Dear Friends of the Department:

We find ourselves in a period of faculty transitions, and hence in changes in our most valued resource. For the second consecutive year, the department has appointed two faculty members and promoted another. We are delighted that Ian Proops and Richmond Thomason are joining the department this academic year, and that James Joyce is continuing at Michigan as Associate Professor with tenure. In addition, as reported in the Fall, 1997 issue of Michigan Philosophy News, P. J. Ivanhoe, a specialist in East Asian philosophy, takes up a joint appointment in Philosophy and Asian Languages and Cultures this year.

Jim Joyce works in decision theory and probabilistic epistemology. Decision theory is the most systematic and powerful means for representing a fundamental human activity: deliberation among alternatives, with an eye toward action. In his Foundations of Causal Decision Theory (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), Jim is the first to provide a suitable mathematical representation -- or "representation theorem" -- for criteria for rational decisions within the framework of causal decision theory. He also synthesizes and extends differing frameworks (those of Savage and Jeffrey) for evidential decision theory, the rival approach, and shows that evidential and causal decision theory are special cases of a more general theory. Jim's current research concerns the philosophical foundations of subjective probability theory and game theory. He also has interests in traditional epistemology, especially skepticism. A recipient of an LS&A Excellence in Education Award, Jim teaches courses in the theory or rational choice, philosophy of science, formal logic, and epistemology and metaphysics.

Ian Proops holds the B.Phil. from Oxford University and completed his doctorate at Harvard University this summer. He is pursuing research in three areas: the history of analytic philosophy, Kant's theoretical philosophy, and current philosophy of language and metaphysics, especially modality. Ian's work on Kant advances a new interpretation of the aims of the transcendental deduction of the categories. In his doctoral dissertation, he argues that the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus must be interpreted against the background of Wittgenstein's reactions to the early logical and metaphysical views of his teacher, Russell. From this starting-point, Ian develops an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's position on such central topics as the picture theory of meaning, the nature of logic, and the distinction between sense and nonsense. Ian joins the department as assistant professor. At Harvard, he received a Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, three times. His advanced teaching this year will focus on Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein.

Richmond Thomason comes to Michigan full time in January, with a joint appointment as Professor of Linguistics and of Philosophy in LS&A and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the School of Engineering. (We are delighted that he is at Michigan this fall as Adjunct Professor.) Rich's research focuses on applications of logic to problems in language, representation, and reasoning. He is well-known for his contributions to non-classical and philosophical logic, formal semantics, semantics and pragmatics for natural languages, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and theories of belief revision and practical reasoning. A Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Rich has held the chief editorial or editorial oversight positions with the Journal of Philosophical Logic and Linguistics and Philosophy. He is coming from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was co-director of an interdisciplinary graduate program in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He will be introducing the course Logic and Artificial Intelligence this winter.

We have also experienced substantial losses; Sally Haslanger, Ian Rumfitt, and Stephen Yablo have resigned, effective this year. Sally, a specialist in metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and ancient philosophy, has moved to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ian, who works in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and philosophy and linguistics, is taking up a position at University College, Oxford, in his native England. Steve, who works in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical logic, is also moving to MIT. These colleagues and friends will be deeply missed. Ian had spent five years at Michigan, Sally six, and Steve twelve. Each made a distinctive mark; Sally's stellar teaching at all levels in Philosophy and Women's Studies, Ian's intense devotion to philosophical inquiry, and Steve's contagious enthusiasm for ideas from all quarters, have provided models for us all.

