J. D. Trout (born 1959) is an American philosopher of science, cognitive scientist, lecturer and nonfiction author who holds the Calamos Endowed Chair in Philosophy at Illinois Institute of Technology.
He attended public schools in the Cleveland and the greater Philadelphia area, where he learned to box, drove a Class 2 vehicle, and flirted with a career in opera.
In 1988–89, Trout was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Bryn Mawr College, and a Choice Award winner for his 1998 book Measuring the Intentional World.
Trout authored a number of experimental and theoretical articles on speech perception, after having begun a parallel career in spoken language processing in his twenties.
His most recent book, The Empathy Gap, makes the case that a fair and humane democracy in modern times must turn to psychological science to forge policies that correct for people's natural imperfections.