Tuomas Manninen

Tuomas Manninen is a Teaching Professor of philosophy in the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies in ASU's New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Iowa in 2007. Prior to that, Manninen earned his master's degree in philosophy in 2001 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy (with minor concentrations in mathematics and in physics) from Beloit College in 1999. He first joined the faculty at ASU's West campus in 2006.

Manninen’s primary research interests are in contemporary analytic metaphysics, particularly in social ontology and theories of personhood.  In addition, his scholarly interests include logic, philosophy of mind, and social and political philosophy. 

Manninen teaches a wide range of courses in philosophy and interdisciplinary arts and sciences. These include PHI 101: Introduction to Philosophy, and PHI 103: Principles of Sound Reasoning, which is an introduction to formal and informal logic and critical thinking. The upper-division courses regularly taught by Manninen include PHI/IAS 406: Moral Dilemmas, which explores some of the classic works in political philosophy and their near-timeless relevance in light of current events, PHI/IAS 417: Philosophy of Censorship, which investigates the philosophical assumptions behind the near-ubiquitous instances of censorship in current society. and IAS 430: Science and Religion, which focuses on the different ways of construing the relationship between scientific inquiry and religious world views.