Michigan Philosophy News | 2025
Challenging the intellect since 1843
The GRUE
Editor-in-Chief | Art Direction | Elise Main, Executive Assistant
Editor | Carson Maynard, Graduate Studies Coordinator
Chair's Letter
by Laura Ruetsche, Department Chair
Louis E. Loeb Collegiate Professor of Philosophy
This past academic year, while ongoing Chair Tad Schmaltz relished a welldeserved sabbatical, I served as Acting Chair. The Deans supposed that my 2011–2014 term as actual chair prepared me adequately for the role. They supposed in error. Nothing could have prepared me for 2024–2025, a tumultuous year at the University of Michigan (and more generally!). The Department has long been committed to delivering transformative philosophical education at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and committed as well to working to dismantle pointless impediments to broad participation in philosophy. This past year, these commitments came under threat. These pages document how the Michigan philosophy community---students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, participants in Ethics Bowl and our COMPASS workshop--worked together to sustain our commitments to doing philosophy well and inclusively. The present overview will celebrate my colleagues’ accomplishments and contributions. Additional reports, including from the Directors of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies, will broaden the scope and increase the depth of this account of an unusual year.
Faculty News
I’ll start with the saddest news. Larry Sklar, Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, passed away on December 25,
2024, at the age of 86. As the memorial notice reproduced on page 44 attests, Larry was one of the most accomplished, and recognized, philosophers of his time. He was also a vivid presence in the Department. At a Celebration of Life this past June, friends, family, students, and colleagues (past and present) gathered, in person at the Michigan League and over Zoom, to share memories of Larry. At Alles Sklar, a small academic workshop convened in Larry’s honor the next day, a quartet of his former students and advisees presented recent work in the philosophy of science. Both events made manifest how much Larry contributed, to the profession and to our community, and how much he will be missed.
https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/ news-events/all-news/search-news/inmemoriam--larry-sklar0.html
Alles Sklar program:
https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/newsevents/all-events.detail.html/13557121876956.html
The next piece of news is bittersweet in the extreme. Peter Railton , Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, and John Stephenson Perrin Professor, retired on May 31, 2025. Peter spent his entire illustrious career at UM, joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 1979 and attaining the rare triple of a Thurnau professorship (which recognizes outstanding teachers), a DUP
(UM’s highest faculty rank), and an endowed chair. The honors are richly deserved. In addition to making lasting contributions to many areas of philosophy (especially normative ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of science), Peter has brought tremendous empathy, wisdom, and insight to conversations in the Department and in philosophy more broadly. One April afternoon, friends, colleagues, students, and staff crowded a corridor of Mason Hall, where we burst into applause when Peter emerged (nestled in a cloud of inquisitive undergraduates) from teaching his very last class. We hope and expect that we haven’t seen the end of Peter. Not only will he maintain an emeritus (that is, windowless) office in Angell Hall, he and Sarah Buss are on tap to deliver the 2027–2028 Tanner Lectures in Human Values at the University of Michigan.
Peter Railton is warmly greeted by colleagues and students as he exits his final class before retirement
On to unmitigatedly happy news! First, we have a new colleague this academic year, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Classical Studies Claudia Yau, a 2021 Princeton PhD whom we recruited
successfully from Northwestern. Claudia specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on ancient ethics, politics, and epistemology---and their interface. Bringing Claudia on board will strengthen our connections with U-M’s outstanding Classical Studies Department, consolidate interdisciplinary programming in ancient philosophy, and reinforce and expand connective intellectual tissue bridging the history of philosophy and contemporary work. We are very excited to welcome her to Angell.
Second, other colleagues are returning in elevated roles. Maegan Fairchild, Renée Jørgensen , and Sonya Özbey (jointly appointed with Asian Languages and Cultures) all sailed through their promotions to Associate Professor with tenure. In addition, Maegan received the prestigious Class of 1923 teaching award. Selected by the Executive Committee of the College on the basis of its comprehensive review of the teaching files submitted as part of promotion cases, this award recognizes new associate professors who complement truly outstanding teaching with "achievements and promise [that] augur well for a productive career as a scholar." Upon being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, Renée inherited the mantle of Max Mendel Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, from Liz Anderson. Renée delivered the inaugural Shaye lecture on October 24, 2025. Renée’s book, Rewriting Rights: Making Reasonable Mistakes in a Social Context , is currently available for pre-order from Oxford University Press.
As long as you’re ordering excellent books by our distinguished faculty, consider Wrongs and Rights Come Apart (Harvard University Press, 2025) by Professor of Law and Philosophy Nicolas Cornell; Words in Action:
An Introduction to the Social Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Professor of Philosophy Ishani Maitra and her coauthor Mary Kate McGowan, Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley; and Knowledge: A Human Interest Story, published (open access--the previous link should take you there) November 2024, by Marshall M. Weinberg Professor Brian Weatherson. Among the many impacts faculty and graduate students have had over the past year on philosophy journals, especially noteworthy is the publication of Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies Liz Anderson’s Dewey Lectures, "Challenges to Creating an Egalitarian Society," as an entire issue of The Journal of Philosophy. And mark your calendars: C. H. Langford Collegiate Professor of Philosophy Jim Joyce is on tap to give this year’s Dewey Lectures at the meeting of the Central Division of the APA in Chicago in February.
It is no surprise that a faculty this active has racked up recognitions beyond those already noted. Liz occupied the Cardinal Mercier Chair at KU Leuven in Belgium in May and delivered the HLA Hart Memorial Lecture at Oxford University that same month. In a year where opportunities for humanities funding evaporated at an alarming rate, Professor Victor Caston and his co-PI, Texas A&M Professor of Philosophy José Bermudez, secured NEH funding for a summer school on "Aristotle and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind" to be held next June. Associate Professor Emmalon Davis and philosophy PhD student Paulina Ezquerra were awarded a grant from the Inclusive History Project to support the development of a proposed undergraduate course on philosophical research methods and disciplinary belonging. Designed to promote and disseminate knowledge about Michigan Philosophy’s past and to explore
Michigan Philosophy’s past and to explore new possibilities for using historically underappreciated tools in contemporary philosophical inquiry, the course will use archival materials to explore the intellectual history of our Philosophy Department. Also, Emmalon and her co-PI Ann Heffernan (assistant professor of Political Science) are among the six teams recently selected from a large field vying for funding through the Provost's Disability Scholarship Initiative.
Staff News
This summer witnessed the departure of two long-serving Philosophy Department staff, one to retirement and one to another department. The retiree is Shelley Anzalone, who has been the Department’s Executive Assistant since 2018. In that role, Shelley supported hiring and promotion efforts, tried to keep the Chair focused and on task--and acted as editor-in-chief of the Michigan Philosophy News. Kelly Campbell has been our Chief Administrator since 2018. As the job title suggests, the CA oversees just about every aspect of the Department’s activity, and functions as a valued source of guidance and advice about institutional resources and possibilities. Kelly has moved into the CA role in the Department of Statistics. We congratulate Kelly and Shelley on these transitions and thank them for their service and support!
Events
The academic year abounded in special events. In September, Ann Arbor native Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, delivered the Ferrando Family Lecture in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. His highly timely topic was the
constitution and the presidency. The 13th annual Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium, organized by the Weinberg Center for Cognitive Science, asked, "What do large language models tell us about human language?" Three guest speakers (Jordan Codner, SUNY-Stony Brook Linguistics; Richard Futrell, UC-Irvine Language and Science; Ellie Pavlick, Brown Computer Science) offered perspectives; a roundtable discussion and an undergraduate poster session followed.
Throughout the year, we enjoyed Departmental colloquia on topics ranging from Stoic treatments of expressive statements (Professor Susan Bobzien, Oxford) to the social power of scoring systems (Professor Thi Nguyen, Utah) to Aristotle’s logic (Professor Marko Malink, NYU) to the metaphysics of science (Professor Nina Emery, Mt. Holyoke) to the early moderns on things and properties (Professor Marleen Rozemond, Toronto).
Every spring we host a colloquium conceived and executed by our graduate students. This past April the spring colloquium "Philosophy For a Changing World: Theorizing in the Age of Information Technology" featured faculty
speakers Professor Kathleen A. Creel (Northeastern University), Professor Hanti Lin (UC Davis), Professor Salomé Viljoen (University of Michigan, School of Law) and Professor Don Fallis (Northeastern University), with graduate student commentators Alison Weinberger, Sophia Wushanley, Mitch Barrington , and Lorenzo Manuali (who also served as colloquium organizer). A range of graduate student groups further enriched our collective intellectual life by sponsoring visiting speakers and organizing workshops: the Race, Gender, Feminist, and Political Philosophy reading group brought in Professor Johanna Oksala from Loyola University-Chicago; Professor Anne Eaton of the University of Illinois gave the keynote address at the UM-MIT Social Philosophy Workshop, which also featured graduate student speakers and commentators from the participating departments; ClaremontMcKenna Professor Gabrielle Johnson gave a lecture to the Knowledge, Information and Society working group; and the Mind and Moral Philosophy Working group brought Professor Antonia Peacocke, from Stanford, to campus.
