Jessica Wilson

Jessica Wilson (PhD Cornell University, 2002) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto (first arriving in 2005); she was Regular Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh (2013–2016), and William Wilhartz Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan (2001–2005). In 2014, Wilson was co-recipient of the Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution, and in 2022, Wilson was named the University of Toronto Scarborough Research Excellence Faculty Scholar. Wilson has been awarded many grants, including three multi-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council grants, and many visiting fellowships, including to the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the University of Milan, the Instituto de Investigadores Filosóficos (UNAM), the Arché Centre for Metaphysics, Language, Logic and Epistemology (St. Andrews), and the Centre for Consciousness (Australian National University). Wilson is a past President of the Society for the Metaphysics of Science, and is currently an editor of Nous.

Wilson’s research focuses on general metaphysics, metaphysics of science and mind, epistemology, and philosophical methodology, and she has published extensively on these topics. Some representative publications include Metaphysical Emergence (Oxford University Press, 2021), ‘Three Barriers to Philosophical Progress’ (2017), ‘The A Priority of Abduction’ (2017, with Stephen Biggs), ‘No Work for a Theory of Grounding’ (2014), ‘A Determinable-based Account of Metaphysical Indeterminacy’ (2013), ‘Relativized Metaphysical Modality’ (2012, with Adam Murray), ‘What is Hume’s Dictum, and Why Believe it? (2010), and ‘On Characterizing the Physical’ (2006).