John Martin Fischer

John Martin Fischer (born 26 December 1952) is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and a leading contributor to the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility.^[1]

John Martin Fischer
Born	(1952-12-26) 26 December 1952 (age 72)
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Philosophy of action, free will, moral philosophy
Notable ideas	Semicompatibilism

Education and career

Fischer received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1982. He began his teaching career at Yale University, where he taught for almost a decade before joining the faculty at the University of California, Riverside. In 2017 he was appointed by the Regents of the University of California as one of 22 University Professors, the first and only philosopher since the inception of this program.

In June 2011, Fischer was elected vice-president of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and became president of the Pacific Division in 2013.^[1] In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[2]

Philosophical work

While Fischer's work centers primarily on free will and moral responsibility, where he is particularly noted as a proponent of semicompatibilism (the idea that regardless of whether free will and determinism are compatible, moral responsibility and determinism are),^[3][4] he also has worked on the metaphysics of death and philosophy of religion and led a multi-year, multi-pronged research project on "immortality," funded in 2012 by the John Templeton Foundation.^[5]

Books

• Moral Responsibility (editor) (Cornell University Press, 1986)
• God, Foreknowledge and Freedom (editor) (Stanford University Press, 1989)
• Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (co-editor with Ravizza) (Cornell University Press, 1993)
• The Metaphysics of Death (editor) (Stanford University Press, 1993)
• The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (Blackwell, 1994)
• Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (co-authored with Ravizza) (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2006)
• Our Stories: Essays on Life, Death, and Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2009)
• Fischer, John Martin; Mitchell-Yellin, Benjamin (2016). Near-Death Experiences: Understanding Visions of the Afterlife. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-046660-2.
• Fischer, John Martin (2020). Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-092114-9.
• Cave, Stephen; Fischer, John Martin (2023). Should You Choose to Live Forever? A Debate. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003105442. ISBN 978-0-367-61540-6.

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers