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UN IVERS I TY OF TORONTO DEPARTMENT OF PH I LOSOPHY
FA L L 2 0 0 8
“I’m an accidental philosopher,” proclaimsWayne Sumner with a wry smile when askedabout his beginnings.The renowned scholaris retiring, after a distinguished forty-twoyear career which produced four books, fouredited anthologies, and over 40 articles inrefereed journals.
He was Chair of the Department from 1988-94 and Acting Chair in 2002. In 1990, he waselected as a Fellow of the Royal Society ofCanada.And in 2002, he was named aUniversity Professor, the highest honour thatU ofT bestows upon its research faculty.
Yet it was an absurd turn of events thatproduced Sumner’s illustrious career inphilosophy. “I would have been a mediocreEnglish professor in some obscure universi-ty,” he continues with a chuckle, “as opposedto a ‘world famous philosopher’ at theUniversity ofToronto!” The young Sumnerwas determined to become a literatureprofessor but the high school he attendedneglected to inform him that grade thirteenLatin was a prerequisite. Sumner haddropped the subject after grade twelve.
Resolute in his goal, Sumner discovered abachelor’s program at U ofT that combinedPhilosophy and English. Forced to acceptsecond best proved fortuitous. “Each succes-sive year that I was in the program,” heexplains, “I discovered more vividly how badI was at the English Lit side but how good Iwas at the Philosophy. I focused on cognitivecontent. I looked for truths, arguments,reasoning, and of course that’s a disaster ifyou’re reading Paradise Lost or Shakespeare.But it’s a great way to read philosophical texts.”
Sumner graduated from the U ofT in 1962,and after having completed Princeton’sdoctoral program, he was hired by theUniversity ofToronto as a philosophyprofessor in 1965. He soon developed aninternational reputation for his unique capac-ity to combine philosophical investigations of
the foundations of morality with empiricallyinformed analyses of the most pressing issuesof the day, such as abortion, pornography, hatespeech, environmental protection, and euthanasia.
His Moral Foundation of Rights (1987) andWelfare, Happiness, and Ethics (1996) havemade him one of the leading proponents ofone of the two dominant ethical theories inphilosophy – the brand of consequentialismcalled utilitarianism. Consequentialism is theview that, when assessing the rightness of anaction or policy, what count ethically areultimately the consequences, not suchconsiderations as rights or autonomy.Utilitarianism specifies this view by holdingthat what is important about the conse-quences is their maximizing of utilityor welfare.
One standard objection to utilitarianism isthat it seems to suggest that it is legitimate toviolate someone’s rights whenever doing socreates the best overall welfare.Yet Sumneranswered this objection by arguing that,despite initial appearances, consequentialismis not only compatible with a commitment tomoral and legal rights but actually providestheir most secure framework.A commitment
We wish to thank the generous donors to the Department of Philosophy,without whom Philosophy News would not be possible.Please see the back page to see how you can support the Department in endeavours like this one.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORL.WAYNE SUMNER RETIRES
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Donald AinslieFrom the Chair
This past year I finished my first term as chair,and agreed to serve for a second term afterI finish a much-needed sabbatical. Looking backover the past five years, I seem to have beenmore than busy! But I think there are fiveaccomplishments that I ammost proud of.In alphabetical order, they are as follows.
Alumni Community: I have been very pleasedto meet so many of our alumni community inthe past five years. Students might leave theDepartment, but they continue to think likephilosophers wherever their endeavours takethem.They challenge their colleagues to exam-ine their assumptions, and when they return tovisit the Department they bring back their samecritical intelligence, as well as their experiencesafter they left U ofT, to help us improve. I’mespecially grateful to those who have been ableto give us their support, either for studentscholarships or by meeting and mentoring thecurrent generation of philosophy students.
Curriculum Reform: AsAssociate Chair andUndergraduate Coordinator, Joe Heath,explains elsewhere in the newsletter,we recent-ly introduced new and more structuredrequirements for our philosophy programs onthe St.George campus.This was the final stepin a process that I started in the first year of myterm,when we asked how to ensure that ourundergrads had the best experience in philoso-
...continued on Page 2...continued on Page 2
Donald during a6-day cycling tripfromToronto toMontreal in July2008 as part of afundraiser for theToronto People withAIDS Foundation.
2 Univers i ty of Toronto
to respecting rights turns out to yield thebest overall welfare. “Maybe on the theo-retical side, that’s the most significantcontribution I made.”
“Consequentialism and I were just a goodfit for one another,” Sumner recalls. “Itspragmatic nature fit my mindset. I alsowanted an ethical theory to make somepractical difference, to try to show what itcould do for important real-world issues.I always thought that ethics doesn’t realizeits full potential if it’s just dealing in veryabstract theories.”
The late 1960s provided a pivotal junc-ture for Sumner’s career.The ethics ofserious social and political issues werefinally being debated publicly. “The timesmattered,” Sumner acknowledges. “I wasvery lucky that it became respectable forphilosophers to start contributing to theseproblems.”Thus from the very start of hiscareer, Sumner has used his theoreticalarguments to tackle and often resolve dif-ficult moral and public policy questions.His aim was to create a body of work that“was always very honest.Yet it tried toaddress important issues not trivial ones,both important practical ones and theo-retical ones. It tried not to be shallow.”
His work has had influence well beyondthe walls of academia. Notably, his multi-faceted argument regarding abortionrights in Abortion and Moral Theory (1981)was adopted by the Canadian SupremeCourt in the landmark 1988 case, R. v.Morgentaler. InThe Hateful and the Obscene(2004), in addition to offering thedefinitive account of the right to freeexpression, he was the first to fullyformulate a philosophical justification forCanada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
He admits that he has “really valued” thepublic contributions he has made. “I thinkthat if my work hadn’t had that kind ofimpact, I would have regarded much of itas a waste of time.”True to form, his nextbook will examine the subject of euthanasia.
