faculty

GENERAL INFORMATION

FACULTY

UNDERGRADUATE

Faculty
		Alphabetical Directory

Faculty Bio


	Philip Kitcher 717 Philosophy Hall Mail Code: 4971 Phone work : +1 212-854-4887 Email psk16@columbia.edu Office Hours Tuesday 2-4 and Wednesday 4:15-6 Add this person to your addressbook

Philip Kitcher
Director of Undergraduate Studies for Columbia College
Columbia University
John Dewey Professor of Philosophy and James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization

Biography
Ph.D., Princeton University (1974)

Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of science, biology and mathematics

I have taught at Vassar College, the University of Vermont, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota and UC San Diego before coming to Columbia. My teaching and research interests are in the philosophy of science, with particular emphasis on general questions in the philosophy of science, problems in the philosophy of biology, and issues in the philosophy of mathematics. I attempt to connect these questions with the central philosophical issues of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, with the history of philosophy (especially the history of modern philosophy), and with the practice and findings of the sciences, past and present.

Examples of Publications

Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, MIT Press, 1982.
The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge, Oxford University Press, 1983.
Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature, MIT Press, 1985.
The Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, 1993.
The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Science, Truth and Democracy, University Press, 2001.
In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Recent Articles

"Real Realism", Philosophical Review, 2001.
"Parfit's Puzzle", Nous, 2000.
"An Argument about Free Inquiry", Nous, 1997.
"The Evolution of Human Altruism," Journal of Philosophy, 1993.
"The Naturalists Return," Philosophical Review, 1992.
"The Division of Cognitive Labor," Journal of Philosophy, 1990.
"Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World," Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, XIII, 1989.
"The Return of the Gene," (with Kim Sterelny), Journal of Philosophy, 1988.
"Precis of Vaulting Ambition and Reply to Peer Commentary," The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1987.
"Van Fraassen on Explanation," (with Wesley Salmon), Journal of Philosophy, 1987.
"Two Approaches to Explanation," Journal of Philosophy, 1985.
"1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences," Philosophical Review, 1984.
"Species," Philosophy of Science, 1984.
"Genes," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1982.
"Explanatory Unification," Philosophy of Science, 1981.
"A Priori Knowledge," Philosophical Review, 1980.
"Frege's Epistemology," Philosophical Review, 1979.
"Theories, Theorists, and Theoretical Change," Philosophical Review, 1978.
"Kant and the Foundations of Mathematics," Philosophical Review, 1975.

Website
www.columbia.edu/~psk16