About Us
Honors Faculty Benjamin Scott Young
Philosophy | Ethics | Interdisciplinary Learning
Dr. Benjamin Scott Young is a philosopher guided by a central question: How do we learn to live well in complex and changing worlds? His research focuses on the cultivation of discernment — the practiced capacity to recognize what matters within unfolding situations and to respond with sensitivity, creativity, and care.
Academic Interests
His research and teaching bring phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science — especially predictive processing and active inference — into dialogue with questions in education, moral psychology, and the medical humanities. Through this interdisciplinary lens, he investigates how experience unfolds through narrative orientation, embodied perception, and the rhythms of practice, illuminating the structures and possibilities for living well in shared worlds.
With his students, he draws on the experiential learning and research contexts of study abroad and international collaboration to explore how discernment is cultivated through improvisational forms of perception and action within cultures and environments of learning and health. Together, they investigate the structures and determinants of first-person experience, contributing to the understanding — and cultivation — of personal and professional growth and well-being.
Honors Programs & Global Experiences
Dr. Young is committed to creating transformative academic experiences for Honors students. He coordinates the Honors first-year seminar Acquisition of Knowledge: Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Practical Wisdom, where students develop the intellectual and social capacities needed to work across disciplines and cultures in addressing complex questions, enduring challenges, and emerging opportunities shaping our shared future.
For more than half of each year, he takes Honors students to the United Kingdom on two immersive study abroad programs: Honors Semester in England, in collaboration with the University of Exeter (spring), and Honors USF in London (summer). These programs combine academic study with international field experience, enabling students to learn through direct encounters with new cultures and environments. Through site visits, conversations with local professionals, and collaborative exploration of cities and landscapes, these courses extend learning far beyond the classroom. Students gain global fluency and confidence while developing the adaptability needed to navigate an increasingly interconnected world.
In partnership with the University of Exeter’s Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Dr. Young collaborates with UK-based faculty to connect Honors students pursuing careers in medicine and health with professionals, researchers, and students from around the world through a transnational digital initiative: the Global Classroom for Health Humanities and Geographies. Students and faculty engage in shared inquiry with researchers from diverse disciplines and cultures, exploring how embodiment, environment, culture, health, and care are lived and understood across diverse human contexts.
Courses & Teaching Philosophy
Dr. Young’s courses invite students to engage enduring philosophical questions about meaning, knowledge, and human flourishing in the context of contemporary life and emerging research. His teaching takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of experience and ethics, drawing on ideas from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, economics, biology, and the arts to explore how language, perception (sensation, emotion, and mood), and practice shape the possibilities that appear in experience. Together, he and his students explore how the cultivation of discernment shapes learning in environments of personal and professional formation, health, and well-being.
As an educator, Dr. Young designs experiential, place-based learning encounters that bring philosophical inquiry into direct contact with lived experience. Whether exploring the nature of consciousness, learning in the age of artificial intelligence, the cultivation of discernment, personal growth, professional formation, or the conditions for flourishing in shared worlds, students are encouraged to think rigorously and creatively in real time, taking responsibility for their own learning and development — reflecting on how ideas, perceptions, and actions continually shape both their lives and the shared environments of learning, health, and well-being they inhabit.
In addition to his teaching at the Judy Genshaft Honors College, Dr. Young teaches professional ethics at the USF Morsani College of Medicine as part of the medical humanities and professional formation curriculum. In this setting, he works with future physicians to explore the ethical, interpretive, and relational dimensions of medical practice.
Across his research and teaching, Dr. Young seeks to deepen our understanding of the conditions for global well-being and human flourishing — individually, relationally, and collectively. He creates learning environments in which philosophical inquiry becomes a lived practice, helping students cultivate intellectual creativity, interpretive generosity, and the practical wisdom needed to flourish amid the opportunities and challenges of contemporary life.
Contact Dr. Benjamin Young.