Susan Haack

Susan Haack (* 1945 in England ) is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Miami . She deals with logic , philosophy of language , philosophy of science and epistemology . She is a representative of pragmatism in the footsteps of Charles Sanders Peirce .

Life path

Haack studied at St Hilda's College of Oxford University (1963-68), where Jean Austin, the widow of JL Austin , her first teacher was. She received her BA in philosophy, politics and economics in 1966. From 1968 to 1971 she taught as a fellow at New Hall at Cambridge University . In the meantime, she turned to studying philosophy. She heard Plato from Gilbert Ryle and logic from Michael Dummett . The MA degree took place in 1969 in Oxford and Cambridge. She wrote her dissertation (B.Phil.) With David Pears on ambiguity . Her dissertation, which she completed in 1972, was supervised by Timothy Smiley .

In 1971, Haack moved to the University of Warwick , first as a lecturer (1971–1976), then as a reader (1976–1982), before she was appointed professor of philosophy in 1982. She stayed in Warwick until 1990 and went to the University of Miami in 1990 as a professor of philosophy. In 1997 and 1998 she was also a visiting professor at the School of Law in Miami. In 1998 she also became a Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, in 2000 Professor of Law and in 2006 she was awarded the title “University Distinguished Professor in the Humanities”.

Haack has held a large number of visiting professorships during her career, including several times in Europe, in particular at the University of Gerona in Spain and in 2013 also at the University of Münster.

Haack is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Association and an honorary member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She is a past president of the Charles S. Peirce Society and a past member of the US / UK Educational Commission.

Teaching

In her first work, Haack primarily deals with questions of the philosophical meaning of "alternative" (especially multi-valued) logics. Questions about the meaning of connectors, the role of truth makers and the definition of truth are in the foreground.

With the publication Evidence and Inquiry she turned to epistemological questions. In doing so, she dealt with the basic directions of fundamentalism and coherentism using the made-up term "foundherentism" and tries to avoid the weaknesses of both approaches by a new formulation of evidence as a basis for justifying knowledge.

In Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate , an anthology of 11 essays, Haack shows the breadth of her interests, which range from philosophy of science to pragmatism to conservative feminism and multiculturalism. In doing so, she turns against various forms of relativism or modern cynicism, for example by Richard Rorty, as well as too strict objectivism.

Fonts

Deviant Logic . Cambridge University Press 1974
with Konstantin Kolenda: Two Fallibilists in Search of the Truth . Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 51 (1977) (Supplementary Volumes), 63-104 ( online , about similarities and differences between Peirce and Popper)
Philosophy of Logics . Cambridge University Press 1978 (translated into six languages)
Evidence and Inquiry . 1993, 2nd exp. Edition Prometheus Books 2009
Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism . The University of Chicago Press 1996. (Extended version of Deviant Logic ) ( Review ; PDF; 12 kB)
Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays . University Of Chicago Press 1998
Defending Science - Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism . Prometheus Books 2003.
Edited with Robert Lane: Pragmatism, Old and New . 2006
Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture . Prometheus Books 2008