11-15
You Make This Possible
Even partway through the catalog of goingson that is the Michigan Philosophy News, the debt of gratitude we owe our donors is apparent. Donors help us to maintain the outstanding faculty whose exploits are chronicled in these pages. Particularly instrumental here are the Malcolm L. Denise Philosophy Endowment, honoring Theodore Denise and supporting faculty recruitment; the Nathaniel Marrs Fund, promoting faculty retention; and a quartet of endowed professorships: the Weinberg Professorship (held by Brian Weatherson), the Nelson Professorship (held by Sarah Buss), the Max Mendel Shaye Professorship of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (held by Renée Jørgensen), and the Wilhartz Professorship (held by Sarah Moss).
Donors help us to support, and to recognize, outstanding students at both the graduate
and undergraduate levels. Particularly instrumental here are the Weinberg Endowment for the Frankena and Stevenson Prizes and the Weinberg Endowment for Philosophy. Donors help us to enrich the student experience; for instance, through Richard and Carolyn Lineback’s sponsorship of graduate student editors for the Philosopher’s Annual, and the Ilene Goldman Block Memorial Fund, which funds internships for our undergraduate Philosophy and PPE majors, among many other things. Donors help us to participate in sustained and thoughtful interdisciplinary interactions; for instance, through the Weinberg Fund for Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, the Hough Fellowship in Psychology and Ethics, and the PPE Strategic Fund, the latter of which supports our thriving interdisciplinary undergraduate program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).
In the present economic climate, maintaining a competitive philosophy department serving the constituency of a public university is no mean feat. I like to think that we’re pulling it off. I know that, if we are pulling it off, it’s only with the help and support of readers of the MPN. We are grateful to all of you.
Point your browser to https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/alumni-friends/ endowments.html for a description of a variety of opportunities to donate to endowment funds. The Department also has an Annual Fund that provides essential support for various undergraduate and graduate activities and programs. If you would like to donate to the Fund, you can find information on how to do so at https://lsa.umich.edu/ philosophy/alumni-friends/annual-fund-giving.html.
Yours,
Laura Ruetsche
Louis E. Loeb Collegiate Professor of Philosophy
UNDERGRADUATE PHILOSOPHY NEWS
by Dave Baker, Undergraduate Chair, PPE Chair, Professor
It’s been a great year for the undergraduate program in philosophy here at Michigan. Courses are filling up, we have great graduate student instructors to staff them, and our major keeps graduating healthy numbers of students (as are the related majors in cognitive science and PPE).
Our Michigan undergraduate philosophy journal, Meteorite, published another great new issue in Spring 2025. The articles range across philosophical issues including existentialist freedom, feminist philosophy, and Aristotle’s ethics. The issue also includes in-depth interviews with UM professors Jim Joyce and Janum Sethi.
Editor-in-chief Ammar Ahmad deserves a shout-out, along with managing editor Ethan Eliasson , web/blog manager Ashley Sawicke, typesetter Alan Tan , and associate editors Summer Adams, Jameson Kanary, Connor Lewis, Megan McKee, Alex Nowakoski, Hunter Ryerson, Alexander Voorhees, and Grace Zhan . These students have done great work keeping philosophy active and energized at UM.
You can check out the current issue of Meteorite—and the many fascinating past issues—on the web at https://sites.lsa.umich. edu/meteorite/
With our recent expansions of the faculty in history of philosophy, our undergraduate offerings in this area are growing. For the 2024/25 academic year we added a new course on medieval philosophy, as an intermediary between our courses in ancient philosophy on the one hand and early modern philosophy on the other. The medieval period features a rich literature in issues related to the philosophy of religion, as one might expect. It was also a very fruitful period for metaphysics, touching on many topics that a contemporary metaphysics student would find familiar. Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas are foregrounded in Victor Caston’s new course, along with major figures from the Islamic and Jewish traditions such as alGhazali and Maimonides (Rambam).
Another new course offering this academic year was Gabriel Shapiro’s class on the philosophy of friendship. The course examines the nature of friendship and its connection to other significant relationships, drawing on the work of the ancients as well as contemporary figures like Susan Wolf, Tom Hurka and Daniela Dover.
Our 2025 philosophy graduation reception featured a speech from Daniel Herwitz, the Huetwell Professor of Comparative Literature, History of Art, Philosophy and Art and Design. (Many of you no doubt have fond memories of his Contemporary Moral Problems course, which usually focuses on South African reconciliation.) He gave a moving speech which drew from Montaigne, Emerson, and the African philosophy of Ubuntu, discussing the place of philosophy in life and the ways it might inform the students’ lives going forward.
One of the most uplifting parts of the graduation reception is the small awards ceremony at the end, when we administer department prizes for outstanding achievement in our curriculum.
The Haller Term Prize recognizes outstanding work done by an undergraduate in our 400-level philosophy courses (Because
there isn’t time to evaluate candidates between exams and graduation, the Winter term prizes are awarded in the following academic year). The Winter 2024 Haller was awarded to Madi Carter for her work in Andreas Gailus’s course on 20th Century German thought. Gailus tells me that both her papers for the course “were clearly written, tightly argued, and unusually creative in their extension of older critical theories to contemporary political and social dynamics.”
The Fall 2024 Haller winner was Junjie Lu, for Gordon Belot’s upper-level philosophy of science course. Belot described him as “one of the most impressive undergraduates that I have ever taught,” and wrote that he was thinking at the same level as the graduate students in the class. Remarkably, this was Junjie’s first philosophy class!
We would also like to give special recognition to our students who wrote and defended an Honors thesis:
Ammar Ahmed “ Comparative Vices in Rawls’ Ideal Theory”, advised by Daniel Herwitz with Laura Ruetsche as second reader
Umana Ahmed “ What Justice Demands: Conceptualizing the Duties of the Privileged Through a Relational Framework, advised by Renee Jorgensen with Daniel Fryer as second reader
UNDERGRADUATE GRADUATION 2025
PHILOSOPHY GRADUATES
Ammar Ahmad
Umana Ahmed
Rubina Alseikhan
Saige Baker
Emma Baron
Avery Berkebile
Stefan Blazen
Brooke Booska
Anjali Brown
Benny Cho
Elishabeth Cunningham
Maegan Davis
Rebecca Dooley
Madeline Dunlap
Rawan Elhusseini
Luke Estey
Noor Fares
Nayseth Fernandez
Tianli Jiang
Jameson Kanary
Olivia Kane
Adrian Karam
Siddharth Kaul
Aprile Kim
Benjamin Kirsch
Yoonjoo Lee
Jack Mack
Riley Manwaring
Mae Marshall
Reda Mazeh
Megan McKee
Alex Miller
Ishan Nyati
Cyrus Raiszadeh
Prince Rankin
Megan Read
Sye-James Scott
Maria Shaya
David Sposito
Patrycja Stachnik
Tyler Straight
Robert Strauss
Ethan Tai
Sierra Turner
Abigael Vides
Yizhuo Wang
Matthew Wu
Ruoyun Zhang
PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY HONORS STUDENTS
Ammar Ahmad
Comparative Vices in Rawls' Ideal Theory
Umana Ahmed
What Justice Demands: Conceptualizing the Duties of the Privileged Through a Relational Framework
Rawan Elhusseini
Building Better Bridges: The Limitations of Traditional and Digital Solidarity
Ishan Nyati
Defending an Alternative Vision of a Democratic Society
Maria Shaya
Self-Estrangement: The Hidden Culprit Behind Ecological Destruction
Rosemary Zhang
Ecumenical Egalitarianism.
CONGRATULATIONS
CLASS OF 2025
UNDERGRADUATE PPE NEWS
by Dave Baker, Undergraduate Chair, PPE Chair, Professor
The Program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics continues to attract some of the most remarkable of Michigan’s leaders and best to the study of political economy. In the past year we’ve enacted a long-standing plan to increase the size of the major to roughly 60 students per year, up from our previous 40. It’s been a disappointment to turn away many highly qualified applicants in the past, who would have thrived in the major. So we are excited to bring more students into this unique program of study.
The 2024/25 academic year was the first year on the job for our new assistant director, Rachael Goodyer. Dr. Goodyer earned her PhD in philosophy from Harvard. Her dissertation concerned animal ethics, and she has broad interests in ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy. In her first year at UM she taught PPE 300 and 400, as well as philosophy courses on the value of education, and on love and faith. She also works with PPE students in an advising capacity.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of PPE advising is seeing what students come up with for their themes. Our theme requirement allows students to bring together a series of three courses in an area of particular
interest connected to the major. To give you an idea of the variety of interests among our majors, here is a small sample of recently declared themes:
Business Management and Operations
Political Strategy and Perception
International Policy and Economic Relations
Political Economy of the Fashion Industry
Environmental Decision Making
Law and Policy Effects on Domestic Legislative Processes
Our 2025 PPE graduation speaker was Ekow Yankah, Thomas M Cooley Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at UM. His speech revolved around several themes: moral dilemmas are difficult to solve, the value of a life can only truly be assessed in retrospect, and disagreement is the deepest problem in politics (but it must not be seen as irreconcilable).
As you can tell, the speech spoke to questions at the heart of PPE, and it was warmly received by the students and their families. It was one of those moments that make me proud of UM as an institution.
Each year, in cooperation with the Donia Center for Human Rights, we award the Ian Fishback Fellowship to enable a PPE major to pursue extracurricular activities related to human rights. The fellowship was endowed in memory of the late Ian Fishback—a US Army officer and UM Philosophy PhD who fought for the human rights of detainees during the Global War on Terror.
