Stephen Stich

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Stephen Stich
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Stich giving the Gottlob Frege Lectures in Theoretical Philosophy 2010 in Tartu, Estonia
Born1943 (age 79–80)
Era Contemporary philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic
Main interests
 Philosophy of mind, epistemology, moral psychology
Notable ideas
 Experimental philosophy
Influences
Influenced

Stephen P. Stich (born May 9, 1943) is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, as well as an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and moral psychology. His 1983 book, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief, received much attention as he argued for a form of eliminative materialism about the mind. He changed his mind, in later years, as indicated in his 1996 book Deconstructing the Mind.

Contents

Education and career

Stich was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania from 1960–1964 where he was a member of the Philomathean Society. He received his BA in 1964 (Summa Cum Laude with distinction in Philosophy). He did graduate work at Princeton University from 1964–1968, receiving his PhD in 1968 under the direction of Paul Benacerraf and Gilbert Harman. [1]

Stich was the Visiting Senior Lecturer at University of Sydney (1984-1985) and was the Clark-Way-Harrison Distinguished Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (2007). [2]

He has held full-time teaching positions at University of Michigan (1968-1978), University of Maryland, College Park (1978-1986), University of California, San Diego (1986-1989), and, since 1989, at Rutgers University. [2]

Stich joined the University of Sheffield as an honorary professor in their philosophy department in February 2005. He remains primarily at Rutgers, but visits Sheffield periodically, where he teaches and works at the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies. [3]

In 2007 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and gave a series of lectures in Paris titled Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science: How the Cognitive Science Can Transform Traditional Debates. [4]

In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [5]

In 2020, he became a visiting professor at Princeton University through the University Center for Human Values. [6]

Philosophical work

Stich is primarily known in philosophy for his work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, and moral psychology. In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, Stich (1983) has argued for a form of eliminative materialism —the view that talk of the mental should be replaced with talk of its physical substrate. Since then, however, he has changed some of his views on the mind. See Deconstructing the Mind (1996) for his more recent views. In epistemology, he has explored (with several of his colleagues) the nature of intuitions using the techniques of experimental philosophy, especially epistemic intuitions that vary among cultures—see Stich (1988) and Stich, et al. (2001). This work reflects a general skepticism about conceptual analysis and the traditional methods of analytic philosophy. In The Fragmentation of Reason he briefly sketched a form of epistemic relativism "in the spirit of pragmatism." [7]

He and Shaun Nichols are responsible for a theory of how humans understand the mental states of ourselves and others, or mindreading, which they present in Nichols and Stich (2003). Their theory is a hybrid, containing elements of both the simulation theory and theory theory, and also aims to explain the mental architecture that enables pretence.

Selected publications

See also

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References

  1. ↑ https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/docman-lister/cv/538-cv-sps-updated-march-2018/file Archived 2019-10-08 at the Wayback Machine [ bare URL PDF ]
  2. 1 2 https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/docman-lister/cv/538-cv-sps-updated-march-2018/file Archived 2019-10-08 at the Wayback Machine [ bare URL PDF ]
  3. ↑ Information from Stich's profile at University of Sheffield Archived 2006-06-23 at the Wayback Machine .
  4. ↑ Archives Audiovisuelles de la Recherche, Stephen Stich, Moral Theory Meets Cognitive Science: How the Cognitive Science Can Transform Traditional Debates Archived 2016-03-05 at the Wayback Machine (full video coverage)
  5. ↑ "Achievements". Archived from the original on 2017-02-24. Retrieved 2017-02-23.
  6. ↑ "Stephen Stich | University Center for Human Values". uchv.princeton.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-03-01. Retrieved 2020-03-01.
  7. ↑ Ch. 6 p.129 of The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation
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