Jonathon VandenHombergh, PhD
Personal: jjacobvandenhombergh@gmail.com
Work: jjvanden@stanford.edu
View my full CV here.
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About Me
Starting August 1st, I will be the Clinical Ethics Fellow at the Laurie J. Girand Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow with the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. Before that, I received my PhD in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my MA in philosophy at the University of Houston, and my BS in psychology and philosophy at Aquinas College.
My research is about the human subject and its place in an increasingly complex world. On the "theoretical" side, this amounts to research on consciousness, perception, and other topics in the philosophy of mind. On the "practical" side, it amounts to research on euthanasia, AI therapy, and other topics in bioethics. I also have side interests in metaphysics.
I enjoy teaching and clinical ethics consultation. I have almost ten years of teaching and grading experience, across a variety of formats, class sizes, and locations. I am especially passionate about teaching logic and ethics, which I consider essential to good civic engagement. I have experience as an on-call ethics consultant at the NIH, and in a shadowing capacity at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. (where I was recently made a visiting scholar in neuroethics and clinical consciousness).
Peer-Reviewed Publications
2026, "The Exploitation Argument against Artificial Companionship," AI and Ethics, 6(371).
2026, w/ Scott Kim, "Assisted Dying in Unjust Conditions," Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.
2025, "Expressivist Concerns for Assisted Dying on Request," Journal of Medical Ethics, 52: 547-51 (Editor's Choice for this issue).
2025, "Hallucination as Perceptual Synecdoche," The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 104(1): 1-16.
2020, "Consciousness, Conceivability, and Intrinsic Reduction," Erkenntnis, 85(5): 1129–51.
2017, "Inconceivable Physicalism," Analysis 77(1): 116-25.
Other Publications
Forthcoming, "A Comparative Analysis of Surrogate Decision-Making with and without Patient Preference Predictors" (w/ Annette Rid and Dave Wendler), in The Handbook of Digital and Experimental Methods in Bioethics, Springer.
2026, "A Reply to Reed on My 'Expressivist Concerns for Assisted Dying on Request'," Journal of Medical Ethics: 1-2.
In Progress
A paper on the role of vagueness in conceivability arguments against materialism (under review)
A paper on the priority of sovereignty in medical decision-making (abstract submitted to conference)
A paper on the priority of inauthentic advance directives (w/ Dave Wendler; second draft)
A paper on metaphysical arbitrariness—what it is and why it sometimes warrants rejection (second draft)
A paper on the morality of using large language models for clinical ethics consultation (first draft)
A paper on thought crimes, the extended mind, and discriminatory law (w/ Daniel Karel; first draft)
Commentaries on My Work
Reed, Philip, forthcoming, "Autonomy-centred assisted death laws still avoid expressivism," Journal of Medical Ethics https://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2025-111434.
Marton, Peter, 2023, "Conceivability, Kripkean Identity, and S5: a Reply to Jonathon VandenHombergh," Erkenntnis https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-023-00759-3.
My Dissertation
2024, The One is the Type of the Many, University of Wisconsin-Madison, advised by Farid Masrour, Alan Sidelle, and Bruno Whittle.
Conference Presentations
Forthcoming, "On Stopping the Organs of an Organ-Stop (Personalized Predictors Still Disrespect Patient Autonomy)," PPE Society 10th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, USA.
2023, "The Inner Part of Chaotic Hallucination," Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Louisville, USA. Download PowerPoint here.
2018, "Conceptual Sieves," New Mexico Texas Philosophical Society, Houston, USA. Download PowerPoint here.
2017, "Conceptual Sieves," Third International Conference on Philosophy of Mind, Braga, Portugal. PowerPoint available upon request.
2016, "Phenomenal Concepts and the Disjunction Problem," Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. PowerPoint available upon request.
2015, "The Logic of Quantified Two-Dimensional Conceivability Arguments," Masterclass Conference with David Chalmers, Stockholm, Sweden. PowerPoint available upon request.
Courses Taught
2023, Introduction to Ethics. Download syllabus and sample of groupwork assignment here.
2022, Introduction to Philosophy. Download syllabus and sample of paper prompts here.
2018-2023, Contemporary Moral Issues. Syllabus available upon request.
2018, Formal Logic. Syllabus available upon request.
Lecture Samples
2023, "Chapter 11: The Kantian Perspective: Fairness and Justice," on chapter 11 of Russ Shafer-Landau's Fundamentals of Ethics, for an online asynchronous introduction to ethics course. Download video here.
2022, "Weeks 1-2: Introduction," on the Introduction to Nigel Warburton's Philosophy: the Basics, for an introduction to philosophy course. Download PowerPoint here.
2018, "Week 3: the Syntax of Propositional Logic; Semantics and Truth Tables," on parts II and III of P.D. Magnus et. al.'s for all x: Calgary, an Introduction to Formal Logic, for a course in formal logic. Download PowerPoint here.
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