Sumner has been renowned not only as aresearcher, but also as a teacher. “I triedto take seriously the idea that the institu-tion officially values teaching and researchequally. So I tried to make a significantcontribution to both.” He recalls fondlywatching the progress of students as they
developed new philosophical skills andthen incorporated them into theirthinking and writing.
Through the years, he continued tochallenge himself as a teacher: “I thinkI’ve always been a good teacher and I’veaspired sometimes to be a very goodteacher. I don’t think I generally speakinglived up quite to my own aspirations.”Sumner is clearly his own worst critic.In 1997, his success in the classroom wasrewarded with the U ofT’s NorthropFrye Award for distinguishedachievements in integrating teachingand research.
Reflecting on his career, Sumner is ascareful with his words as he is in his
work. He naturally weighs both sides.While he does admit to a certain sense ofsatisfaction, acknowledging that “thingshave gone remarkably well,” Sumnerhesitates to take full credit, stating insteadthat he “was extremely lucky.” But then heshrugs, smiles elusively and decides that“it’s not a bad body of work.” Modestyeventually gives way to philosophical rea-soning: “It’s just self-knowledge. It’s whatSocrates said, ‘Know thyself,’ and thatmeans know thy accomplishments butknow thy limitations too. It’s just honestywith oneself.”
A conference will be held in Sumner’shonour in October of 2009.
Barbara Goslawski
phy that we could provide.We decided thattoo many of our classes did not allow studentsto have the Socratic experience of learningthrough philosophical dialogue. Since thattime,we have rectified the problem by mak-ing our upper-year classes relatively small,and by radically increasing the number oftutorials we offer as components of large lec-ture classes.We also received funding for theSocrates Projectwhich offered our best under-grads the opportunity to lead tutorialsthemselves and thus to learn philosophy byteaching philosophy.
Faculty Renewal:We have hired 15 philoso-phy professors at the three U ofT campusesduring my first term.A strong faculty is thesine qua non of a strong department, and is themost significant long-term investment wemake.Our new colleagues are very impres-sive indeed, and the Department continues toclimb in the international rankings.Moreoverthe level of energy and excitement in theDepartment is higher than it’s ever been,withmore conferences,working groups, researchworkshops, talks, and other co-curricularactivities taking place each year.
Graduate Student Engagement:Our grad-uate students have been crucial to all of ouractivities.They are key participants in ourresearch groups and, as teachers-in-training,essential to our new curriculum, especially astutorial leaders. In 2005,we introduced anew proseminar for first-year doctoral stu-dents and, in 2007, added special classes forthose in the master’s program.We have alsoinvested heavily in professional development,assisting students to go to conferences andpreparing them for academic careers.Ourrecent PhD graduates have gone on to jobs atOxford, Birkbeck College at the University of
London,University of California at SanDiego,Queen’s, and elsewhere.With therecent endowments our alumni have createdin support of graduate education,we are nowstarting to compete with the very best USprograms.
Policy and Structure:The radical changes wehave undergone in the past five years requiredus to adapt our policies accordingly.Mostnotably, the University ofToronto Mississauga(formerly Erindale College) and University ofToronto Scarborough (formerly ScarboroughCollege) have both more than doubled in size,with significant growth in philosophy particu-larly at UTM.AmyMullin has been theinaugural chair of the new Department ofPhilosophy at UTM and it has been a pleasureto work with her as we developed appropri-ate structures for the new tricampusframework.At the same time,most of thephilosophers on the St.George campus whohad been closely affiliated with our variouscolleges retired,meaning that we have a uni-fied St.George Philosophy Department forthe first time in our history.While I cannotsay that working through the requisite policychanges has been the most exciting part of myfirst term as chair, I believe that the structureswe have put in place will allow us to thrive inthe upcoming years.
During this year’s leave, I am a visitingresearcher at Stanford University,where I amworking on a book project on David Hume’sscepticism.AmyMullin isActing Chair of thetricampus Graduate Department ofPhilosophy,while Joe Boyle isActing Chair ofPhilosophy in the Faculty ofArts and Scienceon the St.George campus.
DonaldAinslieChair
From the Chair Continued
L.WAYNE SUMNER Continued
Editor: Anita Di GiacomoDesign: NewburyNg
www.newburyng.com
UNIVERSITY OFTORONTO - DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHYNEWS
Again this past year,some major changeswere made to theundergraduate programat St. George. For over20 years, theDepartment has had an“unstructured”program, so that our
specialists, majors and minors simply hadto take a certain number of philosophycourses, in order to receive their degrees,rather than take any particular set ofcourses.The primary reason for this wasthat members of the Department couldnot come to any sort of agreement aboutwhich courses were important and whichweren’t.As a result, it was left up to thestudents to choose.
Unfortunately, students did not alwayschoose wisely. (And why should they? Nothaving taken the courses yet, they werenot in the best position to judge their rel-ative significance.) For instance, theDepartment invests considerableresources mounting two full-year coursesat the second-year level: a year longcourse in ancient philosophy, and anotherin early modern.Yet we found that only aquarter of our graduating specialists hadtaken both of them.
Thus we put our heads together, andcame up with a list of courses that we feltwere the “core” of our undergraduate pro-gram, and made these mandatory.As aresult, our specialists are now requiredto take two of the three major “historyof philosophy” series that we offer(ancient/mediaeval/early modern), two
of three “problems” courses (contemporaryanalytic or continental), one “moral and polit-ical” course, and one course in logic.
The other major innovation in the under-graduate program involves a change in theway that our 4th-year individual studiescourses are organized. Students in thedepartment doing individual studies willcontinue to work one-on-one with a
faculty supervisor, but they will also meetas a group, in order to present their workto each other.This “research seminar” willbe under the supervision of our newly-hired 4th year research coordinator,Vida Panitch.
