Lynne Rudder Baker

Lynne Rudder Baker (born February 14, 1944 in Atlanta , Georgia ; † December 24, 2017 ) was an American philosopher and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst . Her main areas of work were metaphysics , the philosophy of spirit and the philosophy of religion . She was particularly known for her contributions to anthropology and the material constitution, especially of people.

Career

Baker earned a BA in mathematics from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1966 , then took a year of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University on a National Defense Education Act scholarship, and returned to Nashville to get married. She continued her studies in Vanderbilt and obtained her MA and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy in 1971 and 1972.

She taught at Mary Baldwin College from 1972 to 1976. From 1974 to 1975 she received an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1976 she came to Middlebury College. She has received grants from the National Humanities Center (1983–1984) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1988–1989). Since 1989 she has taught alternately at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, from 1994 only there. In Amherst, she headed the graduate program from 1994 to 2003. She was a member of the Grace Episcopal Church of Amherst. She held the renowned Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow and the Kraemer Lectures at the University of Arkansas in 2002. She died in late 2017.

Baker advocated generally non-reductive views and called for our everyday mentalistic vocabulary to be taken ontologically just as seriously as the vocabulary of our best scientific theories.

See also: Realism (philosophy)

Publications

Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism. 1987
Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind. 1995
Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. 2000
The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism. 2007
Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective. 2013

Web links

Homepage with numerous publications to download

Individual evidence

^ Obituary: Lynne Baker, Retired Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 9, 2018, accessed February 10, 2018 .
↑ Source of the biography: Archive link ( Memento from January 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
↑ In Memoriam: Lynne Rudder Baker (1944-2017). University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Philosophy, December 28, 2017, accessed December 30, 2017 .
^ Lynne Rudder Baker: Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective . 1st edition. Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-991474-6 , pp. 6-10 .

personal data
SURNAME	Baker, Lynne Rudder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	February 14, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH	Atlanta , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH	December 24, 2017

[1] Obituary: Lynne Baker, Retired Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 9, 2018, accessed February 10, 2018 .

[2] Source of the biography: Archive link ( Memento from January 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

[3] In Memoriam: Lynne Rudder Baker (1944-2017). University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Philosophy, December 28, 2017, accessed December 30, 2017 .

[4] Lynne Rudder Baker: Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective . 1st edition. Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-991474-6 , pp. 6-10 .