The department enjoys substantial continuity notwithstanding these transitions. Of eighteen faculty members, two-thirds were here five years ago. The extraordinary distinction of our faculty is invariably reflected in recognitions members receive year-to-year. Last winter, Ken Walton, who works in aesthetics, and Don Regan, whose philosophical work is in moral and political philosophy, were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Three of our members hold distinguished national fellowships this year: Steve Darwall, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; Allan Gibbard, American Council of Learned Societies and NEH Fellowships; and David Velleman, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. This past year Steve began a three year term as Senior Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows. Larry Sklar has received a University Humanities Award, to support research on methodological issues in philosophy of science. In work related to his John Locke Lectures delivered at Oxford in the spring, Larry will be paying special attention to the philosophical problems -- issues about descriptive accuracy, idealization, and truth -- that arise in conjunction with distinctive empirical and conceptual difficulties that beset particular scientific theories. Peter Railton received an LS&A Research Excellence Award, in recognition of his recent work defending moral realism by considering analogies in action theory, epistemology, and aesthetics.

Our annual reception for undergraduate concentrators last May overflowed -- with graduates, family, and guests, and with enthusiasm for the program. The reception culminated a year of unusual undergraduate activity. This fall will see the publication of Meteorite, an international forum for undergraduate work, managed by Michigan undergraduates. This has been a most impressive undertaking, one that the editors started "from scratch" last fall. The first issue, which runs one hundred thirty pages, contains five articles, commentaries by individual editors, and an interview, "Philosophy in Metaphor," with Richard Rorty. The articles, selected from forty submissions from six countries, represent work by undergraduates at the University of Texas, Swinburne University of Technology, Freie Universität zu Berlin, and MIT, as well as Michigan. Seven undergraduates served in editorial capacities: Jonathan Yeasting as Chair, Jeffrey Clune, Regan Smith, and Daria Vaisman as Contributing Editors, and Matthew Cannon, Michael Cheng, and Jennifer Naimolski as Editors. This group solicited contributions internationally, provided editorial feedback to authors, and worked on design, printing, and distribution. Though the undergraduates consulted with a number of faculty and the department provided start-up funding, this project was conceived and executed entirely by students. We congratulate them on their remarkable accomplishment and look forward to future issues.

Philosophy is a small concentration, so that one might expect the time and energy devoted to Meteorite to detract from other undergraduate activities. This was not the case. Under the dynamic leadership of Matthew Parrott, the Undergraduate Philosophy Club sponsored informal talks by Ed Curley, Sally Haslanger, David Hills, Eric Lormand, and Peter Railton, as well as café discussions for students. Matt also provided liaison and support to Meteorite, and helped organize our annual information session for undergraduates considering graduate study inpast year. I do not know a formula for success in this regard. It has helped to have been housed in our traditional quarters in Angell Hall for a second year, after two years in a temporary location nearly one mile from central campus. I believe various programmatic changes have helped. We have strengthened the requirements for the concentration, for example, by requiring a course in formal logic taught by a regular member of the faculty. Some years back we reconstituted our fall Honors Seminar to focus on the development of individual student theses rather than a pre-set seminar topic. We have established the Frankena Prize, the Haller Prizes, and the Dewey Prize for graduate student excellence in undergraduate teaching. These and other efforts have had a cumulative impact in directing attention to undergraduates and their needs. Ultimately, of course, undergraduate achievement depends in large measure on the interest and support of individual faculty who serve as formal or informal advisors and interlocutors.

Graduate students are important participants in undergraduate education, and have a significant impact on the health of the undergraduate program. This past winter, Celery Kovinsky, Krista Lawlor, and Andrea Westlund were selected as recipients of a Rackham Graduate Student Pedagogy Award. Their exciting proposal emphasizes mentoring younger graduate student instructors, teaching philosophical writing, and leading discussions on controversial and sensitive issues (abortion, affirmative action, the existence of God, and so forth). Their project will stimulate new forms of training, and the assembly of new instructional resources, in these areas.

Our finishing and recent graduate students compiled a remarkable placement record this past year. Four accepted tenure-track positions: John Devlin at Arizona State, John Doris at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Mika Lavaque-Manty in Political Science at the University of Washington, and Mike Webber at Yale. Members of this group declined two tenure-track offers at other institutions. In addition, Jeff Kasser accepted a two year position at Colby College. We congratulate these students on their hard work and good success. I wish I had reason to believe these placement results -- the best for Michigan students in some years -- a harbinger of a stronger market for new Ph.D.'s in philosophy. It is at least reassuring that there are good positions for highly deserving doctorates.

