Alexander Schaefer
Contact
211 Mary Talbert Way, Rm. 119
Buffalo, NY 14222
Schaef@Buffalo.edu
715.828.2157
Employment
2023-
University at Buffalo,
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy
2021-2023
New York University,
Research Fellow, School of Law
Education
2021
University of Arizona,
Ph.D. Philosophy, Doctoral Minor in Economic Theory
Dissertation: Coping with Complexity: Essays on Evolution and Institutions
Committee: David Schmidtz (chair), Thomas Christiano, Justin Bruner, Vlad Tarko
2014
University of Wisconsin - Madison
B.A. Philosophy, Economics
Graduated with Comprehensive Honors
Senior honors thesis: “Selecting Naturalism: A Dilemma for Street’s Dilemma”
Research
Peer-Reviewed
“Polycentricity and Adaptation: A Multilevel Selectionist Approach.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (forthcoming).
“Does Miscommunication Mitigate the Upshot of Diversity?” PLOS ONE (forthcoming). (with Ryan Muldoon and Keith Hankins).
“Is Justice a Fixed Point?” American Journal of Political Science (2023).
“Public Servants.” Journal of Moral Philosophy (2022). (with Mario Iván Juárez García).
“Exit & Isolation: Rousseau's State of Nature.” Synthese (2022). (with Mario Iván Juárez García).
“Unraveling into War: Trust and Social Preferences in Hobbes’s State of Nature.” Economics and Philosophy (2022). (with Jin-yeong Sohn).
“Reasonable but Nonliberal: Another Route to Polycentrism.” The Philosophical Quarterly (2022).
“Hayek’s Twin Ideas” The Cambridge Journal of Economics (2021).
“Rationality, Uncertainty, and Unanimity: An Epistemic Critique of Contractarianism.” Economics and Philosophy (2021).
“Incoherent but Reasonable: A Defense of Truth-Abstinence in Political Liberalism.” Social Theory and Practice (2020). (with Wes Siscoe).
“The Lukewarm Religions of Rawls’s Overlapping Consensus.” Aporia (2014).
Book Chapters
“Robust Reconciliation,”
New Social Contract Theory: Liberty, Equality, Diversity, and the Open Society. Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
“The Birds and the Bees: Classical Liberalism in Relation to Other Schools of Thought,”
The Routledge Companion to Classical Liberalism (forthcoming).
“The Expressive Commons: Freedom of Expression as a Collective Action Problem.” Exploring the Political Economy & Social Philosophy of Vincent & Elinor Ostrom. Rowman and Littlefeld (2020).
“Coping with Complexity: A Theory of Hayekian Interventionism,” Interdisciplinary Studies of the Political Order: New Applications of Public Choice Theory. Rowman and Littlefeld (2019).
“Between Heteronomy and Anarchy: Kant’s Reformulation of the Social Contract,” Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment. Routledge (2017).
Book Reviews
Review of The Machinery of Government: Public Administration and the Liberal State. In The Independent Review (2022).
Current Projects
“The Problem of Complexity and the Emergence of Polycentric Political Order” (with Dries Daems) (under review).
Defends an explanatory model of the emergence of polycentric structures
“Polycentricity and Adaptation: A Multilevel Selectionist Approach”(revise and resubmit).
Applies evolutionary theory to explain functionality of undesigned polycentric orders
“Justice in Flux: A Reply to Weithman, Wiens & Ingham” (in progress).
Replies to recent criticisms of my recent paper “Is Justice a Fixed Point?”
Selected Presentations
2022
“Cooperation, Trust, and Hypocrisy: A Game-theoretic Account”
PPE Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA
2021
“The Problem of Complexity and the Emergence of Polycentric
Political Order”
Public Choice Society Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN
2021
“Multilevel Selection and Polycentric Organization”
Southern Economic Association Annual Conference in Houston, TX
2019
“What Can Social Complexity Teach Us about Cultural Evolution?”
Santa Fe Institute’s CSSS in Santa Fe, NM
2017
“The Expressive Commons: Free Expression as a Collective Action
Problem”
Mont Pelerin Society Special Meeting in Stockholm, Sweden
2017
“The Unanimity Rule in Constitutional Choice”
The Conditions for Social Order, Workshop at King’s College in London, UK
2017
“Can Reasonable People be Incoherent? Rawlsian Constructivism and
the Avoidance of Truth”
Northwestern University Society for the Theory of Ethics and Politics in Evanston, IL
2016
“Sharon Street’s Adaptive-Link Account IS a Tracking Account”
Wisconsin Philosophical Association in Madison, WI
Selected Awards and Fellowships
2022
NEH Institute, David Hume in the 21st Century
National Endowment for the Humanities, Portland State University
2021
Gerald Gaus Memorial PPE Essay Prize
PPE Society, for my essay “Is Justice a Fixed Point?”
2020
Politics, Philosophy, Economics, and Law Fellowship
Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, University of Arizona
2013, 2014
Draminski Award for Academic Excellence in Economics
Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin Madison
Teaching and Work Experience
Teaching
LAW 11195, Classical Liberalism: History, Theory, Contemporary
Jurisprudence, Fall 2022.
New York University, School of Law, Co-instructor with Mario Rizzo.
PPEL 320, The History of Economic Thought, Spring 2021.
University of Arizona. Primary instructor.
PPEL 250, The Social Contract, Fall 2019.
University of Arizona. Primary instructor.
PPEL 205, The Ethics and Economics of Wealth Creation, Fall 2018.
University of Arizona. Teaching assistant.
PHIL 110, Logic and Critical Thinking, Spring 2017, Fall 2015.
University of Arizona. Teaching assistant.
Academic Work
Managing Assistant for Public Affairs Quarterly, 2021-2022
Screened content, selected referees, and proofread accepted papers
Supervised by Jason Brennan
Editorial Assistant for Social Philosophy & Policy, 2016-2021.
Communicated with authors, assisted with organization and execution of conferences
Supervised by David Schmidtz
Graduate Fellow at The Alexis de Tocqueville Project in New Orleans, LA, 2015.
Contributed to workshop on Kant’s Rechtslehre, helped with administrative tasks
Supervised by Chris W. Surprenant
Additional Information
Referee work
Social Philosophy & Policy (2018), Public Affairs Quarterly (2019), The Independent Review (2019, 2022), Manuscrito (2020), Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics (2021), Politics, Philosophy & Economics (2022), Journal of Economic Methodology (2022), Cosmos + Taxis (2022), Synthese (2022), Journal of Applied Philosophy (2022)
Languages
Proficient in Spanish and French