The 2025 Fishback Fellowship was awarded to Meiting Xu, to allow her to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum. Of her trip, Meiting writes:
I am incredibly fortunate to have spent a week of my summer break in Oslo, Norway, as a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) major. There, I learned about the ways that people in Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, Africa, Hong Kong, and Uyghur have reached out to the international community, requesting their understanding, financial support, and strategic cooperation. I understand the need to make imaginative remarks and demonstrate solidarity in the face of threats, even though pressure on the ruling party does not always work. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, North Korean defector Kim Yumi, former Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sir William Browder, the head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, and Pulitzer Prize winner Gaëlle Borgia are among the prominent speakers. Their emphasis on
individual struggles against repressive states made me reevaluate the true effects on freedom fighters both inside and outside of their native nations. This fellowship experience has been a breeding ground for new ideas and perspectives when it comes to understanding human rights violations and what freedom fighters around the world have long supported. The event also emphasized the need to form partnerships with democratic nations while enforcing economic sanctions, as well as the U.S.'s ability to curb authoritarian behavior. All things considered, this experience has given me some ideas for how to start my thesis paper and demonstrated to me what advocacy actually entails—that is, while advocacy demands significant sacrifices, the fight for freedom is always important. At the same time, I have deepened my commitment to studying and proposing new laws that can better address human rights violations on the high seas in the future. After all, the legal tools serve as one of the best weapons and are gateways to freedom when fighting for truth, justice, and peace.
I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Donia Human Rights Center, the PPE department, Mr Robert Donia, and Mdm Jane Ritter for making this experience possible for me. Thank you for funding this fellowship and supporting my proposal. This experience will undoubtedly help me achieve my academic and professional objectives.
CLASSROOM REPORT
by Renée Jørgensen, Max Mendel Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Associate Professor
Everywhere you turn, someone is selling a “smart” solution, offering data analytics as a way to gain valuable insights to help optimize a product, tailor an intervention, or “improve efficiency”. Very often these tools have unintended social consequences: résumé screening tools trained on the successful applications of past employees inadvertently downgrade women’s applications; facial-recognition tools have high error rates for darkerskinned people; productivity trackers disincentivize taking time to talk problems through with customers or colleagues; adaptive recommender algorithms make it possible for isolated individuals to find each other and form like-minded communities. These aren’t all bad effects, but they do raise a host of urgent questions about whether and how these tools can be used in a fair and just society.
This past Winter term, students in my upper-level undergraduate course, Phil 362: Data and the Just Society, did a deep dive into the political philosophy of algorithmic and AI tools. Some of the questions we explored included: what are the benefits— and costs—of using ‘data exhaust’ to shape local government? (For instance, using the location data in large datasets to decide what bus routes and social services to run?) If we could lower the crime rate by using statistical models to identify locations or individuals for police attention, is there any reason not to do it? When using past datasets to make predictions about particular individuals’ likelihood of graduating high school, being re-arrested, performing well in a job, or responding well to a treatment, what information can or should we use? What does it take to make these kinds of predictions and decisions in fair and non-discriminatory ways?
We also explored political questions as they arise specifically for online spaces. Should we be worried about being subtly manipulated by the ads or content feeds constructed for us by recommender algorithms? (No, but it’s complicated). Do online platforms have an obligation to moderate or curate the content they host in order to protect users (including minors) from harm? What about to avoid creating public threats by radicalizing users? (Yes, but it’s complicated). Are there moderating tools and policies that can feasibly be used at the scale these platforms need, without threatening users’ autonomy or the values animating our commitment to free speech rights? If building the datasets for training these tools requires some workers to view thousands of instances of horrifyingly graphic content so that they can label it ‘objectionable’, can this be justified? Should the beneficiaries compensate these
workers in some way? workers in some way?
Even superficially easy questions turn out to be thorny. It’s clear that we should not adopt hiring practices that directly discriminate against women. But in many fields, the fact that women were openly discriminated against in the past has left them seriously under-represented in the datasets of highperforming past employees that are used to train models to spot a promising candidate. So, when these models encounter resumés with information that doesn’t appear on men’s resumés—like participation in a “women’s athletic club” or attendance at women’s colleges—they are discounted as unlikely to be successful employees. There are two hard problems here. One is technical: how can you train a model to recognize the job-relevant features your past good employees had in common, without also learning their shared features that are
artifacts of past discriminatory social policy, rather than indicators of future performance or fittingness? The other is philosophical: are there contexts where, because of the way that prior injustice has shaped the current facts and available evidence, we can’t justifiably use predictive tools to decide which individuals should receive competitive resources (like job opportunities)?
To grapple with questions like these, you need a firm grasp on foundational issues like why we care about democracy, and what grand-sounding values like “autonomy”, “self-rule”, “privacy”, “fairness”, and “equality” amount to. You also need to have a sense of how the new suite of tools work: how they’re trained, what it could mean to say that a dataset, algorithm, or decision procedure is ‘biased’, and what sorts of interventions on their performance are and aren’t possible. Students in the course read
published chapters and papers in core political philosophy to get a better understanding of the core values of a just society, supplemented with cutting-edge articles discussing specific applications or tools in fields ranging from Philosophy to Legal Theory, Computer Science, Anthropology, Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies. Frequently enough, we added a recent decision from a high court in the US or EU that turned on the question we were discussing.
But sometimes the best way to understand something is to try to build or use it—so I designed Phil 362 to include a number of ‘hands-on’ components. In one activity, students completed worksheets to demonstrate the mathematical impossibility of making a predictive tool that is simultaneously ‘fair’ in all the ways that are core to a commonsense characterization of
fairness. In another, students leveraged multiple databases to re-identify information in an anonymized dataset, illustrating the limitations of privacy protections.
One of the most successful hands-on exercises had the students grappling with the impact of new technologies on their own education. One of the course modules focuses on the phenomenon of ‘value capture’. When success toward a goal that you fundamentally care about (like education) is measured and incentivized by a proxy metric (like grades received on an essay), we’re at risk of being motivationally ‘captured’ by the proxy and behaving in ways that undermine our original value (doing things to get good grades at the expense of actually learning). We had a long discussion about possible ways to use Large Language Models as tools in this kind of class: to summarize or synthesize texts, to outline a paper, to write essays. I had them
spend a week experimenting, and then we discussed how that use affected their understanding of the material. At the end of the module, I asked each student to privately tell me whether they would prefer to be assessed through a written final paper or a one-on-one oral exam, and explain why. All of the students independently preferred an oral exam. The reason? They believed they would learn best during the term if they knew that they would need to be ready to discuss an issue, fielding follow-up questions and being ready to say more on a topic.
Both they and I found these exams a rewarding way to close out the term: they were focused on mastering material, equipping themselves to demonstrate the skill of understanding and critical engagement that was -- after all -- the true aim of the course.
UNDERGRADUATE GRADUATION 2025
PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, AND ECONOMICS GRADUATES
Abigail Bartley
Matthew Bennink
Caroline Berkey
Bennett Colis
Mia Curwin
Jared Dougall
Dana Elobaid
John Flater
Claudia Flynn
John Gerdeman
Ashley Golden
George Hill
Isabelle Howard
Owen Kris
Zhicong Liu
Samantha Miller
Bradley O'Brien
Jack Paroly
Rahil Patel
Claire Phillips
Conner Reagan
Daniel Rosenkranz
Lily Scaife
Evann Seaman
Thomas Shea
Ellie Sinha
Arianna Smith
Palak Srivastava
Maddox Tapp
Deren Tekce
Mario Thaqi
Alison Walsh
Henry Wolf
PPE
PPE HONORS STUDENTS
Graduation is also a time to recognize our PPE honors thesis students. These students must first be accepted to the rigorous thesis track in either philosophy, political science or economics, then sink a year of their life into research at a time when many of their friends are kicking back and enjoying senior year. The work they put into their research is an inspiration, as is the broad range of topics covered.
Bradley O'Brien
Tinkering with the Machinery of Death: A Comparative Historical Institutional Analysis of State-Level Death Penalty
Politics Post Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia
Conner Reagan
The Authority of Agency: Rational Willing in the Face of Incommensurability
Palak Srivastava A Nozickian Defense of Redistributive Taxation
Alison Walsh
Home of the Critics: Institutional Neutrality and Silencing Speech
Henry Wolf
Reagan to Trump: the Rise of the Nationalist Right
CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2025
GRADUATE NEWS
by David Manley, Director of Graduate Studies & Carson Maynard, Graduate Studies Coordinator
In the past year, our graduate students continued to raise Michigan Philosophy’s profile through research, teaching, and service. Their work appeared in leading venues such as Synthese, with additional papers accepted at Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. The reach of their work is truly global – presented at conferences and workshops across four continents – and also spans a huge range of
philosophical areas, from the foundations of quantum physics and early modern history to pressing contemporary issues in bioethics, AI ethics, and social philosophy. Our graduate students have deservedly earned numerous competitive external honors, including the Felix S. Cohen Prize from Yale Law School and fellowships from the Future of Life Foundation, the Mercatus Center, and the Institute for Humane Studies.
