Gilbert Harman
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Gilbert Harman (May 26, 1938 – November 13, 2021) was an American philosopher, who taught 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 ...
from 1963 until his retirement in 2017. He has published widely 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, ...
, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology,
epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epis ...
, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller co-directed the Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory. Harman has taught or co-taught courses in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics.


Education and career

Harman had a BA from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from
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 ...
, where he was supervised by
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" ...
. He taught at Princeton from 1963 until his retirement in 2017 as the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Philosophy. He has been named a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. He was also a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts & 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 ...
. He received the
Jean Nicod Prize The Jean Nicod Prize is awarded annually in Paris to a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as part of its effort to promote int ...
in Paris in 2005. In 2009 he received Princeton University's Behrman award for distinguished achievement in the humanities. His acceptance speech was titled "We need a linguistics department." Some of his well-known PhD students include
Graham Oppy Graham Robert Oppy (born 1960) is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as CE ...
,
Stephen Stich Stephen P. Stich (born May 9, 1943) is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, as well as an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Stich's main phi ...
, Joshua Greene,
Joshua Knobe Joshua Michael Knobe (born 1974) is an American experimental philosopher, whose work ranges across issues in philosophy of mind and action and ethics. He is Professor of Cognitive Science and Philosophy at Yale University. He is known for his w ...
, David Wong, Richard Joyce, R. Jay Wallace, James Dreier, and Nicholas Sturgeon.


Personal life

His daughter Elizabeth Harman is also a philosopher and a member of the philosophy department and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.


Epistemology

Harman's 1965 account of the role of "
inference to the best explanation Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,For example: abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th centur ...
"—inferring the existence of that which we need for the best explanation of observable phenomena—has been very influential. In later work, he argued that all inference or reasoning should be conceived as rational "change in view," balancing conservatism against coherence, where simplicity and explanatory considerations are relevant to positive coherence and where avoiding inconsistency is relevant to negative coherence. He has expressed doubts about appeals to a priori knowledge and has argued that logic and decision theory are theories of implication and consistency and should not be interpreted as theories that can be followed: they are not theories of inference or reasoning. In ''Thought'' and ''Change in View'' Harman argued that intuitions about knowledge are useful in thinking about inference. More recently, he and Brett Sherman have suggested that knowledge can rest on assumptions that are not themselves known. He and Sanjeev Kulkarni have suggested that elementary statistical learning theory offers a kind of response to the philosophical problem of induction.


Mind

Harman has also argued that perceptual experience has "
intentional Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...
content" and that it is important not to confuse qualities of the intentional object of experience with qualities of the experience. Perceivers are only aware of qualities that are presented to them in experience, as opposed to properties of experience that represent what we experience as a kind of mental paint. He has also proposed that perceptual and other psychological states are self-reflective so that the content of a perceptual experience might be: this very experience is the result of perceiving a tree with such and such features (except that the experience is not in language). The content of an intention might be: this very intention will lead me to go home by six o'clock.


Ethics

In ''The Nature of Morality'', Harman, relying on inference to the best explanation, argued that there are no objective moral facts because we do not need such facts to explain our moral judgments. He has argued that there is not a single true morality. In that respect, moral relativism is true. (This sort of moral relativism is not a theory about what ordinary people mean by their moral judgments.) Harman has rejected attempts to base moral theory on conceptions of human flourishing and character traits and has expressed skepticism about the need for a good person to be susceptible to moral guilt or shame.


Works

Monographs: * ''Thought'' (Princeton, 1973) * ''The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics'' (Oxford, 1977) * ''Change in View: Principles of Reasoning'' (MIT, 1986) * ''Scepticism and the Definition of Knowledge'' (Garland, 1990) his is Gilbert Harman's doctoral dissertation which was submitted to Harvard University in 1964* (with
Judith Jarvis Thomson Judith Jarvis Thomson (October 4, 1929November 20, 2020) was an American philosopher who studied and worked on ethics and metaphysics. Her work ranges across a variety of fields, but she is most known for her work regarding the thought experimen ...
), ''Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity'' (Blackwell, 1996) * ''Reasoning, Meaning and Mind'' (Clarendon, 1999) * ''Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy'' (Clarendon, 2000) * (with Sanjeev Kulkarni) ''Reliable Reasoning: Induction and Statistical Learning Theory'' (MIT Press, 2007) * (with Sanjeev Kulkarni) ''An Elementary Introduction to Statistical Learning Theory'' (Wiley, 2012). Edited: * (with Donald Davidson), ''Semantics of Natural Language'' (D. Reidel, 1972) * ''On
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
: Critical Essays'' (Anchor, 1974) * (with Donald Davidson), ''The Logic of Grammar'' (Dickenson, 1975) * ''Conceptions of the Human Mind: Essays in Honor of George A. Miller'' (Laurence Erlbaum, 1993) * (with Ernie Lepore), ''A Companion to W.V.O. Quine'' (Wiley, 2014)


See also

* American philosophy * List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates * Moral skepticism *
List of American philosophers This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States. {, border="0" style="margin:auto;" class="toccolours" , - ! {{MediaWiki:Toc , - , style="text-al ...


References


External links


Official page
Including online versions (drafts and preprints) of some of his more recent work.
Video Interview: Gilbert Harman on Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, and Ethics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harman, Gilbert 1938 births 2021 deaths 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Princeton University faculty Harvard University alumni Moral philosophers Philosophers of language Philosophers of mind Analytic philosophers Epistemologists Swarthmore College alumni Jean Nicod Prize laureates Place of birth missing Moral psychologists Writers from East Orange, New Jersey