New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Charles Mills (1951-2021)

I was both saddened and stunned this morning to read of the passing of Charles Mills.  I first met him at a SPEP years ago; I was having lunch at some random sandwich shop with friends.  He knew one of us, and asked if he could join.  Nevermind that we were all junior.  I managed to find him at a few later conferences, to join a meal or even just to say hi.  He was generous, warm and wickedly funny when he wanted to be.  And the stunning clarity with which he could call out ideal philosophy and other systems of domination is like nothing else I’ve read.

Daily Nous has more, and links to a really touching remembrance by Liam Kofi Bright.

John Perry Barlow (1947-2018)

John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist and one of the early advocates for a libertarian cyberspace free of governmental regulation, as well as founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), died yesterday.  The EFF notice is here.  Barlow is perhaps best known for his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."  As we look at  a world where authoritarian  governments use Twitter to arrest and imprison protesters, and where  the NSA is apparently intercepting and recording pretty much everything online, Barlow's vision can seem too optimistic, or even naive.  But viewed as critique, it also reminds us that the Internet is a human creation, and its regulation can be changed by human laws and human interventions.  The EFF is a lasting contribution to that critical vision, and is a frequent litigant defending privacy and other rights online.

I had the chance to bring Barlow in for a talk many years ago when I was  at Colorado College.  He was thoughtful, engaged, and a genuine pleasure to host.  He will be missed.

In memoriam: Ivor Grattan-Guinness

The great historian of logic and mathematics Ivor Grattan-Guinness passed away about a month ago, aged 73. I only heard it yesterday, when Stephen Read posted a link to the Guardian obituary on Facebook. From the obituary: 

He rescued the moribund journal Annals of Science, founded the journal History and Philosophy of Logic, and was on the board of Historia Mathematica from its inception. A member of the council of the Society for Psychical Research, he wrote Psychical Research: A Guide to Its History (1982). In 1971 the British Society for the History of Mathematics was founded: Ivor served as its president (1986-88) and instituted a formal constitution.

Indeed, many of us owe him eternal gratitude for founding the journal History and Philosophy of Logic, which continues to be the main journal for studies combining historical and philosophical perspectives on logic. Ivor's work and scholarship spans over an impressive range of topics and areas, and is bound to continue to influence many generations of scholars to come. It is a great loss.

In memoriam: Patrick Suppes

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

As readers will have noticed, since yesterday there has been an outpour of expressions of sorrow for the passing of Patrick Suppes everywhere on the internet. He was without a doubt one of the most influential philosophers of science in the 20th century, and so all the love and appreciation is richly deserved. I do not have anything much to add to what others who knew him better have been saying, but I thought of posting a link to the video podcast of a lecture he delivered at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy some two years ago, titled ‘A neuroscience perspective on the foundations of mathematics’. (Back then I even wrote a blog post about the lecture, just before it took place.)

As much as it is sad to see dear, talented people passing away, I think it is comforting to note that Suppes lived his life to the fullest until the very end, for example by flying across the ocean to give a lecture on a new, exciting topic at age 90. The vitality he displays in the lecture is truly impressive, and a lovely reminder of his decisive contributions to philosophy and the sciences.

In memoriam: Alexander Grothendieck

By Catarina Dutilh Novaes

Alexander Grothendieck, who is viewed by many as the greatest mathematician of the 20^th century, has passed away yesterday after years of living in total reclusion. (To be honest, I did not even know he was still alive!) He was a key figure in the development of the modern theory of algebraic geometry, among others, but to philosophers and logicians he is perhaps best known as one of the major forces behind the establishment of category theory as a new foundational framework for mathematics. 

So far, I’ve only seen obituaries in French (Libération and Le Monde), as Grothendieck (of German origin) lived almost all of his life in France (I expect that soon obituaries in English will be available too). His life story is almost as remarkable as his mathematical achievements: his father died in Auschwitz in 1942, while he was sent to a concentration camp in France with his mother. In all of his adult life, he was as passionate about pacifism as he was about mathematics (and perhaps even more), and continuously engaged in a number of activist initiatives like lecturing on category theory in a forrest of bombed Vietnam to protest against the war. He seems to have basically stopped doing any mathematics in the 1970s, but the influence of his work in the field is bound to remain colossal in many years or even centuries to come.