Most impressively, they have achieved all this while continuing to animate our department’s intellectual life. They spearheaded several academic events, including a timely Spring Colloquium on "Theorizing in the Age of Information Technology" and the inaugural Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy. Their commitment to fostering an inclusive and supportive environment also continues to grow, highlighted by the expansion of our affinity groups — including
the new Black Philosophy Graduate Students (BPGS) group — and their dedicated leadership in vital initiatives like the Michigan COMPASS workshop, Minorities and Philosophy (MAP), and the High School Ethics Bowl. And finally, it was a banner year for teaching, with Malte Hendrickx and Julian Rome both earning the prestigious university-wide Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award — the first time Philosophy students have received this honor since 2018.
In the last year, our students’ publications have included:
· Francisco Calderón Ossa , "The unphysicality of Hilbert spaces," co-authored with Gabriele Carcassi and Christine Aidala, Quantum Studies: Mathematics and Foundations (2025). DOI: https://doi. org/10.1007/s40509-024-00357-0.
· —, "El 'Sócrates presocrático' de Las Nubes de Aristófanes," in Las nubes; traducción, notas y ensayos interpretativos, ed. Sergio Ariza, Ediciones Uniandes, pp 111–140 (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.51573/ Andes.9789587988338.9789587988352.
· Shannon Chang, "Listeria monocytogenes adenosine auxotrophs are impaired for intracellular and extracellular growth but retain potent immunogenicity," co-authored with Ying Feng, Mariya Lobanovska, Jenna Vickery, Jesse Castillo, Leslie Güereca, Michel DuPage, and Daniel Portnoy, Infection and Immunity (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1128/iai.00343-25.
· Malte Hendrickx , "Why were there no human challenge trials for covid vaccines?", in Applications of Public Choice Theory to Public Policy, eds. Brian Meehan, Jayme S Lemke, and Paul Dragos Aligica, Bloomsbury Academic (2025).
· Margot Witte, "Using and Losing Our Concepts," Synthese 206 (92), (2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05173-6.
And the papers accepted for publication include:
· Francisco Calderón Ossa , "Feminist and Trauma-Informed Approaches to Teaching Formal Philosophy," co-authored with Thomas M. Colclough and Helen Meskhidze, Hypatia (forthcoming). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2025.10025 .
· Paul de Font-Reaulx , "Do Expected Utility Maximizers Have Commitment
Issues?", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming). DOI: https:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ phpr.70064 .
· Aaron Glasser, "Affect in Action," coauthored with Zachary C. Irving, Australasian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming).
· Lorenzo Manuali, "Addictive Motivational Scaffolds and the Structure of Social Media," Synthese (forthcoming).
Our students have showcased an exceptionally wide array of work at conferences:
· Mitch Barrington , "Duty and Risk," presented at the University of Toronto Graduate Conference (with comments by Ian Campbell), Toronto, Canada, October 2024; and at the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division (with comments by Petra Kosonen), San Francisco CA, April 2025.
· Elizabeth Beckman , "Epistemic skepticism on moral responsibility," presented at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina, March 2025, and at the 6th FINO Graduate Conference on Contemporary Issues across Ethics and Epistemology, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, September 2025.
· Francisco Calderón Ossa , "The (beta-)decay of effective realism," presented at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Munich, Germany, September 2024, and as a poster at the Philosophy of Science Association meeting, New Orleans LA, November 2024.
· —,, "Inconsistencies in Quantum Field Theories: Replacement vs. Refinement?", presented at the Midwest PhilPhys Meeting, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN, February 2025; at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology
(virtual), June 2025; and at the American Institute of Physics Biennial Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences, Salvador, Brazil, August 2025.
· , "Uses of Value Judgments in Quantum Field Theories: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Physics?", presented at the International Conference on the History of Quantum Physics – HQ-5, Salvador, Brazil, August 2025.
· Shannon Chang, "Stubborn Symmetries and Epistemic Egoism – Trouble for Quietist Realism," presented at the DukeUNC Graduate Conference, Durham NC, March 2025.
· , "Theorizing with and without Normative Baggage," presented at PhiLang2025, Łódź, Poland, May 2025.
· Sean Costello, "Émilie Du Châtelet on Love," presented at the Women, Dignity, and Reason in the Early Modern Period (1600–1800) Conference, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, December 2024.
· , "Henry More on the Extended Mind," presented at the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, New York NY, January 2025.
· , "Descartes on the Indivisible Mind," presented at the York University Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, York University, Toronto, Canada, June 2025.
· Paul de Font-Reaulx , "What stands to desire as perception stands to belief?", presented at the NYU Mind group, New York NY, December 2024.
· , "Do we want technology to do what we want?", presented at the IHS Summer Fellowship, Charlotte NC, June 2025.
· Lindy Featherly, "Sexual Violations:
Imaginaries and Intersectionality," presented at the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World Annual Conference, Chicago IL, July 2025.
· Aaron Glasser, "Representing Relevance," presented at the Society for Philosophy and Neuroscience, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis MO, May 2025.
· , "Affect in Action," presented at the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions, Sorbonne, Paris, France, June 2025.
· , "Steering Salience," presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, June 2025.
· Lila Graham , " ‘Would You Love Me If I Was a Worm?’ and the Limits of Modal Factualism," presented at the Metaphysical Mayhem Workshop, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, May 2025.
· Gillian Gray, "On Identity Ambivalence," pre-read presented at the Knowledge in Crisis Social Metaphysics Workshop, CEU, Vienna, Austria, June 2025.
· , "Emerging Social Group Identities," presented at ISOS Social Ontology 2025, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, August 2025.
· Emma Hardy, "Local Food and Producer-Only Farmers Markets," presented at the Philosophy of Food Graduate and Early Career Workshop, University of Milan, Milan, Italy, March 2025.
· , "Competing Food Values," presented at the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Association / Association for the Study of Food and Society Annual Conference, Oregon State University, Corvallis OR, June 2025.
· Malte Hendrickx , "Difficulty and Demandingness," presented at the Mental Sciences Club, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, October 2024.
· , "Effort," presented at the Serious Metaphysics Group, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, November 2024.
· , "Moral Burnout," presented at the Summer Graduate Conference, Institute for Humane Studies, Arlington VA, December 2024; at the Postgraduate Working Group, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, April 2025; at the Aristotelian Society Postgraduate Session, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, July 2025; at the Swiss Philosophical Association and the Effort and Value Workshop, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, August 2025.
· Gabrielle Kerbel, "Dilating and Contracting non-Arbitrarily," presented at the 16th Annual Notre Dame/Northwestern Graduate Epistemology Conference, Northwestern University, Evanston IL, May 2025; and at the SIFA "Minds and Worlds" Conference, University of Turin, Turin, Italy, August 2025.
· , "Undermining Eternalism," presented at Beyond the Present: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Time, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, July 2025.
· , "Rationalizing Constraints on Chance and Estimation", World Congress of Philosophy, Rome, Italy, August 2024, and at the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division, San Francisco CA, April 2025.
· Dennis Lee, "The Political Ideal and the Ethical Ideal in Marx and Kant," presented at King’s College London Political Theory Graduate Conference (virtual ), April 2025,
and at the Summer Graduate Conference, Institute for Humane Studies, Arlington VA (virtual), May 2025.
· Zuzanna Lutrzykowska , "Privacy and Privilege: Tensions in Physician Advocacy", poster presentation at the American Physician Scientists Association (AAP/ASCI/ APSA) Joint Conference, Chicago IL, April 2025.
· , "Maintaining democratic equality in an era of exploding health care costs: Is the single-tier ideal in health systems obsolete?", lightning talk at the Brocher Summer Academy on Global Population Health, Geneva, Switzerland, June 2025.
· Lorenzo Manuali, "A Method for Rational and Authentic Epistemically Transformative Choice," presented at the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, New York NY, January 2025.
· , "Addictive Motivational Scaffolds and the Structure of Social Media," presented at the Society for Philosophy and Neuroscience, Washington University in St Louis, St Louis MO, May 2025.
· , "Can LLMs Fix Democracy?" copresented with Seth Lazar at FAccT: ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Athens, Greece, June 2025.
· Mica Rapstine, "Moral Epiphany and Insight in Problem Solving," presented at the Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning Research Group Graduate Conference (virtual), February 2025.
· , "Is Moral Feeling Owed?", presented at the University of Nebraska Lincoln Graduate Philosophy Conference, Lincoln NE, March 2025.
· , "The Possibility of Moral Feeling," presented at the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, Boulder CO, August 2025.
· Julian Rome, "Trans Utopian Temporality," presented at the MidSouth Philosophy Conference, Memphis TN, March 2025.
· Ethan Seidenberg, "Rights-Based Tort Reform," presented at the Law and Philosophy Student Scholarship Workshop, Yale University, New Haven CT, March 2025.
· Margot Witte, "You Should Be Tortured: The Relational Value of Internal Conflict," presented at the Chapel Hill Normativity Workshop, Chapel Hill NC, March 2025; at the Waterloo Graduate Workshop, Waterloo CA, April 2025; at the Northwestern Society for the Theory of Ethics and Politics (NUSTEP), Evanston, May 2025; at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Ithaca NY, June 2025; and at the Workshop on Gender and Philosophy (WOGAP), Boston MA, June 2025.
· Yixuan Wu, "Sexual Racism as Perception", presented at the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, New York NY, January 2025; and at the Arizona Feminist Philosophy Graduate Conference, Tucson AZ, February 2025.
