The University of Florida’s Department of Philosophy is proud to announce the addition of three esteemed scholars: Dr. Cameron Buckner, Dr. Jan Maximilian (“Max”) Robitzsch, and (starting in Spring 2025) Dr. Charles Goldhaber. These new faculty members bring a wealth of knowledge and diverse research interests that will significantly enrich the department and broader UF community.
Dr. Cameron Buckner joins us as Professor of Philosophy and the first Donald F. Cronin Endowed Chair in the Humanities. This endowment expands opportunities for students and faculty by providing funds for post-doc positions, graduate research assistantships, colloquia, and workshops on topics that connect with philosophy and AI.
Cameron Buckner is a leading expert in philosophy of AI and the author of From Deep Learning to Rational Machines: What the History of Philosophy Can Teach Us about the Future of Artificial Intelligence (2024, OUP). Other recent publications include “Empiricism without Magic: Transformational Abstraction in Deep Convolutional Neural Networks” (2018, Synthese), and “Rational Inference: The Lowest Bounds” (2017, PPR)—the latter of which won the APA’s Article Prize (2016–2018). He co-authored several articles with MA students while at the University of Houston and looks forward to working with new PhD students at UF. Dr. Buckner has been awarded a Senior Fellowship in Philosophy of AI and Animal Cognition at Ruhr-University Bochum and a Visiting Fellowship at the Leverhulme and Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on philosophical and ethical issues in the study of non-human minds, especially artificial intelligence animal cognition. His additional expertise in the philosophy of science, language and logic, giving him a uniquely interdisciplinary platform to explore a technological force that is rapidly reshaping modern life. You can explore his work further on his personal page.
Dr. Charles Goldhaber specializes in epistemology and the history of modern philosophy, with a primary focus on skepticism. His research addresses key questions about skepticism, such as how we can engage with skeptics, what might lead them to change their minds, and the origins and implications of skepticism, whether beneficial or harmful. Dr. Goldhaber’s approach combines contemporary philosophical inquiry with historical insights from figures like Hume and Kant. For more information on his research, visit his website. Dr. Goldhaber will be joining us in Spring 2025.
Dr. Jan Maximilian (“Max”) Robitzsch brings a wide range of expertise in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy to the department. His main research at the intersection of ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of law concerns early Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus and Democritus, philosophers of the classical period such as Plato, and Hellenistic authors such as Epicurus and his followers. He also has research expertise in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt as well as philosophy and film. You can learn more about his diverse research interests on his personal site.
We are extremely excited to welcome Dr. Buckner, Dr. Goldhaber, and Dr. Robitzsch to the University of Florida’s Department of Philosophy. Their contributions promise to have a lasting impact on our academic community and the field of philosophy more generally.