Rate My Professor Andrew Spear

Andrew Spear is Full Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), a position he has held since 2023. He joined GVSU in 2008 as Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 2014. Spear earned his BA in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2002, his MA in Philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) in 2005, and his PhD in Philosophy from SUNY Buffalo in 2009. His doctoral dissertation, “Not by Experience Alone: Toward A Theory of A Priori Justification,” was supervised by James R. Beebe, Randall R. Dipert, and Michael W. McGlone.

Spear's research interests include epistemology, social epistemology, intentionality and the philosophy of mind, applied ontology—particularly the ontology of function—as well as aspects of Edmund Husserl's work, epistemological dimensions of gaslighting, political and epistemological implications of Hannah Arendt's thought, and philosophical issues relating to social media and algorithms surrounding knowledge, agency, and transparency. Key publications include the co-authored book Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology (MIT Press, 2015, with Robert Arp and Barry Smith); “Gaslighting, Confabulation, and Epistemic Innocence” (Topoi, 2018); “Epistemic Dimensions of Gaslighting: Peer-Disagreement, Self-Trust, and Epistemic Injustice” (Inquiry, forthcoming); “Functions in Basic Formal Ontology” with Werner Ceusters and Barry Smith (Applied Ontology, 2016); “Conditions of Cognitive Sanity and the Internalist Credo” (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2016); and “The ACGT Master Ontology and its Applications” (Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 2011). He has contributed chapters such as “Intentionality and Indexicality: Content Internalism and Husserl’s Logical Investigations” (2013) and the encyclopedia entry “Husserl on Intentionality and Intentional Content” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011). Spear has received the GVSU Pew Teaching Excellence Award (2012), a Research Fellowship at Saarland University’s Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (2006), the SUNY Buffalo Excellence in Teaching Award (2006), an APA Graduate Student Travel Stipend (2006), the UWGB Humanities Essay Prize (2002), and the Albert Einstein Mahatma Gandhi Award for Excellence in Research (2001). His service includes chairing the department colloquia committee, advising the student philosophy club, organizing the “Back to Basics” lecture series (2017), membership on the University Academic Senate, and activity in the GVSU AAUP chapter.