Bermudez, Jose Luis

Dr. José Luis Bermúdez is a professor of philosophy and the Samuel Rhea Gammon Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M. He served as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Born in Bogotá, Colombia and educated at St Paul’s School, London and King’s College, Cambridge (B.A., M.A., PhD.), Dr Bermúdez joined Texas A&M in 2010 as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He subsequently served as Associate Provost for Strategic Planning (2014-2015) and as Acting Dean of the College of Dentistry (2021-22). Before coming to Texas A&M, he was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Center for Programs in Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Bermúdez’s many publications include eight single-author books and six edited volumes, as well as more than 100 journal papers and book chapters. His research interests are interdisciplinary in nature at the intersection of philosophy and the cognitive and behavioral sciences. His books include The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998), Thinking without Words (Oxford UP, 2003), Decision Theory and Rationality (Oxford UP, 2009), Understanding “I”: Language and Thought (Oxford UP, 2017) and The Bodily Self: Selected Essays (MIT Press, 2018). His most recent book, The Power of Frames: New Tools for Rational Thought, was published by Cambridge University Press in November 2020 and was the basis for a target article published in 2022 with extensive peer commentary in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

The fourth edition of his widely used textbook Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2022. It has been adopted for courses offered by departments of cognitive science, philosophy, psychology and computer science in universities in (at least) 12 different countries. He published Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge 2005) and is the founding editor of the New Problems in Philosophy book series also published by Routledge.

Dr. Bermúdez’s work has been supported by an ACLS fellowship (2018-2019), an NEH Summer Stipend (2018), a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (1993-1996), and grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique, the Carnegie Trust and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in addition to private foundations. He has served on review panels and advisory committees for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Strokes, and the European Union.

Dr. Bermúdez has held visiting appointments in seven different countries. He is a member of the European Science Foundation’s College of Reviewers and has served as an advisor on humanities and social science grants to many of the major European funding agencies.

Pursuing a long-standing interest in the history of philosophy, he co-directed a project on the theme "Reconsidering the Sources of the Self in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods" with Dr. Catherine Conybeare of Bryn Mawr College. This project was supported by a Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently writing a book on Aristotle’s De Anima for the Oxford Guidebooks in Philosophy series.