Philosophy
Michael Bergmann 
Michael Bergmann, professor in the Department of Philosophy, has been awarded the Senior Research Fellowship in Religious Experience by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion, where he will be a visiting scholar for the 2015-2016 academic year. His project is to complete a three-part book titled Responding to Skepticism: Radical, Moral, and Religious. Part I of the book defends a response, inspired by the 18th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, to radical skepticism about perceptual, memorial, and logical belief. Part II argues that moral and religious belief are similar to perceptual, memorial, and logical belief in being noninferentially based on experience of some kind and that parallel Reidian responses can be used in defending moral and religious belief against similar skeptical worries. Part III responds to different skeptical challenges arising from the existence of disagreement with our peers and from research on the evolutionary origins of our belief-forming tendencies—challenges that seem more troublesome for moral and religious belief than they are for perceptual, memorial, and logical belief.
Dana Tulodziecki 
Dana Tulodziecki is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and awardee of a 2015 PRF Summer Faculty Research Grant for her project titled: “Going Beyond Scientific Realism: The Case of the Zymotic Theory”.
Professor Tulodziecki's main area of research is Philosophy of Science, where she is particularly interested in issues relating to scientific epistemology and methodology. Her current project focuses on understanding what criteria besides empirical evidence make epistemic contributions to our scientific theories.
More generally, she is interested in the role of various aspects of scientific practice (methodological principles, experimental procedures, the ways in which we engage with scientific instruments, etc.) in the epistemology of science. As a result, Tulodziecki has strong interdisciplinary interests, and is trying to better understand how her research applies to different areas of scientific enquiry.