UMUT BAYSAN
I am a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Previously, I had teaching and research positions at the University of Oxford (2017-2025) and the University of Glasgow (2014-2017). My PhD is also from the University of Glasgow (2015). In 2012, I was a visiting PhD student at MIT. Prior to that, I studied Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the METU (2004-2011).
I work in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics, mostly in various intersections of these areas (e.g., metaphysics of mind, metaphysics of value and normativity, inter-level metaphysics, with a focus on emergence and inter-level causation). You can find my published work in these areas below. For a more complete list and citation-related metrics, you can visit my page on Google Scholar.
During the 2025-2026 academic year, I am teaching lectures in Philosophy of Religion and Moral Philosophy, and seminars for Truth, Knowledge, and Objectivity and supervising dissertations, mostly in Ethics. Previously in Oxford, I taught lectures and/or tutorials in Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Ethics, Practical Ethics, Metaphysics & Epistemology, Feminist Philosophy, and specialist graduate classes such as Moral Status, Metaethics, Moral Metaphysics, and Emergence. (You can view some sample teaching feedback here.)
Publications
Journal Articles
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"Evaluative Properties and their Non-Causal Powers", The Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming.
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"Emergent Moral Non-Naturalism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2025.
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"Essence Facts and the Source of Normativity", Mind, 2025.
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"Arguing about Moral Causation", The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2024.
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"Social Constructs and How not to Ground Them", Inquiry, 2024.
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"Does Panpsychism Explain Mental Causation?", Erkenntnis, 2024.
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"Truthmaker Puzzles for One-Level Physicalists", Synthese, 2022.
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"Physicalism or Anti-Physicalism: A Disjunctive Account", Erkenntnis, 2022 (with Nathan Wildman).
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"Are Propositional Attitudes Mental States?", Minds and Machines, 2022.
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"The Pursuit of Neutrality in the Metaphysics of Emergence", Analysis, 2022.
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"Rejecting Epiphobia", Synthese, 2021.
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"Causal Emergence and Epiphenomenal Emergence", Erkenntnis, 2020.
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"Mad Qualia", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2019.
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"Quidditism and Contingent Laws", Thought, 2019.
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"Epiphenomenal Properties”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2018.
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"Why Incompatibilism about Mental Causation is Incompatible with Non-Reductive Physicalism" (With J. Christensen), Inquiry, 2018.
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"Must Strong Emergence Collapse?" (With Jessica Wilson), Philosophica, 2017.
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"Lawful Mimickers", Analysis, 2017.
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"An Argument for Power Inheritance", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2016.
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"Realization Relations in Metaphysics", Minds and Machines, 2015.
Chapters in Edited Collections
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"Emergence and Levels of Fundamentality", in A. Bryant & D. Yates, (eds.), Rethinking Emergence, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
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"Metaphysics of Desire", in A. Gregory, (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Desire, Routledge, forthcoming.
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"Qualia as Properties of Experiences", in A. Fisher & A. S. Maurin, (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge, 2024.
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"Sensory Substitution and Non-Sensory Feelings" (with David Suarez, Diana Acosta-Navas & Kevin Connolly), in F. Macpherson (ed.), Sensory Substitution and Augmentation, Oxford University Press, 2019.
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“Emergence, Function, and Realization”, in S.C. Gibb. et. al. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Emergence, Routledge, 2019.
Book Reviews
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"Review of Metaphysical Emergence by Jessica Wilson", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2022.
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"Review of Mental Causation: A Counterfactual Theory by Thomas Kroedel", Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2020.
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"Review of The Multiple Realization Book" by Thomas Polger and Larry Shapiro", Analysis, 2017.
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"Review of Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World by T. Horgan et al. (eds.)", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015.
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"Review of Mental Causation and Ontology" by S. C. Gibb, E. J. Lowe, and R. D. Ingthorsson (eds.)", Mind, 2014.
Journal Special Issue
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"Non-Standard Approaches to Emergence", (co-edited with Olivier Sartenaer) Synthese, 2021. Includes articles by Karen Crowther, Samuel Fletcher, Paul Humphreys, Gil Santos, Ludger Van Dijk, Michele Paolini Paoletti, and Kenneth Silver. Our introduction to the special issue is here.
Shorter Pieces, Blog Posts, and Other Writings
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"Group Beliefs without Group Minds?", Imperfect Cognitions Blog, 2022.
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"Memory, Confabulation, and Epistemic Failure", Logos & Episteme, 2018.
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"A New Response to the New Evil Demon Problem", Logos & Episteme, 2017.
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"Introducing The Illusions Index", The Brains Blog, 2017 (with Fiona Macpherson).
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"The Mental Causation Question and Emergence", iCog Blog, 2016.
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"Realization", Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2015.
Outside of philosophy, I am a father, a step-father, and a husband. I love running, swimming, cooking, brewing cider, and thinking about food.
In the early 2000s, I played guitar in various bands in Ankara. (I find it comforting to believe that exactly one of these bands was actually alright.) Once I realised that stardom as a musician was unlikely, I turned to academic philosophy, a field with a marginally higher success rate.