Dear Friends of the Department,

Greetings from Ann Arbor!  We hope you've had a good year.

Our year has been full of activity and excitement, and I'd like to share some of that with you.  I suppose many of us are drawn to Philosophy in the first place by a sense of the challenges and rewards of entering into the world of thought, and this year has found us in the thick of that world. 

It seems especially appropriate to begin with this year's Faculty News.  Here is a sampling.  Stephen Darwall, whom many of you know as a former teacher and Department Chair, took on the mantle of President of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division.  For his inaugural address, he gave not a capsule summary of his distinguished past work, but a beautiful introduction to his most recent research, a path-breaking approach to rethinking the problem of moral justification via the "second-person standpoint," the standpoint of addressing oneself to others with equal claims in the moral community around us.   We are pleased to include that address as our selected faculty contribution this year.

David Velleman, who became the G.E.M.Anscombe Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan, challenged received ideas about the way that we conceive of self-reflection and its role in action and emotion in his inaugural address, "The Centered Self."  To a packed house with an interdisciplinary audience, he showed how more profound ways of thinking about the relationship of self identity and the need for self-understanding might lead us to rethink some of the standard problems of commitment in action theory and morality, including thorny issues about holding oneself to an intention over time and bringing trust into the picture in the famous "Prisoner's Dilemma."

The examples readily multiply.  Elizabeth Anderson, whose work spans many areas of ethics and the social world, gave the James Moffat Lecture in Ethics at Princeton, presenting her detailed analysis of "Ethical Assumptions of Economic Theory," while her work on equality, justice, and integration appeared in journals of law and philosophy alike.  Louis Loeb's major new book on Hume, Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise, which shows how Hume's approach to belief might provide not only explanation but also epistemic justification, was the subject of symposiums at the APA Eastern Division meetings and the meeting of the Hume Society.  Allan Gibbard's many contributions to rethinking the nature of moral thought and emotion, and its relation to evolution, were paid special tribute in a symposium at Duke and Chapel Hill.  At the same time, Gibbard's highly original work in the theory of meaning is gaining influence in various areas of philosophy.  And Kendall Walton's seminal work on mimesis and make-believe, which is finding application from semantics to metaphysics, was honored with his election to the Presidency of The American Society for Aesthetics.  

Philosophy at Michigan, then, continues thrive and take on new challenges.  One of the greatest challenges is, always, continuing and renewing our tradition of faculty excellence.  This year saw several signs of continuity and renewal.  Anthony Gillies, currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard, will be joining our faculty in the fall.  Gillies works at the intersection of issues in epistemology, linguistics, and the philosophy of language, pioneering a new model of meaning that develops the connection between the information a sentence carries in a context and the dynamics of belief-revision.  Only in his third year post-Ph.D., Gillies has already begun to make significant contributions to our understanding of dynamic models for the justification of beliefs - justification over time - as opposed to more familiar static models - justification at a time.    Ian Proops, who has become a leader in the emerging field of the history of analytic philosophy, was promoted this year to Associate Professor with tenure.  Proops has remarkable range, bridging from the 18th century to the 20th.   He has done original work on questions ranging from Kant's legal metaphors in the Critique of Pure Reason, to the notion of the universality of logic in Bertrand Russell's early work, to the interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  The Tractatus, a notoriously enigmatic work, has been the subject of many interpretative controversies, even to the point of asking whether Wittgenstein intended that the work as a whole have significant meaning or advance a coherent position.  Proops offers a systematic defense, solidly grounded in the text and in Wittgenstein's subsequent remarks and writings, which seeks to secure the philosophical meaningfulness and importance of the doctrines advanced in the Tractatus.  Proops is also famous as teacher and advisor of undergraduates, bringing into the classroom and one-on-one discussion the challenges and excitement of working together to illuminate a difficult philosophical text, even in introductory courses.  His promotion thus helps to continue and strengthen another Michigan tradition, that of dedication by research-active faculty to undergraduate instruction at all levels. 

This year also saw several departures of much-admired colleagues.  Rachana Kamtekar, Assistant Professor, has been the mainstay of our program in the area of Ancient Philosophy.  She will be leaving to take up a position at the University of Arizona.  And Jason Stanley, Associate Professor, who has helped establish Michigan's current high reputation in the philosophy of language and linguistics will join the faculty at Rutgers University.  Each of these individuals made a distinctive mark on Michigan in the years they spent here, and it is with genuine feelings of  regret that  we wish  them well  in their new positions.

The vitality of Philosophy at Michigan is also reflected in our Undergraduate Program News.  The undergraduate program continues to grow handsomely, as the number of Philosophy concentrators now approaches 200 and the number of Philosophy minors reached 40.  Our classroom experience testifies that this is indeed a time when students increasingly are looking with interest to the world of ideas, seeking to discuss and better understand such core elements of our worldview as notions as justification, objectivity, value, freedom, and the existence of God.  Classes in ethics, for example, regularly fill to overflowing.  Even with our large number of faculty doing active work in ethics, we cannot keep up with the demand.

