Dear Friends of the Department:

I wish you could have been at the Central Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association this past May, when the outgoing President was introduced by his successor before the annual Presidential Address. It was Ann Arbor in Minneapolis, as Allan Gibbard warmly recounted his long association with Larry Sklar and Sklar's amazing philosophical accomplishments. To give you some of the flavor of the event, as well as some interesting philosophy to think about, we are including Professor Sklar's address in this issue: "Naturalism and the Interpretation of Theories."

I can't remember another time when two Michigan philosophers were successively presidents of a division of the APA. This was only one example of what was a wonderful year for the Department. Nine graduate students have defended their dissertations since last fall. We only admit six or seven graduate students a year, so this is a stunning achievement. As you will see below, our graduates also did extremely well in attaining teaching positions at fine colleges and universities. The undergraduate program is flourishing too. Last fall we held our breath, worrying that a new Philosophy minor might draw students away from the concentration. Not to worry. By the end of the year, we had 29 Philosophy minors and 132 Philosophy concentrators, more concentrators than at any time in memory.

We also had another good faculty recruitment season. This fall we welcome Jessica Wilson, who is completing a Ph.D. at Cornell University. Professor Wilson's major teaching and research areas are metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Her research focuses on debates between physicalists (who hold that only physical things exist) and their opponents, specifically, on issues about "supervenience" and fundamental physical forces. She is the author of, among other things, "How Superduper Does Physicalist Supervenience Have to Be?" (Yes, you read that right.) We are very happy to have Professor Wilson among us and look forward to her participation in the Department.

I am also delighted to have no faculty departures to report. In fact, we are now beginning to experience an office crunch. We should wish for such problems!
     On the faculty honors front, I mentioned Larry Sklar's and Allan Gibbard's successive APA presidencies already. In addition, Peter Railton was awarded the John Stephenson Perrin Professorship by the College of LS&A, which he takes up this September. Also this September, David Velleman becomes a James B. and Grace J. Nelson Professor of Philosophy (along with Ed Curley, who continues). And Louis Loeb and Rich Thomason have been named James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellows. Last September, Ken Walton inaugurated the Charles L. Stevenson Collegiate Professorship with a lecture titled, "In Others' Shoes." This year, he will present three more lecturers as the Romanell Phi Beta Kappa Professor in Philosophy. The Romanell Professorship is awarded through a national competition, so this is a very high honor for Professor Walton, who was also elected Vice-President of the American Society for Aesthetics (and will automatically become President the year following).

In addition, P. J. Ivanhoe was S. J. Fagothey Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy at Santa Clara University last spring. And Thomas Hofweber's article, "Proof-Theoretic Reduction as a Philosopher's Tool" (Erkenntnis 53 (2000): 127-146) was selected for the next volume of the Philosophers' Annual, which annually collects the "ten best" articles published in philosophy. Finally, Stephen Darwall was elected a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This brings to six the number of Michigan philosophers who are Fellows of the American Academy: Edwin Curley, Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, Donald Regan, Lawrence Sklar, and Kendall Walton.

Last year also saw the launching of a new web-based journal by two members of our faculty: David Velleman and Stephen Darwall. Designed to counteract the dramatic price pressure caused by for-profit journal publication, Philosophers' Imprint is a joint venture with the University of Michigan Library. It aims to mimic the look and feel of the finest philosophical journals and is edited by a distinguished board of editors with rigorous standards. The Imprint began publishing this past spring with Kit Fine's "The Question of Realism." You can find the Imprint at www.philosophersimprint.org.

Last spring's reception for graduating philosophy concentrators was a wonderful affair. Joseph Dwaihy and Grace Lim were each awarded the William Frankena prize for excellence in the philosophy concentration. This was the first time that two Frankena prizes have been given, but we found it impossible to choose between these two superb students. The Haller Prize for the best papers submitted in undergraduate Philosophy courses this year were won by Seth Yalcin and Joe Dwaihy (who won in both Fall and Winter terms). Honors theses were written and defended by Amy Burke, Sarah Goldfein, Chris Haufe, Marcos Mendoza, Anthony O'Rourke, and Hilary Rosenberg. Congratulations to all 2001 Philosophy graduates!

Last year also was a year of reinvigoration of the Undergraduate Philosophy Club, which sponsored a number of discussions and a very successful debate about the rationality of belief in God. The undergraduate philosophy journal, The Meteorite, also published its second issue. Check it out: www.umich.edu/~meteorit/

As I mentioned briefly above, both the Philosophy concentration and the new Philosophy minor seem to be doing very well. Last year saw the first fruits of some changes enacted in the concentration the previous year. We now require our concentrators to have an undergraduate seminar. To make that possible for a growing number of concentrators, we scheduled two sections of Philosophy 402 (Undergraduate Seminar), which filled nicely. The students seem to appreciate this new opportunity for intensive philosophical engagement with a faculty member and their peers.

