Charles Parsons (philosopher)
{{Short description|American philosopher (1933–2024)}}
{{Infobox philosopher
| region = Western philosophy
| era = Contemporary philosophy
| name = Charles Parsons
| birth_name = Charles Dacre Parsons
| image =Charles Parsons May 2004.jpg
| caption =Parsons in 2004
| birth_date = {{birth date|1933|04|13}}
| birth_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|04|19|1933|04|13}}
| death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
| alma_mater = Harvard University (Ph.D., 1961)
| school_tradition = Analytic
| main_interests = Philosophy of mathematics
| notable_ideas = The distinction between "intuition-of" and "intuition-that"Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, "Benacerraf's dilemma revisited", European Journal of Philosophy 10(1):101–129 (2002).
| doctoral_advisor = Burton Dreben, Willard Van Orman Quine
| doctoral_students = Michael Levin, James Higginbotham, Peter Ludlow, Gila Sher, Øystein Linnebo
}}
Charles Dacre Parsons (April 13, 1933 – April 19, 2024) was an American philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of mathematics and the study of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He was professor emeritus at Harvard University. In a 2014 review of one of his books, Stewart Shapiro and Teresa Kouri said of Parsons: "It surely goes without saying that [he] is one of the most important philosophers of mathematics in our generation".{{Cite journal |last=Shapiro |first=Stewart |last2=Kouri |first2=Teresa |date=2014-08-05 |title=Review of Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century: Selected Essays |url=https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/philosophy-of-mathematics-in-the-twentieth-century-selected-essays/ |journal=Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews}}
Life and career
Born on April 13, 1933, Charles Dacre Parsons was a son of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard University in 1961, under the direction of Burton Dreben and Willard Van Orman Quine.{{mathgenealogy|name=Charles Dacre Parsons|id=10806}}.[https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/people/charles-parsons Charles D. Parsons, Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus], Harvard University Department of Philosophy. He taught for many years at Columbia University before moving to Harvard University in 1989. He retired in 2005 as the Edgar Pierce professor of philosophy, a position formerly held by Quine.
Parsons was an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.{{cite web|url=http://www.dnva.no/c26849/artikkel/vis.html?tid=40104|title=Gruppe 3: Idéfag|publisher=Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters|language=Norwegian|access-date=16 January 2011|archive-date=27 September 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927171625/http://www.dnva.no/c26849/artikkel/vis.html?tid=40104|url-status=dead}}
Among his doctoral students were Michael Levin, James Higginbotham,{{Cite web |title=Charles Parsons |url=https://www.mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=10806 |access-date=2024-04-24 |website=The Mathematics Genealogy Project}} Peter Ludlow, Gila Sher and Øystein Linnebo.{{cn|date=April 2024}}
In 2017 Parsons gave the Gödel Lecture, titled Gödel and the Universe of Sets.{{Cite web |title=Gödel Lecturers |url=https://aslonline.org/prizes-and-awards/godel-lecturers/ |website=– Association for Symbolic Logic |access-date=2024-05-08 |language=en-US}}
Parsons died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2024, at the age of 91.{{cite web |title=Charles D. Parsons |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/charles-parsons-obituary?id=54926563 |website=Legacy |access-date=21 April 2024}}{{cite web |title=In Memoriam: Charles D. Parsons (1933–2024) |url=https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2024/04/in-memoriam-charles-d-parsons-1933-2024.html |website=Leiter Reports |access-date=21 April 2024}}
Philosophical work
In addition to his work in logic and the philosophy of mathematics, Parsons was an editor, with Solomon Feferman and others, of the posthumous works of Kurt Gödel.Kurt Gödel, Collected Works, ed. S. Feferman, et al. Oxford University Press. Vol. III, 1995. Vols. IV–V, 2003. He has also written on historical figures, especially Immanuel Kant,E.g. "The Transcendental Aesthetic", Parsons [2012], Essay 1; also [1983], Essays 4 and 5. Gottlob Frege,E.g. "Some remarks on Frege's conception of extension", with a postscript, Parsons [2012], Essay 5; also [1983], Essay 6. Kurt Gödel,E.g. "Platonism and mathematical intuition in Kurt Gödel's thought", The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. 1 (1995), pp. 44–74; [2014a], Essay 5, with postscript; [2014b]. and Willard Van Orman Quine."Quine and Gödel on analyticity", Parsons [2014a], Essay 6; also Essays 8 and 9, and [1983], Essay 7.
Selected publications
=Books=
- 1983. Mathematics in Philosophy: Selected Essays. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press.
- 2008. Mathematical Thought and its Objects. Cambridge Univ. Press.
- 2012. From Kant to Husserl: Selected Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.
- 2014a. Philosophy of Mathematics in the Twentieth Century: Selected Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard Univ. Press.
=Articles=
- 1987. "Developing Arithmetic in Set Theory without infinity: Some Historical Remarks". History and Philosophy of Logic, vol. 8, pp. 201–213.
- 1990a. "The Uniqueness of the Natural Numbers". Iyyun, vol. 39, pp. 13–44. ISSN 0021-3306.
- 1990b. "The Structuralist View of Mathematical Objects". Synthese, vol. 84 (3), pp. 303–346.
- 2014b. "Analyticity for Realists". In Interpreting Gödel: Critical Essays, ed. J. Kennedy. Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–150.
References
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Category:Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Category:Columbia University faculty
Category:Harvard University Department of Philosophy faculty
Category:Mathematical logicians
Category:American philosophers of mathematics
Category:Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Category:People from Cambridge, Massachusetts
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