In memoriam: Sandra Bem

Another sad loss this week: psychologist Sandra Bem, a pioneer in the empirical study of gender roles, passed away on Tuesday, May 20th. Here is the most complete obituary I could find so far, which details nicely her scientific contributions and the practical impact they had in gender policies. For example, it was largely based on her scientific work that the infamous practice of segregating classified job listings under "Male Help Wanted" and "Female Help Wanted" columns was finally abandoned, after a 1973 decision of the US Supreme Court ruling against the practice. (The case was against a particular press, but within a year all other newspapers in the country changed how their classified ads were listed.)

There are many other aspects of Sandra Bem’s life and work worth mentioning, but let me focus on two of them. As an undergraduate in 1965, she met Daryl Bem, then a young assistant professor, and a romantic relationship between them began. (Yes, there are successful stories too, apparently…) Initially, she did not want to get married, as this course of events seemed to preclude the professional path she had in mind for herself. But Daryl was not deterred, and so together they agreed on an arrangement that would allow her to flourish professionally, and which would basically consist in what is now known as equally shared parenting – an ideal that many couples aspire to, but which remains a challenge to implement (speaking from personal experience!). The ‘experiment’ was largely successful, and Sandra narrates all the ups and downs of raising two children (a boy and a girl) on this model in her 1998 book An Unconventional Family. (I’ve been meaning to read the book for years, and now may well be the time to stop procrastinating.)

In memoriam: Laurence Goldstein

This morning, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock posted on Philos-L the sad news of Laurence Goldstein’s passing, after a short illness. I suspect that this comes very much as a surprise to most of us in the philosophy community, as Laurence seemed to be active and thriving; among other things, his edited collection Brevity came out just last year.

This website at the department of philosophy at Kent, where Laurence had been for the past decade or so (after many years in Hong-Kong), has a very nice summary of his work and research interests. He was mostly interested in philosophy of logic, and more specifically in paradoxes. I’ve corresponded quite extensively with Laurence on the topic of medieval solutions to the Liar paradox, a topic which he had grown particularly fond of (e.g. his paper in this volume). But Laurence also had a keen interest in the teaching of logic, and in particular developed a number of devices to make logical properties more perspicuous, as it were. In my opinion, one of his most original achievements was the development of a method to teach logic to blind students, based on a device he developed for this purpose, the Sylloid.

I last saw Laurence last year in Rio for UNILOG, where he was teaching a tutorial on ‘Logic for the blind’. This initially practical concern had led him to reflect deeply on some of the ‘material aspects’ of logic, a field thought by many to be quintessentially abstract. (Here our paths had met again, as I have also worked quite extensively on the ‘materiality’ of external devices for logical reasoning, in particular formal languages.) He seemed energetic and healthy, and so it is a bit of a shock to hear of his passing. But his work will stay with us, as well as the memories of friends and colleagues who interacted with him more closely. Please feel free to share your memories of Laurence in comments below. 

(This reminds me that we did not post anything to mark the passing of David Armstrong here at NewAPPS. Perhaps we should still have a belated in memoriam for him too.)

Gary Becker (1930-2014)

Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago, has died.

Becker is perhaps best known for "human capital" theory, which talks about how one might, for example, come to think of education as an investment in one's future earnings.  As the absolute normalcy of a statement like this would suggest, I think it's probably hard to overstate how influential Becker has been on the development of the neoliberal world we all inhabit.  Foucault's analysis in Birth of Biopolitics is essential, as are the exchanges (here and here) between Becker, Bernard Harcourt (whose Illusion of Free Markets ought to be required reading), and the Foucauldian Francois Ewald.

As readers of this blog will know, I'm no fan of neoliberalism.  But, as I tell my students, if you don't see neoliberalism at least as a temptation, you didn't get it.

Here is the U. of Chicago notice; here is Leiter.

