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Name: Joe Cruz

Graduation Year: '91

address: Williams College Department of Philosophy Stetson Hall Williamstown, MA 01267

occupation: Professor

Email address: jcruz@williams.edu

After writing a senior thesis on the social dynamics of knowledge and language, I pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Arizona. The Arizona department has leading faculty in Epistemology, the Philosophy of Mind, and the Philosophy of Psychology, and pursuing a degree there allowed me to concentrate on epistemology at the level of the individual cognizer. My studies also included a substantial commitment to cognitive psychology, as many contemporary philosophers maintain that understanding rationality and the mind will require integrating scientific research with more traditional philosophical methods. Thus, I spent two of my graduate years as a research assistant in the Infant Cognition Lab and the Visual Memory Lab in the Arizona Psychology department. Ultimately, I wrote my dissertation (with Alvin Goldman as director) on the role of scientific psychology in contemporary epistemology.

The Arizona department was collegial, supportive, and demanding. I often miss Tucson, and I remain in close contact with friends and mentors there.

My first job after graduate school was in the department of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College, in Amherst. My role there was to research and teach the topics in philosophy that are most closely associated with current research on the mind. I was the only philosopher, as my colleagues hailed from Neuroscience, AI research, Psychology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Ethology. So, in addition to the usual sorts of philosophy courses one finds at a liberal arts college, I taught philosophy of psychology, foundations of cognitive science, and neural network modeling. During these years, I co-authored a book with my old friend on the Arizona faculty, John Pollock (called Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). I also continued to give talks and write shorter pieces on the same sorts of issues that my dissertation engaged in a preliminary way.

I value the interdisciplinary approach at Hampshire, but when presented with the opportunity to join the Williams faculty, I could not resist. I started at Williams in the Fall of 2000. At the same time, Will Dudley, my JA from Morgan MW, also began a permanent position at Williams. We are -- as the vernacular would have it -- totally psyched.

I still spend my downtime doing some of the things that I was introduced to at Williams: Bicycle racing, backpacking, and progressive rock bass playing.