Dear Friends of the Department:

Greetings from Angell Hall! As I am sure you will recall, the beginning of the academic year is an exciting time as undergraduates stream back onto the campus, and we all come together with renewed enthusiasm and dedication. In addition to these annual rhythms, the past year has seen a number of significant passages in the life of the Department.

The saddest was the passing of Jack Meiland last November following a long illness. Professor Meiland retired in 1997, after thirty-five years on the Michigan faculty. Hundreds of Michigan undergraduates, including many future philosophy concentrators, first experienced the exhilaration of discovering their own powers of critical thought in his "Methods of Thinking," a University course he taught primarily for first-year students. This was only one of countless ways in which Jack Meiland impacted students' lives at Michigan. Talking to Jack and Jack's students over the years made one vividly aware of the affection they felt for each other. Jack had a remarkable eagerness to explore ideas with anyone, regardless of status, which warmed his interlocutors with respect. He was also a devoted servant and steward of the College of LS&A and of the University, serving in a wide variety of important administrative roles. He will be much missed.

In another significant passage, Louis Loeb completed a six-year term as Chair of the Department this past July 1 and began a well-earned year's research leave. Louis served the Department with extraordinary dedication and effectiveness. His thoroughness and attention to detail were legendary in the College of LS&A. Woe to the Dean or College Executive Committee member who might seek to question the wisdom of a Philosophy Department faculty position request or recruitment or tenure and promotion recommendation! Louis's memoranda established a standard of comprehensiveness and cogency that is not likely to be matched any time soon. At a party this past spring, adorned with "Louis for President" buttons, we presented him with an early edition of Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects as a token of our appreciation.

This fall also finds us with a new member of the faculty, Thomas Hofweber, who adds significantly to our strength in metaphysics and epistemology. Professor Hofweber comes to us from Stanford University, where he recently completed a dissertation, "Ontology and Objectivity," which examines with elegance and clarity the ontological presuppositions of thought and discourse about numbers, properties, and propositions. Professor Hofweber also holds an M.A. from the University of Munich in his native Germany, with a major in Philosophy and minors in Logic and Mathematics. His interests range broadly and include philosophy of language and logic, in addition to epistemology and metaphysics. He will also add to the Department's teaching resources in history of early modern philosophy, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion. We are very fortunate and happy to have him with us.

On a less happy note, Mark Crimmins resigned from the Department this past spring to take a position at Stanford. (Is there a principle of conservation of Stanford philosophers at work here?) Although he was with us for only five years, Mark was very important to the Department's offerings in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind and was a highly valued colleague and friend. He will be sorely missed.

As many of you know, the Department has faced continuing challenges in recruiting and retaining top faculty in the central philosophical areas of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. We have had many quite wonderful philosophers in these areas at Michigan over the last fifteen years, but it has proven very difficult to retain a stable cluster, even though we have almost always had a very strong group at any one time. During this period, Paul Boghossian, Mark Crimmins, Kit Fine, Sally Haslanger, Jaegwon Kim, Ruth Millikan, Gideon Rosen, Ian Rumfitt, Bill Taschek, Stephen Yablo, and Crispin Wright all have been at Michigan at one time or another, several for extended periods. Even now, many of our faculty work in these areas to some degree, including Eric Lormand, Thomas Hofweber, Ian Proops, Jamie Tappenden, Richmond Thomason, Jim Joyce, Allan Gibbard, Peter Railton, and Larry Sklar. But relatively few of our current faculty concentrate their efforts there exclusively. You can be sure that we will be putting a lot of effort into rebuilding these important areas at Michigan.

Our faculty won numerous awards and honors during the past year, bringing the Department continued distinction. Larry Sklar was elected Vice-President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. The APA has three divisions (Eastern, Central, and Pacific), and Vice-President is the Central Division's highest elected office. After serving as Vice-President this year, Professor Sklar will automatically become President of the Division for the following year. Peter Railton was simultaneously awarded three (3!) distinguished national fellowships: from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Together with a Michigan Humanities Award, which Professor Railton also won, these will support work on his project, "Facts and Values: Toward a Fallible Objectivity," during two of the next three years. In fact, Michigan faculty won 3 of the 10 fellowships awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in Philosophy during the last two years (Railton, Gibbard, and Darwall).