Continuing Michigan graduate students have garnered some impressive awards and recognitions. Nadeem Hussain has received a Germanistic Society of America Fellowship and a Fulbright Travel Grant, to continue his research into Nietzsche's fictionalist theory of value. Nadeem will be working with Rüdiger Bittner at Bielefeld University. Andrea Westlund received a Mary Malcomson Raphael Fellowship. Awarded by the Center for the Education of Women, the Fellowship was established in 1985 for women graduate students in the humanities or social sciences in LS&A; recipients are selected on the basis of academic excellence and their potential to make a contribution of exceptional usefulness to society. Peter Vranas received a Decision Behavior Consortium Fellowship. He will investigate, partly by reviewing the relevant social psychological literature, the conditions under which behaving respectfully rather than disrespectfully is in one's rational self-interest. Jeffrey Brand-Ballard and Craig Duncan received Rackham Predoctoral Fellowships. Jeff is investigating the consequences of taking collective agency seriously for liberal political philosophy. Craig is working to explain how it is that religious toleration is at once both problematic and justified. Angela Napili received the Department's Charles L. Stevenson Prize for Excellence in the Graduate Program. Angela has been working in epistemology, especially "the ethics of belief" and related issues about the control of belief. Blain Neufeld, who works in political philosophy, received a Marshall Weinberg Summer Fellowship. Samuel Ruhmkorff received our John Dewey Prize for Graduate Student Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Lynne Rudder Baker (University of Massachusetts), Jennifer Hornsby (University College, London), and Brian McLauglin (Rutgers) presented papers at the department's annual Spring Colloquium, "The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Commonsense Psychology." Graduate students once again served as commentators: Ted Hinchman on Hornsby, Laura Schroeter on McLaughlin, and James Woodbridge on Baker. This format at once provides excellent professional experience for graduate students and insightful comments for the speakers and audience. Krista Lawlor did marvelous work organizing the conference and overseeing events.

Frank Jackson (Australian National University) visited the department for one week in February as Nelson Philosopher-in-Residence. Speakers during the course of the year included Gail Fine (Cornell), Jane Heal (Cambridge), Bryan Norton (Georgia Institute of Technology), Gideon Rosen (Princeton), and Timothy Williams (Edinburgh). With some ten philosophers at other institutions visiting campus each year, we have an unusually extensive and rich program of special events. Each year we see a number of active discussion groups. During 1997-98, Fred Kroon (Auckland) gave a talk to the Aesthetics Discussion Group (organized by Jamie Tappenden and Ken Walton). There have also been groups on epistemology (organized by David Hills), logic and logical consequence (Steve Martin and Jamie Tappenden), philosophy of mind (Peter Vranas), and Wittgenstein on rules (James Mangiafico and Greg Sax).

Last November Antonio Damasio delivered the 1997-98 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Michigan. Damasio, M. W. Van Allen Professor of Neurology, University of Iowa, College of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, is the author of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. He has shared the Pessoa Prize, and has received the Beaumont Prize of the American Medical Association. Dr. Damasio is the first M.D. selected to give the Tanner Lecture here. In his lecture, "Exploring the Minded Brain," Dr. Damasio treated those attending to an exhilarating tour of research and ideas about the brain and mind, connecting emotion, rationality, evolution, neural development, the limits of innate bioregulatory machinery, and human betterment. In addition to Dr. Damasio, three scholars participated in the Symposium on the Tanner Lecture: Richard Davidson, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin; Susan Wolf, Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University; and Robert Zajonc, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University.

