Charles Dacre Parsons (born April 13, 1933) is an American philosopher best known for his work in the

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in peopl ...

and the study of the philosophy of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...

. He is professor emeritus at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Life and career

Parsons is a son of the famous Harvard sociologist

Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in socio ...

. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at

in 1961, under the direction of

Burton Dreben Burton Spencer Dreben (September 27, 1927 – July 11, 1999) was an American philosopher specializing in mathematical logic. A Harvard graduate who taught at his alma mater for most of his career (where he retired as Edgar Pierce Professor of ...

and

Willard Van Orman Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century ...

.Charles D. Parsons, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus

Department of Philosophy. He taught for many years at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

before moving to Harvard University in 1989. He retired in 2005 as the

Edgar Pierce Edgar is a commonly used English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Eadgar'' (composed of '' ead'' "rich, prosperous" and ''gar'' "spear"). Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the later medieval period; it was, however, rev ...

professor of philosophy, a position formerly held by Quine. He is an elected Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

and the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

. Among his former doctoral students are Michael Levin,

James Higginbotham James Higginbotham FBA (17 August 1941 – 25 April 2014) was a distinguished professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He taught previously at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia Un ...

, Peter Ludlow,

Gila Sher Gila Sher is an American logician and professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. She has worked extensively in the theory of truth and philosophy of logic. Sher is a leading advocate of foundational holism, a holistic t ...

Øystein Linnebo Øystein Linnebo (born 1971) is a Norwegian philosopher. As of 2020 he is currently employed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, having earlier held a position as Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of ...

, Richard Tieszen, and Mark van Atten. In 2017, Parsons held the

Gödel Lecture The Gödel Lecture is an honor in mathematical logic given by the Association for Symbolic Logic, associated with an annual lecture at the association's general meeting. The award is named after Kurt Gödel and has been given annually since 1990. ...

titled ''Gödel and the universe of sets.''

Philosophical work

In addition to his work in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, Parsons was an editor, with

Solomon Feferman Solomon Feferman (December 13, 1928 – July 26, 2016) was an American philosopher and mathematician who worked in mathematical logic. Life Solomon Feferman was born in The Bronx in New York City to working-class parents who had immigrated to t ...

and others, of the posthumous works of

Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel ( , ; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an imm ...

. He has also written on historical figures, especially

Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...

, and

."Quine and Gödel on analyticity", Parsons 014a Essay 6; also Essays 8 and 9, and 983 Essay 7.

Works

Books

* 1983. ''Mathematics in Philosophy: Selected Essays''. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. * 2008. ''Mathematical Thought and its Objects''. Cambridge Univ. Press. * 2012. ''From Kant to Husserl: Selected Essays''. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press. * 2014a. ''Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century: Selected Essays''. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.

Selected articles

* 1987. "Developing Arithmetic in Set Theory without infinity: Some Historical Remarks". ''History and Philosophy of Logic'', vol. 8, pp. 201–213. * 1990a. "The Uniqueness of the Natural Numbers". ''

Iyyun ''Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly'' ("Iyyun" literally means "inquiry" or "study") is published by the S. H. Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was established in 1945 as a Hebrew philos ...

'', vol. 39, pp. 13–44. ISSN 0021-3306. * 1990b. "The Structuralist View of Mathematical Objects". ''

Synthese ''Synthese'' () is a scholarly periodical specializing in papers in epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of science, and related issues. Its subject area is divided into four specialties, with a focus on the first three: (1) "epistemology, m ...

'', vol. 84 (3), pp. 303–346. * 2014b. "Analyticity for Realists". In ''Interpreting Gödel: Critical Essays,'' ed. J. Kennedy. Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–150.

References

1933 births American logicians Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Columbia University faculty Harvard University faculty Living people Mathematical logicians Philosophers of mathematics Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Gödel Lecturers {{US-mathematician-stub