Philosophy, holds BA and MA degrees in Philosophy are from The American University (Washington DC), and a PhD is from The University of Memphis, with a dissertation on the metaphysical status of logical objects and properties. He is co-editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Metaphysics and author of numerous articles and book chapters. His primary research areas include metaphysical and conceptual problems in the theory of truth, the history of analytic philosophy, and philosophical methodology. Barnard (with T. Horgan (Arizona) argues that truth is best understood as a kind of “Mediated Correspondence.” This means that a belief or sentence counts as true when it agrees with how the world is, but that this agreement can only be understood through our conceptualization of the world. Barnard also explores the concept of truth empirically. As an “experimental philosopher” Barnard uses a social scientific survey method to collect data on people's belief and attitudes about truth. A large-scale study of the ordinary person’s conception of truth conducted by Barnard and Joseph Ulatowski (Waikato NZ) was part of the “Experiment Month” project hosted in 2011 by the Departments of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale University. Collaborating variously with Ulatowski and J. Weinberg (Arizona), Barnard has published several papers looking at e.g. whether there are gender differences in how we think about truth and whether philosophical training changes how we think about the objectivity of truth, as a well as whether “Dual Process” theories can help us understand how people think about the liar paradox. Most semesters, Barnard teaches introductory classes in philosophy and logic. Recently, Barnard has taught upper level and graduate courses on the work of the American Philosopher W.V. Quine, the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the history of Philosophical Analysis, and The problem of Method in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, and the nature of truth. Barnard is co-founder and board member of the Virtual International Consortium for Truth Research (VICTR), past President of the Mississippi Philosophical Association and has served on the executive boards of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Mid-south Philosophy conference. Beyond academia, Barnard is involved with a number of local civic organizations in the Oxford, Mississippi area.