Philip Kitcher


Philip Stuart Kitcher is a British philosopher who is the John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathematics, and more recently pragmatism.

Life and career

Born in London, Kitcher spent his early life in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the south coast of the United Kingdom, where another distinguished philosopher of an earlier generation was also at school. Kitcher himself went to school at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, West Sussex. He earned his BA 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.
Kitcher is currently John Dewey Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Columbia University. As chair of Columbia's Contemporary Civilization program, he also held the James R. Barker Professorship of Contemporary Civilization. Before moving to Columbia, Kitcher held tenure-track positions at the University of Vermont, the University of Minnesota, and 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 was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. Kitcher was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science from 1994 to 1999, was also a member of the NIH/DOE Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project from 1995 to 1997.
He has trained a number of philosophers of science, including Peter Godfrey-Smith, Kyle Stanford, and Michael R. Dietrich. He also taught C. Kenneth Waters and Michael Weisberg as undergraduates.
He is married to Patricia Kitcher. She is a Kant scholar and philosopher of mind who has been the Mark Van Doren Professor of Humanities at Columbia. Their son, Charles Kitcher, is the associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission.

Philosophical work

Within philosophy, Kitcher is best known for his work in philosophy of biology, science, and mathematics, and 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. He has also done work on the philosophy of climate change.

Criteria for what constitutes "good science"

Kitcher's three criteria for good science are:
He increasingly recognised the role of values in practical decisions about scientific research.

Kuhn and creationism

Kitcher is the author of Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. He has commented on the way creationists have misinterpreted Kuhn:

Books

  • Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. MIT Press, 1982.
  • The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 1983.
  • Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press, 1985.
  • The Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, April 1993.
  • The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities. 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, Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Science, Truth, and Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback 2003.
  • In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, Oxford University Press, 2003..
  • Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring, co-authored with Richard Schacht, Oxford University Press, February 2004.
  • Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith, Oxford University Press, January 2007.
  • Joyce's Kaleidoscope: An Invitation to Finnegans Wake, Oxford University Press, July 2007.
  • The Ethical Project, Harvard University Press, October 2011.
  • Science in a Democratic Society, Prometheus Books, September 2011.
  • Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2012.
  • Deaths in Venice: The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach, Columbia University Press, November 2013.
  • Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism, Yale University Press, 2014.
  • Moral Progress, Oxford University Press, 2021.
  • The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education, Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • What's the Use of Philosophy?, Oxford University Press, 2023