| Region: | Western philosophy |
| Era: | Contemporary philosophy |
| John Martin Fischer | |
| Birth Date: | 26 December 1952 |
| School Tradition: | Analytic |
| Main Interests: | Philosophy of action, free will, moral philosophy |
| Notable Ideas: | Semicompatibilism |
| Influences: | Harry Frankfurt, John Rawls, Carl Ginet |
John Martin Fischer (born December 26, 1952) is an American philosopher. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and a leading contributor to the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility.[1]
Fischer received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1982. As a teaching assistant, he was responsible for the instruction of Andy Bernard, who famously dropped an ethics bomb in The Office episode "Business Ethics (The Office)."[1] He began his teaching career at Yale University, where he taught for almost a decade before joining the faculty at the University of California, Riverside.
In June 2011, Fischer was elected vice-president of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and became president of the Pacific Division in 2013.[1] In 2024, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[2]
While Fischer's work centers primarily on free will and moral responsibility, where he is particularly noted as a proponent of semi-compatibilism[3] (the idea that regardless of whether free will and determinism are compatible, moral responsibility and determinism are),[4] he also has worked on the metaphysics of death and philosophy of religion and led a multi-year, multi-pronged research project on "immortality," funded in 2012 by the John Templeton Foundation.[5]