Dr. Porter received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. from St. Andrews University, Scotland, with graduate study at Oxford University, England. He has taught at various institutions such as Russell Sage College, the University of Maryland (Europe), and Drexel University, and he has served as Department Chair and Dean of Arts and Sciences. He taught at Mount Holyoke College as Visiting Professor of Philosophy, and he is presently on the faculty at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts. Dr. Porter received the award of Outstanding Educator of America.

He is the author of 11 print books including What the Tortoise Taught Us (Rowman and Littlefield), The Head and the Heart (Humanities Books), Philosophy Through Fiction and Film (Prentice Hall), The Voice of Reason (Oxford University Press), The Good Life (Rowman and Littlefield, 4/ed), Religion and Reason (St. Martin's Press), Philosophy Through Film (Sloan Publications), Personal Philosophy (Harcourt Brace), Reasons for Living (Macmillan Publishing), and Philosophy, A Literary and Conceptual Approach (Harcourt Brace). He has also published 4 on-line books, Forbidden Knowledge, The Moebius Strip, Lab Rats, and Black Swans and White Tigers, as well as numerous articles.