Daniel R. Kelly
- Professor // Philosophy
- Graduate Studies Director // Philosophy
Research Focus
Philosophy of Mind, Moral Theory, Cognitive Science
Office and Contact
Daniel Kelly's research focuses on issues at the intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, moral theory, and evolution. He turned his dissertation into a book on the genetic and cultural evolution of disgust called Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, and has published on a range of topics that include moral judgment, moral progress, climate change, social norms and norm-guided activity, the psychology of group membership, racial cognition, implicit bias and responsibility, cross-cultural diversity, and David Foster Wallace and free will. While getting his PhD at Rutgers, he also became a founding member of the Moral Psychology Research Group, which includes like-minded philosophers and psychologists investigating morality from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. He has taught a variety of courses, and is currently putting together a new one on Fun and Games and the Life Worth Living. Kelly’s research interests are stridently interdisciplinary. Since starting at Purdue in 2007, he has gotten involved with Purdue's larger environmental and sustainability community through the Sustainable Communities Research Community, which is now housed in the Institute for a Sustainable Future. He was recently a visiting scholar in the Culture, Cognition, and Coevolution Lab at Harvard University, and has been a fellow at Holland College at KU Leuven and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Much of Kelly's recent work has been exploring ways to apply the insights of the cognitive, behavioral, and evolutionary sciences to social issues like climate change, misinformation and polarization, and systemic injustice. He is currently co-authoring a public-facing book that explores how those insights can be used to integrate individual and structural approaches to social change. In addition to philosophizing he enjoys reading novels and making witty remarks. He spends the summers with his wife and dog living that #vanlife and surfing along the California coast.