Robert Koons

Robert Koons is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas (UT), noted for his contribution to metaphysics and philosophical logic. Koons has also advocated for academic freedom and courses on Western civilization.

Koons has been involved in debates over issues of academic freedom and has advocated for college exit exams as he believes the measures used currently don't measure how well students learn. He led an effort at UT to create a concentration in Western Civilization and American Institutions. The goal of the program was to promote the study of the "Great Books" of the Western tradition, especially the American founding. Koons stated that the program transcended political differences.

Koons is a national Senator of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, as well as a member of the executive committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Koons is co-editor, with George Bealer, of The Waning of Materialism: New Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford University Press, 2010), a collection of articles by leading analytic philosophers critical of physicalism and materialism. He is engaged in contributing to contemporary metaphysics and the philosophy of religion, including a forthcoming textbook, Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, (with co-author Timothy Pickavance; Blackwell-Wiley, to appear January 2015).

• Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality (Cambridge, 1992)
• Realism Regained: An Exact Theory of Causation, Teleology, and the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• The Waning of Materialism: New Essays (with George Bealer) (Oxford University Press, 2010)
• Metaphysics:The Fundamentals (with Timothy Pickavance), (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
• The Atlas of Reality: A Complete Guide to Metaphysics (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming)