Dr. Mario De Caro

Biography

Mario De Caro is Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at Università Rome Tre (expected promotion to Full professor: September 2016). Since the year 2000, he has also been teaching at Tufts University, where he is regularly a Visiting Professor. He received his first degree and his PhD in Philosophy at University of Rome "La Sapienza". He spent two years at MIT as a Visiting Graduate Student and one at Harvard University as a Fulbright Fellow. He is Associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association (Cambridge UP) and a member of the editorial and scientific boards of several international journals. He is Literary executor for Hilary Putnam. He is Vice President of the Consulta Nazionale di Filosofia (which groups all Italian academic philosophers); a former President of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy; a Member of the Scientific committee of the European Society for Moral Philosophy; a member of the American Philosophical Association on whose Committee on Academic Career Opportunities and Placement he served 2009-2013; and a member of the Steering Committes of the Italian Association for Moral Philosophy, of the Rome Division of the Italian Society of Philosophy, of the Italian Association for Cognitive Science, and of the Italian Association of Neuroethics and Philosophy of Neurosciences. He has been an elective member of the Board of Directors of Università Roma Tre (2002-2010), and he is Delegate of the Rector of that university for the relationship with the student body and the coordinator of the programs for the continuing education of teachers of history and philosophy in the high schools. He has been a consultant for academic issues of the governments of Canada, Portugal and Belgium. He contributes regularly to the cultural section of the Italian national daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, has written for The Times, La Repubblica, La Stampa, and Il Manifesto, and is an author and host of three series of the TV show Zettel, dedicated to philosophy and broadcasted by RAI, the public Italian television. The asteroid "5329 Decaro" is named in his honor. He has given invited talks given in Italy, United States, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, India, Poland, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Austria, and the Vatican. The institutions where he has given talks include Oxford University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, University of Notre Dame, Tufts University, Boston College, University of Massachusetts (at Amherst), Case Western University, Indiana University (at Bloomington), University of New Hampshire, College of the Holy Cross, Institute Jean Nicod (École Normale Supérieure, Paris), Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS Paris, Paris IV-Sorbonne, Bonn, Heidelberg, Bamberg, Ghent, Bern, Genéve, Lugano, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and more than 60 Italian universities.

Research Interest

Moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of film, the perspectives of philosophical naturalism, the free-will controversy, theory of action, metaphysics, and history of Renaissance and early modern philosophy and science.