Faculty and Staff

Biography

Jonathan Beever is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Texts & Technology Ph.D. Program at the University of Central Florida. 

He is the founding director of the UCF Center for Ethics (founded Fall 2019), and the Program Director of the Theoretical and Applied Ethics Certificate Program. 

He previously held postdoctoral appointments in ethics at Penn State and Purdue University. He works in applied ethics, specifically at the intersections among digital ethics, environmental ethics, and bioethics, on issues including the ethics of biotechnologies, environmental bioethics, public and ecological health ethics, digital ethics, and questions of interdependence.

Education

• Ph.D. in Philosophy from Purdue University (2012)
• B.A. in Philosophy from University of Maine (2003)

Research Interests

Ethics (Animal, Environmental, Digital, Engineering), Environmental Bioethics; Simulation and Representation; Soundscape Ecology; Interdependence; Biosemiotics

Recent Research Activities

• Primary Investigator, Intersections of Moral Foundations and Ethics Frameworks (NSF Institutional Transformation award)
• Co-Investigator, Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (NSF CCRI award)

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Selected Publications

Books

• Beever, J. (Ed). The Horror of Relations: The Dark Side of Interdependence. Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield). Forthcoming Fall 2020.
• Beever, J., McDaniel R., Stanlick, N. (2018). Understanding Digital Ethics: Cases and Contexts. Routledge.
• Beever, Jonathan and Vernon W. Cisney (eds). 2016. The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Northwestern University Press.
• Perspectives in Bioethics, Science, and Public Policy. 2013. Jonathan Beever and Nicolae Morar (Eds.). Purdue University Press.

