Michael O’Rourke
orourk51@msu.edu
(517) 432-0751
A524 South Kedzie Hall
368 Farm Ln
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyPhilosophy
Professor
Executive Director, Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center
Environmental Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Interdisciplinary Theory; Epistemology; Philosophy of Action
Biography
Michael O’Rourke is Professor of Philosophy, faculty in AgBioResearch, and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Science & Policy Program at Michigan State University. He is also the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinarity (http://c4i.msu.edu/), Director of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI, http://tdi.msu.edu/), and the Executive Director of the TDI Center. His research interests include the nature of epistemic integration and communication in collaborative, cross-disciplinary research, the nature of linguistic communication between intelligent agents, and environmental philosophy. He has published extensively on the topics of communication, interdisciplinary theory and practice, and robotic agent design. He has been a principal investigator, co-principal investigator, or collaborator on projects funded by the US National Science Foundation, NASA, Office of Naval Research, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, involving environmental science education, the facilitation of cross-disciplinary communication, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, resilience in environmental systems, and autonomous underwater vehicles. He co-founded and served as co-director of the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference, an interdisciplinary conference on philosophical themes, and as co-editor of the Topics in Contemporary Philosophy series published by MIT Press.
Professor O’Rourke is currently accepting graduate students.
Publications
Fam, D., O’Rourke, M. (Eds.) 2021. Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Failures: Lessons Learned from Cautionary Tales. London: Routledge.
Hubbs, G., O’Rourke, M., Orzack, S. H. (Eds.). 2020. The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative: The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Practice. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Valles, S., Piso, Z., O’Rourke, M. 2019. Coupled ethical-epistemic analysis as a tool for environmental science. Ethics, Policy & Environment. 22(3): 267–286.
Robinson, B., Gonnerman, C., O’Rourke, M. 2019. Experimental philosophy of science and philosophical differences across the sciences. Philosophy of Science. 86(3): 551–576.
O’Rourke, M. 2019. Referential intentions. In B. Abbott and J. Gundel (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Reference (pp. 19–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Rourke, M. 2017. Comparing methods for cross-disciplinary research. In R. Frodeman, J. T. Klein, and R. Pacheco (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2nd edition (pp. 276–290). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Piso, Z., Sertler, E., Malavisi, A., Marable, K., Jensen, E., Gonnerman, C., O’Rourke, M. 2016. The production and reinforcement of ignorance in collaborative interdisciplinary research. Social Epistemology 30(5-6): 643–664.
Crowley, S., Gonnerman, C., O’Rourke, M. 2016. Cross-disciplinary research as a platform for philosophical research. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2(2): 344–363.
Piso, Z., O’Rourke, M., Weathers, K. C. 2016. Out of the fog: Catalyzing integrative capacity in interdisciplinary research. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 56: 84–94.
O’Rourke, M., Crowley, S., Gonnerman, C. 2016. On the nature of cross-disciplinary integration: A philosophical framework. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 56: 62–70.
O’Rourke, M., Crowley, S., Eigenbrode, S. D., Wulfhorst, J. D. (Eds.) 2013. Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
O’Rourke, M., Crowley, S. 2013. “Philosophical intervention and cross-disciplinary science: The story of the Toolbox Project.” Synthese 190: 1937-1954.
Eigenbrode, S., M. O’Rourke, J. D. Wulfhorst, D. M. Althoff, C. S. Goldberg, K. Merrill, W. Morse, M. Nielsen-Pincus, J. Stephens, L. Winowiecki, N. A. Bosque-Pérez. 2007. “Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science,” BioScience 57: 55-64.
O’Rourke, M. 2003. “The Scope Argument,” The Journal of Philosophy 100: 134-155.
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