John Heil

John Heil is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St Louis and Durham University, an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He is editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

Heil’s interests center on what the Australians call ‘ontologically serious’ metaphysics, metaphysics untainted by epistemology and the philosophy of language. He puts a premium on clarity and disdains jargon. Metaphysical questions force themselves on any moderately reflective human being, but are in most cases brushed aside as ‘merely philosophical'. What is time? Does time flow? If so, how fast? What is the relation between the familiar everyday world of trees, rabbits, and instruments in laboratories, and the world as characterized by physics? You can get a feel for Heil’s approach to these and other metaphysical questions in What is Metaphysics? (Polity Press).

Web page: https://philosophy.wustl.edu/people/john-heil-faha