Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
Mark Alfano uses tools and methods from philosophy, psychology, and computer science to explore topics in social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He studies how people become and remain virtuous, how values become integrated into people's lives, and how these virtues and values are (or fail to be) manifested in their perception, thoughts, feelings, deliberations, and actions. One of the guiding themes of his work is that normative philosophy without psychological content is empty, but scientific investigation without philosophical insight is blind.
Currently an Associate Professer in Macquarie University's Department of Philosophy, Mark received a doctorate from the Philosophy Program of the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC) in 2011. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and the Princeton University Center for Human Values, as well as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, associate professor of ethics & philosophy of technology at Delft University of Technology, and professorial fellow at Australian Catholic University.
Research interests
Mark works on social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He also maintains an interest in Nietzsche, including a recent monograph titled Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology. His papers have appeared in numerous journals, including Philosophical Quarterly, Mind, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, The Monist, Erkenntnis, Synthese, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
Mark's first book, Character as Moral Fiction, argues that the challenge to virtue ethics spearheaded by John Doris and Gilbert Harman should be co-opted, not resisted. His second monograph, Moral Psychology: An Introduction, was published by Polity Press in 2016. In more recent work, he has developed a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility. He is the editor of a series on The Moral Psychology of the Emotions, which include books on gratitude, sadness, regret, hope, admiration, guilt, curiosity, contempt, anger, disgust, pride, compassion, and forgiveness.
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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DP24: Trust and Distrust in Social Epistemic Networks
Alfano, M. & Klein, C.
14/02/24 → 13/02/27
Project: Research
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DP190101507: Trust in a Social and Digital World
Klein, C. & Alfano, M.
2/01/20 → 31/12/21
Project: Research
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Anticipatory solastalgia in the Antipodes: evidence of future-oriented distress about environmental change in Australia and New Zealand
Stanley, S. K., Ghasemi, O., Ross, R. M., Kerr, J. R., Marques, M. D., Mede, N. G., Berger, S., Alfano, M., Levy, N., Ferreira, M. & Cologna, V., 13 Jan 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Journal of Climate Change and Health. 19 p., 100415.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile1 Downloads (Pure) -
Perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries - the TISP dataset
Mede, N. G., Cologna, V., Berger, S., Besley, J., Brick, C., Joubert, M., Maibach, E. W., Mihelj, S., Oreskes, N., Schäfer, M. S., van der Linden, S., Abdul Aziz, N. I., Abdulsalam, S., Shamsi, N. A., Aczel, B., Adinugroho, I., Alabrese, E., Aldoh, A., Alfano, M., Ali, I. M., & 221 others , 20 Jan 2025, In: Scientific Data. 12, 1, p. 1-27 27 p., 114.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile2 Downloads (Pure) -
Political disagreement, moral misinformation, and affective polarization
Reimann, R. & Alfano, M., 2025, The Routledge handbook of philosophy of disagreement. Baghramian, M., Carter, J. A. & Cosker-Rowland, R. (eds.). London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, p. 444-456 13 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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The use of large language models as scaffolds for proleptic reasoning
Kudina, O., Ballsun-Stanton, B. & Alfano, M., Jun 2025, In: Asian Journal of Philosophy. 4, 1, p. 1-18 18 p., 24.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Cologna, V., Mede, N. G., Berger, S., Besley, J., Brick, C., Joubert, M., Maibach, E. W., Mihelj, S., Oreskes, N., Schäfer, M. S., van der Linden, S., Abdul Aziz, N. I., Abdulsalam, S., Shamsi, N. A., Aczel, B., Adinugroho, I., Alabrese, E., Aldoh, A., Alfano, M., Ali, I. M., & 221 others , 20 Jan 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Nature Human Behaviour. 22 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Datasets
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Public data files containing the data used for the ChatGPT survey (XLSX) and the survey containing variable selection codes (DOCX).
Bower, M. (Owner), Torrington, J. (Contributor), Lai, J. (Contributor), Petocz, P. (Contributor) & Alfano, M. (Contributor), Macquarie University, 15 Sept 2023
DOI: 10.25949/24123306.v1
Dataset