Travis Timmerman, Ph.D.

Chair and Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy

Professor Timmerman's main research interests are in normative ethics, applied ethics, and the philosophy of death. In normative ethics, he primarily focuses on the actualism/possibilism debate and axiological issues concerning the concept of "harm." Recent work includes "Probabilism" in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association (2024, co-authored with Yishai Cohen) and "The Negative Impact on Well-Being Account of Harm" forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Harm. In applied ethics, he has written on animal welfare, global poverty, and the ethics of Confederate monuments. Recent publications include the co-authored book "Weighing Animal Welfare," published by Oxford University Press (2024). In the philosophy of death, he primarily focuses on issues related to the question of whether death can be bad for the person who dies and fitting attitudes toward death. Recent publications include “Is Temporal Bias Key to Solving Fischer’s Asymmetry?” in Freedom, Responsibility, and Value: Essays in Honor of John Martin Fischer (Routledge, 2023) and “Constraint-Free Meaning, Fearing Death, and Temporal Bias" in Journal of Ethics (2022). He is currently working on a book on the philosophy of death, under contract with Oxford University Press.