Sharon Street (born 1973) is a professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

. She specializes in

metaethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought ...

, focusing in particular on how to reconcile our understanding of

norm Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envir ...

ativity with a scientific conception of the world.

Education and career

Street received her B.A. from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

in 1995 and her 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 higher le ...

in 2003 under the supervision of

Christine Korsgaard Christine Marion Korsgaard, (; born April 9, 1952) is an American philosopher who is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Harvard University. Her main scholarly interests are in moral philosophy and its history; the relat ...

. Street's doctoral dissertation examined the metaethical implications of

evolutionary Evolution is change in the heredity, heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the Gene expression, expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to ...

biological explanations of our normative capacities, and whether such explanations might have an undermining effect on our moral and other normative commitments. Street is currently Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She joined the NYU Philosophy Department in 2002.

Philosophical work

Street's work has been particularly influential in the fields of

, where she defends a doctrine she calls "Humean Constructivism", a term she uses to differentiate her work from the "Kantian Constructivism" of her mentor,

. In addition to the development of Humean Constructivism, Street has also been an influential critic of naturalist and non-naturalist accounts of

moral realism Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion), some of which may be true to the extent that they ...

, as well as quasi-realist and

theist Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to ...

metaethical positions.

Bibliography (selected)

* * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Street, Sharon 1973 births Living people American philosophers American women philosophers New York University faculty Harvard University alumni Amherst College alumni 21st-century American women