Delia Ruby Graff Fara (April 28, 1969 – July 18, 2017) was an American philosopher who was professor of philosophy at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. She specialized in

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

, and philosophical logic.

Early life

Fara's mother was African-American and her father was of Irish and Jewish ancestry. She was raised by her mother as a single parent in New York after her father died when she was a child.

Education and career

A 1991 graduate of

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 ...

, Graff Fara earned her PhD at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1997 under the supervision of

George Boolos George Stephen Boolos (; 4 September 1940 – 27 May 1996) was an American philosopher and a mathematical logician who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Life Boolos is of Greek-Jewish descent. He graduated with an A.B. i ...

and

Robert Stalnaker Robert Culp Stalnaker (born 1940) is an American philosopher who is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Correspo ...

. She joined the Princeton faculty the same year as an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree A docto ...

, moving to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 2001 and then returning to Princeton as a tenured associate professor in 2005. She died in July 2017.

Philosophical work

Graff Fara is best known for her work on the problem of

vagueness In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word "prime" is ...

, where she defends an interest-relative theory of "contextualism". In her most influential article, "Shifting Sands: An Interest-Relative Theory of Vagueness", she argues that the meanings of vague expressions render the truth conditions of utterances of sentences containing them sensitive to our interests. In her view, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on "vagueness" explains, "interest relativity extends to all vague words. For instance, 'child' means a degree of immaturity that is significant to the speaker. Since the interests of the speaker shift, there is an opportunity for a shift in the extension of 'child'."

Selected publications

* "Shifting Sands: An Interest-Relative Theory of Vagueness." ''Philosophical Topics'' 28 (2000): 45–81. * "Descriptions As Predicates." ''Philosophical Studies'' 102 (2001): 1-42. * "Phenomenal Continua and the Sorites." ''Mind'' 110 (2001): 905-935. * ''The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language'' (co-edited with Gillian Russell). Routledge, 2011. * "Specifying desires." ''Nous'' 47 (2013): 252-272. * "Names Are Predicates." ''Philosophical Review'' 124 (2015): 59-117.

References

External links

Fara's Princeton University homepage

In Memory of Delia Graff Fara (1969 - 2017)

Princeton University Obituary Professor Delia Graff Fara

Linguistic Society of America - In Memoriam: Delia Graff Fara

{{DEFAULTSORT:Graff Fara, Deli Analytic philosophers Harvard University alumni Philosophers of language Metaphysicians Princeton University faculty African-American philosophers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Place of birth missing 1969 births 2017 deaths 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people