Proceedings And Addresses
January 2007 (Volume 80, Issue 3)
2007 Candidates for Office
Brief Biography of Vice Presidential Candidate Nancy Cartwright:
Nancy Cartwright is professor of philosophy at the University of
California San Diego and at the London School of Economics, where she
is chair for the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science.
She studied mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, graduating
summa in 1966. In 1971 she completed her Ph.D., “Philosophical
Analysis of the Concept of Mixture in Quantum Mechanics,” at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. Her major publications include Measuring
Causes: Invariance, Modularity and the Causal Markov Condition, The
Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science, Otto Neurath: Philosophy
between Science and Politics, Nature’s Capacities and their Measurement,
and How the Laws of Physics Lie. Cartwright has received the
MacArthur Fellowship and is a member of the British Academy.
Statement of Vice Presidential Candidate Nancy Cartwright: “I
spent the first half of my career at Stanford and now the second at
UCSD and LSE. When I moved from Stanford I shifted my focus from physics
to the social sciences, which I have always cared about but thought
would be far too hard to take on at the beginning of my career. I teach
a lot of philosophy of economics now and have done a great deal of research
on causation. Philosophically I think I am best described as a pluralist:
I don’t ever start out intending to take a pluralist stance on
a subject, but repeatedly once I start digging into the details—from
studies in physics to those in economics and from methodology to metaphysics—I
end up defending some kind of pluralist position. My central concern
right now is to encourage philosophers of science to devote more effort
to studying and fostering what Philip Kitcher calls ‘well-ordered
science’, science that better serves global human needs. My own
current project is on the concept and use of evidence for evidence-based
policy.”
Brief Biography of Executive Committee Member-at-Large Candidate
Stewart Cohen: Stewart Cohen is professor of philosophy at Arizona
State University. He received his B.A. from Wayne State University in
1974 and his Ph.D. from University of Arizona in 1983. He publishes
articles and book chapters in epistemology. He is editor-in-chief of
Philosophical Studies and co-editor of the Philosophical Studies
Book Series and the Ashgate Epistemology and Mind Series. He has served
on the program committee of the APA Pacific Division.
Statement of Executive Committee Member-at-Large Candidate Stewart
Cohen: “I have been interested in skeptical arguments and the
challenge they present to our ordinary claims to knowledge. In response
to some of these arguments, I have developed and defended a contextualist
theory of knowledge ascriptions. I have also worked more generally on
the nature of justification and how it must be structured in order to
yield knowledge.”