Lives of Philosophers

Sandra Bartky (1935-2016)

Sandra Lee Bartky, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, died earlier today. (more…)

Mary Hesse, professor emeritus of philosophy at University of Cambridge, died this past Sunday. Professor Hesse worked in philosophy of science. She had been at Cambridge since 1960 in its Department of History and Philosophy of Science, becoming a fellow of Cambridge’s Wolfson College in 1965. (more…)

Joseph Boyle (1942-2016)

Joseph Boyle, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto, died on September 24th. Professor Boyle worked mainly in ethics, including ethical theory and applied ethics (especially bioethics), as well as natural law theory. He received his doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University, and prior to the University of Toronto, held appointments a..

An Interview with David Chalmers

David Chalmers (NYU & ANU), apart from being a prolific academic philosopher, does a good amount of public philosophy, is half of the team that runs PhilPapers and its associated endeavors, edits the philosophy of mind series for Oxford University Press and the philosophy of mind section at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and, I’m told, takes on an impressi..

Philosophy and the Racial “Epistemic Horizon”

Looking back, I brought something special to those spaces that are predominantly white at Duquesne. And I don’t think that white philosophers can offer what I offered to those Black students and students of color. There is a certain discourse, certain assumptions, a shared discourse, a shared worldview, a shared style. There is also a certain understanding of where ..

Dale Jacquette (1953-2016)

Dale Jacquette, Senior Professorial Chair in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bern (Switzerland), died this past Sunday. Prior to moving to Bern in 2008, he was professor of philosophy at Penn State University. He also held visiting appointments or was affiliated with the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the Julius Maximil..

Philosophy: Splendidly Polyphonic, Historically Limited, Problematically Magical

In the latest interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?, Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) asks Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) how he sees the future of philosophy. Appiah answers:

I’m not much of a prophet and I feel very stuck in the present of the subject, which strikes me as splendidly more polyphonic than it was when I started out. (more…)

One of the World’s Most Successful — and Different — Philosophers

When Nussbaum was three or four years old, she told her mother, “Well, I think I know just about everything.” Her mother, Betty Craven, whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower, responded sternly, “No, Martha. You are just one person among many.” Nussbaum was so frustrated by this response that she banged her head on the floor. (more…)

What Philosophy Makes You Worse At

Over at the group blog, A Philosopher’s Take, new contributor Mike Steiner (a philosophy PhD who went into the business world) has a post up asking what studying philosophy makes one worse at.

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Morton White (1917-2016)

Morton White, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, died on May 27th. Over the course of his career he taught philosophy at City College of New York, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. (more…)

Summer Reading: Your Non-Fiction Suggestions

The other day we solicited summer reading suggestions in fiction. Fiction! Who has time for that? If we are going to be reading something this summer that isn’t philosophy, we better learn something about the real world from it. So, readers, which works of non-philosophy non-fiction do you recommend your philosofriends read this summer? (more…)

Summer Reading: Your Fiction Suggestions

Ah, summer…. that part of the year in which I like to think I have time to read something besides philosophy. Help me keep the dream alive, philosofriends, and recommend some fiction. If you want to say something about why you’re recommending this or that particular work, be my guest. But you don’t have to. Because it’s summer. (more…)

João Paulo Monteiro (1938-2016)

João Paulo Monteiro, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of São Paulo (USP), died on April 17th, 2016. He taught at USP for roughly 30 years. He worked in epistemology and political philosophy, but his focus was primarily on David Hume (he was a charter member of the Hume Society). (more…)

Ingrid Stadler (1931-2016)

Ingrid Stadler, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Wellesley College, died this past March 18th. Professor Stadler worked mainly in aesthetics, and taught at Wellesley from 1958 until her retirement in 2000. Prior to Wellesley, she taught at Harvard. She also lectured at MIT, Boston Architectural College, Holy Cross, Wheaton, and Vassar. Professor Stadler was a nati..

Interview with Janice Dowell

Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) continues his series of interviews of philosophers at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher? with Janice Dowell of Syracuse University. In it she discusses her childhood (she worked as a janitor for a Princeton eating club), how she ended up going into philosophy (“almost entirely by accident”), her career at various institutions, her..