This year's annual reception for graduating concentrators and minors was a festive event, filling Tanner Library with graduates, family, friends, and faculty.   The reception is a welcome chance to meet some of the people who have been important to our students, to say good-bye and good luck, and to recognize the accomplishment of all graduates - they have successfully completed a degree or a minor in an area study known for its difficulty and high standards.  We also give special recognition to a few students for unusual accomplishments.  This year William K. Frankena Prize (made possible by a grant from Marshall Weinberg, AB '50) for overall excellence in the Philosophy Concentration went to Luke B. Weiger.  The Haller Prize for the best undergraduate paper of the year was divided between Andrew Hoffman II, for "The Scope of the Doubt in the Third Section of  Meditations on First Philosophy" and Nicolas Bommarito, for "An Evaluation of Dissimulation in Descartes' Meditations.

In May of 2003 there were three Philosophy Honors graduates, each of whom wrote a substantial honor thesis under the guidance of a member of our faculty:   Max Helveston, "One Organ, Two Patients: A Theory of Medical Goods Distribution"; David Mollo-Christensen, "The Second Analogy from the Critique of Pure Reason: An Interpretation and Defense"; Clair Morrissey, "When You Feel Like It: Using the Sentiments to Determine How and When to Fulfill the Kantian Duty of Benevolence."

Outside the classroom, the Undergraduate students Philosophy Club continued its activities, as did the  students who have been working over a two-year period to bring the fourth issue of Meteorite to final publication.  This impressive journal, striking graphically as well as philosophically, is the work of nearly thirty different students.  It includes an interview with Allen Wood (Stanford University), the wide-ranging scholar of the history of philosophy, as well as articles that emerged from the journal's competition for undergraduate submissions.  Winning entries came from Georgetown, University of London, Oxford, and Bard.

In Graduate Program News, we're pleased to report that graduate study at Michigan continues to be among the most highly ranked in the world, last year we attracted 212 applicants from around the world for a scarce 6 entering fellowships.

Two students finished our program during the past year: Robin Kar, trained in both Law and Philosophy, defended his thesis on "Legal Parallelism: How Recent Advances in Evolutionary Game Theory and Evolutionary Psychology Can Help Us Understand the Relationships and Autonomies of Law and Morality"; and Bruce Lacey defended his thesis on "Cognitive Content and Communication".

The annual John Dewey Prize for excellence in graduate-student teaching went to Steven Daskal; the Stevenson Award for an outstanding candidacy dossier went to Remy Debes;  Christie Hartley was named an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor by the  Rachkam Graduate School.

During the past year a number of our graduate students began making their mark on the profession of philosophy.  Aaron Bronfman presented, "Kant's Postulate of Possibility," at the Boston University Graduate Student Kant Conference.  Steve Daskal commented on a paper, "Does Rawls Have a Theory of Punishment," at the Central Division APA.   David Dick presented, "Moral Skeptics, Practical Saints, and Korsgaard's Constitutive Account," with a response by Christine Korsgaard, at the Third Inter-University Workshop on Mind, Art, and Morality in Madrid.  Erica Lucast had her paper "Informed Consent and the Misattributed Paternity Problem in Genetic Counseling" accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Bioethics.

The Twenty-Fifth Annual Michigan Spring  Colloquium was planed and organized by Carole Lee.  The theme was "Topics in Naturalized Epistemology."  Professors Peter Graham (University of California, Riverside), Paul Thagard (University of Waterloo), and Richard Feldman (University of Rochester) brought three distinctive perspectives to the topic.  As is our tradition, three of our graduate students commented on the papers.  Matthew Pugsley commented on Professor Graham's  "Theorizing Justification", Joshua Brown commented on Professor Thagard's  "Coherence and Truth", and Soraya Gollop commented on Professor Feldman's "Reasonable Disagreements".

Last year saw a number of  Distinguished Visiting Faculty bring their own form of philosophical excitement to campus.  Professor Timothy Williamson (New College, Oxford), was our Nelson Philosopher-in-Residence in the Fall Term, presenting a series of seminars and a public lecture organized around a theme of great recent philosophical interest, "Knowledge, Context, and the Subject's Point of View." Professor Daniel Stoljar (Australian National University), was the Marshall Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Winter Term.  In addition to teaching an undergraduate course in metaphysics, he conducted a lively seminar on his most recent work in the philosophy of mind, and presented a public lecture on "Ignorance and Experience".  This past year's Tanner Lecture on Human Values was a stunning discussion of "Fellow Creatures:  Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals" by Christine Korsgaard, the Arthur Kingsley Professor of Philosophy at Harvard.  Korsgaard is known for her rigorous yet innovative interpretations of Kantian ethics, and the account she offered presented a new way for Kantian reasoning to incorporate the treatment of non-rational animals.  Commenting on the lecture were Marc Hauser, Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program at Harvard, Seana Schiffrin, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at UCLA, and Allan Wood, Professor of Philosophy at Stanford.  These distinguished lectures are made possible by the generosity of donors, who continue to make a crucial difference to the life of this Department at all levels.

On that happy note, let me conclude by wishing you all the best for the coming year - and hoping that this brief visit to Michigan Philosophy, and Stephen Darwall's compelling discussion of respect and the second-person, will afford you a share of the philosophical pleasures we have enjoyed this year.  

Peter Railton

John Stephenson Perrin Professor and Chair

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