· Sophia Wushanley, "Functional Privacy," presented at the MINT Lab (virtual), Australian National University, virtual, June 2025.
Two students also presented commentaries at conference sessions:
Audrey Powers’ "For and Against Moral Contingentism," Moral Metaphysics at Maryland, College Park MD, May 2025.
· Gabrielle Kerbel commented on Heather Demarest’s "Resisting the Second Law of Thermodynamics," LanCog Summer Metaphysics Workshop, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2025.
Several of our students also attended conferences and summer institutes:
· Francisco Calderón Ossa attended the "Methodological Transformations in Fundamental Physics" Workshop, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany, September 2024.
· Shannon Chang attended the Carnegie Mellon Summer School in Logic and Formal Epistemology, Pittsburgh PA, June 2025.
· Paulina Ezquerra attended the 2025 Latinx Philosophy Conference, Pennsylvania State University, University Park PA, May 2025.
· Lindy Featherly volunteered for the SoCal Philosophy Academy, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks CA, June 2025.
· Lorenzo Manuali attended the Sociotechnical AI Safety Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra ACT, Australia, May 2025; and the AIDE Summer School in Philosophy of Technology, Northeastern University, Boston MA, June–July 2025.
· Shannon Chang commented on
· Sophia Wushanley attended the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, New York NY, January 2025.
· Chris Yee attended the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division, New York NY, January 2025; and the Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division, San Francisco CA, April 2025.
Our students organized three conferences here at Michigan:
· In March 2025, the annual MichiganMIT Social Philosophy Conference was organized by Lindy Featherly, Lila Graham, and Valerie Trudel . AW Eaton gave the keynote lecture, and the conference featured 12 graduate student speakers, both from UMich and MIT.
· In early April 2025, the University of Michigan Spring Colloquium, titled "Philosophy For a Changing World: Theorizing in the Age of Information Technology," was co-organized by Lorenzo Manuali, Alison Weinberger, and Sophia Wushanley. This year’s invited speakers were Kathleen Creel (Northeastern), chaired by Alison Weinberger with comments by Lorenzo Manuali; Don Fallis (Northeastern), chaired by Dennis Lee with comments by Alison Weinberger; Hanti Lin (UC Davis), chaired by Mitch Barrington with comments by DJ Arends; and Salomé Viljoen (UM), chaired by Lorenzo Manuali with comments by Sophia Wushanley.
· In April 2025, the first Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy was organized by Sean Costello, Lila Graham , and Tad Schmaltz. Marleen Rozemond (Toronto) gave the keynote talk, titled "Why Matter Can’t Think: Suárez, Descartes, and Leibniz on Things and Properties." The other invited
graduate-student speakers were Raimundo Cox (Pittsburgh), with commentator Andrew Mayo; Kevin Lower (Villanova), with commentator Valerie Trudel; Fanhao Meng (Princeton), with commentator Sean Costello; Pia Schneider (Berkeley), with commentator Alison Weinberger; and Jason Yonover (Yale), with commentator Lila Graham .
The editorial board of this year’s Philosopher’s Annual (volume 44) was comprised of Gabrielle Kerbel, Lorenzo Manuali, and returning editor Sophia Wushanley.
This year’s reading and working groups included the Aesthetics Discussion Group, organized by Aaron Glasser and Margot Witte; the Epistemology WorkIn-Progress (E-WIP) group, organized by Mitch Barrington, Shannon Chang, and Chris Yee; the Ethics Discussion Group (EDGe), organized by Dennis Lee, Zuzanna Lutrzykowska, and Lorenzo Manuali; the Latin American Philosophy group, organized by Paulina Ezquerra , which invited Ariana Peruzzi (PhD ‘24) to present her recent work on migration justice; Philosophy of Science etc (PoSe), organized by Gordon Belot; Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Science, organized by Shannon Chang; and the Writing Accountability Group, organized by Sophia Wushanley. In the fall, Abdul Ansari and Francisco Calderón Ossa organized a reading group on Lorraine Daston's Rules: A Short History of What We Live By with Daston herself attending the last meeting online!
In 2024–25, our new affinity groups – intended to fulfill a more social, networking, and supportive role in the
department – expanded from 3 to 4, with the addition of BPGS just before Admissions Fair:
· Black Philosophy Graduate Students (BPGS) was organized by Lindy Featherly, KiKi Gilbert , and Nyla Welch .
· Poor People of Color in Philosophy (PPCP) rebranded as Intersectional Working Class Philosophers (IWCP), intended to support the struggles of people of color who grew up poor or working-class and who've entered philosophy and are navigating elite academic spaces, organized by Paulina Ezquerra .
· Queer (Unrestricted) in Philosophy (QUIP), a space to promote queer community in the department as well as facilitate networking opportunities and professional development for queer philosophers, was organized by Lorenzo Manuali and Margot Witte. QUIP ran a queer philosopher networking event, a social "get-to-knowother-queer-philosophers" event, and a professional development event for queer philosophers.
· Women and Gender Minorities (WAGM) – a longstanding tradition in the Philosophy department, formerly known as the Women’s Coffee, which aims to provide a networking and professional development opportunity for women and gender minorities – was organized by Zuzanna Lutrzykowska and Alison Weinberger.
Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops (RIWs) are graduate student oriented groups that meet regularly throughout the year to discuss readings on a particular interdisciplinary topic, workshop one another’s papers, and sponsor a public lecture or facilitate
a workshop with an outside speaker. The RIWs for 2024–25 were:
· Early Modern Philosophy (EMP) –organized by Sean Costello, Lila Graham, and MA student Andrew Mayo, under the supervision of Tad Schmaltz – held monthly meetings wherein members discussed primary or secondary literature from the Early Modern period, and bimonthly graduate student work-in-progress meetings from graduate students and faculty. In the winter term, they organized a two-day conference, the first Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy, as described above.
· Knowledge, Information, and Society (KIS) – organized by Lorenzo Manuali and Sophia Wushanley – hosted a biweekly reading group and a work-in-progress workshop with Prof Thi Nguyen (Utah).
· Race, Gender, and Feminist Philosophy (RGFP) – organized by AG McGee and Yixuan Wu, under the supervision of Ishani Maitra – held a biweekly reading group and a series of interdisciplinary workin-progress workshops, featuring Qian Qian Ng (U-M Political Science) presenting "A Structural Account of Epistemic Injustices: Reconsidering the Finniss River Land Claim (1981)", and Yajie Xu (U-M Chinese Studies) presenting "Cosmopolitan Independence: Power Dynamics of Young Chinese Female Migrants in Kenya". They also hosted Johanna Oksala (Loyola University Chicago) for an invited talk titled "Critical Phenomenology and the Problem of Ideology".
· Mind and Moral Psychology (MMP) – organized by Elizabeth Beckman, Aaron Glasser, and Mica Rapstine – offered a workshop in October 2024 with visiting speaker Matthew Parrot (Oxford), giving a talk entitled "Delusional Form and Delusional
Content", and in March 2025, hosted Antonia Peacocke (Stanford), who gave a talk called "Belief in Action". Antonia met with MMP to discuss a draft of her book, Mental Means, and also hung out with department folks for the weekly social hour at Bill's Beer Garden, and joined a group for dinner at Pacific Rim.
As ever, our students are extending philosophical conversations beyond campus and into the community. Last winter, at Jidda in Seoul, South Korea, Subin Nam organized a seminar on philosophy of music titled "Philosophizing with Music", in which participants (including some musicians) read Wayne Bowman’s Philosophical Perspectives on Music (1998) and explored a broad range of philosophical discussions on music, from ancient Greece to the modern period. The seminar discussed questions such as "What is the value of music, and how is it different from other kinds of art?", "What does music represent—or does it represent anything at all?", and "Where does musical pleasure come from?"
In February 2025, Lindy Featherly, KiKi Gilbert , and AG McGee organized our twelfth annual Michigan High School Ethics Bowl. This year, along with organizers AG and Lindy, our philosopher coaches included Lila Graham, Zuzanna Lutrzykowska, Adam Waggoner (PhD ‘25), and Nyla Welch. In addition, several of our graduate students served as judges for preliminary rounds, along with faculty members Sarah Buss, Daniel Fryer, and Peter Railton.
For the third year in a row, Malte Hendrickx organized a local fundraiser for Philosophers Against Malaria (part of the Against Malaria Foundation), which this year raised $21,000. Our students have continued to help advance diversity in philosophy by leading and
supporting initiatives for underrepresented scholars.
Our students have continued to help advance diversity in philosophy by leading and supporting initiatives for underrepresented scholars.
As we reported last year, our ninth annual Michigan COMPASS workshop in October 2024, for students from underrepresented groups considering graduate school in Philosophy, was co-organized and facilitated by Nina Brown, Lila Graham, AG McGee, and Lindy Featherly, with 12 of our grad students serving as mentors: Mitch Barrington, Jason Byas (PhD ‘25), KiKi Gilbert, Lila Graham, Gabrielle Kerbel, Dennis Lee, Brett Thompson, Valerie Trudel, Alison Weinberger, Nyla Welch, Margot Witte, and Sophia Wushanley. Laura Ruetsche gave opening remarks, and other faculty members (Jim Joyce, Ishani Maitra, and Janum Sethi) joined a faculty Q&A panel on applying to grad school. The graduate students, meanwhile, led an info session on grad school applications – facilitated by Lindy Featherly, Nina Brown, and AG McGee – and a panel on life as a graduate student in Philosophy, with panelists Julian Rome, Alison Weinberger, Nyla Welch , and Margot Witte. Participants read two different articles (Linda Alcoff's "The Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment" and Daniela Dover’s "The Conversational Self") with discussion sections led by Yixuan Wu and Lila Graham , respectively. Flash talks were given by Mitch Barrington ("Duty and Risk"), Jason Byas ("Retributive Failure"), and Lindy Featherly ("Beyond Credibility: Making Sexual Violations Imaginable"). Next year’s newsletter will report on our tenth annual Michigan COMPASS workshop, coorganized by Nina Brown, KiKi Gilbert, Lila Graham, Nyla Welch , and Yixuan Wu, which was held in October 2025.
