New FPO Fellow Announced: Jes Heppler

After we received 32 applications for our FPO doctoral dissertation fellowship, we engaged in a careful two-stage selection process, first by examining the written application materials and second via a Zoom meeting with the four finalists and members of our advisory council and board. We are delighted to announce our next FPO doctoral dissertation for the academic year 2024-25:

Jes Heppler, PhD Candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, with her dissertation entitled: “Gut Feelings,
Orientation, and Embodied Epistemology
.”

Jes Heppler’s dissertation builds on existing literature about intuition and argues for a novel distinction between intuitions and gut feelings: intuitions with an embodied mode of presentation. Because gut feelings present their content in the body, they raise a new set of questions about the affective, epistemic, and ethical dimensions of intuition. Jes explores the disorienting nature of gut feelings and argues that the right epistemic orientation can allow us to benefit from gut feelings’ revelatory nature while taking appropriate caution towards their liability to reflect fallacies and prejudice. She plans to defend her dissertation in May 2025.

Congrats and welcome Jes!