Joseph HeathSt. George Undergraduate Coordinator
Department of Ph i losophy News 3
Notes from the St.George Undergraduate Department
Heath
Last year was the first in many yearswhen we were not searching for newfaculty at UTM. (We will be busysearching again this year, and plan tohire two new philosophers – one work-ing on moral or political philosophy,and one in history of 19th or early 20th
century continental philosophy.)We focused our energy this past year onthe following changes in our undergrad-uate programs and activities.
We introduced a new course to allowour more senior students to work ontheir philosophy research skills, witha particular focus on presenting theirown original scholarship and critiquingand commenting on the work of otherstudents and philosophy faculty.
Thanks to the generosity of our facultythis year, we were able to present allour graduating majors and specialistswith philosophy books.
We very successfully experimented withusing UTM undergraduates as teachingassistants for our logic courses and willexpand this program in the comingyear.We have also introduced under-
graduate student-ledfacilitated studygroups to more ofour courses in 2008-9thanks to fundingfrom the StudentExperience Fund.
Our student-runPhilosophy Club held its firstPhilosophy Symposium in the springof 2008.Thanks are due in particularto graduating student Kelly Gloverand Professor JonathanWeisbergfor their organizational work. Prize-winning undergraduates (Rima Basu,John Hurst and PaulWlodarski)gave presentations and had their workdiscussed by fellow students.
Many thanks to our faculty and studentswho made last year such a success.We have received more updates on ouralumni (posted on our web page) andlook forward to hearing from moreof you in the near future.
Amy MullinChair, Department of PhilosophyUniversity ofToronto Mississauga
Mullin
UTM PHILOSOPHY NEWS
It is a challenging yearat UTSC in philosophy,with no less than 3.5faculty on leave, andone more on second-ment to the graduatedepartment.We expectplenty of new faces andnew philosophers toenliven our undergradu-
ate offerings in the coming year.Undoubtably, the highlight of philosophyat UTSC this past year was the firstannual undergraduate conference whichwas held all day on Saturday, March 15th.The conference was organized in aninteresting way. Papers were solicited
from undergrads (a multitude ofsubmissions from many provinces,states and even countries beyond NorthAmerica poured in), which were refereedby UTSC philosophy students. SelectedUTSC students then served ascommentators for the papers chosenfor presentation. In addition, ProfessorDiana Raffman trekked all the wayfrom UTM to give the keynote address.The conference was a great success andwe all look forward to its successors.Many thanks must go to all the studentsin the philosophy club who helpedorganize and run the conference.Special thanks to Professor NickTreanor, who served as faculty liaison
and put a tremendous effort into settingup the event.One last notable event:Mark Lee,a third year student at UTSC, wasaccepted at the rather exclusiveSummer Philosophy Seminar in Boulder,Colorado.Thanks to the help ofProfessors Phil Kremer and JessicaWilson, along with that of the chair ofHumanities, Professor Bill Bowen,UTSC managed to find a couple of thou-sand dollars to defray Mark’s expenses.Mark enjoyed the opportunity to discussphilosophy in the gorgeousRocky Mountains.
William SeagerPhilosophy Discipline RepresentativeUniversity ofToronto at Scarborough
Seager
UTSC PHILOSOPHY NEWS
4 Univers i ty of Toronto
PROMOTIONS &APPOINTMENTSGurpreet Rattan waspromoted to AssociateProfessor with tenure.His research interestsare philosophy oflanguage andphilosophy of mind.
Marleen Rozemondwas promotedto Full Professor.Her research interestsare early modernphilosophy andfeminist philosophy.
Gopal Sreenivasanwas promoted to FullProfessor. Gopal holdsthe Canada ResearchChair in Justice andHealth Care.Joseph Boyle has beenappointed Acting Chairof the St. GeorgePhilosophyDepartment for 2008-2009. His 11 yearsas Principal of St.Michael’s Collegeshould stand himin good stead.
Cheryl Misak wasappointed InterimVice President andProvost at theUniversity ofToronto.She will return to herpost as DeputyProvost once a newprovost has been installed in office.Amy Mullin has accepted anappointment as Acting GraduateChair of Philosophy at the UniversityofToronto for 2008-2009.She continues to serve as Chairof Philosophy at UTM.
Rattan
Rozemond
MisakSreenivasan
We have a largeand impressivenew group ofstudents admittedthis year: 16 PhDstudents and 10MA students.Among the PhDstudents, seven arecoming to us with
external funding from SSHRC (SocialSciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil) or OGS (Ontario GraduateScholarship program) and three haveinternal awards; among our MA stu-dents, two have won the impressiveCGSM (SSHRC’s Canada GraduateScholarship Masters) award.Especially notable is our large groupof six students coming into theCollaborative Program in Ancient andMedieval Philosophy.Across all years,we will have 11 students funded by
the OGS and 17 students fundedby SSHRC, among them 11 withSSHRC’s $35,000 Canadian GraduateScholarship, the so-called super-SSHRC.
We also had a large and impressivegroup of PhD students who graduatedor submitted theses in the 2007-2008academic year.Among these, mostsecured tenure-track jobs and othergood positions: Kirstin Borgersonat Dalhousie; Paul Miller at Queen’sLaw School; PatrickTurmel at Laval(Turmel holds the distinction of sub-mitting the Philosophy Department'sfirst dissertation in a language otherthan English: La ville comme objet dela justice); Kara Richardson atSyracuse; and Sari Kisilevsky atCUNY (to be taken up after a UCLApost-doc). Vida Panitch andJonathan Peterson have contractsat the University ofToronto;David
Bronstein will hold a SSHRC post-doc at Oxford;Danielle Bromwichwill hold a two-year post-doc at theNational Institutes for Health inWashington, D.C.; and Tom Rand ismanaging theVCi Green Fund, a pri-vate equity fund he founded in 2005.
