Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Political Science, and Philosophy Department Chair at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. A native of New Jersey, Talisse earned his PhD in Philosophy at the City University of New York. His academic work resides at the intersections of Political Philosophy, Ethics, and the Theory of Knowledge. More specifically, Talisse writes about how a democratic political order can assist (and complicate) our efforts to acquire knowledge, including knowledge about what is of value. His research engages questions about public discourse and argumentation, popular political ignorance, and the role of moral and religious conviction in democratic politics.
Talisse is the author of over one hundred scholarly articles, and ten books. Among the latter are his Democracy and Moral Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and the co-authored (with Scott Aikin) Why We Argue (And How We Should): A Guide to Political Disagreement (Routledge, 2014).