Wallace I. Matson (1921-2012) was an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He is known for his works on the existence of God.

Biography

Matson was Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Berkeley (1955-1991) and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

1950–1955. Matson was an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. In 1978, he debated Thomas B. Warren on the existence of God.

Books

* ''The Existence of God'' (1965) * ''Sentience'' (1976) * ''A History of Philosophy'' (1968), revised and published in 2 volumes as ''A New History of Philosophy'' (1987), and revised again (2000) * ''The Warren-Matson Debate on the Existence of God'' (1978) * ''Uncorrected Papers'' (2006) * ''Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs: Science, Philosophy, and Their Histories'', Oxford University Press, 2011"Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs: Science, Philosophy, and Their Histories"
''Publishers Weekly''. Retrieved 10 February 2021.

References

1921 births 2012 deaths 20th-century American philosophers Atheist philosophers Philosophy academics University of California, Berkeley faculty Place of birth missing Place of death missing {{US-philosopher-stub