Our biggest innovation this year is thebroadening of the former Frenchrequirement to a more general“research tools” requirement.Thisrecognizes the breadth of Philosophyand its interdisciplinarity: while somestudents’ thesis work requiresknowledge of French or anotherlanguage, other students’ workrequires competence in anotherdiscipline or in research methodsnot typical in philosophy.
Phil KremerGraduate Coordinator
Note from the Graduate Department
Boyle
Kremer
TRANSITIONS
Colin Howson, specialist in probability,logic and philosophy of science, has joined usas a full professor. Previously he was Chair ofthe Department of Philosophy at the LondonSchool of Economics.
Vida Panitch, having finished her PhD herethis year, has joined us as the PhilosophyUndergraduate Research Coordinator, througha project made possible by the Arts andScience Curriculum Renewal Initiative Fund.She will be coordinating several 4th yearresearch-based courses as well as coordinatingand teaching Bioethics courses.
NEW FACULTY
Howson Vida Panitch
Department of Ph i losophy News 5
IN MEMORIAMReginald Edgar Allen, a professor in the Departmentfrom 1969 to 1978, was born in Philadelphia on 13 March1931 and earned theAB degree from Haverford College in1953. For the Master’s degree, he attendedYale, and thenwent to the University of St.Andrews where he wasawarded the BPhil in 1957. Just a year later he earned thedoctorate atYale with a thesis entitled The Status of Soul inPlato’s Philosophy.At the time of his coming toToronto in1969 he was Director of the Program of Classics andPhilosophy at Purdue University, a position he had accept-ed only a couple of years earlier. During hisToronto yearshe published his first monograph, Plato’s Euthyphro and theEarlierTheory of Forms (1970), and with David Furley editedStudies in Presocratic Philosophy, which came out in two vol-umes in 1970 and 1975. It was during these years that heformulated his long-term project of translating all of thePlatonic dialogues, each accompanied by an analyticalcommentary.At the time of his death he had publishedtranslations of thirteen dialogues; the most recent,The Republic, came out in 2006.AtToronto he held a cross-appointment in the Faculty of Law where he seemed tospend most of his time when on campus. In 1978 heresigned to take a position in Northwestern University.Allen died on 12April 2007 in Hammond, Indiana, ofheart failure after a long illness.
Armand Augustine Maurer was bornin Rochester, NewYork, on 21 January1915 and graduated from its AquinasInstitute High School. From 1933 to1938 he was a student at St. Michael’sCollege where he earned an Honoursdegree in philosophy. He began graduatestudies, but broke them off two yearslater to enrol as a novitiate in the Congregation of St. Basiland began theological studies in St. Basil’s Seminary.At thesame time he was enrolled in the Pontifical Institute asa candidate for the Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies, whichwas awarded in 1945, the year of his ordination. Resuminghis graduate studies in philosophy, he successfully defendedhis thesis, Ockham’s Interpretation and Criticism of the Formalismof Duns Scotus, in 1947.A year of post-doctoral studiesin Paris completed his formal education. In 1949 he wasappointed an assistant professor in the Pontifical Instituteof Mediaeval Studies and a lecturer in philosophy inSt. Michael’s College.Although his graduate courses,throughout his career, were in medieval philosophy,his undergraduate teaching came to include a courseinAmerican philosophy which focussed on the works
of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Maurer’s scholarly work hascentred on the history of medieval philosophy. Perhaps hisbest known contribution is Medieval Philosophy, a volume ofthe history of philosophy conceived and edited by ÉtienneGilson. In recent years he resumed his study of the thoughtof William of Ockham. His last book, The Philosophy ofWilliam of Ockham in the Light of Its Principles (1999), isa substantial contribution to Ockham scholarship. He diedin Mt. Sinai Hospital,Toronto, on 22 March 2008, aftera short illness.
Robert Forbes McRae was born on 27June 1914 inWinnipeg and spent severalyears of his childhood in China wherehis parents were missionaries. Both hisBA (1936) and MA (1938) were award-ed by the University ofToronto.Whenwar broke out in 1939 he was enrolledas a doctoral student at Johns HopkinsUniversity. He joined the Canadian Navy and was capturedby the Germans at Dieppe inAugust 1942; he was held as aprisoner of war for over three years. By requesting booksthrough the Red Cross he was able to continue his philo-sophical studies. In 1945 he joined the Department as apart-time lecturer while continuing at Hopkins. In 1948,having earned his PhD, he was made a permanentmember. His first book, The Problem of the Unity of theSciences: Bacon to Kant came out in 1961, and his second,Leibniz: Perception,Apperception, andThought in 1979.While serving a term as associate dean of the Facultyof Arts and Science, he was appointed acting dean of theFaculty for 1964-65. He was associate chairman ofthe Department from 1966 to 1969. He retired in 1981.In 1985 his former students, Georges Moyal and StanleyTweyman, published Early Modern Philosophy:Metaphysics,Epistemology, and Politics: Essays in Honour of Robert F.McRae.He died on 19 September 2007 inToronto.
Henry S.Harris, was born in England in 1926.He received his BA and MA in classics and philosophyat Oxford, and in 1954 his PhD at the University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign.After having taught in the UnitedStates for eight years, he was recruited toYork Universitywhere he was the first Chair of the Philosophy Departmentand later academic dean atYork’s BayviewAvenue Frenchlanguage campus, Glendon College. Harris, an expert onGiovanni Gentile, later published important books on thephilosophy of Hegel. He taught in our graduateDepartment for several years prior to his retirement.He died on 13 March 2007, inVictoria, BC, at the age of 80.
6 Univers i ty of Toronto
Annette Dufner wonthe Martha Lile LoveTeaching Award for PHL370H – Issues inPhilosophy of Law, taughtat UTM.The award isgiven to a PhD studentwho has demonstrated
a combination of skill, inventiveness,competence and enthusiasm whileteaching an undergraduate course.
