About Dr. Owen

My great grandparents moved to Yakima in the 1920s. Once my grandfather returned to Yakima from the South Pacific, where he served in the US Navy during WWII, he started an auto repair business downtown near the A.E. Larson Building. My father, who ran the business once my grandfather retired, intentionally taught me very little auto mechanics so I would not feel pressure to eventually run the auto repair shop. So, I became a philosopher. 

After graduating from East Valley High School, I went to the University of Washington, where I was a student-athlete studying history while competing in track and field. Then I went to Biola University, where I studied for two master’s degrees and worked as an assistant coach of the track and field team. While studying philosophy at Biola, I met my wife Aryn and we married in 2012. After Biola, I did my PhD in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in England. 

Aryn is now a flight nurse at Airlift Northwest, the medevac branch of UW Medicine, and I have been a professor at Yakima Valley College since 2020. I regularly teach philosophy courses in the humanities department and healthcare ethics in the nursing program. As a first-generation college graduate, I’m grateful to contribute to my community by teaching first-generation college students as well as future nurses, business owners, journalist, teachers, and so forth, here at YVC.
 
Beyond teaching, I do research in philosophy of mind and neuroscience, bioethics, and philosophical theology. I’ve published in various research journals, including the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Neuroethics, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, Synthese, and TheoLogica. I also wrote Measuring the Immeasurable Mind: Where Contemporary Neuroscience Meets the Aristotelian Tradition (Lexington Books, 2021). Outside academia, Aryn and I enjoy raising our three kids and doing outdoor sports, especially skiing.