Haugeland was a research fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has also been a member of the Council for Philosophical Studies. Before starting graduate school Haugeland was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga.

Haugeland first studied at Harvey Mudd College, where he obtained a degree in physics before studying for a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Hans Sluga. At Berkeley, Hubert Dreyfus served as one of his important mentors.

In Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea, Haugeland coined the term GOFAI. Haugeland's work has focused on the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, phenomenology, and Heidegger.

Philosophers who completed their doctoral dissertations under John Haugeland's supervision include William Blattner, Mitchell Stein, Bennett Helm, Rebecca Kukla, Eric Marcus, Arthur Ripstein, and Tim van Gelder.

On his University of Chicago web page Haugeland also claims to have the largest collection of nuts and bolts of any philosopher, though this claim has not been independently verified.

Books

• Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind (1998). Harvard University Press.
• Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea (1985). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Mind Design (1981) (editor). MIT Press
• Mind Design II Second Edition (1997) (editor). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
• Rationality and Theory Choice (forthcoming) (Haugeland, J and Conant, J, eds.). Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.