Matthew Fulkersonwon the Dean’s EssayPrize for best graduateessay in the Facultyof Arts and Science in2006-2007 for his essay“Tactual Reference.”Matthew’s interests lie
in Perception, Philosophy of Psychologyand Neuroscience, and in MoralPsychology. He is currently working onhis thesis, which is on the sense of touch.
Doug MacKay has beenawarded a DoctoralFellowship in the Centrefor Ethics for the 2008-2009 academic year.He has an office in theCentre and will beparticipating in seminarsalong with the faculty and post-doctoralfellows at the Centre. Doug is currentlywriting a dissertation on the significanceof institutions for distributive justice.
Charles Repp has won a ChancellorJackman Graduate Student Fellowshipin the Humanities.As a residential fellow,Charles will have an office at the Jackman
Humanities Institute and will participatein its activities with faculty, postdoctoraland doctoral fellows.This year’s themeat the Institute isTelling Stories, andRepp’s thesis is about thecognitive value of litera-ture (fictional narrativesin particular). He says:“Almost everyone thinkswe can gain knowledgeof some kind throughreading fictional narra-tives, but most everyonealso accepts that in order to count asknowledge, a belief must not only be truebut also justified (or, depending on one’stheory, arise from a reliable process ordisposition, or else it must fulfill someother condition).And no one has a verysatisfying explanation of how the beliefswe acquire through reading literature meetthis other condition.That’s the mainproblem I want to solve.”
DerekAllen was awarded a Leadershipin FacultyTeachingAward by the Ministry ofTraining, Colleges and Universities, Ontario,for his exemplary efforts to influence andinspire students and for demonstratingleadership in teaching methods.
Ronnie de Sousa was namedHumanist oftheYear by the HumanistAssociation ofToronto.
Imogen Dickie received the prestigiousBersoff Assistant Professor / FacultyFellowship in the Department of Philosophyat NewYork University where she is spend-ing the 2008-2009 year.
Ian Hacking received a Doctorate honoriscausa fromMcMaster this year, and one from
the University of Cordoba,Argentina last year.
Peter King received a Faculty of Arts andScience OutstandingTeaching Award for2006-2007.The nomination stated Peter“has excelled at generat-ing enthusiasm in hisstudents at the same timeas he challenges them tomaster complex newmaterial.”Also cited washis hard work in gettingour Socrates Project up andrunning. [See page 8.]
Thomas Robinson received an honoraryDoctor of Sacred Letters from the UniversityofTrinity College.
DenisWalsh has received a Chancellor
Jackman Research Fellowship in theHumanities for this academic year.
Byeong-ukYi has won anAmericanCouncil of Learned Societies Fellowship for2008-2009.
Lambert Zuidervaart’sbook Social Philosophy afterAdorno was selected thewinner of the 3rd annualSymposium BookAward,given by Symposium:Canadian Journal ofContinental Philosophy,which is published by the Canadian Societyfor Continental Philosophy. Lambert will bethe keynote speaker at the Society’s annualcongress in Montreal in late October.
Dufner
Fulkerson
MacKay Repp
de Sousa
Zuidervaart
Awards & Honours
CAREER NIGHTThis year’s Career Night was held January 30. Our upper yearundergraduates had an opportunity to meet alumni and hearabout their career choices and experiences.This year’sparticipants were lawyer Stephen Bowman (BA, 1976; LLB,1979), teacher Tamara Fernandes (BA, 2001), entrepreneurCenk (Jake) Koseleci (BA, 1990; MA, 1992), directorof ethics and legal affairs at ethica Clinical ResearchMartinLetendre, and author and Toronto Star finance and consumeraffairs columnist Ellen Roseman (MA, 1969).
Career Night speakers and student organizers:Martin Letendre,Ashley Atkins, Lauren Beharry, Stephen Bowman, Ellen Roseman, JakeKoseleci,Thomas Sanderson, Navona Calarco, andTamara Fernandes.
FacultyAwards
StudentAwards
Department of Ph i losophy News 7
Alumni Awards & ActivitiesCalvin Normore, (MA, 1969; PhD,1976), former Professor at U ofT, 1984-99, has been elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Peter Koellner, (BA, 1995), is one of fivewinners, and the only philosopher, of theKurt Gödel Centenary Research Prize
Fellowship. Sponsored by the Kurt GödelSociety and the JohnTempletonFoundation, each prize amounts to 100,000euros. In a press release the government ofAustria stated that this is the “world’s high-est prize money ever awarded to logicians.”Koellner received his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in2003 and was immediately appointed an
assistant professor in thedepartment of philosophyat Harvard University. Hehas just passed his six-yearreview and is on studyleave at the University ofCalifornia in Berkeley for2008-9.
Koellner
TheArborAwards are given annually by theUniversity ofToronto to volunteer alumni andfriends in recognition of outstanding serviceto the university. In September 2007 two phi-losophy alumni receivedArborAwards,Michael Herman and Stephen Bowman, andin September 2008 two more philosophyalumni, Sidney Robinson and Susan Han, havebeen honoured.
Michael Herman (MBA, 1992;MA 2006),President and CEO ofCitipark Inc., has workedtirelessly for theDepartment. Besidesrecently earning an MA inphilosophy he has estab-lished graduate fellowshipsand helped raise the pro-file of the Department inToronto’s legal and business communities.Last fall he hosted a lunch and networkingevent for 12 undergrads to share his knowl-edge and perception on career opportunitiesafter graduation.Our undergrads appreciateevents like these as they prepare to leave uni-versity and enter the working world.
Stephen Bowman (BA, 1976; LLB, 1979),managing partner of theToronto offices of law firmBennett Jones, has beenvery active with theDepartment. He, alongwith a number of otheralumni, helped raise fundsto establish the Philosophyand LawAlumniScholarship. He has hosteda roundtable where issues fromWayneSumner’s award-winning The Hateful and theObscene were discussed and debated amongthe author, alumni from the legal communityand graduate and undergraduate students.And he was one of the panelists at lastJanuary’s Career Night, an event for ourundergrads to learn about potential careerpaths for those with a philosophy background.
