Philosophy and Religion

I was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and spent most of the first 18 years of my life in Florence, Alabama. When I first went to college, I was considering a career in politics. While I enjoyed my political science courses, I came to the conclusion that I would hate being a politician, so I was trying to decide what to do instead. I fell into a math major, but I didn't think that math was what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, either. I thought that I might like to teach, but I didn't know what I wanted to teach. Some friends of mine had taken Introduction to Philosophy spring term of my freshman year, and I had looked over a couple of their paper assignments and thought that they might be fun to write about. Fall term of my sophomore year, one of the classes that I was planning to take got cancelled, and so I decided to take Introduction to Philosophy instead. I loved it, and so I took a couple of additional philosophy courses, and realized that this was what I could see myself spending the rest of my life doing. So I went to graduate school in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. While there, I spent a couple of years as a visiting graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, and then went back there for a post-doctoral fellowship and as a visiting assistant professor once I had finished my doctorate. I then spent three years at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, and then the job here opened up.

My research interests are primarily in philosophy of religion.

My favorite class to teach among my regularly scheduled classes is Philosophy of Law, especially when I have a number of students who are enthusiastic class participators. There are just so many interesting issues that come up in philosophy of law. But a close second would be Introduction to Philosophy. I really enjoy teaching students who are encountering philosophy for the first time, with at least a few of them discovering that there is something really exciting here that they never knew about before. Of classes that are taught only occasionally, I really enjoy classes such as Philosophy and Science Fiction, because science fiction is a great source for the thought experiments that philosophy runs on.

A number of years ago, I had a student who took Introduction to Logic and really struggled with it, but she kept at it and earned a respectable grade, though one lower than she was used to. I had more respect for her work and the grade that she had truly earned than I did for the somewhat higher grades of other students for whom logic came more easily and who could have earned still higher grades if they had really tried. She took several more classes with me, and ended up with a philosophy major as just part of her triple major which she pulled off despite being extremely involved in extra-curricular as well as befriending many people, including everyone from students who were very different from her to homeless people in Hillsdale. She has attended law school among many other activities since graduation. She is someone who will change the world, who is already changing the world, at least the part of the world around her.

I really like Hillsdale College's emphasis on our heritage from both the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions. I also like Hillsdale's size, and the fact that it emphasizes teaching and encourages fruitful interaction between faculty and students.

Try to find the right balance between your studies and extra-curricular activities. Being involved in extra-curricular activities forces you to structure your time. Because they know that they have a limited amount of time, students who are involved in extra-curricular activities often plan things so that they have their assignments completed before those who aren't involved in extra-curricular activities who, thinking that they have all the time in the world, keep putting completing (or even starting) their assignments off. At the same time, you can't major in extra-curricular activities. You need to be involved in something. But you can't be involved in everything.

Their overall friendliness.

dturner@hillsdale.edu