Several of our faculty won fellowship competitions inside the University during last year. Ed Curley will be the A. Bartlett Giamatti Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities this year, working on the second and final volume of his highly acclaimed translations, Collected Works of Spinoza. And Elizabeth Anderson won a Michigan Humanities Award, which will support work on her project, "Feminist Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science: A Handbook for Practitioners, a Guide for the Perplexed."

We should also note here Professor Anderson's promotion this past year from associate to full professor. Since coming to Michigan in 1987, Elizabeth Anderson has established herself as an important figure in both moral philosophy and feminist epistemology. She has been especially central to the Department's graduate program, both as Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee and as a highly sought dissertation advisor. She has also collaborated widely across the University, especially through her work in the Law School and in the Program in Women's Studies.

I am very pleased also to be able to tell you about various other distinctions our faculty have won. This fall, Kendall Walton was named a Collegiate Professor, a very high honor in the College of LS&A. He will be the Charles L. Stevenson Professor of Philosophy. Like Professor Walton, Charles Stevenson had a deep interest in aesthetics and, especially, in music. Professor Walton had been the James B. and Grace J. Nelson Professor. Beginning this fall, Ed Curley and Peter Railton will be the Department's Nelson Professors.

I am also pleased to report that this fall we have the first Marshall M. Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy with us for the semester. He is Charles Travis of the University of Stirling in Scotland. Professor Travis has done extremely interesting work in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. He is the author of The Uses of Sense, published by Oxford University Press in 1989, and Unshadowed Thought, forthcoming from Harvard University Press. We are especially grateful that Marshall Weinberg's generous gift makes it possible for Professor Travis to visit during this period of departmental need in his areas.

Some words now about our students. Last year's reception for graduating concentrators was the most well-attended and lively occasion of this kind that I can remember. It fairly brimmed with joy of the occasion, pride in our students' accomplishments, and general enthusiasm for the undergraduate program and for the Department. There is nothing like these rites of passage--together with the connections we make through Michigan Philosophy News and the letters we receive in response--to give one a vivid sense of Michigan Philosophy as a Burkean partnership of generations. In addition to recognizing all the graduates, including those whose honors theses earned them an honors degree, the William Frankena prize for excellence in the concentration was presented to Joel Hoffman. Joel's career is a wonderful example of how our undergraduates are frequently able to combine philosophy in exciting ways with the extraordinary range of other intellectual riches at Michigan. In addition to his stellar work in philosophy, Joel also received a B.S. in Biological and Environmental Studies. Philosophy honors graduates included Christopher Bignell, Matthew Holtzman, David Lundeen, and Adam Podlaskowski. Earlier in the year, the Haller Prize for the best papers submitted in undergraduate philosophy courses had been presented to Matthew Jones, Leah duMouchel, and Aaron Sherman.

Although we think our undergraduate concentration is rigorous and demanding, the Department is currently in the process of considering ways in which we might improve it and make it more satisfying still. In recent years, we strengthened the logic requirement to include a faculty-taught course in symbolic logic and added a requirement that students take at least one course that enrolls both advanced undergraduates and graduate students. It would be a great help to us as we think about the concentration if we had the benefit of the experience and wisdom of former Michigan Philosophy concentrators. On the final page of this issue of MPN you will find a brief description of the current concentration requirements along with a space for your comments and recommendations. Please feel free to add additional pages or to e-mail me at sdarwall@umich.edu. We would really value your perspective.

Now about the graduate program. 1998-99 was a banner year for Michigan Philosophy Ph.D's. In the past twelve months, all of the following have defended their dissertations: Jeff Brand-Ballard, John Devlin, Ted Hinchman, Nadeem Hussain, Marc Kelley, Jeff Kasser, Krista Lawlor, and Laura Schroeter. Since we generally admit between six and eight students in any given year, this is truly an amazing achievement. Last year's job market was difficult however. Some of our graduates had already taken positions the year before. Of those who sought positions last year, Krista Lawlor accepted a tenure-track position at Stanford and Jeff Brand-Ballard one at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Ted Hinchman took a visiting position at Kenyon College as did Marc Kelley at the University of Toronto. And we are pleased that Laura Schroeter and Nadeem Hussain will be joining the teaching staff at Michigan for the year.