Sidney Robinson (BA, 1961;MA, 1962;LLB, 1966), after practis-ing law for 35 years,renewed his connectionwith the U ofT PhilosophyDepartment in 2004. Inaddition to pursuing hisphilosophical studiesSidney has been a mentorto a number of his fellow students and a
benefactor to the Departments of Philosophyand Classics creating Graduate Fellowshipsto assist them in attracting the mostoutstanding and sought after graduatestudents in the field ofAncient Philosophy.
Susan Han (BA, 1982; LLB, 1986), seniorvice president and generalcounsel atAIMTrimarkInvestments, has, for thepast few years, beenworking behind the scenesfor the Department’s jointJD-PhD program in Lawand Philosophy.She too has been instrumental in helpingestablish the new Philosophy and LawAlumniScholarship. She has also graciously hosted anetworking event for graduate and under-graduate students interested in law andphilosophy in her home and has participatedin Career Night for our undergrads.
Our alumni bring us many gifts, not justfinancial. Mentoring and inspiring studentsand giving them hope and insight can havelasting effects.We are very grateful to ourfriends and alumni.
Herman
Robinson
Han
Bowman
The Department has achieved its goal ofraising $50,000 to establish the Philosophyand Law Alumni Scholarship! This scholar-ship will encourage talented graduatestudents taking courses related to thePhilosophy of Law, or enrolled in the eliteJD/PhD (Philosophy) Program, to pursuea profound investigation of the complexissues that lie at the intersection of lawand philosophy.
Some of our alumni who contributed to the Philosophy and Law AlumniScholarship, along with donors who have established scholarships orlecture series, visted the department at its new location in the JackmanHumanities Building this past April.
From the left: Michael Herman (MBA,1992;MA 2006),Charles Simon (BA,1967),Eban Bayefsky (BA,1982;LLB,1985), Prof.DonaldAinslie, Stephen Bowman (BA,1976;LLB,1979), Susan Han (BA,1983;LLB,1986),Ellen Roseman (MA,1969),Gwendolyn MontgomeryThorburn (BA,1949;MA,1950), and ProfessorsWayne Sumner,Arthur Ripstein,Amy Mullin, SergioTenenbaum,and David Dyzenhaus.
ArborAwards
Philosophy and Law
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UPDATES
The Socrates Project was established through funding from the Provost’s Student Experience Fundin 2006-07 to enable our best undergrads to have the Socratic experience of learning philosophyby teaching philosophy. Project participants serve as tutorial leaders in Introduction to Philosophy(PHL 100Y) and also take an enrichment seminar, where they work with professors in theDepartment to delve deeper into cutting-edge research on the topics covered in the Intro course.Some of the Project participants from 2007-08 are featured below.
SOCRATES PROJECT
JessicaTizzard:“Revisiting many textsI haven’t read sincefirst or second year ina setting where I hadthe opportunity tolead tutorials has defi-nitely resulted in abetter grasp of the main ideas, andretriggered a lot of knowledge thathad been buried under second andthird year courses. Lately I’ve beenspending far too much time thinkingabout the writings of Immanuel Kant,and consequently have become almost
as tedious as hereportedly was.”
Jovana Milovic:“This is the best jobI have ever had.For the first time, Ifelt like I was doing
something relevant and somethingthat I had interest in – and mostimportantly, something that I couldsee myself doing in the future.”
Esther Shubert:“The Socrates Projectwas an extremelyrewarding andenriching experience.It really enhanced myundergraduate careerand I feel lucky tohave been a part of it!”
Cory Lewis:“This project expandedmy perspective on theuniversity experience.”
Aaron Henry:“The Socrates Projecthas been an extraordi-
nary learning experience and easily
the highlight of myundergraduate careeras a philosophy student.It has significantlydeepened my appreci-ation and enthusiasmfor the subject.”
Sean M. Smith:“Participating in the Socrates Projecthas certainly been one of the mostmeaningful and stimulatingexperiences of my life. Having theopportunity to workclosely with studentsas a teaching assistantwas an honour, a priv-ilege and expandedmy philosophicalthinking in a deep andlasting way.”
Milovic
Tizzard
Shubert
Lewis
Henry
Smith
Professor JenniferWhiting, winner of theKonrad Adenauer Research Award, spent theyear in Berlin at Humboldt University. Besidesconducting her research and giving numeroustalks around Europe, she also taught (togetherwith faculty from Oxford, Edinburgh, Parisand Berlin) a special summer seminar whichseveral U ofT graduate students attended.
Grad students Marta Jimenez,Andrea Piatesi(visiting doctoral student from Bologna), David
Bronstein, Prof. JenniferWhiting, and gradstudent Alessandro Bonello in Berlin.
PHILOSOPHERSIN BERLIN
Department of Ph i losophy News 9
WORLD PHILOSOPHY DAY 2007John U. Nef DistinguishedService ProfessorJonathan Lear of theCommittee on SocialThought and Departmentof Philosophy, Universityof Chicago was thespeaker at our UNESCOWorld Philosophy Dayon November 15, 2007.He spoke on “What is itto be deprived of a world?”Ashley Atkins, one of ourundergrad student leaderswho participated at thelunch and reception, saidthat “these kinds of eventsare what enrich the uni-versity experience.”Thereception ended with thelaunch of the 2007 editionof Noesis, the undergradu-ate journal of philosophy,where Don Ainslie alsorecognized the previousyear’s award winners.
Don Ainslie, guest speaker Professor Jonathan Lear,and Matt Fruchtman, organizer ofWorld PhilosophyDay at the U of T.
Editors of Noesis: Oday Khaghani, Katie Mann,Colin LennardWhite.
