News
Remembering Marco Dees
It is with profound sadness that we report the death of Marco Dees on July 22 in a climbing accident in Grand Teton National Park. Marco came to Rutgers after studying philosophy at Saint Andrews. He wrote a dissertation on the metaphysics of quantities, space, and time, receiving his Ph.D. in 2015. Dean Zimmerman and Jonathan Schaffer were his co-advisors. He had begun to publish papers based on his thesis (in Thought and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly), and to teach, first at Bard College and then Vassar.
Marco was a beloved member of our community. He brought a kind, encouraging spirit to every conversation — philosophical or otherwise. His passing is an incalculable loss for all who knew him.
For information about memorial services, or to leave remembrances and pictures, visit https://marco-dees.muchloved.com.
Rutgers Alumnus Wins Lakatos Award!
Craig Callender has been announced as one of the recipients of the 2018 Lakatos Award for his book What Makes Time Special? (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Craig Callender is a Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. Prior to that he worked in the Department of Philosophy, Logic & Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1997. Congratulations Craig!
The Philosophy Department hosted public lectures by Patrick Byrne (CEO Overstock.com and Stanford Philosophy P.h.D.) in Spring 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78vZtoVui7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kALNSFPe5lQ
Ernest Sosa will give the 18th annual Muenster Lecture in Philosophy at the University of Muenster on November 4th. The lecture, entitled “Judgment and Knowledge as Forms of Action,” is part of a two-day workshop where Professor Sosa will respond to critics. Details here.
With sadness the department announces the untimely passing of our colleague Mark Colby, beloved teacher of many of our students since his initial appointment at Rutgers in 2002. He will be greatly missed. More information here.
Ruth Chang's Ted talk on Hard Choices
The Phi Beta Kappa Society, in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association (APA), has awarded the 2014 Lebowitz Prizes to Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers) and Jessica Wilson (The University of Toronto) for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution for their symposium titled "Grounding in Metaphysics." The symposium will take place this winter, December 27-30, at the APA's Eastern Division meeting. The Lebowitz award recognizes the work of celebrated philosophers for their excellence in thought, in addition to awarding an honorarium of $30,000 to each recipient. See here for more details.
There will be a memorial conference and celebration in memory of our late colleague Brian Loar on October 9, 2014 at 1 pm in the Philosophy Department seminar room. Speakers will be Stephen Schiffer (NYU), Katalin Balog (Rutgers), and David Chalmers (NYU/ANU). There will also be time for remembrances and discussion of Brian's contributions to philosophy. All are invited. For more information contact Barry Loewer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Peter Kivy at 3:AM Magazine.
The Mellon Foundation endows the first Philosophy Chair at Rutgers. More details here.
Ruth Chang was interviewed by 3:AM Magazine. For other faculty interviews in this series see here, here, here, here, and here.
We are sad to report that our colleague Brian Loar passed away on March 31 after a long illness. Brian taught at the University of Michigan and USC before coming to Rutgers in 1994. He retired in 2009. Brian was a subtle and elegant philosophical thinker who influenced generations of students and colleagues and a great friend to many in the profession. He made major contributions to the philosophy of mind and metaphysics and is especially known for developing a novel account of phenomenal states and phenomenal concepts. There will be a memorial that will be announced in this space.
Elisabeth Camp was interviewed by 3:AM Magazine. For other faculty interviews in this series see here, here, here, and here.
Rutgers is co-sponsoring a Networking and Mentoring Workshop for graduate student women in philosophy, to be held at Princeton University in August 2014. Submissions are due March 1st. See here for details.
Jeffrey King published New Thinking About Structured Propositions, (co-authored with Scott Soames and Jeff Speaks), Oxford University Press, New York, 2013.
Jeff McMahan's op-ed piece, "Why Gun 'Control' is Not Enough," in the New York Times Opinionator blog was awarded an American Philosophical Association Committee on Public Philosophy Op-ed Essay Award.
Alec Walen received a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship at the Princeton University Center for Human Values in 2014-2015. He will work on his book Detention in a Liberal State.
Larry S. Temkin presented the distinguished Annual Lecture for the Society for Applied Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, in October, 2013.
Susanna Schellenberg was interviewed by 3:AM Magazine. For other faculty interviews in this series see here, here, and here.
Virtuous Thoughts: the Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, edited by John Turri, was published by Springer, with twelve chapters on respective topics in Sosa's philosophical output.
With sadness the department announces the death of our colleague Allan Gotthelf on August 30th, 2013. A tribute by Alan Code
here
.
The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce the founding of the Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion, and the appointment of Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams as Distinguished Research Professors. More information
here
.
Jeff McMahan has teamed up with Major Ian Fishback (West Point Military Academy) to teach a seminar on the ethics of war.
Ernie Lepore wrote a piece for The New York Times on the seminal Donald Davdison conference in 1984.
Holly Smith has won a fellowship at the National Humanities Center (NHC) for the 2013-2014 academic year, turning down fellowship offers from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Princeton University Center for Human Values. The NHC will award individual fellowship grants to enable scholars to take leave from their regular academic duties and pursue research at the center. The NHC receives grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other sources. Holly's plans are to complete a book for Oxford University Press in which she develops "a new approach to show how to configure moral theories so they serve both as standards to evaluate conduct and as decision-making guides when we wish to act as morality demands.”
Anthony Gillies has been named Associate Editor of Semantics & Pragmatics: A Journal of the Linguistic Society of America.
In November, 2012, Martha Bolton was an invited speaker at the international conference, 'Harmony and Reality in the Philosophy of the Late Leibniz', held at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Muenster, Germany.
Alvin Goldman delivered "Toward a More Fruitful Conception of Embodied Cognition" at the Institute for Cognitive Science, Lyon, France, at a symposium in honor of Marc Jeannerod, October 30, 2012.
Barry Loewer gave an invited talk "The Objective Probability Structure of the World," at a conference in Taiyuan, China on September 28, 2012 and another talk at Beijing University.
In August 2012 Jeff McMahan was one of two keynote speakers at a conference on “Mortality, Death, and Dying” at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.
Jonathan Schaffer presented "Monistic Structural Realism" at The Metaphysics of Relations, Oxford on 10/1/12.
At the final conference of Phenomenal Qualities Project, University of Hertfordshire in March 2012, Susanna Schellenberg presented “Phenomenal Qualities and Perceptual Content.”
In October of 2012 Ernest Sosa presented "Epistemic Agency" at the University of Leipzig and at the University of Barcelona, and "Descartes and Virtue Epistemology" at the University of Barcelona.
Larry S. Temkin presented "Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning," as the Fifth Annual Law, Ethics, and Philosophy (LEAP) Lecture at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona in October 2012. This year's LEAP Lecture was the keynote address of a special conference on Temkin's recent book Rethinking the Good. The same lecture was also delivered as part of the Legatum Book Forum Series at the Legatum Institute, London, October, 2012.
The summer 2012 issue of Utilitas, a journal of moral philosophy, contained a symposium on Professor Jeff McMahan’s 2009 book, Killing in War.
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