Philip Kitcher

Philip Kitcher
Born	20 February 1947 London, England
Residence	New York City, United States
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Philosophy of Science, Bioethics, Philosophy of Mathematics
Institutions	Columbia University
Alma mater	Christ's College, University of Cambridge (B.A.); Princeton University (PhD)
Notable awards	Lifetime Achievement Award (American Psychological Association), Distinguished Contribution Award (American Psychological Association), Lakatos Award, Prometheus Prize (American Philosophical Association), Lannan Notable Book Award

Philip Stuart Kitcher (born 20 February 1947) is a British philosophy professor who specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of literature, and, more recently, pragmatism.

Early life

Born in London, Kitcher spent his early life in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the South Coast of the United Kingdom. He earned his B.A. in Mathematics/History and Philosophy of Science from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1969, and his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Princeton University in 1974, where he worked closely with Carl Hempel and Thomas Kuhn.

Patricia Kitcher, to whom he is married, is a well known Kant scholar and philosopher of mind who has been the Mark Van Doren Professor of Humanities at Columbia.

Philosophy

Kitcher is best known outside academia for his work examining creationism and sociobiology. His works attempt to connect the questions raised in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mathematics with the central philosophical issues of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. He has also published papers on John Stuart Mill, Kant and other figures in the history of philosophy. HIs 2012 book documented his developing interest in John Dewey and a pragmatic approach to philosophical issues. He sees pragmatism as providing a unifying and reconstructive approach to traditional philosophy issues. He had, a year earlier, published a book outlining a naturalistic approach to ethics, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press, 2011).

Criteria for what constitutes 'good science'

Kitcher's three criteria for good science are:

1. Independent testability of auxiliary hypotheses
2. Unification
3. Fecundity

He increasingly recognised the role of values in practical decisions about scientific research

Kuhn and creationism

Kitcher commented on the way creationists have misinterpreted Kuhn:

Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has probably been more widely read—and more widely misinterpreted—than any other book in the recent philosophy of science. The broad circulation of his views has generated a popular caricature of Kuhn's position. According to this popular caricature, scientists working in a field belong to a club. All club members are required to agree on main points of doctrine. Indeed, the price of admission is several years of graduate education, during which the chief dogmas are inculcated. The views of outsiders are ignored. Now I want to emphasize that this is a hopeless caricature, both of the practice of scientists and of Kuhn's analysis of the practice. Nevertheless, the caricature has become commonly accepted as a faithful representation, thereby lending support to the Creationists' claims that their views are arrogantly disregarded.

Appointments

Kitcher currently teaches at Columbia University in the Department of Philosophy where he holds an appointment as the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy. As chair of Columbia's Contemporary Civilization program (part of its undergraduate Core Curriculum), he also holds the James R. Barker Professorship of Contemporary Civilization. Before moving to Columbia, Kitcher taught at the University of Vermont, Vassar College, The University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, and for several years at University of California, San Diego where he held the position of Presidential Professor of Philosophy.

Kitcher is past president of the American Philosophical Association. In 2002, Kitcher was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was awarded the inaugural Prometheus Prize from the American Philosophical Association in 2006 in honour of extended achievement in the philosophy of science.

He has trained a number of prominent philosophers of science, including Peter Godfrey-Smith at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Kyle Stanford at the University of California at Irvine, and Bruce Glymour at Kansas State University, and C. Kenneth Waters at the University of Calgary and Michael Weisberg at the University of Pennsylvania as undergraduates.

His appointments and service have included:

• Editorial Board, Philosophy of Science, 1985–1994.
• Editor-in-Chief, Philosophy of Science, 1994–1999.
• Governing Board, Philosophy of Science Association, 1987–1991.
• Member NIH/DOE Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project, 1995–1997.
• Representative of the American Philosophical Association to Section L of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1995–1998.
• Member, Board of Officers, American Philosophical Association, 1996–99.
• Philosophy Referee for John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1994—

Publications

• Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. MIT Press, 1982 (paperback 1983). ISBN 0-262-61037-X
• The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 1983 (paperback 1984).
• Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press, 1985 (paperback 1987).
• The Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, April 1993 (paper January 1995).
• The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (Simon and Schuster [US], Penguin [UK], January 1996, paperback editions 1997). The American paperback contains a postscript on cloning, almost identical with his article "Whose Self is it, Anyway?”.
• Patterns of Scientific Controversies, essay in Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives
• Science, Truth, and Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback 2003. ISBN 0-19-516552-7
• In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, Oxford University Press, 2003. (This is a collection of seventeen of his articles).
• Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner’s Ring, co-authored with Richard Schacht, Oxford University Press, February 2004. ISBN 0-19-517359-7
• Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith, Oxford University Press, January 2007. ISBN 0-19-531444-1
• Joyce's Kaleidoscope: An Invitation to Finnegans Wake, Oxford University Press, July 2007. ISBN 0-19-532103-0
• The Ethical Project, Harvard University Press, October 2011. ISBN 0-67-406144-6
• Science in a Democratic Society, Prometheus Books, September 2011. ISBN 1-61-614407-6
• Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780199899555.
• Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, Yale University Press, 2014. ISBN 9780300203431

External links

• The Quest For Inclusion in the Science and Religion Debate
• Philip Kitcher website via Columbia University.
• Interview with Philip Kitcher. Human Nature Review. 2004 Volume 4: 87–92 (7 February).
• Interview by Point of Inquiry 13 July 2007 (mp3/podcast). Kitcher "explores the implications of Darwinism for both literalist religion, and for liberal faith" and "discusses the role and benefits of religion, and explores alternatives to it, such as secular humanism, and offers ideas for how secular humanism might become more popular in society."
• Life after faith: Interview with Richard Marshall 3am Magazine, 2 August 2015.