Esther Shubert writes:
Last summer I applied for and receiveda University ofToronto Excellence Awardin the Social Sciences and Humanities,which allows students to work as researchassistants for the summer.To apply,students must contact a professor holdinga SSHRC grant whose work they areinterested in and with whom they agreeto work for the summer. I had just takena bioethics course on end-of-life issues withProfessorWayne Sumner and had found itfascinating, so I applied for the award todo research for a new book he is writingthat will further explore issues from thatclass. My topic of research was the systemof assisted suicide in Switzerland, whichwill serve as a point of comparison forpolicy regarding end of life issues inCanada. I found the experience extremelyrewarding. It was challenging and greatlyimproved my research skills; it also gaveme greater insight into the process ofwriting professional academic work.It made for a very interesting summerand I am very grateful for the experience!
Undergraduate StudentSSHRC SummerResearch Award 2007
RESEARCH NOTESTom HurkaJackman Distinguished Chair inPhilosophical StudiesMy research in moral philosophy hasspanned many topics. I’ve written a lotabout the things that are intrinsicallygood, such as happiness, achievement, and moral virtue,and on the applied side about ethics and war. But mymain current project is a history of ethics book abouta group of British moral philosophers active betweenthe 1870s and 1950s. Many of them aren’t well known:the most famous are G.E. Moore (friend of Russell,Keynes,VirginiaWoolf, and others in the Bloomsburyset),W.D. Ross (translator of Aristotle but also a greatmoral theorist), and Henry Sidgwick (most sophisticat-ed of the 19th-century utilitarians).I first encountered this group as a U ofT undergradin the 1970s, when a seminar I took included someMoore and Ross. I was immediately attracted to theirwork: it was so clear, analytically sharp, and – what isn’tfor all philosophers a positive – sensible.There werenone of the grandiose ideas found, say, in Kant. But it’s
common for each later generation of philosophersto despise their immediate predecessors as hopelesslymisguided, and the group were suffering that fate in the1970s and 80s.There’s now a revival of interest in theirwork, though mostly in individuals taken on their own.My book will be the first to look at them as a whole,and identify the common assumptions that made theirsboth a unified and a distinctive movement in the historyof ethics, approaching the subject in a different andI think better way thanAristotle, Kant, and mostpresent-day moral philosophers.I was fortunate enough to have a GuggenheimFellowship in 2006-07, and spent the second half of itdoing research for the book in Oxford, where manyof the relevant philosophers’ archives are. It was excitingto read letters carrying on a philosophical conversationstarted the day before on a drive to the golf course.I’ll be back in Oxford this coming winter, on sabbatical,and starting to write the book. I can’t pretend it’ll bea bestseller, but I hope it attracts more attention fromphilosophers to this set of theorists. Look out,Aristotle,Hume, and Kant – some new rivals are coming.
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RESEARCH NOTES continuedBrad InwoodUniversity Professor andCanada Research Chair inAncient PhilosophyI have been on leave this past yearafter finishing my term as Chairof the Classics Department, andI seemed to have kept myself verybusy. I recently became the editorof Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,the premier journal in the field,though I alsofound time forsome newprojects of myown in ancientphilosophy.Two papers inprogress relatedirectly or indi-rectly to Ciceroand the ancientAcademy (one on the physics ofAntiochus of Ascalon and one onancient categorizations of the good).I am also finishing up a translation(with Miriam Griffin) of Seneca’sOn Benefits, a work on Stoic ethicsand social theory. Plans for the nearfuture include an article on Stoicismin the early Roman empire, oneon Stoic social and political ideasin Cicero’s On Moral Ends, anda discussion of the reception ofAristotle’s ethics in the Hellenisticperiod. In the longer term, I intendto work more on Plato and Aristotle,with particular interest in the Critoand the Eudemian Ethics.During my leave, I was MalcolmBowie DistinguishedVisitor atChrist’s College, Cambridge, andtravelled in Europe, giving papers inBudapest, Berlin, and Rome (whereI got to spend some time communingwith the philosopher-emperor,Marcus Aurelius – see photo).
JenniferNagelMy recent work hasfocused on some verystrange intuitive pat-terns of knowledgeascription.When youencounter a descriptionof a person forming a belief, in somecases you’ll be naturally inclined to saythat this person has knowledge, and inothers you’ll naturally tend to say thatthis subject believes but doesn’t know.Some of the factors that make a differ-ence have been recognized for a longtime: for example, you’ll say the sub-ject doesn’t know if the propositionthe subject believes is false, or if heis just guessing or relying on wishfulthinking in forming his belief. Butother factors are more surprising:for example, practical interests seemto make a big difference to how toughwe are about counting someone asa knower. Here’s Stewart Cohen’sillustration of that point: if nothingmuch hangs on it for you, a quickglance at the airline schedule isenough for you to know that the flightyou are about to board has a stop inChicago. If it’s a life-or-death matter,however (here you can embellish thestory by adding in something aboutpicking up some transplant organs atO’Hare), then a quick glance is notenough for knowledge – you need totalk to the gate agent, maybe even thepilot.We also get much more strin-gent in our ascriptions of knowledgewhen we mention possibilities of error(you think that’s a zebra, and it is, butif it were really a painted mule, couldyou tell the difference?) – even wherethe subject is making no actual mis-take. In recent years, epistemologistshave developed some really creative(OK, far-fetched) cases to test intu-itive responses here. It is extremelyhard to construct a satisfactory theory
of knowledge that fits all the intuitiveresponses provoked by these variousscenarios.Actually I think it’simpossible.Thinking of intuitive caseresponses as data points for a theoryof knowledge, there is no smoothcurve through this data.As a big fan of the smooth curve,I’ve been working on getting ridof some of the awkward data points(or, to be more precise, arguing thatsome of our case reactions aren’treally data about knowledge itself, in thephilosophically interesting sense ofthe term). My recent articles haveargued that some of our intuitiveresponses to cases are tainted, forexample by psychological biases likehindsight and the wonderfully named‘paradox of unfounded confidence’,biases known to distort judgments inother domains. I recently organizedan interdisciplinary workshop oncross-cultural uniformity and diversityin epistemic assessments, bringingtogether linguists who work on lan-guages with sharply different methodsfor marking evidential relations,psychologists who examine whathappens in the brain when we ascribeknowledge to others (yes, there’s onetiny region devoted to just that job),anthropologists and philosophers.Although my papers are full of referencesto the empirical literature on beliefformation and attribution, I don’tthink of myself as a naturalist. I don’tthink that properly philosophical ques-tions about how we ought to conceiveof the end of inquiry are answered inany straightforward way by empiricalmethods. But I do think empiricalmethods can be useful in cleaningaway the dirt that obscures our viewof the core conceptual issues.At thispoint it looks like there’s quite a bitof dirt there to be cleaned.
