Richard Ladd Kirkham (born June 18, 1955) is an American

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. Among his published works are ''Theories of Truth'' (his most-cited work, published by

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

in 1992), "Does the Gettier Problem Rest on a Mistake?" ''

Mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...

'' (1984. Vol. 93, No. 372), and "On Paradoxes and a Surprise Exam" ''Philosophia'' (1991). Kirkham graduated from

Cornell College Cornell College is a private college in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Originally the Iowa Conference Seminary, the school was founded in 1853 by George Bryant Bowman. Four years later, in 1857, the name was changed to Cornell College, in honor of iron tyc ...

in 1977 and received his Ph.D. from 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 c ...

in 1983.

Philosophical work

Kirkham is probably best known for his work on analytic theories of truth. His 1992 book, ''Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction'', was received positively upon release.For examples, see Carlin Romano, ''If there are philosopher-kings, why not philosopher-journalists?'' Boston Sunday Globe, 12/5/1993, p. B21 (Boston, MA): "excellent new book" and Frederick F Schmidt, ''Truth: A Primer'', Westview Press: 1995. In the book, Kirkham proposes that the various theories of truth proposed through the centuries are really not all in competition with one another after all, because they are often intended to answer distinct questions about truth. For example, some have been intended only to provide the extensional necessary and sufficient conditions for truth, while others have been intended to provide a definition of truth, and still others are intended only to explain the linguistic and non-linguistic purposes of statements that predicate truth or falsity. According to MIT Press, this book is their all-time best-selling work in

analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...

and nearly half of all English-reading professional philosophers in the world own a personal copy of the book. It has been used as a text in graduate seminars on every inhabited continent and translated into Portuguese and Russian. He is also the author of four articles in the ''

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' is an encyclopedia of philosophy edited by Edward Craig that was first published by Routledge in 1998 (). Originally published in both 10 volumes of print and as a CD-ROM, in 2002 it was made availabl ...

'' (Routledge, 1998).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirkham, Richard 1955 births Living people American philosophers University of Notre Dame alumni

Philosophical work

See also

References