J.D.'s Homepage

J.D. Trout

About J.D.

J.D. Trout is the John and Mae Calamos Professor of Philosophy at Illinois Institute of Technology. In 2012-2013 he was the Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professor. J.D. received his PhD in Philosophy at Cornell University in 1988, where he was a National Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellow. He then took a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College. He has had visiting appointments at Virginia Tech, University of Innsbruck and University of Chicago. His chief interests include the nature of scientific explanation, the psychology of human judgment, scientific realism and intellectual progress, and social/political issues bearing on well-being. He has also work in epistemology and experimental and theoretical work in spoken language processing. His most recent book is Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science, a lively and daring interpretation of the sudden rise of modern science. The Empathy Gap is on judgment and social policy. In a book called Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment, Michael Bishop and J.D. developed a version of epistemic naturalism called Strategic Reliabilism. He also advanced a novel version of scientific realism in Measuring the Intentional World , which gave special focus to the use of quantitative methods in the psychological and social sciences. J.D.'s research has been funded by a NSF Scholars Award, the NEH, the Templeton Foundation, and the Deafness Research Foundation, and he teaches a wide range of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, from epistemology and the philosophy of science, to metaphysics and the psychology of decision-making.