Thomas F. Wall

Department Chair
Professor of Philosophy
B.S., College of the Holy Cross; M.A., Ph.D., Boston College

Office hours:
Mon-Thur 1:30-2:00 pm
Other times by appointment

Office: Administration Building, Room 343
Phone: 617-264-7618
Email: wall@emmanuel.edu

Professor Wall received his Ph.D. from Boston College in 1970. His special areas of interest are ethics (especially applied ethics) and the philosophy of mind. Recently he has been interested in how critical thinking skills might more explicitly be interwoven with philosophical content, so that students learn how to think well as they attempt to solve philosophical problems.

The result of his research has been the two textbooks referred to below — books that have had a very positive reception in the philosophical community. Currently, Professor Wall is writing a book on human nature. Understanding what sorts of beings we are and why we behave as we do has always been at the center of the philosophical enterprise, though there has been surprisingly little written on how the central questions of philosophy — questions of reality, knowledge, good and evil, God, free will and the meaning of life — all may be understood in relation to this central subject.

Courses
PHIL1101 - Problems of Philosophy
PHIL1115 - Recent Moral Issues
PHIL1117 - Critical Thinking
PHIL2104 - Contemporary Conceptions of Human Nature
PHIL2105 - Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

Recent Publications & Professional Activity

Thomas F. Wall, Thinking Critically About Philosophical Problems. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2001.

Thomas F. Wall, Thinking Critically About Moral Problems. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2002.

Thomas F. Wall, Theories of Human Nature. Wadsworth (forthcoming).