Randall Harp
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Philosophy
Randall Harp, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, received his B.A. magna cum laude in Music and Philosophy from Columbia University in 1999 and his Ph.D. (joint) in Philosophy and Humanities from Stanford University in 2009. He was a George Washington Henderson fellow at UVM from 2007 until 2009.
Harp's research interests primarily lie at the intersections of rationality, justification, agency, and sociality. His Ph.D. dissertation provides a philosophical account and model of deliberation and collective goals which can explain collective action. He is interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the behavioral sciences and of the social sciences; in explanations of individual and collective behavior; in the line between rational action and non-rational behavior; in the concept of rationality; in the ways that we must conceive of others in order to cooperate with them; and in the ways that we justify our behavior to ourselves and to others. He is a very firm believer in the benefits of interdisciplinary work; methodologically, his research makes use of tools drawn from philosophy, from formal modeling and game-theoretic accounts of strategic and cooperative interactions, from the social sciences, and also from theory.
When neither reading nor arguing his interests include listening to and playing jazz, cooking, theater, taekwondo, film, video games, and following his Minnesota sports teams in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.
Last modified September 10 2009 05:04 PM