Justin Leiber (1938-2016)

Justin F. Leiber, retired professor of philosophy at Florida State University, died earlier this week. Prior to joining Florida State, he taught at Lehman College (CUNY) and the University of Houston. Professor Leiber worked mainly in philosophy of language, and also in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. In addition to his philosophy work, he had a care..

Do Philosophers’ Personal Lives Influence Their Choice Of Research Topic?

According to the philosophical training that I received, scholars select their research topics on the basis of an impartial assessment of the scholarly potential of these topics. I recognized very early in my career that this is not the case. The reasons that academics choose the topics of their research and teaching are often related to their personal lives; early ..

Hilary Putnam (1926-2016) (updated)

Hilary Putnam, Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, died earlier today. Professor Putnam was a tremendously influential philosopher, working across a broad range of fields, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of math, and moral philosophy. (A list of his works is available here.) He received h..

Talking Philosophy With Your Kids

Philosopher parents: how, if at all, do you talk philosophy with you own children?

I don’t give my children philosophy lessons, nor do we celebrate Socrates’ birthday. There may be a few more books of logic puzzles laying around the house than average, along with many of the children’s books listed here, but I don’t force philosophy on the kids. If the opportunit..

Jon Altschul (2016)

Jon Alstchul, associate professor of philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans, has died. Professor Altschul worked mainly in epistemology and philosophy of mind, and received his Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2009. A brief article in Loyola’s newpaper, The Maroon, reports university president Kevin Wildes saying, “All who knew Jon remembe..

José Benardete (1928-2016) (updated)

José Benardete, professor emeritus of philosophy at Syracuse University, has died. The author of three books—the latest was Greatness of Soul: In Hume, Aristotle and Hobbes, As Shadowed by Milton’s Satan (Cambridge)—Professor Benardete was known for his work in metaphysics and, I am told, his dedication to a philosophical life. For years, numerous interesting a..

Umberto Eco (1932-2016)

Umberto Eco, known to the world as the author of novels such as The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, has died. Obituaries have appeared in mamy outlets (e.g., New York Times, NPR, The Guardian, The Telegraph). Eco was also an academic, working in philosophy and semiotics. He’s quoted in several articles as saying, “I am a philosopher. I write novels only on..

Is Philosophy Unfriendly?

The latest interview at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher? is up, and it’s with Dan Haybron (Saint Louis University). There’s a lot of interesting stuff in it, so worth a read. One theme that stuck out was the idea that, though most philosophers are quite nice, there is something “unfriendly” about philosophy. Professor Haybron says of grad school in philosophy:
..

William Craig (1918-2016)

William Craig, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, has died. Craig worked mainly in logic and philosophy of science, and is known for, among other things, what has come to be called Craig’s Interpolation Theorem.

UPDATE: See this announcement from the Berkeley Philosophy Department (via Richard Zach).

Philosophers Gift Guide 2015

Last year I waited until mid-December to post the gift guide and tons of philosophers missed out on pencil sharpeners because their loved ones had already bought them something else. I’m not going to make that mistake again. Today is”Cyber Monday,” a holiday that stretches back to the era before all of the marketing professionals who used the word “cyber” to describ..

Burleigh Wilkins (1932-2015)

Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, who was professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara for forty-five years, died last month at the age of 83. Wilkins worked in political and legal philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of history. His career also included appointments at MIT, Princeton, and Rice. A festschrift for him, Essays In Honor of Burleigh W..

Aldo Antonelli (1962 – 2015) (several updates)

G. Aldo Antonelli, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Davis, died unexpectedly earlier this week. Professor Antonelli was known largely for his work in logic. Prior to taking up his position at UC Davis, he also taught for many years at UC Irvine, and held appointments at Pittsburgh, Yale, Stanford, Michigan State, and elsewhere. You can learn ..

What It’s Like to Be Josh Knobe

A new interview is up at What Is It Like To Be a Philosopher?, this time with Joshua Knobe (Yale). Interviewer Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) asks Knobe a range of questions about his life and ideas.

Some interesting excerpts:

On the job market:

I lived pretty far from campus and hardly ever came in. As a result, I was woefully ignorant about just about ..