AG McGee also served as a mentor for Philosophy in an Inclusive Key, a program based out of MIT that helps expand access to philosophy PhD programs.
AWARDS
We are pleased to recognize an impressive set of awards our students earned at UM and elsewhere.
· Elizabeth Beckman was awarded the Weinberg Summer Dissertation Prize, awarded to a graduate student who has shown distinction during their first five years of study.
of Michigan, he was awarded the Future of Life Foundation AI for Human Reasoning Fellowship.
· Paulina Ezquerra was awarded a Weinberg Summer Fellowship, given to a graduate student who has shown distinction during their second year of study. Outside Philosophy, she received an Inclusive History Project Course Development Grant for developing a course titled "Philosophical Perspectives," which will acquaint students with pluralistic approaches to philosophical research, writing, and practice.
· Paul de FontReaulx was awarded the Weinberg Summer Dissertation Prize, awarded to a graduate student who has shown distinction during their first five years of study. Beyond the University
· Malte Hendrickx and Julian Rome were awarded the prestigious Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, which are the first awards for a Philosophy graduate student since Mara Bollard (PhD ‘18) in 2018.
· Malte Hendrickx was awarded two Philosophy department prizes: the 2025 Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and
of two 2025 Special Prizes for Leadership in Cocurricular Enrichment (SPLICE), which recognizes graduate students who have made outstanding contributions to cocurricular efforts that benefit our department, our institution, our community, and our discipline. Beyond the University of Michigan, Malte was awarded a Life Worth Living Fellowship by the Yale University Center for Faith & Culture, an Adam Smith Fellowship through the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and an Academic Mentorship Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies, Arlington VA.
· Gabrielle Kerbel was awarded two Philosophy department prizes: the 2025 Cornwell Fellowship Prize in recognition of her excellent (original and creative) philosophical work, and the 2025 John Dewey Prize for her outstanding teaching. Beyond the University of Michigan, she won the Eva Picardi Prize, which included a €250 bursary to present her paper "Dilating and Contracting non-Arbitrarily" at the SIFA "Minds and Worlds" Conference in August 2025.
shown distinction during their second year of study. Beyond the University of Michigan, he won an Institute for Humane Studies Short-Term Residency Grant from Australia National University, Canberra ACT, Australia.
· AG McGee was awarded two Philosophy department prizes: a Weinberg Summer Fellowship, given to a graduate student who has shown distinction during their second year of study, and one of two 2025 Special Prizes for Leadership in Cocurricular Enrichment (SPLICE), which recognizes graduate students who have made outstanding contributions to cocurricular efforts that benefit our department, our institution, our community, and our discipline. In addition, they received a Darrow Scholarship from the Law School.
·Lorenzo Manuali was awarded a Weinberg Summer Fellowship, given to a graduate student who has
· Julian Rome was awarded two Philosophy department prizes: the 2025 Charles L. Stevenson Prize (for excellence in a dissertation dossier), and the Robin Zheng Prize (RZP), awarded in recognition of outstanding efforts to support and sustain a welcoming academic community, to broaden the reach of philosophical inquiry, and to improve the
practices of professional philosophy.
· Ethan Seidenberg was awarded the Felix S. Cohen Prize from Yale Law School for the best essay relating to legal philosophy, for his paper "The Next Private Law".
· Brett Thompson was awarded a Weinberg Summer Fellowship, given to a graduate student who has shown distinction during their second year of study.
These accomplishments — publications, conference activity, service, and an exceptional set of awards (including university‑level teaching prizes and competitive fellowships) — speak volumes about the energy, talent, and imagination our students bring to philosophy every day. Whether advancing philosophical inquiry, developing innovative pedagogy, or leading impactful community initiatives like the $21,000 Philosophers Against Malaria fundraiser, our students continue to inspire us. On the strength of this year’s momentum, we look forward to another vibrant year of research, teaching, and community.
2025 GRADUATE STUDENT COHORT
Manula Adhihetty (U Toronto, MA Philosophy, J.D.)
Hello! I work on both philosophy and law. On the philosophy side, I'm interested in ethics, metaethics, legal philosophy, and political philosophy. On the law side, I'm interested in constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, and private law theory. I hold a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy, as well as a J.D., all from the University of Toronto. Following law school, I served as a Law Clerk at the Court of Appeal for British Columbia and the Supreme Court of Canada. I also worked in the litigation group of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York. I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and lived there until my family migrated to Toronto, Canada when I was 13 years old. I love spending my free time with my wonderful wife and baby daughter, who brings us much happiness.
Andrew Chin (Northwestern Univ, BA Philosophy + Chemistry, MS Chemistry)
My interest is in moral philosophy and Kant's philosophy, specifically in metaethics, Constructivism, and animal ethics. Questions that keep me awake at night are: why we should be moral, what we owe to animals, and the practical implications of these answers. Currently, I am thinking about moral phenomenology and the possibility of transcendental arguments in practical philosophy. My hometown is in Taipei, Taiwan, and I completed my BA at Northwestern University.
Eduarda Fonseca da Nova Cruz (Univ Fed Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, BS Physics, MA Philosophy; Ludwig-Maximilian Univ München, Germany, MA Philosophy)
I hold both a B.A. in Physics and a M.A. in Philosophy from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I am also in the process of earning a master’s degree in Logic and Philosophy of Science from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. I am mostly interested in metaphysical issues within quantum mechanics, and in what types of scientific realism might be compatible with it. Other areas that I might engage with in the future are feminist philosophy of science and epistemological issues of situatedness, especially those involving marginalized agents.
Subin Nam (Seoul National University, Korea, BFA Painting/Drawing & Graphic Design, MA Philosophy)
My research interests lie at the intersection of epistemology and aesthetics, particularly in how cognition and aesthetic experience explore the relationship between mind and world, or subject and object. I approach this inquiry through Kant’s critical philosophy alongside the broader context of 18th-century intellectual history, focusing on the role of perception in cognition and the relation of aesthetic attitude to conceptual thinking. I also explore how Kant’s philosophy can inform contemporary debates.
Ellie Riggsbee (UNC-Chapel Hill, BA Philosophy + Economics)
Hello! I am a first-year Ph.D. student from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I also completed my undergraduate studies at UNC with a double major in Philosophy and Economics. My current, most prevailing philosophical interests lie in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and (applied) ethics. I’m especially drawn to how these areas overlap and inform one another: how foundational questions about knowledge and meaning can illuminate ethical inquiry, and how ethical considerations, in turn, guide our language use and belief-formation practices. I also have budding interests in decision theory and the philosophy of law. I am hoping to refine this list as I continue to learn in Ann Arbor!
Ethan Seidenberg (Yale, BA Philosophy, JD Law)
Ethan holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School. He writes mostly in moral and legal philosophy, although he's also interested in the philosophy of language and social ontology.
Tesha
Sengupta (National University Singapore, BA Philosophy)
I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale-NUS College, Singapore. Currently I am interested in metaphysics. I also have a side interest in Classical Indian and Buddhist philosophy, specifically the metaphysical theories of those traditions. I also have a developing interest in the philosophy of mathematics and metaphysical inquiry into mathematics.
Yichun Sun (Oxford, BA Philosophy + Physics, MPhysPhil Philosophy + Physics; Univ Wisconsin Milwaukee, MA Philosophy)
Before coming here, I spent two wonderful years on the other side of Lake Michigan, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a Master’s student in philosophy. Before that, I was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, at the University of Oxford for my undergraduate degree in physics and philosophy. I am interested in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. Some topics I have explore in the past include emotional self-knowledge, conceptualism in perception, and the epistemology of scientific illustrations. Outside of philosophy, I am very passionate about plants. I love observing, identifying, and learning to draw plants wherever I go (and yes, an educational path with great mobility does help with this interest). Because of my love for plants, I have developed a recent interest in environmental philosophy.
DISSERTATIONS & PLACEMENT
Alvaro Sottil de Aguinaga defended his dissertation ("Yoltilia Totlahtol: Education, Mestizaje, and Language Revitalization") in August 2025. Alvaro has accepted a consultant position with the Boston Consulting Group in Denver, Colorado.
