Headshot of Dr.Sam Director

Dr. Sam Director

Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    Dr. Sam Director is a philosopher whose research deals with issues related to consent in applied ethics and political philosophy. His work asks, “What does it mean to honor an individual’s consent?” Much of his research thus far has been about the connection between informed consent and various kinds of cognitive impairment, including dementia, intoxication, anorexia, framing effects, bipolar-disorder, and more. Recently, he has developed projects in other areas of ethics and political philosophy as well, including researching the political philosophy of public health and the ethics of AI.  

    Director earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Whitworth University and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. After completing his doctorate, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University's Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and subsequently, an assistant professor of philosophy at Florida Atlantic University. He is originally from Portland, Oregon.

    Director's work has been published in numerous academic journals, including Bioethics, the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and more. For more information on Director's research, see his website.

  • Selected Publications
    Journal Articles

    "Framing Effects Do Not Undermine Consent." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (published online August 2023): 1-18. *Winner of the 2022 Marc Sanders’ Graduate Student Prize.

    "Informed Consent, Price Transparency, and Disclosure." Bioethics (2023): 1-7.

    "Public Health Officials Should Almost Always Tell the Truth." Journal of Applied Philosophy (2023): 1-16.

    "Persistent Autonomy: Dementia and Concurrent Consent to Sexual Relations." Hastings Center Report (2023): 37-45.

    "Civil Liberties in a Lockdown: The Case of COVID-19." Co-authored with Christopher Freiman. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (2023): 1-24.

    "The Sheriff in Our Minds: The Morality of the Mental." Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2022): 1-19.

    "Sober Thoughts on Drunken Consent: Intoxication and Consent to Sexual Relations." Social Theory and Practice (2022): 235-261.

    "Of Blood Transfusions and Feeding Tubes: Anorexia-Nervosa and Consent." Public Affairs Quarterly (2021): 247-276.

    "Intuitions, Biases, and Extra-Wide Reflective Equilibrium." Metaphilosophy (2020): 674-684.

    "Speciesism, Prejudice, and Epistemic Peer Disagreement." Journal of Value Inquiry (2020): 1-20.

    "Consent’s Dominion: Dementia and Prior Consent to Sexual Relations." Bioethics (2019): 1065–1071.

    "Global Public Reason, Diversity, and Consent." Philosophical Papers (2019): 31-57.

    "Justice in the Laws, a Restatement: Why Plato Endorses Public Reason." Journal of the American Philosophical Association (2018): 184-203.

    "A Dilemma for Saulish Skepticism: Either Self-Defeating or Not Even Skepticism." Disputatio (2018): 43-55.

    "Why the Perfect-Being Theologian Cannot Endorse the Principle of Alternative Possibilities." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2017): 113-131.

    Reviews

    James Stacey Taylor. "Bloody Bioethics: Why Prohibiting Plasma Compensation Harms Patients and Wrongs Donors." Bioethics (2022): 997-998.

    Christopher Freiman. "Unequivocal Justice." Journal of Value Inquiry (2018): 1-7.

  • Links
    Sam Director website