Some philosophers are really big deals in the profession, yet still fit all the rules for most underrated. (They inhabit a metaphysical grey zone?) This week's most underrated, Helen Beebee (Birmingham), is one of the most prominent metaphysicians of our time (with influential work on causation, free will, natural kinds, etc), an inspiring scholar of David Hume, and an important public philosopher as Director of the British Philosophical Association. During the last week I have been browsing in the OUP Handook volume on causation she co-edited, and I was reminded how much she offers the discipline by way of edited volumes and taking on the task of representing us to the outside. Her most famous paper (judging by citations) is her "causing and nothingness" (in which she defends Lewisian orthodoxy). I have long admired the frankness (involving the cost of adopting her position) exhibited by another paper that defends a descriptive account of the laws of nature. Of course, I am most familiar with her work on Hume's account of causation. She has a very fine book on the topic. But in my view her 2007 joint session piece was really important because it finally said "stop" to all the folk who try to read Hume entirely in light of the Old/New Hume debate. Moreover, it wisely points out that Hume's "definitions" are not what *we* would call definitions.
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