EPISTEMOLOGY · CRITICAL THINKING
ETHICS · METAPHYSICS
Alex
Whalen
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA
I am an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Alabama. My research focuses on epistemology—specifically the nature and value of understanding, and how it differs from knowledge. I completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Duncan Pritchard, and my work continues to ask what it means not just to know something, but to genuinely understand it.
That question carries directly into my teaching. I teach courses in critical thinking, ethics, metaphysics, and symbolic logic, with a particular interest in how philosophical reasoning applies to media literacy and everyday belief formation. This has led me to develop the F.A.S.T. system, a fact-checking framework I use in my courses to help students reason carefully about what they read, watch, and share.