Faculty

Jonathan Katz, Ph.D. earned a B.A. from Wright State University in Ohio, an M.A. from the University of Manitoba, and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, all in philosophy. His dissertation addressed some of the philosophical puzzles raised by the indeterminacy of modern physics. Besides the philosophy of science, his interests include metaphysics and the philosophy of religion, with papers published in all three areas. Dr. Katz is Chair of the Department.

Bill Barthelemy, Ph.D. received a B.A. from Wright State University, an M.A. from the University of Manitoba and a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo. His areas of interest include history of philosophy, logic, philosophy of art, and philosophy of language. Dr. Barthelemy was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana for three years. Recently he gave a lecture series in philosophy of art at Vancouver Art Gallery downtown.

Warren Bourgeois, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy who received his doctorate at the University of California, Irvine. He has taught at the University of Salzburg, Austria, the University of California, San Diego, the University of British Columbia, and now teaches at Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he chairs the Research Ethics Board. Since 1977 he has been a director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. He has helped to found and served on two hospital ethics committees locally. Among his published writings is the book Persons: What Philosophers Say About You released in its second edition by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2003. His current project is an online textbook in Bioethics.
For a CV, see http://plaza.kwantlen.ca/sites/bioethics.nsf.

Wayne Fenske, Ph.D. teaches a variety of courses at Kwantlen. His favorite ones have to do with Ethics and Logic. He has been known to throw chalk in his classes, but no student has ever been injured as a result. His research interests are in meta-ethics and ethical theory. He has published in Dialogue and The Journal of Value Inquiry. His current research focuses on the nature of practical reason and its relation to moral obligation.

Patrick Findler, Ph.D. Patrick Findler received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 2001. Before joining Kwantlen’s Philosophy Department, Patrick taught at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. His research interests are in ethics and metaphysics. Current projects include papers addressing both foundational and substantive questions in ethics, and a debate-format book on contemporary topics in applied ethics. Patrick’s main interests, in addition to philosophy, are his family and “freeride” mountain biking.

Mark Glouberman, D.Phil. I received my advanced philosophical training in England, at a time when (what is called) ‘ordinary language philosophy, ‘(i.e., the view that philosophical problems are illusory shadows cast by a failure to attend to the everyday workings of language) was on its last legs. Though I was never much attracted by the ordinary language approach, it has inspired in me a lasting interest in the nature of philosophy itself, and I have worked a lot in (what is called) ‘meta-philosophy.’ I have also focused in research on the history of early modern philosophy, among whose figures are numbered giants such as Descartes, Hume, and Kant. In addition to teaching introductory philosophy at Kwantlen, I also offer, and very much enjoy offering, a Humanities course of a ‘softer’ sort. Here, the issues that interest me include the origin and nature of our specifically Western sense of ourselves as human beings.

Mazen Maurice Guirguis, Ph.D. received a Specialized Honors B.A. degree from York University, an M.A. degree from the University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. His areas of specialization are in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. Dr. Guirguis has taught at the University of British Columbia and now teaches a variety of courses at Kwantlen. He has published in Discourse, Metapsychology, Philosophy in Review, The Review of Metaphysics, Anthropology and Philosophy, Dialogue, and The Journal of Mind and Behavior. 

Heather Harrison, M.A. has worked at helping to develop the Kwantlen Philosophy Department program over the last 7 years. Her teaching goal is to help students develop the tools to critically examine the important issues which they encounter in their lives. As a result, she particularly enjoys teaching subjects such as critical thinking, and moral reasoning. Her graduate and undergraduate work was undertaken at Simon Fraser University. Her interests include epistemology and ethics.

Melinda Hogan, Ph.D. completed her undergraduate work in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Excited by developments in the field of cognitive science, she completed her Ph.D. in philosophy, with a graduate minor in linguistics, at the University of Wisconsin. Her research is in metaphysical and epistemological issues concerning representation, particularly mental and linguistic representation. Publications include articles in the journals Synthese, Biology and Philosophy and in anthologies, as well as book reviews in several journals.  Currently she is exploring competing accounts of the knowledge one has of one's own mental states. In the introductory courses she teaches at Kwantlen, she stresses that philosophy is the activity of bringing to light ordinarily unnoticed assumptions.

Puqun Li, Ph.D. received a B.A. from Zhenzhou University, an M.A. from Renmin University and from Carleton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa. His areas of interest include Wittgenstein, Asian philosophy, comparative philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Current teaching includes history of philosophy and symbolic logic.

Michaela Lucas, M.A. Michaela first developed her love of philosophy as a Kwantlen student before going on to complete her B.A. in philosophy at Simon Fraser University and her M.A. at the University of British Columbia (where, as a recipient of a SSHRCC research grant, she is currently working towards her Ph.D.). Michaela really enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for philosophy with students who are new to the subject, so she particularly enjoys teaching introductory courses such as 1100, 1110, and 3033. Michaela’s main area of research is in moral philosophy, but she is also very interested epistemology, metaphysics, and early modern philosophy (David Hume and Thomas Reid).

Colin P. Ruloff, Ph.D. earned a B.A. (Hons.) from Simon Fraser University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California. His research interests lie primarily in epistemology and analytic philosophy of religion, and his publications include “Some Remarks on BonJour on Warrant, Proper Function, and Defeasibility” (in Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology, 2000), “Evidentialism, Warrant, and the Division of Epistemic Labor” (in Philosophia: The Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, 2003), and “Plantinga’s S5 Modal Argument, Obvious Entailment and Circularity: Response to Sennett (in Philo: The Journal of the Society of Humanist Philosophers, 2004). He also has published a number of book reviews. When not doing philosophy, Colin enjoys surfing and skateboarding, both of which he has done competitively.

Doran Smolkin, Ph.D.  Dr. Smolkin teaches a wide variety of courses at Kwantlen. He is very fond of teaching and has been recognized by the American Philosophical Association for teaching excellence. His research interests are in moral and political philosophy, with article publications on the nature of our obligations to future generations, and in medical ethics. His current research focuses on the topics of forgiveness and trust. Dr. Smolkin earned his B.A. at the University of British Columbia, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago.