Faculty
-
Associate Professor; Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education; Co-Director, Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities
AOS: History of Late Modern Philosophy (18th-20th c.); Kant; Nietzsche; Montaigne; Philosophy and Literature
Research Interests
I work in the history of late modern philosophy, focusing primarily on Kant and his influence on 19th c. philosophy. I have written articles on Kant's theoretical philosophy, on Nietzsche, and on the neo-Kantian movement. I am currently working on a book about the analytic/synthetic distinction in Kant, as well as ongoing projects about the notion of redemption and the norms governing belief for Nietzsche. With Joshua Landy (French), I have been instrumental in developing and undergraduate program in Philosophy and Literature at Stanford, and we are currently collaborating on papers in that area.
-
Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor
AOS: Pure and applied logic
Research Interests
General logic, in particular, logical model theory and modal logic
(correspondence theory, temporal logic, dynamic, epistemic logic).
Applications of logic to philosophy (epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language), linguistics, computer science
and cognitive science (generalized quantifiers, categorial grammar, process logics, information update, logic and games).
-
Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy
AOS: Ancient Greek philosophy
Research Interests
I work on topics in Greek ethics, political theory, psychology and related issues in epistemology and metaphysics. I’m currently working on a project about the relations between knowledge and action in Plato and Aristotle.
-
U. G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Professor of Philosophy
AOS: Philosophy of Action; Practical Reason; Shared Agency
Research Interests
I am currently at work on a monograph on shared agency, and on a series of essays on practical rationality. I also continue to develop an approach to self-governance presented in my Structures of Agency (2007). All three projects are efforts to develop further the planning theory of intention and our agency. The planning theory tries to shed light on the temporally extended structure of our agency; and the idea that underlies much of my work is that this approach to individual human agency puts us in a position to deepen our understanding of a wide range of issues in practical philosophy.
-
Assistant Professor
AOS: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophical Logic
Research Interests
I work primarily in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philsophical logic, on topics like truth, fiction, fictionalism, deflationism, reference, existence, paradox, and indeterminacy. I also have interests in philosophy of mind and mathematics. And teachiing interests in dramatic literature and film theory.
Right now I'm juggling papers on deflationism about numerical identity, onic indeterminacy, Sider's metaphysical semantics plan for reductive metaphysics, and Davd Foster Wallace qua philosopher of language.
-
Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor
AOS: Ancient Greek Philosophy
Research Interests
n/a
-
Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society
AOS: Political Philosophy
Research Interests
n/a
-
Associate Professor
AOS: Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics
Research Interests
I am interested in language, mind, and reality: semantic accounts of natural languages including puzzling phenomena such as vagueness and attitude ascription, theories of consciousness, representation and propositional attitudes, and explanations of ontological commitment and its connection to existence.
-
Associate Professor of Philosophy
AOS: Epistemology; Skepticism and Naturalism
Research Interests
Historical Topics in Epistemology, especially Hume and Kant; also Frege, Wittgenstein, and Quine; skepticism and naturalism
-
Bella and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus
AOS: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind
Research Interests
Epistemology & Philosophy of Mind
-
Lecturer
AOS: History of Modern Philosophy, esp. Leibniz; Aristotle, Aristotelianism
Research Interests
My research interests focus on the relation of metaphysics to natural science up to the Early Modern period.
-
Provost and Patrick Suppes Family Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
AOS: n/a
Research Interests
n/a
-
Patrick Suppes Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences, Em.
AOS: Mathematical Logic; Foundations of Mathematics; Philosophy of Mathematics; History of Modern Logic
Research Interests
n/a
-
C.I. Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
AOS: Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mathematics, 20th Century Philosophy, mainly Husserl, the existentialists and Quine
Research Interests
I am now working on Husserl and Gödel’s views on the existence and knowability of mathematical entities., supported by the Templeton Foundation. -
Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities
AOS: Kant; Philosophy of Science, History of 20th Century Philosophy
Research Interests
My interests include: Kant, Philosophy of Science, History of Twentieth Century Philosophy, including the interaction between philosophy and the exact sciences from Kant through the logical empiricists, prospects for post-Kuhnian philosophy of science in light of these developments, and the relationship between analytic and continental traditions in the early twentieth century
-
Associate Professor (Teaching)
AOS: Aesthetics; History of Modern Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Theory of Knowledge; Continental Philosophy; Political Philosophy; Ethics
Research Interests
Philosophy is the ungainly attempt to tackle questions that come naturally to children, using methods that come naturally to lawyers. Historians of philosophy accordingly divide into those who are forever asking "Where is he coming from?" and those who are forever asking "Where does he get off?" You can probably already guess which kind of historian I am.
Currently I am hardest at work on a booklength study of metaphor. A metaphor leads two lives. It is a short-lived bit of imaginative free play put to durable serious expressive use.
In the short term, a metaphor invites its audience to play a pickup game of make believe with the speaker. A game of make believe, since what players are to imagine in it is a fixed function of perceivable states of various props and perceivable actions on the part of various actors, the function in question being specified by rules that all concerned undertake to play by. A pickup game, since it proceeds without benefit of explicit or tacit agreements among the players: each player identifies the game she is invited to play by reinventing it on the spot, endeavoring for her part to play by whatever rules promise to afford her personally the greatest imaginative satisfaction.
In the longer term, a metaphor presents its audience with a particular thought content by embodying that content in a word or phrase or sentence the speaker proceeds to weave into larger verbal structures. The word or phrase or sentence in question functions in these larger structures as if it had been endowed with that content once and for all by an appropriate standing literal meaning.
We need to work out how the content a metaphor durably embodies depends on the unstated rules of the evanescent game of make believe it invites us to play when first we hear it.
-
Associate Professor
AOS: Metaethics; Philosophy of Action; Nineteenth-Century German Philosophy
Research Interests
I specialise in metaethics, the philosophy of action, and the history of nineteenth-century German philosophy. I am currently investigating contemporary criticisms of mainstream analytical metaethics and philosophy of action that draw their inspiration from the Kantian tradition. My hope is that a book will emerge from this. Meanwhile I continue to work on assessing different interpretations of Nietzsche views about metaethics and the nature of agency.
-
Associate Professor
AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology
Research Interests
In philosophy of mind, I work on issues about coreference and confusion. In epistemology, I work on a variety of issues including the nature of assurance, the semantics of knowledge ascription, self-knowledge, memory and inference.
-
Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy
AOS: Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Biology; Social Epistemology; Feminist Philosophy
Research Interests
I am currently completing a monograph analyzing the evidential structures and frameworks of inquiry of contemporary scientific approaches to the study of human behavior.
-
Director of Research, Philosophy Talk
AOS: n/a
Research Interests
n/a
-
Assistant Professor
AOS: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind
Research Interests
I work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and metaphysics.
At present I'm particularly interested in certain basic problems in meta-philosophy, in linguistic communication and testimony, and in the psychology and epistemology of inference.
-
Professor
AOS: logic, foundations, constructive mathematics
Research Interests
mathematical logic, especially proof theory, substitution method, dynamical topological logic, constructive mathematics, foundations
-
Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Professor of Oriental Philosophies, Religions and Ethics, Emeritus
AOS: n/a
Research Interests
Chinese Philosophy
-
Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
AOS: Philosophy of Languge, Philosophy of Mind
Research Interests
I am working on three books:
Wretched Subterfuge, a defense of compatibilism on the free-will problem.
With Kepa Korta, a book on the pragmatics of singular reference.
Meaning and the Self, which concerns personal identity, the self, and self-knowledge.
I am also finishing the second edition of my book on the philosophy of language, Reference and Reflexivity.
-
Associate Professor
AOS: Political philosophy, Ethics
Research Interests
-
Main interests are in contemporary political theory. Currently working on two book projects, the first on the ideals of equality and adequacy as applied to education policy and reform, the second about topics in ethics, public policy, and philanthropy.
- Author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
- Co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation and What We Can Do About It (Brookings Institution Press, 2005).
- Co-editor (with Debra Satz) of Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin (Oxford University Press, 2009).
-
-
Professor (teaching), beginning 1 Sept 2012
AOS: Philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, history of 20th century physics and philosophy
Research Interests
I am currently writing a book (with Arthur Fine) entitled Einstein for the Routledge Philosophers series, edited by Brian Leiter.
-
Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities & Arts
AOS: Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Social Science
Research Interests
I am currently working on two main projects. The first project concerns the basis for and nature of the state's obligation to provide an education to its citizens.
The second project is related to my recently published book, Why Some Things Should Not be For Sale: The Moral Limits of the Market [Oxford University Press, 2010]. It concerns the relationship between markets and social equality. I am especially interested in the ways that markets can support, but also undermine, the relationship between citizens as equal members of a democratic society.
I also have continuing interests in global justice.
-
Associate Professor
AOS: Ethics; History of Ethics; Kant's Practical Philosophy; Practical Reasoning; Moral Psychology; Philosophy of Action
Research Interests
The nature of passion/inclination and its role in practical reasoning; the structure of agency; the role of ideal concepts in moral theory; Kantian nonideal theory
-
professor
AOS: "decision theory ; game theory; probability; induction; social contract"
Research Interests
n/a
-
Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus
AOS: n/a
Research Interests
n/a
-
Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy
AOS: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Normativity
Research Interests
I am currently working on three books, in various stages of completion. The most nearly complete is a book about reference called Referring to the World: An Opinionated Introduction to the Theory of Reference. It was commissioned by Oxford ages ago and should be finished soon -- any day now. The second book, which is a longer term project is called Toward a Natural History of Normativity. It contains a naturalization of many things normative -- including ethical norms, linguistic norms, epistemic norms, and logical norms. The third book, which is still a bit of a gleam in my eyes, will be called Pragmatics Everywhere. It grows out of my most recent work on the pragmatics of communication -- about which I have written a fair amount, but in somewhat scattered and occasional form. This book will collect my thoughts on pragmatics under one heading.
-
Clarence Irving Lewis Professor
AOS: Syntax, Psycholinguistics, Philosophy of Linguistics
Research Interests
Much of my research is concerned with the question of what leads people to formulate a sentence one way, when there is another way of saying the same thing. In particular, I have investigated alternative word orders allowable in English and the use of the word that where it is optional, making use of annotated corpora of speech and writing. This has led me to some general conclusions about language production strategies that facilitate communicative efficiency.
Another project is an assessment of the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics. After more than fifty years of work within the generative tradition, what are its accomplishments and shortcomings?
-
Professor of Philosophy Emerita
AOS: n/a
Research Interests
Medieval Philosophy, Theology, History
-
Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor, Emeritus
AOS: Modern Philosophy, esp. Kant and German Idealism, Ethics
Research Interests
History of modern philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, and chiefly in the areas of ethics and social and political philosophy.