Elisabeth Camp is a professor of philosophy at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

. Camp's work has focused on forms of thought and speech that do not fit standard propositional models. She has written extensively about figurative speech such as sarcasm and metaphor, arguing that these forms of speech force listeners to reconsider their standard methods of delineating the difference between what is meant and what is said.

Education and career

As an undergraduate, Camp attended the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, graduating in 1993 and double-majoring in philosophy and English. After graduating, Camp worked as an educational organizer in Chicago, creating and putting into practice programs designed to help residents of public housing study for their

GED The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...

's and programs to provide instruction in

English as a second language English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EF ...

to members of Chicago's Latino community. Camp eventually decided to return to school, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 2003. As a graduate student, her advisors were

John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...

Richard Wollheim Richard Arthur Wollheim (5 May 1923 − 4 November 2003) was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the British So ...

, and John MacFarlane. After receiving her doctorate, Camp spent several years 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 higher le ...

as part of the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

, before moving to the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 2006 where she served as an Associate Professor of Philosophy until 2013. In 2013, Camp accepted a tenured offer from

where she is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy (and where she is additionally affiliated with the Center for Cognitive Science.)

Brian Leiter Brian Leiter (; born 1963) is an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and founder and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. ...

viewed Camp's move to Rutgers as cementing the reputation of Rutgers' philosophy department as a leader in the fields of

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...

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, ...

, and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...

. Besides her academic appointments, Camp is also active in efforts to encourage the participation of women in academic philosophy. Along with Elizabeth Harman and Jill North, Camp is one of the organizers behind a series of workshops aimed at providing mentorship to women in graduate philosophy programs; the first workshop is currently intended to be held at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in August 2014.

Research areas

Much of Camp's research has focused on forms of thought and speech that do not fit neatly in to standard propositional models. An especial focus of her research has been figurative speech such as sarcasm and metaphor, although she has also worked significantly in other areas, including the effects that loaded language (such as slurs) can have on conversational dynamics, and how conversations are affected when a speaker and a listener are uncertain about whether or not their interests agree. Camp has strongly defended the idea of the indispensability of metaphor. She has also written on philosophical issues involving concepts as well as on animal cognition. Camp has also made an effort to counter arguments used against the classical Gricean

implicature In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...

account of metaphor, making a number of arguments intended to show that

contextualist Contextualism, also known as epistemic contextualism, is a family of views in philosophy which emphasize the ''context'' in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs. Proponents of contextualism argue that, in some important respect, the a ...

approaches to metaphor are flawed and that it is in fact possible for what is meant by a speaker to differ from what is literally said by a speaker, even in situations where the speaker appears to be quite candid in their speech.

Publications

Camp has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in journals such as

Noûs ''Noûs'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy published by Wiley-Blackwell. It was established in 1967 by Hector-Neri Castañeda and is currently edited by Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University). The journal is accompanied by t ...

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research ''Philosophy and Phenomenological Research'' (''PPR'') is a bimonthly philosophy journal founded in 1940. Until 1980, it was edited by Marvin Farber, then by Roderick Chisholm and since 1986 by Ernest Sosa. It considers itself open to a variety ...

Philosophical Studies ''Philosophical Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition. The journal is devoted to the publication of papers in exclusively analytic philosophy and welcomes papers applying formal techniques to philo ...

and

Philosophical Quarterly ''The Philosophical Quarterly'' is a quarterly academic journal of philosophy established in 1950 and published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Club and the University of St Andrews. Since 2014 its publisher is Oxford Academ ...

. She has also contributed chapters to a number of books, including chapters in ''A Companion to Donald Davidson'' (part of the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series,) and the forthcoming ''Concepts: New Directions''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Camp, Elizabeth 21st-century American philosophers American women philosophers Living people Philosophers of art Philosophers of mind Philosophers of language Rutgers University faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni Harvard Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers