Philosophy Ph.D. Student Rhys Borchert Wins 2024 Sanders Graduate Award

According to the APA online website, the annual Sanders Graduate Student Awards are three prizes awarded to each of the three best papers in mind, metaphysics, epistemology, or ethics submitted for the annual APA Eastern Division meeting by graduate students, as chosen by the Eastern Division program committee. This prize is funded through the generosity of the Marc Sanders Foundation.

Rhys Borchert is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Arizona. Before coming to Arizona, he received a BPhil in philosophy from the University of Oxford and a B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rhys has a wide range of philosophical interests, including epistemology, metaphysics, decision theory, ethics, and the philosophy of science. His dissertation focuses on foundational issues in epistemology, in particular on the nature of empirical justification. He argues for a version of non-doxastic foundationalism and applies the account to epistemological issues related to evidence possession, skeptical scenarios, and ideologies. In other work, Rhys has discussed the implications of fallibilist foundationalism, the status of certain normative theories of decision, the praiseworthy actions of nonhuman animals, and the connection between epistemic and moral normativity. In future work, he plans to expand upon the considerations in his dissertation, further develop the theory of intentional action argued for in “Discrimination in Action”, advance a theory of moral agency that includes nonhuman animals, and make connections between the nature of normativity in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics.

For more information, visit https://www.apaonline.org/page/2023prizes-f?utm_source=Informz&utm_medi….