Our annual Tanner Lecture Program is an especially visible and focused example of departmental efforts that promote interdisciplinary discussion. These include individual faculty initiatives, as well as a wealth of interdisciplinary undergraduate offerings. This past year, Ed Curley and Steve Darwall conducted a year-long seminar on religious toleration, under the auspices of the International Institute, and with support from the PEW Foundation. The seminar brought to campus nearly two dozen scholars in anthropology, history, Near Eastern studies, political science, sociology and other disciplines. This coming Winter, Peter Railton and Randy Nesse, Professor of Psychiatry in the Medical School, will offer an interdisciplinary seminar, "Evolution and the Moral Emotions," with support from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

Philosophy faculty at Michigan have an enormous range of interdisciplinary interests and expertise -- in anthropology, biology, cognitive science, economics, film, law, literature, mathematics, music, physics, political theory, psychology, religion, and, with the arrival of P. J. Ivanhoe and Rich Thomason, Asian studies, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. It is difficult, however, to "lend" existing staff to new teaching initiatives without funds to replace teaching in other courses. Yet, the resources for such initiatives are here in abundance. One challenge for the University, which is increasingly emphasizing interdisciplinary work, is to find ways to take better advantage of interdisciplinary expertise that is already on board.

In at least one instance, a faculty colleague is devoting attention to the intellectual growth of high school students. This summer Steve Darwall was co-leader of the first Telluride Association Summer Program at Michigan, a six week seminar for highly-selected rising high school seniors from around the country. The seminar, "Ethics, Aesthetics, and Society," took students into moral, political, and aesthetic questions, drawing on the writings of Mill, Burke, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Kant. Dan Jacobson, a 1994 Michigan Ph.D. who teaches at College of Charleston, was the other seminar co-leader.

The Department has been fortunate to have benefactors who contribute to endowment. These contributors have demonstrated a profound commitment to the humanities, as well as loyalty to this department and confidence in our programs. We are honored and proud to have their support. Though in MPN we periodically discuss developments affecting the various endowments -- each of which makes a unique contribution --, I would like to review endowment resources that have resulted from relatively recent benefactions. It is a heartening and gratifying record.

In 1985, the late Obert C. Tanner, and Grace Adams Tanner, established the Obert C. Tanner Philosophy Endowment to support the Tanner Philosophical Library. (The Tanners provided funds to establish the Library in 1970, and to add a second room in 1979.) As reported in recent issues of MPN, the Tanner Charitable Trust recently enhanced the Endowment and its expendable accounts, enabling the department to renovate the existing Library beyond baseline plans for the Angell Hall renovation. The recent gifts also enabled us to refinish tables and reupholster chairs in the Library, work that was completed this summer. Those of you who spent hours reading and writing in the Tanner Library will be pleased to see the results of the renovation and more recent refurbishing. The Library, long the envy of other departments, remains a gem. We are grateful to the Reverend Carolyn Tanner Irish (B.A., '62), Chair of the Board of the Trust, for making the recent gift possible.

In 1986, Malcolm L. Denise (B.A., '35, J.D., '37) established the Denise Philosophy Endowment, honoring Theodore C. Denise (B.A., '42, Ph.D., '55). The Denise Endowment, which is unrestricted, has been used since its inception to provide research funds to faculty, with more junior faculty receiving priority. The College does not routinely support professional travel beyond one trip each year, and does not provide funds for other essential research expenses, such as books and journal subscriptions, research assistance, manuscript preparation, and so forth. The Denise Endowment has enabled us to guarantee significant research support to younger faculty. Mr. Denise has enhanced the initial endowment in each of the last dozen years. His contributions, in conjunction with matching funds from the Ford Motor Company, have enabled us to expand the program of research funds well beyond the assistant professor level. We are fortunate to have these resources; they play a substantial role in the retention and recruitment of outstanding young faculty.