Last year was also a very successful year in the graduate program. To give you some idea of the intellectual vitality and breadth of our graduate students' work, let me just list the authors and titles of the nine completed dissertations I referred to above: Peter Gibbard ("Anti-Realism, Anti-Holism, and Rejection"), Robert Mabrito ("Studies in Disagreement and Inconsistency"), Sam Ruhmkorff ("The Reliability of Inference to the Best Explanation"), Nishi Shah ("Thinking Through Belief"), Peter Vranas ("Respect for Persons: An Epistemic and Pragmatic Investigation"), Greg Walski ("Descartes' Doctrine of the Creation of the Eternal Truths"), Rivka Weinberg ("Procreative Justice: A Contractualist Approach"), Andrea Westlund ("Selflessness and Responsibility for Self: The Implications of Deference for Autonomy, Shared Agency, and Love"), and James Woodbridge ("Truth as a Pretense: A Deflationary Account of Truth-Talk").

Let me also list the remarkable collection of institutions our students will be assuming teaching positions at this fall: Amherst College (Nishi Shah, tenure-track), Claremont-McKenna College (Ted Hinchman, tenure-track), College of William and Mary (James Woodbridge, one-year), Iowa State University (Peter Vranas, tenure-track), Ithaca College (Craig Duncan, three-year), Simon's Rock College (Sam Ruhmkorff, tenure-track), University of Pittsburgh (Andrea Westlund, tenure-track), University of San Diego (Greg Walski, post-doc teaching), and Western Michigan University (Marc Kelley, tenure-track). Also, Robert Mabrito will join our teaching staff at Michigan for this year.

Prominent among graduate students winning honors last year were Charles Goodman and Blain Neufeld, who won Rackham Pre-doctoral Fellowships to support their dissertation work. Charles is working on a fascinating project on metaphysics and Buddhism, and Blain is writing on debates about political liberalism, especially in relation to educational policy. The Charles Stevenson Award for the outstanding candidacy dossier of 2000 was won by Bruce Lacey. The John Dewey Award for excellent graduate student teaching was won by Peter Vranas. And Katie McShane won an Outstanding GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) Award, presented by the Rackham Graduate School through a campus-wide competition.

As has become our custom, the graduate students organized last year's Spring Colloquium, which was a 50th anniversary celebration of W.V.O. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Steve Peterson put together an amazing group of speakers--Gilbert Harman of Princeton, and Paul Boghogossian and Christopher Peacocke of New York University--and Steve commented, along with Greg Sax and Jim Bell. It was really an extraordinary event, for which Steve and the other graduate participants deserve great credit.

Last year's Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor was Adam Morton, a distinguished philosopher of mind, who spent the Winter Term in Ann Arbor. In addition to a seminar and an undergraduate course on the philosophies of language and mind, Professor Morton delivered the Weinberg Lecture on the moral dimensions of common-sense psychological knowledge. The occasion included the presentation of a medal by the Dean of the College of LS&A, Shirley Neuman, to Marshall Weinberg in appreciation for his gift of the Professorship. We were especially grateful that Marshall took the occasion to say some simply inspiring words about the value of philosophical education and its importance to the culture.

In addition to the Weinberg and Ken Walton's Stevenson Lectures and the Spring Colloquium, we had a full plate of other philosophical events, including two Nelson week-long visitors (Philip Kitcher and Joseph Raz), and frequent talks on Friday afternoons, including Graeme Forbes, Alison Simmons, Delia Graff, David Lewis, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Nancy Cartwright, and David Chalmers. Last year's Tanner Lecture was given by the distinguished Cambridge economist, Partha Dasgupta, on the economic analysis of environmental policy and economic development. Symposiasts included Jeremy Waldron, legal and political philosophy, Columbia, Debra Satz, political philosophy, Stanford, and T. N. Srinivasan, economics, Yale.

Well, that's about it for news. I hope you will enjoy Lawrence Sklar's "Naturalism and the Interpretation of Theories," which follows. Finally, I invite you to join us on the World Wide Web, where you can see our new and improved web pages thanks to David Velleman and the Philosophy Department staff, including pictures of faculty, graduate students and staff, and news about our undergraduate and graduate program: www.lsa.umich.edu/philosophy

Sincerely,

Stephen Darwall
Chair

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