Many of our graduate students won honors and fellowships this past year. Peter Vranas presented papers at both the Central and Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association and at the 1998 Philosophy of Science Associationmeetings in Kansas City. This last, "Epsilon-ergodicity and the success of equilibrium statistical mechanics," also received the 1998 Philosophy of Science Association prize for the best essay submitted by a graduate student. In addition, Peter Vranas won the Department's Charles Stevenson Prize for the outstanding candidacy dossier of 1998-99. Last year's John Dewey Prize for outstanding teaching by a Philosophy graduate student went to Celery Kovinsky. Celery also was awarded one of the highly competitive, university-wide Rackham Graduate School prizes for Outstanding Graduate Student Instructors.

Katie McShane won the Mary Malcomson Raphael Fellowship to support her dissertation on the foundations of environmental ethics. Awarded by the Center for the Education of Women, the Raphael supports dissertation work in the humanities and social sciences. Rackham Pre-doctoral Fellowships were won by Andrea Westlund and Peter Vranas. Andrea's dissertation engages issues of autonomy, accountability, and independence within ethics and moral psychology, including aspects relating to gender. And Peter is investigating a number of issues centered on the psychology and ethics of respect and esteem. Peter Vranas also was awarded a fellowship from the Institute for the Humanities, which he declined in order to accept the Rackham. This past summer, Charles Goodman, Douglas Klassen, and Bruce Lacey were all supported in their candidacy dossier work by Marshall Weinberg Summer Fellowships.

For the past several years, our graduate students have organized the Spring Colloquium. Jeanine Diller and Peter Vranas organized the 1999 Colloquium on the philosophy of religion. The major presenters featured two former members of the Michigan faculty: Robert Adams, now at Yale, who taught at Michigan from 1968 through 1972, and William Alston, currently at Syracuse, who was on the Michigan faculty from 1949 through 1971. They were joined by Philip Quinn of Notre Dame. The graduate student commentators were Craig Duncan, Charles Goodman, and Samuel Ruhmkorff.

The Colloquium was only one of the rich set of events in the Department during the past year. Hartry Field of New York University and Michael Bratman of Stanford each visited the Department for a week as Nelson Philosophers-in-Residence in the Fall and Winter Terms, respectively. These Nelson week-long visits provide a marvelous opportunity to get to know a philosopher and his or her work in great depth. They are especially valuable to graduate students working in the relevant areas. In addition, we had talks by Michael Tye (Temple), Jason Stanley (Cornell), Karen Neander (Johns Hopkins), Greg Ray (University of Florida), Nancy Sherman (Georgetown), and Laura Ruetsche (Pittsburgh).

Last year's Tanner Lecturer was Walter Burkert, an eminent classicist who is Honorarprofessor at the University of Zürich. The title of Professor Burkert's lecture was "Revealing Nature Amidst Multiple Cultures: A Discourse With Ancient Greeks." Also participating in the Tanner Lecture Symposium were Wendy Doniger (Divinity School, University of Chicago), Sarah Morris (Classics, UCLA), and Francesca Rochberg (History, University of California, Riverside). The Tanner Lecture is an especially visible and focused example of departmental efforts that promote interdisciplinary discussion, teaching, and research. Another vivid example is a special interdisciplinary Rackham Graduate School seminar that Peter Railton and Randolph Nesse, from the Department of Psychiatry in the Medical School, gave this past year on evolution and the moral emotions.

As you can see, we have been very busy. Enough description though, now some exemplification. I invite you to enjoy Professor James Joyce's fascinating article which follows on the role of "incredible" beliefs in strategic thinking. And please send us your thoughts on the undergraduate concentration if you have any. We need all the help we can get!

Sincerely,

Stephen Darwall

Chair

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