Faculty News

Ned Hall Talks Possible Worlds in Mindscape Podcast

January 10, 2020

In the December 9th installment of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast, Ned Hall and Sean Carroll engage in a conversation about causation that explores definitions of reality.

An excerpt from the post:

“It’s too easy to take laws of nature for granted. Sure, gravity is pulling us toward Earth today; but how do we know it won’t be pushing us away tomorrow? We extrapolate from past experience to future expectation, but what allows us to do that?”

You can read more and listen to the full podcast...

Selim Berker's "Unity of Grounding" Named One of Ten Best Articles from 2018 by Philospher's Annual

October 7, 2019

The Department of Philosophy congratulates Professor Selim Berker on his article “The Unity of Grounding” being chosen as one of the ten best philosophy articles of the year by The Philosopher’s Annual. Originally published in ...

Susanna Rinard appointed John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities

September 27, 2019

Professor Susanna Rinard has been appointed the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities as of July 1st, 2019. The Loeb chair is one of a small number of endowed positions for Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science’s most distinguished tenure-track faculty, recognizing achievement in teaching, research, and departmental citizenship.

Previously, Rinard was an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy. Her research...

Doyle publishes "No Morality, No Self"

March 30, 2018

James Doyle, Lecturer in Philosophy at Harvard, has recently published No Morality, No Self: Anscombe's Radical Skepticism, which will be released in April through Harvard University Press.

Frequently cited and just as often disputed, Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) and “The First Person” (1975) are touchstones of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Though the arguments Anscombe advances in these papers are familiar to philosophers, their significance remains widely misunderstood, says ...

Susanna Siegel speaks on The Rationality of Perception at Brooklyn Public Library

December 14, 2017

On Wednesday, December 13th, Professor Susanna Siegel--Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy at Harvard-- joined BPL Presents and Brooklyn Public Philosophers to share work from her recent book The Rationality of Perception. Siegel's book takes as its point of departure the truism that different people see the world differently and investigates whether, given this truth, perception itself be rational or irrational and, if so, how we can tell. As the...

Sen receives Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science

May 9, 2017

Thomas W Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen has been awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. Sen was awarded the prize for a body of scholarship that "combines insights into human vulnerability with knowledge about the potential of democratic political power to redress and relieve this deprivation." The award ceremony will take place on September 30, 2017 in Uppsala, Sweden and will be accompanied by a public lecture.

The Department of Philosophy congratulates Professor Sen on receiving this well-deserved award.

Moran publishes The Philosophical Imagination

May 9, 2017

Brian D Young Professor of Philosophy Richard Moran has published a collection of essays entitled The Philosophical Imagination (Oxford UP, 2017).

The essays in the collection explore a range of philosophical topics—aesthetics, philosophy of mind and action, and moral psychology—drawing together topics that are often treated in...

Shelby receives Andrew Carnegie fellowship

April 28, 2017

Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy Tommie Shelby has been named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for 2017. As noted by the philosophy blog Daily Nous, Shelby is one of two philosophers to receive the award this year. According to its website, the...

Sean Kelly and Cheryl Chen named faculty deans of Dunster House

April 25, 2017

Philosophy department faculty members Sean Kelly and Cheryl Chen have been named the new faculty deans of Dunster House, one of the twelve undergraduate residence houses at Harvard and "one of the first two dormitories constructed under President Lowell's House Plan." First opened in 1930, Dunster House recently underwent a...

Siegel publishes The Rationality of Perception

January 18, 2017

Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy Susanna Siegel has published a new book, The Rationality of Perception, with Oxford University Press. The Rationality of Perception makes an important contribution to our understanding of the human mind and, specifically, to how we think of perception. According to a traditional conception of the human mind, reasoning can be rational or irrational, but perception cannot. Perception is simply a source of new information, and cannot be assessed for rationality. Susanna Siegel argues that this conception is wrong. Drawing on examples...