ABSTRACT:
This dissertation aims to bring together three different academic literatures—Mexican intellectual history, settler colonial studies, and political philosophy—in order to develop the beginnings of a new framework for thinking about the politics and ethics of indigenous languages in Mexico. It begins by reconstructing the philosophy of education of José Vasconcelos, a pivotal figure in Mexico’s intellectual and political history. Though Vasconcelos created Mexico’s public education system, his ideas on education have not been studied at all by philosophers. I show that he developed a detailed account of what the proper goals of education ought to be. For Vasconcelos, education not only ought to ensure that the worst-off in society have the means to improve their economic position, but it ought to form students into moral and democratic citizens. Most importantly, I show how Vasconcelos also thought that education ought to promote a Latin American cultural ideal on students. I end by arguing that Vasconcelos’s approach to education shows two different models for thinking about the relationship between ideal and nonideal theorizing.
In Chapter 2, I aim to characterize Vasconcelos’s Latin American cultural ideal, which is his theory of mestizaje, alongside Andrés Molina Enríquez’s account of the Mexican nation as theories of what I call mestizo nationalism, accounts of Mexico as a nation unified around the figure of the mestizo, a person of mixed racial heritage. I then argue that these mestizo nationalist accounts are cases of settler colonial ideologies, or sets of normative and empirical beliefs that aim to promote settler colonial structures. This argument has multiple upshots: first, it has consequences for settler colonial studies insofar as it presents an argument for considering (parts of) Latin America to be settler colonial nations. Second, it also raises questions for Linda Alcoff’s attempts to see, in a distinctive Latin American racial paradigm, a model for thinking about racial identity in a way that unsettles American racial paradigms.
Finally, in Chapter 3, I sketch the beginning of a framework to think about the ethics and politics of indigenous language revitalization efforts. I argue that contemporary accounts of linguistic rights are unable to provide any guidance for how to think about the distinctive normative questions of how indigenous language speakers ought to respond to injustice. I suggest that in the kinds of unjust conditions existing in Mexico today, where (among other things) the ideology of mestizo nationalism continues attempting to assimilate indigenous people into the mestizo nation, it is a mistake to focus on the role of the state or on linguistic rights. By drawing from work in sociolinguistics as well as from Iris Young’s account of structural responsibility, I argue that members of indigenous language speech communities have a forwardlooking responsibility for the consequences of their linguistic practices and attitudes. When these practices and attitudes cause or constitute an injustice, they have a responsibility to transform the relevant social structures to ameliorate or prevent those injustices. Though in this chapter, I do not provide an account of linguistic injustice that appropriately takes the sociolinguistic complexity of actual language use into account, I illustrate this framework by considering speakers’ responsibility to ameliorate the injustice caused by puristic language ideologies.
Jason Byas defended his dissertation ("Decriminalizing Crime: Accountability Without the Retributive Ritual") in August 2025. He began a postdoc in the Philosophy department of Georgetown University this fall.
ABSTRACT:
When someone has clearly committed egregious wrongdoing and they either go unpunished, or are very lightly punished, this provokes in us a sense of outrage. This provides a simple, yet compelling argument for retributivists, who believe there is something morally important about punishment regardless of whether it provides further social benefit, and a simple, yet compelling problem for abolitionists who reject punishment as unjust. The aim of this dissertation is to provide a very complicated answer to this simple argument.
The short version of that answer is as follows: it is morally significant, independent of further social benefit, to condemn wrongdoing and vindicate victims, which is a role currently served by punishment. Yet this purpose does not necessarily depend on punishment in particular, and it is a live question whether it could be adequately or even better served by abolitionist alternatives to the criminal law, such as expanding tort restitution and restorative justice. Our outrage in cases of non-punishment, then, is outrage towards the failure to hold someone accountable, given our socially contingent system of accountability. The more conservative version of my conclusion is thus that retributivism requires substantive criminological inquiry to justify punishment; the less conservative version is that the abolitionist rejection of punishment is compatible with the basic retributivist intuition.
I begin with an introduction that explains the basic question in greater detail, while also explaining my own motivations in wanting to answer it. Then, in the first substantive chapter, “A Dilemma for Desertism,” I argue against the version of retributivism that says wrongdoers simply deserve to suffer by arguing that this sense of desert is either morally objectionable or reduces to mere shorthand for other moral concerns. In the second chapter, “Systems of Social Worth,” I reconstruct a version of the expressive retributivist framework that seems correct: on this picture, we must condemn wrongdoing and vindicate victims in order to socially realize the value of victims. This social realization, I argue, ends up being protection within a shared set of stable social norms, and this task, I further argue, could in principle be satisfied by something other than punishment. Part of this depends on whether alternatives could meaningfully count as condemnation, and whether something expresses a given value judgment is partly a matter of convention. Thus, the third chapter, “The Vocabulary of Society” turns to the question of how we can judge which conceivable modes of expression are feasible and fitting. With respect to fit, my answer ends up being that a mode of expression is more fitting to the extent that it is the one you would choose if you sincerely cared about the values in question. In the case of condemning egregious wrongdoing, this will partly depend on what actually reduces the incidence of that wrongdoing, and so substantive criminological inquiry should matter for the expressive retributivist, even if it does not matter in the same way that it does for the straightforward penal consequentialist. The conclusion, “Retribution: An Abolitionist Translation,” then returns to the cases motivating simple retributivist intuition, and shows how the machinery of the three core chapters helps to “translate” that intuition into something more amenable to the abolitionist.
DISSERTATIONS & PLACEMENT
Julian Rome defended his dissertation ("Trans Utopianism in Literature") in October 2025. He’ll be starting a full-time job as the Director of Operations at Memphis Inner City Rugby, where he'll be using his doctoral research skills to implement and evaluate programs aimed at disrupting cycles of poverty and closing the opportunity gap for disadvantaged youth in Memphis.
ABSTRACT:
This dissertation articulates the concept of trans utopianism, drawing on both utopian theory and literature and trans theory and literature. Trans utopianism is a utopian orientation to trans identity and experience, a trans-centered orientation of hope and desire toward trans individual and communities’ futures. I characterize it by five core dimensions: temporality, spatiality, inherent incompletion, sociality, and alternativity, with each of these highlighting intersections between trans theory and experience and utopianism/utopian theory. I then argue that trans utopianism makes important interventions in debates concerning assimilative as well as separatist approaches to trans liberation and resistance, and offers new, better ways of resisting past and present oppression and injustice. In this dissertation, I argue in favor of trans utopianism by differentiating it from other, related concepts (such as queer utopianism and the t4t ethos), and demonstrating how it leads to different, better political projects and relations to self and community than those related concepts as well as concepts of projects of assimilation politics and prescriptive models of trans identity. I further argue that literature and media are important means by which trans utopianism can be fostered, and use an example of a novel which exemplifies the core features of trans utopianism to demonstrate how a literary text can foster a trans utopian orientation in its readers.
Adam Waggoner defended his dissertation ("Aristotle on Living with Passions") in May 2025. Adam has occupied a postdoc position at Purdue University since Fall 2024.
ABSTRACT:
This dissertation is about how Aristotle understands the nature and value of passions. In the first chapter, I focus on how Aristotle thinks passions function, a question I show is central to his own investigation. I argue that Aristotle thinks passions function to motivate action in response to the evaluative considerations that passions make salient. I then show how this function helps us better understand how Aristotle thought passions help us navigate the world. In the second chapter, I argue that we can illuminate Aristotle’s description of selfcontrol as intrapersonal persuasion by looking at his account of interpersonal persuasion, where he discusses concrete strategies that direct the audience’s attention, evoke their passions, and motivate them to act differently. The dynamics of these cases of interpersonal persuasion provide us with the outline of a compelling Aristotelian model of self-control. In the third chapter, I develop an account of why Aristotle thinks it is impossible to feel fear and anger at the same time and show how this leads to what I call affective dilemmas: cases where a person must choose (in a sense) between two incompatible passions, each of which would accurately represent how things are in the world.
FACULTY NEWS
The Board of Regents weighed in and made it official in May, 2025: Maegan Fairchild, Renée Jørgensen , and Sonya Özbey were promoted to Associate Professors with tenure. Congratulations to them on their well-deserved elevations!
Maegan Fairchild has also been honored with the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award. The College Executive Committee pays special attention to contributions to undergraduate teaching---and recognizes Asscociate Professor candidates whose contributions are not only exemplary but also "foretell a proilific career as a scholar, teacher, and mentor" with the Class of1923 Memorial Teaching Award. Congrats again to Maegan!
Renée Jørgensen focuses on the relationship between agents’ moral and civil rights and their society’s informal social norms and conventions,
especially as they relate to managing risk. Her book, Rewriting Rights (Oxford University Press, 2025), explores how social norms shape agents’ moral rights and demands on each other, and can be leveraged to give content to the notion of ‘reasonable mistakes’ in consent and self-defense.
Sonya Özbey is a scholar of early Chinese thought and early modern European philosophy. Drawing on methods developed by sinologists, philosophers, intellectual historians, and literary critics, her research revolves around questions of difference, identity formation, and power in diverse philosophical works. She is particularly interested in the conceptual and rhetorical tools that thinkers in different times and milieus have deployed to imagine, explain, and justify their social worlds and in the possibilities and limitations such texts present to us today in regard to the ways we envision our own world.
Emmalon Davis and Paulina Ezquerra received an award from the Inclusive History Project to support the developmentof a proposed undergraduate course on
philosophical research methods and disciplinary belonging. Emmalon and Paulina will support student experimentation with philosophical methods that have remained marginalized in the department and the field. The course is designed to promote and disseminate knowledge about Michigan Philosophy’s past and to explore new possibilities for using historically underappreciated tools in contemporary philosophical inquiry.
