Hartry H. Field (born November 30, 1946) is an American philosopher. He is Silver Professor of Philosophy at
New York University; he is a notable contributor to
philosophy of science,
philosophy of mathematics,
epistemology, and
philosophy of mind.
Field is also Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy,
University of Birmingham, UK.
Education and career
Field earned a B.A. in mathematics from the
University of Wisconsin in 1967 and an M.A. in philosophy from
Harvard University in 1968. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1972 under the direction of
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
. He taught first at
Princeton University, and then at the
University of Southern California and
City University of New York Graduate Center
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the Ci ...
before joining the NYU faculty.
Field was elected Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and is also a past winner of the
Lakatos Prize
The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previo ...
in 1986.
Philosophical work
Field's first work was a commentary on
Alfred Tarski's theory of
truth, which he has worked on since 1972. His current view on this matter is in favor of a
deflationary theory of truth
In philosophy and logic, a deflationary theory of truth (also semantic deflationism or simply deflationism) is one of a family of theories that all have in common the claim that assertions of predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a prop ...
. His most influential work produced in this period is probably "Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference" (''
Journal of Philosophy
''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, e ...
'', 70(14): 462–481), in which he introduced the concept of partial
denotation
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For inst ...
.
In the 1980s, Field started a project in the
philosophy of mathematics discussing
mathematical fictionalism
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 ...
, the doctrine that all mathematical statements are merely useful fictions, and should not be taken to be literally true. More precisely, Field holds that the existence of
sets may be denied, in opposition to the
Quine–Putnam indispensability argument
The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the phil ...
.
Much of his current work is in semantic
paradoxes. In 2008, he gave the
John Locke Lectures, entitled "Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability."
John Locke Lectures
- Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford
Books
*''Science Without Numbers'', Blackwell, 1980
*''Realism, Mathematics and Modality'', Blackwell, 1989
*''Truth and the Absence of Fact'', Oxford University Press 2001
*''Saving Truth from Paradox'', Oxford University Press, 2008
See also
*American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevert ...
* List of American philosophers
* New York University Department of Philosophy
References
External links
Field, Hartry
– New York University
1946 births
Living people
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
21st-century American philosophers
Philosophers of mathematics
New York University faculty
Analytic philosophers
Philosophers of language
Philosophers of mind
Lakatos Award winners
{{US-philosopher-stub