William ("Ted") Morris

Illinois Wesleyan Professor Receives NEH Summer Research Stipend

April 10, 2003

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — William Edward ("Ted") Morris, associate professor and chair of the department of philosophy at Illinois Wesleyan University, is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Stipend for a project on the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume.

The $5,000 award is one of 288 grants announced by the NEH to museums, colleges, and other educational institutions across the United States. The awards are granted on a competitive basis. Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the NEH read all applications and advise NEH on the quality and significance of each proposed program.

Well-known for his work on Hume’s theory of knowledge, Morris also edited the journal Hume Studies for 10 years. His project, "Naturalism and Normativity in Hume's Epistemology," continues work he has been pursuing on issues central to understanding Hume’s controversial arguments about how beliefs are formed.

Through research during the summer, Morris hopes to provide "a unified account of Hume’s views on belief-formation, belief-modification, and belief-improvement. I intend to show that Hume has a theory of human cognition that is both genuinely naturalistic and demonstratively normative. The result should be not only important to Hume scholarship but also relevant to contemporary naturalized epistemology."

Morris will prepare several papers that will result in a monograph on the subject. He intends the work not only to be an original contribution to Hume scholarship but also to be accessible and useful to undergraduate and graduate students as well as "to anyone interested in trying to understand why Hume’s views on human cognition are still interesting and important."

A member of the Illinois Wesleyan faculty since 2000, Morris received his bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College and both the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Virginia. He also did postdoctoral research at St. John’s College in the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining the Illinois Wesleyan faculty, he was Director of Graduate Studies in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Philosophy for 15 years.