Neven Sesardić (born 30 July 1949) is a Croatian philosopher known for his writings on

heritability Heritability is a statistic used in the fields of breeding and genetics that estimates the degree of ''variation'' in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. The concept of h ...

and

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

who worked most of his career as a professor at

Lingnan University Lingnan University (LN/LU), formerly called Lingnan College, is a public liberal arts university in Hong Kong. It aims to provide students with an education in the liberal arts tradition and has joined the Global Liberal Arts Alliance since ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Life and career

He grew up in

communist Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yugo ...

. From 1977 to 1983 he worked as a lecturer at the

University of Zagreb The University of Zagreb ( hr, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, ; la, Universitas Studiorum Zagrabiensis) is the largest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of ...

, and, from then, until 1989 he was assistant professor at the same university. In the 1980s he was listed as an "internal enemy" of the Yugoslav regime. From 1989 to 1991 he was fellow of the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Resear ...

at the

University of Giessen University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (german: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von L ...

. From 1991 to 1992 he worked as a Fellow of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University (german: Universität Bielefeld) is a university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization a ...

. The following two years (1992–94) he spent as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Zagreb. The following academic year, 1994–1995, he worked as a visiting professor at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

, while the following year (1995–96) he became an

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...

Research Fellow at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. Following that, in 1996 he became professor of philosophy at the

Miyazaki International College is a private university in Kiyotake, Miyazaki, Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, ...

, Japan, where he worked until 1999 when he was appointed research fellow at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

. From 2000 until 2006, he worked as an associate professor of philosophy at the

, Hong Kong. From 2006 to 2015, he worked as a professor of philosophy at the Lingnan University. In 2015, he retired from Lingnan University. He is a member of the

American Philosophical Association The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly ...

(APA), the Croatian Philosophical Association, and the

Philosophy of Science Association The Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) is an international academic organization founded in 1933 that promotes research, teaching, and free discussion of issues in the philosophy of science from diverse standpoints. The PSA engages in activit ...

Publishing under a pseudonym

In 2008, Sesardić published a paper "Guilt by Statistical Association: Revisiting the Prosecutor's Fallacy and the Interrogator's Fallacy" in ''

The 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, es ...

'' under the pseudonym "Carmen de Macedo". He revealed his authorship in 2011, writing that he submitted the article under a pseudonym because the journal did not have a practice of

double-blind peer review Scholarly peer review or academic peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of having a draft version of a researcher's methods and findings reviewed (usually anonymously) by experts (or "peers") in the same field. Peer review is w ...

. The journal had changed its policy in 2010. After philosopher M. V. Dougherty wrote to the ''Journal'', they published a

corrigendum An erratum or corrigendum (plurals: errata, corrigenda) (comes from la, wikt:errata corrige, errata corrige) is a correction of a published text. As a general rule, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced duri ...

in 2017 acknowledging that de Macedo's name was a pseudonym, and that Sesardić was the actual author.

Books

* Fizikalizam ("Physicalism"), Belgrade: IIC (Istraživačko-izdavački centar SSO Srbije), 1984 * Marxian Utopia? (with Domenico Settembrini), London: CRCE, 1985. * Iz analitičke perspektive ("From an analytical perspective"), Zagreb: Sociološko društvo Hrvatske, 1991. * Making Sense of Heritability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. * Iz desne perspektive ("From the right perspective"), Zagreb: Večernji list, 2012. * When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics, New York: Encounter Books, 2016.

References

External links

Lingnan University website

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sesardic, Neven 1949 births Living people Analytic philosophers Philosophers of science Race and intelligence controversy 20th-century Croatian philosophers 21st-century Croatian philosophers Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb alumni