Panayot Butchvarov (
Bulgarian
Bulgarian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria
* Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group
* Bulgarian language, a Slavic language
* Bulgarian alphabet
* A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria
* Bul ...
: Панайот Бъчваров; born April 2, 1933, in
Sofia
Sofia ( ; bg, София, Sofiya, ) is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and ha ...
,
Bulgaria
Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...
) is a Bulgarian-born American philosopher who is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
.
Career
Butchvarov left Syracuse University in 1968 as a full professor to move to the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
, where he was at the time of his retirement in 2005 the University of Iowa Foundation
Distinguished Professor
Distinguished Professor is an academic title given to some top tenured professors in a university, school, or department. Some distinguished professors may have endowed chairs.
In the United States
Often specific to one institution, titles such ...
of Philosophy. He was President of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) in 1992–93, and has served as editor of the ''Journal of Philosophical Research.''
Butchvarov has made major, systematic contributions to contemporary
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 ...
,
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.
Episte ...
, and
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
. His books include ''Resemblance and Identity: An Examination of the Problem of Universals'' (Indiana University Press, 1966), ''The Concept of Knowledge'' (Northwestern University Press, 1970), ''Being Qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence and Predication'' (Indiana University Press, 1979), ''Skepticism in Ethics'' (Indiana University Press, 1989), ''Skepticism about the External World'' (Oxford University Press, 1998), and ''Anthropocentrism in Philosophy'' (de Gruyter, 2015). Some of his writings can be found on http://myweb.uiowa.edu/butchvar/ and, more reliably, http://butchvarov.yolasite.com/.
In metaphysics, Butchvarov is perhaps best known for his work on the identity theory of universals and on the nature of informative identity statements (that is, statements of the form ''a=b''—as opposed to instances of the law of identity, that is, statements of the form ''a=a''). In epistemology, he argues for the view that knowledge is the absolute impossibility of mistake. In ethics, his central
metaethical thesis is that a realist account of
goodness is defensible if goodness is seen as a generic property.
Butchvarov may be said to have been influenced by philosophers as varied as
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
,
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
, and
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
. The latter's influence can perhaps best be seen in Butchvarov's metaphilosophical Method of Analogy for which he argued in "The Limits of Ontological Analysis" (in M. S. Gram and E. D. Klemke (eds.), ''The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann'' (University of Iowa Press, 1974)). He claims that understanding is most often a matter of coming to see what something is ''like'', seeing what it literally ''is'' being a limiting case, and that it is the noticing, discovery, and grasping of similarities and differences that is the core intellectual achievement in our understanding of the world.
In his most recent work, Butchvarov argues that anthropocentrism in philosophy, though common, is deeply paradoxical. Ethics investigates the human good (including happiness and pleasure), epistemology investigates human knowledge (including perception and conceptualization), and antirealist metaphysics holds that the world depends on our cognitive capacities. But humans' good and knowledge, including their language and concepts, are empirical matters, properly investigated by empirical sciences, not armchair philosophy. And humans are inhabitants, not "makers," of the world. Nevertheless, all three – ethics, epistemology, and antirealist metaphysics – can be reinterpreted as making no reference to humans. Ethics would be confined to the metaphysics of the generic property goodness, epistemology to the appraisal of basic nonformal inferences, and antirealism to the logical structure of the world.
Butchvarov's latest papers are "Commonsense Political Philosophy," "Counterfactuals and Antirealism," "Afterlife," and "Faith Without Theology," all available at http://butchvarov.yolasite.com.
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
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.
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References
*Larry Lee Blackman (ed.), ''The Philosophy of Panayot Butchvarov: A Collegial Evaluation'' (Edwin Mellon Press, 2005).
External links
Butchvarov papersButchvarov materialsPersonal page at University of Iowa- Annotated bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Butchvarov, Panayot
American philosophers
Living people
1933 births
Bulgarian emigrants to the United States
Syracuse University faculty
University of Iowa faculty