Articles/Essays

• Nikolaidis, A., Beever, J., Kissel, J., Kuebler, S.M., Pinkert, L.A.. (Feb 2025).  “The Moral Limits of Professional Ethics Enculturation” International Journal of Ethics Education.
•  Lynn, M.A., Cook, C., Felber Neff, D., Kinchen, E.V., Beever, J. (2024). Ethical Decision-Making among Nurses Participating in Social Media: A Grounded Theory Study. Journal of Nursing Regulation.
• Beever, J. (Sept 2024). “Conceptual Integrity: the Case of Integrity” A Companion to Doing Ethics. (ed. A. Preti and T. Weidel). Blackwell.
• Nikolaidis, A., Beever, J., Kuebler, S.M., Pinkert, L.A., “From Education to Enculturation: Rethinking the Development of Ethical Professionals in Higher Education.” (June 2024). International Journal of Ethics Education.
• Pinkert, L.A., Beever, J., Kuebler, S.M., Vazquez, E., Milanes, V., Taylor, L. & Klonoff, E. (July 2023). “Responsibility and Accountability: Faculty Leaders, Ethics Frameworks, and Disciplinary Enculturation.” American Society for Engineering Education 2023.
• Banzon, A., Beever, J., Taub, M. “Facial Expression Recognition in Classrooms: Ethical Considerations and Proposed Guidelines for Affect Detection in Educational Settings.” (April 2023). Transactions on Affective Computing. (special edition edited by Gratch, J. Greene, G., Picard, R. Urquhart, L., Valstar, M., doi: 10.1109/TAFFC.2023.3275624.
• Beever, J. (accepted April 2023). “Thinking Like a Giraffe: Biosemiotics, Ethics, and Soundscape Ecology.” 2023 Proceedings of the World Form of Acoustic Ecology.
• Beever, J. (October 2022). “The Horror of Relations.” Philosophy Now, volume 152, https://philosophynow.org/issues/152/The_Horror_of_Relations
• Pinkert, L.A., Taylor, L.A., Beever, J., Kuebler, S.M., & Klonoff, E. (Summer 2022). “Disciplinary Leaders Perceptions of Ethics: An Interview-Based Study of Ethics Frameworks.” American Society for Engineering Education 2022. Paper ID 37843.
• Beever, J. “Conceptual Stewardship and Ethics Centers: The Case of Integrity.” Teaching Ethics, 21(2). (special edition edited by C. Meyers, accepted January 2022).
• Beever, J., & Taylor, L. (Jan. 2022) “Bioethics of Public Commenting: Manipulation, Data Risk, and Public Participation in E-Rulemaking.” Bioethics 36(1): 18-24. (accepted May 2021).
• Beever, J., Kuebler, S.M., Collins, J. “Where Ethics is Taught: An Institutional Epidemiology.” International Journal of Ethics Education, 6, 215-238. (February 2021).
• Beever. J., Kuebler, S.M., Pinkert, L., Taylor, L.E. (2021). “Faculty Perspectives on Frameworks of Responsibility in their Disciplines.” 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science, and Technology (ETHICS). 978-1-6654-0801-1.
• Spector-Bagdady, K., Beever, J. (July 07, 2020). “Rethinking the Importance of the Individual within a Community of Data.” Hastings Center Report. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1112.
• *Upvall, M., Nguyen-Thanh, T., Beever, J., & Huy, N.V.Q. (June 2020). “An Interprofessional Approach to Assessing Research Ethics Capacity in Vietnam: Implications for Nursing Education.” Nursing Education Perspectives. [online first June 26, 2020] doi: 10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000683.
• Beever, J. (May 2020 [first online Dec. 2019]). “Sonic Liminality: Soundscapes, Semiotics, and Ecologies of Meaning.”  Biosemiotics (special edition on Hybrid Natures) 13(1): 77-88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-019-09371-x.
• Beever, J. & Pinkert, L.A. (2019). “Preliminary Results from a Survey of Moral Foundations Across Engineering Subdisciplines.”American Society for Engineering Education 2019. Paper ID #27491.
• Hess, J.L., Beever, J., Zoltowski, C.B., Kisselburgh, L., Brightman, A.O. (Feb. 2019). “Enhancing Engineering Students’ Ethical Reasoning: Situating Reflexive Principlism within the SIRA Framework.” Journal of Engineering Education 108(1): 82-102.
• Beever, J. & Morar, N. (Oct. 2018). “The Epistemic and Ethical Onus of ‘One Health’,” Bioethics 33(1): 185-194.
• Beever, J. & Tønnessen, M. (Aug 2018). “Justifying Moral Standing by Biosemiotic Particularism.” Zeitschrift fur Semiotik 37(3-4): 31-54.
• Beever, J. (2018). “The Value of Ethics in Engineering: Hypotheses and Preliminary Data.” American Society for Engineering Education 2018. Paper ID #22824.
• Beever, J. and Pinkert, L.A. (2018). “Identifying Moral Foundations and Disciplinary Frameworks of Engineering Ethics.”American Society for Engineering Education 2018. Paper ID #22839.
• Beever, J. (Jan. 2017). “The Ontology of Species: Commentary on Kasperbauer’s ‘Should We Bring Back the Passenger Pigeon? The Ethics of De-Extinction’.” Ethics, Policy, and Environment http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291825.
• Beever, J. & Whitehouse, P.J. (Jan. 2017). “The Ecosystem of Bioethics: Building Bridges to Public Health.” Jahr: European Journal of Bioethics 8/2(16): 227-243.
•  Beever, J. (Winter 2016). “The Mountain and the Wolf: Aldo Leopold’s Uexkullian Influence.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 4(1): 85-109.
• Beever, J. (Fall 2016). “Teaching Ethics Ecologically: Decision-Making Through Narrative.” Teaching Ethics 16(2): 195-206.
• Beever, J. & Morar, N. (Sept. 2016). “Bioethics and the Challenge of the Ecological Individual.” Environmental Philosophy 13(2):215-238.
• Beever, J. & Brightman, A.O. (2016). “A Principlist Approach for Thinking about the Social Impacts of Engineering.” Conference Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education. Paper ID #16973.
• Beever, J. & Brightman, A.O. (Feb 2016). “Reflexive Principlism As An Effective Approach for Developing Ethical Reasoning in Engineering.” Science and Engineering Ethics 22(1):275-291.
• Beever, J. & Hess, J. (2016). “Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: An Ethics Case Study in Environmental Engineering.” Conference Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education. Paper ID #15112.
• Beever, J. & Morar, N. (Feb. 2016 [online Feb 2015]). “The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Individual in Biomedicine.” American Journal of Bioethics 16(2): 34-45.
• Beever, J. (2015). “An Ecological Turn in American Indian Environmental Ethics.” Environmental Philosophy 12(1): 1-19.