Speakers: Robert Pasnau(University of Colorado, Boulder)Thérèse-Anne Druart(Catholic University of America)CeciliaTrifogli(All Souls College, Universityof Oxford)
The University of Toronto Colloquiumin Medieval Philosophy 2008Friday - Saturday, September 19 - 20
Responding to theCrisis of Responsiblity:
A Philosophical Challenge
For further information please check:http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ecpamp/pages/utcmp.html
Location: Centre for MedievalStudies,Lillian Massey Building,Room 301,125 Queen’s Park (at thecorner of Bloor St.W.)
Registration and inquiries:[email protected]
An academic conference in honour ofProfessorThomas LanganSaturday, September 27, 2008St. Michael’s College, CharbonelleLounge, University ofTorontoFor inquiries please contact:Prof. Nikolaj [email protected]
UPCOMING EVENTS
Department of Ph i losophy News 11
Colloquium ScheduleSeptember 25, 2008 – John MacFarlane(UC Berkeley),“If ’s and Ought’s”.
March 19, 2009 – Richard Moran(Harvard), title to be announced.
May 8, 2009 – John McDowell (Univ ofPittsburgh), title to be announced. (Thiswill also be the Graduate PhilosophyConference Keynote Lecture.)
Each colloquium will take place at 3:15 pmand will be followed by a reception.
Please check our website,<www.philosophy.utoronto.ca>, forlocations and titles.
Authors at the launch: MichaelVertin, Lloyd Gerson, Ronnie de Sousa (front),Martin Pickavé (back), Brad Inwood (back), EvanThompson, Sergio Tenenbaum,Lambert Zuidervaart, FredWilson.
The department’s 21st Annual Book Launch,held on March 6th,2008,featured:
Anjan Chakravartty. A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing theUnobservable. Cambridge University Press, 2007.Ronald de Sousa.WhyThink? Evolution and the Rational Mind. Englishtranslation & improved rewriting of Evolution et Rationalité (2004).Oxford University Press, 2007.Brad Inwood. Seneca: Selected Philosophical Letters. Oxford UniversityPress, 2007.Mohan Matthen. Seeing, Doing, and Knowing (paperback edition).Oxford University Press, 2007.Cheryl Misak, editor. New Pragmatists. Oxford University Press, 2007.David Novak. The Sanctity of Human Life.Georgetown University Press,2007.Joseph Owens, edited and introduced by Lloyd Gerson.Aristotle’s Gradations of Being in Metaphysics E – Z. St.Augustine’s Press,2007.Martin Pickavé. Heinrich von Gent überMetaphysik als erste Wissenschaft. Brill, 2007.SergioTenenbaum, editor.Moral Psychology. Rodopi, 2007.Philip David Zelazo, MorrisMoscovitch, and EvanThompson. TheCambridge Handbook of Consciousness.Cambridge University Press, 2007.EvanThompson. Mind in Life: Biology,Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind.Harvard University Press, 2007.MichaelVertin, editor. Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, by FrederickE. Crowe. University ofToronto Press, 2007.FredWilson. Acquaintance, Ontology, and Knowledge. Collected Essays inOntology. OntosVerlag, 2007.FredWilson. Body, Mind and Self in Hume’s Critical Realism. OntosVerlag, 2008.Lambert Zuidervaart. Social Philosophy after Adorno. CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007.
Alumni are invited to attend the 2009 Philosophy Book Launchwhich will be held onThursday, March 12, 4-6 pm, at theJackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, Room 418.
Books at the launch
2008 PHILOSOPHYBOOK LAUNCHSimon Lectures
November 6-7, 2008Professor Barbara Herman,Griffin Professor of Philosophy andProfessor of Law at UCLA, willdeliver the Jerome S. SimonMemorial Lectures on November 6and 7.The lectures will develop theidea of moral content in Kantianethics, and consider its bearing onassessments of wrongness and imper-missibility when duties conflict.
World Philosophy DayNovember 13, 2008The University of Toronto will becelebrating UNESCO’sWorldPhilosophy Day – one of the eventswill be a talk by Jeff McMahan(Rutgers University) on“Responsibilities of Soldiers andCivilians in an UnjustWar,” to be fol-lowed by a reception celebrating oursenior undergraduate students.Grad ConferenceMay 8 & 9, 2009The theme of this year’s conferencewill be The Philosophy of Action.This annual event brings togethergraduate students from across NorthAmerica to share their research.The keynote speaker will be JohnMcDowell, University Professorof Philosophy at the Universityof Pittsburgh. His major interestsare Greek philosophy, philosophy oflanguage,philosophy of mind, meta-physics and epistemology, and ethics.For up-to-the-minute details on theseand other events, please see our website,<www.philosophy.utoronto.ca>.
12 Univers i ty of Toronto
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
12 Univers i ty of Toronto
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Philosophy News is the Department’s Newsletter forAlumni and Friends of Philosophy.Items for inclusion should be sent by fax to 416-978-8703 orby e-mail to [email protected].
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