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In June 2013 Jeff McMahan will give a series of five lectures as the Wittgenstein Lecturer at the University of Bayreuth.  Jeff has also been selected as the 2013 Astor Lecturer in the Humanities at Oxford, giving a public lecture and a variety of seminars, talks, and debates.

We are pleased to announce that Howard Robinson is an exchange visitor in the Department during the Fall 2012 semester. Past Provost and Academic Pro-Rector of Central European University, Prof. Robinson is Professor of Philosophy and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He mainly specializes in metaphysics, including the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of mind, and is also interested in the history of philosophy.

We are pleased to annouce that Allan Gotthelf joins the Department this year as the Anthem Foundation Distinguished Fellow.  His "Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology," published earlier this year in the United Kingdom by Oxford University Press in its distinguished Oxford Aristotle Studies series, has recently been released in North America.

The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a grant of $1,452,082 to the School of Arts and Sciences to support a multi-university project in philosophy of cosmology headed by Barry Loewer in collaboration with philosophers and physicists at Columbia, Yale, NYU and UCSC. The grant will fund three two year post-doctoral fellows at Rutgers University as well as a number of conferences, distinguished lectures and a summer institute in 2013. For more information, visit: 
http://philocosmology.rutgers.edu/.

Peter Kivy has published Sounding Off: Eleven Essays in the Philosophy of Music, with Oxford University Press (2012).  The book consists of eight new essays and responses to his critics, as well as reprintings of previously published work.

A study recently released by David M. Miller of Duke University shows, based on placements that have been reported to Leiter Reports, that the Philosophy Department at Rutgers has the strongest graduate placement record of any Anglo-American philosophy department for the years 2007-2012. Kudos to our graduates and to our placement director for much of this period, Jeff McMahan!  See the study.

Howard McGary gave the Aquinas Lecture entitled, "Post-Racial Ideal," at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, February 26, 2012. The lecture is published as the POST-RACIAL IDEAL (Aquinas Lecture), Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2012.

Stephen P. Stich, as co-editor with Eric Margolis and Richard Samuels, published The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Oxford University Press, 2011), which includes contributions by Frances Egan and Alvin Goldman.

Alvin Goldman delivered two invited lectures on social epistemology in March, 2012 at the College de France (in Paris), which is widely regarded as the most prestigious academic institution in France.

Jeff McMahan spent a week in January 2012 at the University of California at Santa Barbara as this year's Steven Humphrey Distinguished Visitor in the Department of Philosophy, as well as several days in February 2012 as the Selzer Visiting Philosopher at Beloit College.

Larry S. Temkin, who continues to serve on the Editorial Board of Utilitas, has been asked to serve on the Editorial Board for Law, Ethics, and Philosophy, a new journal in ethics, legal theory, moral and political philosophy, and related disciplines, to be based at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. In another vein, Larry planned and hosted Master Teachers in Action: A Symposium on the Art of Teaching Philosophy and Political Theory at Princeton University in February 2012.

Philosophy major Kevin Tobia has been awarded a Clarendon Fund Scholarship and an Ertegun Scholarship (both to Oxford) to continue his studies in philosophy in the Fall of 2012. The Ertegun Scholarship, which is modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship, is awarded to only 15 students internationally, and is a tremendous honor for Kevin, the Philosophy Department, and Rutgers University.  Read More.

The Philosophy Department regrets to announce that Professor Emeritus Fadlou Albert Shehadi, beloved scholar and teacher, died at his home on February 29, 2012. He was 86. Professor Shehadi joined our Philosophy Department in 1953 after receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He retired in 1994. He is best known, in philosophy, for his work in Islamic philosophy. A skilled and accomplished baritone, he brought intelligence, dignity and grace to our Department and Faculty. 


 

Barry Loewer will give the inaugural Ernst Mach Lecture at the first Ernst Mach Workshop in Prague on June 25-26, 2012, sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Republic Academy of Sciences.

Jason Stanley published Know How (Oxford University Press, 2011).  The American Philosophical Association has organized two “Author Meets Critics” sessions on the book, one at the 2011 Eastern Division meeting, and one at the 2012 Pacific Division meeting.  Northwestern University has also organized a March 2012 conference on Jason’s epistemological work.

Alvin Goldman published Reliabilism and Contemporary Episteomology: Essays. (Oxford University Press, 2012)

The 2-16-12 Star Ledger’s “Inside Jersey” has a special section on intellectual firepower in New Jersey in which the Rutgers Philosophy Department is featured three times.  Our quarters are described as “surely the smartest half-acre in the state…home to one of the world’s greatest collections of philosophers since, well, Plato's Academy," and Jerry Fodor is listed as “one of the 20 exceptional intellects who are changing the world” from the Garden State.  

Larry Temkin published Rethinking the Good:  Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning (Oxford University Press, 2012).  Larry is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University for 2011-2012.

Stephen P. Stich published Mind and Language:  Collected Papers, Vol. I (Oxford:  Oxford University Press:2011) and has forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, (New York: Oxford University Press: 2012), Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich, eds

Metaphysical Mayhem, a 5-day summer school for graduate students, will be May 14-18, 2012. John Hawthorne, Katherine Hawley,  Ted Sider, Jonathan Schaffer, and Dean Zimmerman will lead seminars on a variety of topics in metaphysics, including: natural properties, composition as identity, grounding, metaphysical explanation, and more. 

Douglas Husak's paper, co-authored with Craig Callender, “Wilful Ignorance and the Equal Culpability Thesis: A Study of the Significance of the Principle of Legality,” (Wisconsin Law Review) was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S.Ct. 2060 (2011).

Alvin Goldman continues to serve as editor of EPISTEME, A JOURNAL OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY. The journal will begin publication with Cambridge University Press in March 2012.

Peter Klein presented "Knowing oneself is not an Epistemic Privilege" as one of two plenary talks at the annual International Workshop on Mind/Knowledge at the University of Graz (Austria) on 12/8/2011.  

Peter Kivy's book The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius has been published in Spanish (Madrid: La Balsa de la Medusa, 2011).

Barry Loewer is a fellow at the Central European University Institute for Advanced Studies.

Rutgers Philosophy 30 Year Anniversary Party and Conference.  You are invited to a party on December 7 and 8, 2012 to celebrate the 3oth anniversary of the Rutgers Philosophy Department!  For more information, click here.

The October Issue of Ethics (Vol. 122, No. 1) consists of a symposium on Jeff McMahan’s influential book Killing in War (Oxford Clarendon Press, 2009).

Jacob Ross, Rutgers Philosophy graduate student, has had an article, “Sleeping Beauty, Countable Additivity, and Rational Dilemmas,” selected for Volume 30 of The Philosopher’s Annual (2010). The Annual publishes articles judged by the editors to be the year’s ten best philosophy articles.

Ross’s article follows hot on the heels of the selection for The Philosopher’s Annual Volume 29 of Jonathan Schaffer’s article “On What Grounds What?”

Rutgers Philosophy has received a $967,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation for the Philosophy of Cosmology project to investigate Big Questions in Philosophy of Cosmology.

Jeff King was promoted this year to Professor II, a Rutgers rank above Professor I reserved for faculty demonstrating outstanding achievement in their fields of inquiry. Congratulations to Jeff!

Larry Temkin was interviewed on Oregon Public Radio to launch a series on the subject of equality.  A recording can be found here.