Book Sections/Chapters

• Beever, J. & Morar, N. (Jan 2025). “The Moral Status of Mark Bernstein.” Animal Thinkers: Celebrating the Pioneers of Animal Ethics (ed. C. Linzey)
• Beever, J. & Morar, N. (Nov 2024). “When the Outside Becomes Inside: Causal and Constitutive Environmental Relations in Bioethics.” Oxford Handbook of Environmental Bioethics. (Ed. C. Richie)
• Zacharias, K., Hersh, M., Brightman, A. and Beever, J. (under review Nov 2023; volume accepted April 2024, published 4 Dec 2024). “Individual and Collective Dimensions of Ethical Decision-Making in Engineering” in Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, Chapter 3. Chance, S., Borsen, T., Martin, D.A., Tormey, R., Lennerfors, T., Bombaerts, G.  (Eds.). Routledge.
• Kisselburgh, L. and Beever, J. (Feb 2022). “The Ethics of Privacy in Research and Design: Principles, Practices, and Potential” in Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy, pp 395-426. Knijnenburg, B., Page, X., Wisniewski, P., Lipford, H.R., Proferes, N., Romano, J. (Eds.). Springer.
• Brightman, A.O., Beever, J., Hiles, M.C. (Nov 2019). “Next-Generation Ethical Development of Medical Devices: Considering Harms, Benefits, Fairness, and Freedom,” In Next Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society. Abbas, A.E. (Ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Hess, J., Beever, J., Strobel, J., Brightman, A.O. (2017). “Empathic Perspective-Taking and Ethical Decision-Making in Engineering Ethics Education.” In Philosophy and Engineering: Exploring Boundaries, Expanding Connections: 163-179, Byron Newberry, B., Michelfelder, D., Zhu, Q.(Eds.). Springer.
• Beever, J. (June 2016). “The World of Representation in The Tree of Life.” In The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life: 233-250, Cisney, V. & Beever, J. (Eds.). Northwestern University Press.
• Beever, J. (2016). “Have Hope, Not too Much, Mostly for Plants: Hope in Environmental Moral Literacy.” In Ecology, Ethics, and Hope: 111-126, Brei, A. (Ed.). Rowman and Littlefield.
• Beever, J. (January 2016). “Symbolic Violence as Subtle Virulence: A Philosophy of Terrorism.” In Re-Visioning Terrorism: A Humanistic Perspective: 163-179, Lawton, B. & Coda, E. (Eds.). West Lafayette, Purdue University Press.
• Tønnessen, M. & Beever, J. (Nov 2014). “Beyond Sentience: Biosemiotics as Foundation for Animal and Environmental Ethics,” In Animal Ethics & Philosophy: Questioning the Orthodoxy: 47-62, Hadley, J. & Aaltola, E. (Eds.). Rowman and Littlefield, International.
• Springer, J.A., Beever, J., Morar, N., Sprague, J.E., Kane, M.D. (2010). “Ethics, Privacy, and the Future of Genetic Information in Healthcare Information Security,” In Information Assurance and Security Ethics in Complex Systems: Interdisciplinary Perspectives: 186-205, Dark, M. (Ed.). IGI Global Springer.

Book Reviews

• Beever, J. (August 2020). Book review. “Review of Nicholas Shrubsole’s What Has No Place, Remains (2019).” Environmental Philosophy 17(1): 183-186.
• Beever, J. (2018). Book review. “On Expecting Relations: Review of Wendy Wheeler’s Expecting the Earth: Life, Culture, Biosemiotics (2016).” New Formations, Issue 92.

Awards

• see personal website

Activities

• see personal website

Courses

• Spring 2026
• Fall 2025
• Summer 2025
• Spring 2025
• Fall 2024
• Summer 2024