Murphy-Philosophy Seminar: Ryan Muldoon

Organized by the Tulane Philosophy Department, the Murphy-Philosophy Seminars are a series of talks where Center for Ethics Faculty Fellows and distinguished guest speakers present works in progress on ethics, political philosophy, political theory, moral psychology, the philosophy of law, and intellectual history. These seminars are designed primarily as a philosophy colloquia for faculty, fellows, and graduate students. Papers are distributed one week beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter.

Ryan Muldoon is a Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo - SUNY. Before joining UB in 2015, he was a Senior Research Fellow in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Core Author of the 2015 World Development Report at the World Bank. 

His research aim has been developing New Diversity Theory, a novel approach to social and political philosophy that he first began developing in his 2016 book Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World. Muldoon's research, which ranges from political philosophy to the philosophy of science, relies on the tools and insights of the interdisciplinary field of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His work emphasizes the social organization of political, cultural, and scientific communities and how these communities can and should respond to diversity. This focus on diversity is manifested most prominently in three major projects: the first remakes social contract theory for very diverse societies, the second offers a normative-descriptive framework for analyzing the division of cognitive labor in science, and the third examines the emergence and persistence of social norms.