Also, Emmalon and her co-PI Ann Heffernan (assistant professor of Political Science) are among the six teamsrecently selected from a large field vying for funding through the Provost's Disability Scholarship Initiative. Their project; "(Doing) disability research from the (disabled) margins: Constructing community and conceptualizing support."
NEW FACULTY
Claudia Yau specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, especially ancient ethics, politics, and epistemology. Her current research project focuses on wisdom in Plato and Aristotle: what wisdom consists in, what sets this virtue apart from other intellectual abilities, what it enables and obligates the
wise to do, and what role wisdom plays in ethics and politics. She has additional work on Aristotle’s theory of justice and methods of argumentation in Sextus Empiricus.
Professor Yau is working on a monograph on wisdom in Plato's Republic. She has published and forthcoming articles in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Apeiron.
Claudia Yau has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, 2021 and a B.A. Wellesley College, 2016. Welcome to Angell Hall, Claudia!
FACULTY LIST
Elizabeth Anderson — John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies, Professor of Law, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies; Moral and Political Philosophy, Epistemology, Feminist Theory, Philosophy of Social Science
David Baker — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Science
Gordon Belot — Lawrence Sklar Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Science
Sarah Buss — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Professor of Philosophy; Ethics, Action Theory, Moral Psychology
Victor Caston — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Ancient Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, Austrian Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics
Emmalon Davis — Assistant Professor and Denise Fellow; Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Epistemology
Kristie Dotson — Professor of Philosophy; Professor, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies; University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Anna Edmonds — LEO Lecturer II; Ethics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind
Maegan Fairchild — Associate Professor and Denise Fellow; Metaphysics, Philosophical Logic, Epistemology, Aesthetics
Rachael Goodyer —Lecturer and Assistant Director, PPE. Political Philosophy; Ethics
Daniel Herwitz — Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor; Aesthetics, Film, Philosophical Essay, Transitional Societies
Renée Jorgensen — Associate Professor and Denise Fellow; Max Mendel Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Ethics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Law
James Joyce — Cooper Harold Langford Collegiate Professor; Decision Theory, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
Eric Lormand — Associate Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Language
Daniel Lowe — LEO Lecturer II; Moral and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Moral Epistemology
Ishani Maitra — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Language, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Law
David Manley — Associate Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Epistemology
Sarah Moss — William Wilhartz Professor of Philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics, Epistemology
Sonya Özbey — Assistant Professor and Denise Fellow; Chinese Philosophy
Peter Railton — Gregory S. Kavka Distinguished University Professor; John Stephenson Perrin Professor; Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Aesthetics
Laura Ruetsche — Louis Loeb Collegiate Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy of Science
Tad Schmaltz — Department Chair, Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; History of Early Modern, History and Philosophy of Science
Janum Sethi — Associate Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Kant, History of Modern Philosophy, Aesthetics
Gabriel Shapiro — Assistant Professor and Denise Fellow; Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy
Chandra Sripada — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Ethics, Moral Psychology, Mind, Cognitive Science
Eric Swanson — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Formal Epistemology
James Tappenden — Professor and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Philosophy of Language, Philosophy and History of Mathematics, Philosophical Logic
Brian Weatherson — Marshall M. Weinberg Professor, James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow; Epistemology, Philosophy of Language
Claudia Yau — Assistant Professor; Ancient Philosophy; Classical Studies;
AFFILIATED FACULTY
Linda A.W. Brakel Nicolas Cornell Daniel Fryer Scott Hershovitz
Ezra Keshet Mika LaVaque-Manty Gabe Mendlow Steven Schaus
Will Thomas Kyle Whyte Ekow Yankah
EMERITUS FACULTY
Edwin Curley
Donald Regan
Stephen Darwall
Richmond Thomason
Allan Gibbard
Kendall Walton
Louis Loeb
Nicholas White
IN MEMORIAM
Larry Sklar | Emeritus Faculty | 1938-2024
Larry Sklar recently passed away in Ann Arbor at the age of 86. He was among the foremost philosophers of science of our time.
Larry received a BA from Oberlin College and an MA and a PhD from Princeton. He was an Assistant Professor at Swarthmore (1965–1966) and at Princeton (1966–1968). He joined the university of Michigan as an Associate Professor of Philosophy in 1968 and retired in 2016 as Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy. He held visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, UCLA, and Wayne State University.
Larry was the author of six books, roughly two hundred articles, and an astounding 672 brief notices in Mathematical Reviews. When one thinks of the means by which Anglophone philosophers are honored, Sklar has been, received, given, or held just about all of them: President of the American Philosophical Association, President of the Philosophy of Science Association, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Matchette Prize, the Lakatos Award, the Locke Lectures, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Larry combined to an unparalleled degree the desire and ability to write about his subject clearly and accessibly with a magisterial understanding of many disparate scientific fields and with a searching philosophical intellect. He provided readers with detailed and illuminating maps of difficult terrain in which empirical, conceptual, and mathematical considerations are often entangled with each other. He seldom seemed interested in settling philosophical debates. Rather, in most of his work, he aimed to make progress in philosophy by clarifying the questions at hand, by investigating the dialectical resources available to partisans of various positions, and by highlighting the extent to which apparently compelling appeals to empirical and mathematical considerations usually also rely crucially on underlying philosophical commitments.
Larry wrote many influential articles— anyone’s list of highlights would probably include “Methodological Conservativism,” “Do Unborn Hypotheses Have Rights?,” “Saving the Noumena,” “Up and Down, Left and Right, Past and Future,” and “Inertia, Gravitation, and Metaphysics.” In the last half-century, generations of philosophy students have been introduced to the philosophy of space and time through Larry’s first book, the Matchette Prize-winning Space, Time, and Spacetime—a classic that
remains essential reading for experts in this field. His later book, the Lakatos Awardwinning Physics and Chance, plays a similar foundational role for students and scholars pursuing philosophical questions about statistical physics. A third masterpiece, Theory and Truth (based on Larry’s Locke Lectures) stands out as perhaps the most serious philosophical attempt to explicate what it means to adopt a realist attitude towards physical theories when one takes seriously the fact that our current best theories are both astonishingly accurate in their predictions and almost certainly false.
During his long career at Michigan and into his retirement, Larry was a vital presence in the department. Most days, he would carom from one end of the corridor to the other, seeking out staff members, students, and colleagues to let them know what was on his mind (the popular semi-regular dinners that he organized in Chinese restaurants served the same purpose). Since Larry’s mind was nothing if not tenacious,
someone on his route might well hear much the same thing from day to day. But on a longer time-scale they could expect to learn about an astonishing range of topics, since Larry’s famously prodigious memory was matched by his insatiable and wide-ranging curiosity. In a typical month, Larry might have illuminating things to say about any number of current and historical debates in philosophy and in physics, about the films he had been watching (perhaps, early works of W.C. Fields and of Bong Joon-ho), about the monetary and political predicaments of an array of countries across the world, about conversations he had had decades ago (often, those with his teacher Peter Hempel or his friend and former colleague Jaegwon Kim), and about the accomplishments of his wife Elizabeth, of their daughter Jessica, and of his (now deceased) brother Richard.
He will be sorely missed.
Gordon Belot, Lawrence Sklar Collegiate Professor of Philosophy
The Passing of a Philanthropist Marshall M. Weinberg
The department and university mourns the loss of Marshall M. Weinberg. Marshall graduated from UM in 1950 and his philanthropy cannot be overstated. At the University of Michigan, Mr. Weinberg supported Judaic Studies, the Population Studies Center, the School for Environment and Sustainability, and the Department of Philosophy, in addition to the Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science.
Mr. Weinberg's studies convinced him that philosophy has much to contribute to clear thinking that benefits society. Marshall established three Departmental endowments over the course of a decade: the Endowment for the Frankena and Stevenson Prizes, in 1991; the Weinberg Endowment for Philosophy, in 1995; and the Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professorship Endowment, in 1999. He subsequently established the Fund for Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences in 2006, and the Weinberg Professorship in Philosophy, in 2011, of which Brian Weatherson is the first occupant.
He shares some thoughts about philosophy and investment in a short film, Legacy of Benjamin Graham: The Original Adjunct Professor, produced by the Columbia
Business School, honoring the seminal investment strategist who also taught at the school. In the film, some of Graham's former students, including Mr. Weinberg and Warren Buffett, testify to his legacy.
Mr. Weinberg's philanthropy encompassed higher education, reproductive rights -through the Center for Reproductive Rights and Law -- and issues in international justice. He has sponsored two conferences in the Middle East: "Utilizing Research to Promote Opportunities for Arab Children and Youth in Israel" (2003) and "Arab Women and Girls in Israel: Obstacles, Opportunities and Strategies for Change in Health, Education, and Employment" (2005). In 2010, Mr. Weinberg announced an extraordinary bequest to the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute. Those of us who worry that it is not possible to make a difference have much to learn from Marshall's work and example.
In 2008, Marshall Weinberg received the David B. Hermelin Award for Fundraising Volunteer Leadership, the university's most prestigious award for volunteers. The Philosophy Department extends our deepest respect, gratitude, and condolences to the Weinberg family.
“Over the years, in talking to students and faculty, I have realized that interdisciplinxary learning has the most meaningful impact.”
- Marshall M. Weinberg
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PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DOMENICO GRASSO
