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Rutgers Philosophy Newsletter Spring 2009 Rutgers is once again ranked 2nd overall Philosophy Department in the US… Inside: Every two years, Blackwell Publishers releases its Philosophical The doctoral program Gourmet Report—a ranking of the fifty best Philosophy departments 4 continues to attract top in the English-speaking world, based on the reputation and graduate students. Meet the accomplishments of their faculty members. In the February 2009 current group and learn what edition, Rutgers was once again ranked 2nd overall in the United rd recent PhDs have done. States (after NYU) and 3 overall in the world (after NYU and Oxford). In the specialty rankings, Rutgers was voted the top department internationally for Philosophy of Language and The New York Times highlights Cognitive Science, and tied for #1 in Epistemology and Mind. 6 Rutgers’ undergraduate Rutgers was among the top four departments for Metaphysics. And Philosophy program. Rutgers was within the top ten for Philosophy of Science, Applied Ethics, Decision Theory and Early Modern Philosophy. The surveys reflect the outstanding strength our department has in core areas. A Letter from the Chair 8 See more of the rankings at www.philosophicalgourmet.com. Catching up with the Faculty: New Research by Rutgers Professors; Conferences, Talks and Upcoming Projects This past year has brought some selection. In April, Larry Temkin changes to the Rutgers faculty. hosted a two-day conference While Barry Loewer continued on human rights in honor of as Chair, Jeff King took over as James Griffin. On May 13th- Graduate Vice-Chair and 14thRutgers will be hosting its first Martin Lin as Undergraduate Foundations of Statistical Vice-Chair. Andy Egan and Mechanics Workshop. And this Thony Gillies (both formerly of coming summer, Rutgers is Michigan) were hired and will headed abroad. Jason Stanley join the Rutgers ranks this and Barry Loewer are hosting a coming fall. workshop at the Central European University in Hungary. 2008-2009 has been a busy year A Packed Calendar of Scholars and graduate students of conferences and workshops for Workshops and Conferences from Europe and the United the department. States will spend two weeks in (Above: Jeff King, Below: Ernie Sosa with 2008-2009 has also been a busy Budapest studying linguistic Nick Wolterstorff at the Knowledge, Faith and Disagreement conference) year of conferences and and metaphysical issues in workshops for the department. conditionals. Finally, this In April, Rutgers faculty joined coming summer will also forces with Princeton to host a feature the bi-annual Rutgers conference on disagreement Epistemology Conference, and religious epistemology. In hosted by Peter Klein. While July, metaphysicians from there, Rutgers alum Jonathan around the US and UK Weisberg will receive the 2009 gathered for Dean Young Epistemologist Prize for Zimmerman’s bi-annual his “Bootstrapping in General.” Metaphysical Mayhem conference on metaontology. Maudlin and McMahan Win In September, a similarly broad Guggenheim Fellowships audience came to New Brunswick for the Aristotle on In 2008, the Guggenheim Predication conference, hosted foundation awarded one of its by Alan Code. In January, the prestigious fellowships to Tim Center for Philosophy and the Maudlin for his project “New Sciences hosted a packed- Foundations for Physical auditorium for a debate Geometry.” Jeff McMahan between Jerry Fodor and Phillip Kitcher on Darwinian natural (Continued) 2 Rutgers Philosophy Newsletter: Spring 2009 Service to Rutgers, New Jersey followed up this year and was and the APA selected for a Guggenheim for his new book project, The Ethics Outside of their publishing and of Killing: Self Defense, War, and teaching, many faculty Punishment. Only 2-3 members also serve in various philosophers win this award service roles at the university. each year. Here is a rundown of recent activities: Temkin Lights Up the Australian Airwaves Ernie Lepore- State of NJ Board of Education. While visiting at the Australian Tackling Major Debates National University last spring, Ernie Sosa- President, VP, (Above: Larry Temkin visited ANU in the Larry Temkin gave two national and Past-President of the spring 2008. Below: Jerry Fodor discusses natural selection with Phillip Kitcher at a radio interviews: one on Eastern APA (2003-2006), Center for Philosophy of Science event) “Extending Human Lifespans” Chairman of the Board of and the other on the American Philosophical “Egalitarianism and Fairness”. Association (2005-2008), You can listen in at Chair of Committee to Elect www.publicethics radio.com New Members of American for the former and the Academy of Arts and Sciences Philosopher’s Zone for the latter. (Philosophy and Religious