Dr. Kevin Cales

krcales@radford.edu
Hemphill Hall 4211

Ph.D., Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
M.A., Philosophy, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

I graduated from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2022. During my time at SIU-C, I developed and taught courses in philosophy from 2017 to 2022. Currently, I teach philosophy classes at Virginia Western Community College, Roanoke College, and Radford University.

As a professor, the philosophy classes I teach address the human being. My classes emphasize the relation of philosophy to my students' lives. Teaching and learning are about more than conveying information and assessment. Our word pedagogy comes from the Greek words for child and leader, and pedagogy can be understood as cultivating a child. Teaching and learning are about actualizing potential and transforming the self. 

While I enjoy teaching students in a formal setting, I have always thought philosophy has more to offer than can be accomplished in a college classroom. My life has been a long engagement with philosophy as an educational activity for existential and moral problems and issues. I believe that others can benefit from philosophy just as I do. Although philosophy is done in universities and colleges by faculty and students, it is also done anywhere someone asks questions about the world, beliefs, and ethics. We philosophize with family, friends, and acquaintances in many situations, but often we do not realize philosophy is the name of the activity we are doing. After I left SIU-C, I decided to test my belief in practical philosophy by providing individual counseling and group facilitation in which I apply the critical skills and wisdom of philosophy to real life problems. I became an APPA-Certified Philosophical Counselor in 2022. My goals are to help others question and reason through problems and processes and to discover who they are, what they believe, and why they believe it. When you discover your beliefs and the reasons behind them, you are empowered as a thinker and better equipped to confront future problems.

• “When the Client Does Not Know: Regressive Abstraction and Nelsonian Socratic Dialogue in Client Counseling,” Philosophical Practice: Journal of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association 18, no. 3 (November 2023): 3199–3209.
• “Scientific Realism and the Objects of Medicine in the Hippocratic Treatise On the Art,” Studia Gilsoniana 11, no. 2 (April–June 2022): 229–248. [PDF]

• “When the Client Does Not Know: Regressive Abstraction and Nelsonian Socratic Dialogue in Client Counseling,” American Philosophical Practitioners Association Annual Meeting, Virtual, 17 June 2023.
• “A Platonist’s Perspective of Gender Fluidity,” Virginia Philosophical Association, University of Lynchburg, 28–29 October 2022.
• “Did Some Hippocratics think the Science of Medicine required the Existence of Nonspatiotemporal objects?” The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, University of California, Irvine, 20–23 June 2022
• “Truth and Medical Diagnosis,” Lightning Talk, Festival of Arts and Ideas, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 14 April 2022.
• “Ontological Reductionism, Realism, and the Objects of Science in the Hippocratic Collection,” Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Annual Meeting, Virtual, 25 September 2021
• “Plato’s Symposium: Erotic Philosophy, Kairos, and the Crisis of the Soul,” Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Annual Meeting, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, 16 November 2019