Rate My Professor Alex Miller

Professor Alex Miller holds the Chair in Philosophy at the University of Otago, where he has been Professor of Philosophy since June 2012 and served as Head of the Department of Philosophy from 2014 to 2016. Previously, he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, serving as Head of Department from 2008 to 2011, and taught at the Universities of Nottingham, Cardiff, and Macquarie University. He earned his MA (Hons) in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Glasgow in 1987, awarded the Edward Caird Medal in Philosophy; an MLitt in Logic and Metaphysics from the University of St Andrews in 1989; an AM from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1992; and a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1995, during which he held the Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship. At Otago, Miller serves as Postgraduate Coordinator and has supervised doctoral and master's students from countries including Austria, Iran, the United Kingdom, Brunei, Vietnam, China, and the United States. He has also held external examiner positions at the Universities of London, Nottingham, Leeds, York, and Glasgow.

Miller's research specializes in philosophy of language and mind, metaethics, metaphysics—particularly realism and antirealism—and Wittgenstein. He has authored and edited numerous influential works, including Philosophy of Language (revised and expanded 3rd edition, Routledge, 2018), Contemporary Metaethics: An Introduction (revised and expanded 2nd edition, Polity Press, 2013), Wittgenstein on the Possibility of Meaning: “To Follow a Rule Blindly” (Oxford University Press, 2024), and the edited volume Logic, Language and Mathematics: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright (Oxford University Press, 2020). He co-edited A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (2nd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and serves as Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy since March 2023. Recent publications include “Hume on Causation: Against the Quasi-Realist Interpretation” (with Saba Ghoroori, Inquiry, 2024) and “Belief Holism and the Scope of Doxastic Norms” (with Seyed Ali Kalantari, Acta Analytica, 2023). Miller has presented research internationally in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, and featured on the Stanford-hosted radio program Philosophy Talk.