Marshall Weinberg established the Endowment for the William K. Frankena and Charles L. Stevenson Prizes in 1991, and the Marshall M. Weinberg Endowment for Philosophy in 1995. He has generously met his funding commitments to these endowments well ahead of schedule. The Department has wide discretion in the use of the Weinberg Endowment, which is being applied to summer fellowships for outstanding graduate students at main junctures in their studies. Graduate student support is increasingly critical. A Mellon Foundation program to reduce the time to degree in the humanities, which has been providing the department funds for graduate student fellowships, is being phased out nationally. In another example of his knack for helping to spot special needs, Marshall, as reported in the 1997 issue of MPN, is establishing the Weinberg Visiting Professorship Endowment. This Endowment will insure the department access to new ideas affecting the discipline. Colleagues and I eagerly look forward to a first appointment funded from the Endowment during the 1999-2000 academic year.

As many of you know, Richard B. Brandt, Roy Wood Sellars Distinguished College Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, passed away September 10, 1997, in Ann Arbor. He was 86 years old. Dick joined the Michigan Department as Chair in 1964, and served ably in this capacity for thirteen years. During his tenure, the Department faculty grew from twelve to twenty. At Michigan, and at Swarthmore earlier in his career, Dick trained many students who are now distinguished philosophers. Two of his former students, Allan Gibbard and Don Regan, are curent members of the Michigan Department. In 1976, Dick was awarded this University's Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award. He retired from active faculty service in 1981.

Dick's family held a campus memorial service in October. Memorial minutes can be found in the November, 1997, Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association. Dick served as President of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1969-70. The APA Central Division will hold a session on Dick's philosophical work at its annual meeting in New Orleans this May. The speakers will include Peter Railton and Connie Rosati (Ph.D., '89), who teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

Dick insisted that traditional philosophical questions are often confused, and a philosopher must work to identify what is clear and important in them. He rejected appeals to "intuition," and worked to find better ways to support philosophical conclusions. His philosophical theories drew on his vast learning in psychology and anthropology, and in this way he expanded the scope of contemporary philosophy. Carolyn Morillo (Ph.D., '65), one of Dick's students, wrote us of "a very helpful correspondence he initiated concerning some of my work, in which, as I told him, I finally overcame certain old-style 'analytic' prejudices in my training and saw the wisdom and fruitfulness of his more empirical approach to issues of value and motivation. Given the current fruitful overlap among philosophy, psychology (evolutionary and otherwise), and the brain sciences, we can see how prophetic his work was."

Dick lived philosophy intensely, engaging his colleagues and students in long and avid philosophical conversation on whatever he had been reading, hearing, or writing. His philosophical opinions were strong, but he kept questioning their grounds and exploring reasons to change his views. He was always determined to get to the root of an issue. He was a lunch-time regular at the Michigan League, where he organized the Ethics Table, a weekly discussion group. Dick was prolific with important work to very near the end of his long life. His Facts, Values, and Morality was published in 1996.

Dick lived philosophy intensely, engaging his colleagues and students in long and avid philosophical conversation on whatever he had been reading, hearing, or writing. His philosophical opinions were strong, but he kept questioning their grounds and exploring reasons to change his views. He was always determined to get to the root of an issue. He was a lunch-time regular at the Michigan League, where he organized the Ethics Table, a weekly discussion group. Dick was prolific with important work to very near the end of his long life. His Facts, Values, and Morality was published in 1996.

His late colleague Bill Frankena wrote of Dick:

From the beginning he resolutely set himself to develop a system Of moral philosophy of his own that would compare well with Those developed by others of his time (and) those of his predecessors, and live on into the next century….Brandt has pursued this goal with singular devotion, with candor and flexibility, but with hard and careful work, clarity and vigor of thought, with an unusual knowledge of work in anthropology, psychology, and law, and also with a good deal of critical and constructive insight and originality--all to a very significant result, both in the form of a moral theory and of its applications to current moral problems. He must be put very high on any list of those who have produced full-fledged systems of moral philosophy in English in the second half of this century.

Sincerely,

Louis E. Loeb,
Chair

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