Studies). Rutgers Partners with Notre Dame in Philosophical Theology Peter Klein- Executive Vice Dean. This May, seven Rutgers graduate students will Howard McGary- SAS Dean accompany Dean Zimmerman Search Committee. to a three-day conference at Notre Dame University Frances Egan- SAS Curriculum inaugurating Logos: An Committee. Interdisciplinary Workshop in Philosophical Theology. Barry Loewer- University-wide Theologians and philosophers Promotion Review Committee. from around the world will Brian Weatherson- Humanities gather to discuss the doctrine A&P Committee. of the Trinity. Zimmerman is partnering Notre Dame’s Larry Temkin- Committee on Michael Rea to hold annual Academic Planning and workshops, alternating years Review, Graduation Marshal between New Brunswick and Committee. South Bend. Doug Husak- SAS Promotion Philosophy Plans Events for First Review Committee, Co-director Annual Rutgers Day of the Law and Philosophy Institute (Camden). On April 25th, the department will participate in the first ever (Continued on page 7) Rutgers Day celebration on the College Avenue campus. The Philosophy Café will be open for coffee and conversation. Undergraduate majors have built a brain-in-a-vat for visitors to explore. And Minerva the owl will be on hand to dispense 3 Rutgers Philosophy Newsletter: Spring 2009 Training New Philosophers: What are the graduate students working on? Preston Greene explains Newcomb’s puzzle at a graduate retreat. In the fall of 2008, eight new PhD students joined the forty-six There are fifty-four upper-level graduate students in the department. Graduate students in the department now represent five continents. The graduate students at PhD students in our department have diverse interests and work on topics ranging from the structure of time, to the best present, representing interpretation of quantum mechanics, to strategies for coping with moral uncertainty, to the meaning of pronouns. Seminars are five continents and supplemented with less formal reading groups for students working on moral philosophy, religion & metaphysics, working on a wide epistemology, and philosophy of language. A large number of range of dissertation students also participate in the Cognitive Science Certificate program, working closely with RuCCs. This year, seven graduate projects. students were awarded Mellon summer funding for their research. Here are just a few PhD projects in the works: The Science Behind the Unconscious Mind… Karen Shanton is studying the philosophical implications of empirical findings about the cognitive unconscious. Recent work in psychology and neuroscience suggests that the unconscious mind is (1) more complex than we tend to think and (2) often in conflict with the conscious mind. Shanton is identifying the implications of this work for a range of traditional philosophical issues, from consciousness to personal identity to rationality. Matt Benton Investigates How We Speak and Reason About the Future… Some prominent epistemologists have recently argued that the primary norm governing assertion is tightly connected to knowledge: roughly, one properly asserts that p only if one knows that p. The arguments for this view are fairly compelling, but the norm doesn’t seem right for future-tensed utterances: we (properly) make future-tensed assertions all the time, but (Continued) 4 Rutgers Philosophy Newsletter: Spring 2009 intuitively, we typically don’t dependence, thinking about know such future-directed the status of indices in propositions. Matt Benton’s semantics, and planning to dissertation aims to explain why return to the mall to conduct we fail to know much about more surveys about the role of the future, to discern what contrasts in knowledge.” alternative norm(s) might (Jonathan neglects to mentions plausibly govern future-tensed that in 2008 he won the APA assertion, and to hypothesize Best Article Prize for “Knowing why the knowledge-norm and the Answer.”) the future-directed norm have hitherto been conflated. Jill North (2005) spent two years at NYU as a Bersoff Fellow after Will Starr On Truth Conditions finishing at Rutgers and is now The grad student motto is “Argue an assistant professor at Yale. Hard. Play Hard.” (Above: The According to truth-conditional She writes, “I have recently Phenomenal Zombies- Our semantics, knowing the been thinking about "structure" departmental soccer team. meaning of a sentence in physics; things like: What do Below: Matt Benton makes a point amounts to knowing the we mean by the structure to Louise Antony.) conditions under which that (spacetime or other structure) sentence is true. Despite its of a given physical theory? successes, this proposal faces What does a theory's some challenges. For example, mathematical structure tell us it does not naturally