Lives of Philosophers

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 ..

Philosophy Majors Are Less Likely To Marry Each Other (updated)

Only 5% of “philosophy or religious studies” majors end up marrying other “philosophy or religious studies” majors, according to an analysis of census data by Dan Kopf at Priceonomics this past summer. This makes it one of the least common majors shared by married couples. Since, in the Census data, philosophy is lumped in with religious studies, we don’t know what ..

Claudia Card (1940-2015) (Updated)

Claudia Card, Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has died. Professor Card received her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Wisconsin, and joined the faculty there after getting her PhD at Harvard in 1969. She wrote on a wide range of topics in ethics and social philosophy, and is especially well-known for her work in femin..

Philosophically Interesting Books for Young Kids

A friend is interested in soliciting philosophically-minded books for young children—ones who are reading, but are not at the chapter-book stage. Here are a few I’ve enjoyed with my kids…

The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater — for the young individualist.
A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss — for the young teleologist.
Pierre: A Cautionary T..

William L. Rowe (1931- 2015)

William L. Rowe, professor emeritus at Purdue University, has died. Professor Rowe was known for his work in philosophy of religion and metaphysics. A memorial notice by Paul Draper is posted at The Prosblogian.

(via Adam Omelianchuk)

Jaakko Hintikka (1929-2015)

Jaakko Hintikka, professor of philosophy at Boston University, has died. Over the course of his career, he also taught at Florida State University, Stanford, University of Helsinki, and the Academy of Finland. From his page at BU:

Dr. Hintikka is known as the main architect of game-theoretical semantics and of the interrogative approach to inquiry, and also as on..

Richard Gale (1932-2015) (Updated)

Richard Gale, who spent much of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, has died. Gale had also held appointments at NYU, Hunter College, Vassar, and the University of Tennessee. He worked on pragmatism and philosophy of religion. Prior to entering graduate school in philosophy, Gale was a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, and also worked in record promotion for..

Peter Manchester (1943-2015)

Peter Manchester, a philosopher at Stony Brook University (formerly SUNY Stony Brook), has died. Professor Manchester started at Stony Brook in 1980 and worked in ancient philosophy, Neoplatonism, speculative theology, hermeneutical phenomenology, and philosophy of time. His last book,Temporality and Trinity, came out just a few months ago. Newsday has more informat..

Al Mele Interviewed at “What Is It Like…?”

Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) continues his series of interviews at “What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?” (previously) with Florida State University’s Al Mele. A synopsis:

In this interview, Al Mele talks about his early love of sports (especially football), games and reading, being an East Detroit greaser, getting a football scholarship, being disinterested..

Michael Martin (1932-2015)

Michael Martin, professor of philosophy emeritus at Boston University, has died. Martin worked mainly in philosophy of religion, and is known for his defenses of atheism, in such works as Atheism, Morality, and Meaning and various edited collections, including the Cambridge Companion to Atheism. He also wrote a few plays. Following an initial appointment at the Univ..

Interviewed

Clifford Sosis continues his series at What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? (previously here, here, and here) with an interview of, uh, me. For the record let it be known that an earlier part of our conversation was omitted from the published version. I include it here:

Sosis: I’m starting an interview series.
Weinberg: Sounds good. Do you have anyone lined up?..

At his new site, What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher, Clifford Sosis (Coastal Carolina) has posted a long and wide-ranging interview with Michael Ruse (Florida State). The interview covers a lot of his personal life and how he got into philosophy, evolution and creationism and his testimony in the McLean versus Arkansas Board of Education lawsuit, interdisciplinary ..

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