"But Quiet, Be Quiet A Minute": On the Death of Rev. Fred Phelps

The news has just been released that Rev. Fred Phelps, founder and lifelong shepherd of the Westboro Baptist Church (in Topeka, Kansas) has died at the age of 84.  I find it difficult, I confess, to summon the normal human compassion that usually accompanies news of another's death in this case, largely because Phelps dedicated his life to broadcasting his rejection of-- not to mention enlisting others, including children, to stage carnival-like circuses around his rejection of-- what most people would consider even the most minimally-decent exhibitions of human compassion.  Fred Phelps was one of the most infamous, outrageous, dishonorable and genuinely despicable hatemongers of my generation.  And, what is more, Fred Phelps' hate was as ferocious and vicious as it was blind.  Through the prism of his delusional and evangelical abhorrence, the Westboro congregants en masse considered themselves justified in casting an unjustifiably wide net of Judgment.  Caught in that net were many: ranging from bona fide innocents against whom no reasonable person could or ought cast aspersions, like Matthew Shepard, to a whole host of other "collateral-damage" victims of Phelps' quasi-political positions who found themselves the inadvertent and inauspicious targets of his his flock's detestation.

I say again: I find it very, very difficult to summon the normal human compassion that ought to accompany the news of Fred Phelps' passing.

Nevertheless, these are the moments when our inclination toward Schadenfreude, however deeply affirming and deeply satisfactory indulging that sentiment may feel, ought to be on principle squelched. 

Helen Tartar, RIP

A terrible loss felt by many, many people. Notice is here, from Fordham University Press, where she was Editorial Director.

1919-2014

He is gone. When someone is 94, you can't call it a surprise.  But when someone has always been there as a part of just about everything you cared about politically your entire life, it somehow is.  We are much the poorer.
 

In memoriam: Francesco del Punta

Francesco del Punta, a well-known and much admired scholar of medieval philosophy, sadly passed away yesterday. Upon hearing the news from his former student Luca Gili, I asked Luca to write an obituary for NewAPPS, and here it is.

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After a long and dreadful illness, Francesco Del Punta (1941-2013) passed away yesterday evening. He was a great scholar and a great man, and he will be much missed. Del Punta is well known especially for his edition of Ockham’s commentary on Aristotle’s Sophistici Elenchi (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1978), and for his edition of Paul of Venice’s treatises De veritate et falsitate propositionis  and De significato propositionis (Oxford, 1978).

RIP: Edward Francis McClennen II, 1936– 2013

Here's a moving, detailed tribute to my former colleague, Ned McClennen.

Fred Dretske: A Reminiscence

Fred Dretske was one of the most elegant men I knew. I became friends with him at a conference that he was attending together with his friend Berent Enç. Both could always make you laugh, but first they’d make you feel wanted and at home. Fred had a quick and intimate smile, the kind of smile that made you think he liked you. And he probably did. It was his way to see, and perhaps more remarkably, to look at and attend to, the best in everything and everybody. I remember his gestures and way of talking: simple, economical; he’d smile a lot but laugh much less often. He had the look of being comfortable in his body in the way that athletes are, but as far as I know, he wasn’t an athlete.

His critical remarks were always understated: you’d say something, and he’d say “You mean . . . ?” and it would be clear he’d understood, but didn’t agree. Many people talk about discussing some point with Fred for hours on end. With me, it wasn’t like that. It’d be a word here and a word there, and he’d get it across how he was thinking about something. I was usually able to take it from there. In my 2005 book, I was quite critical of occasions when he didn’t seem to distinguish between information-contained and information-extracted. When we talked about it, he simply smiled. I asked why he hadn’t mentioned the point in his review of my book. He smiled some more. I guess he thought I had him and it wrong. I thought a lot about how. Later, some of the experts in the field taught me some of the advanced moves, and maybe I would have written Chapter 3 of my book somewhat differently if I had known them. Fred, however, didn’t think that it was his role to teach me. He would have thought it overly forward.

Fred’s book Knowledge and the Flow of Information is one of the two or three most important works on perceptual knowledge in the last fifty years or so. Some philosophical works are argumentative—forcefully arguing for a philosophical thesis. Such works are immediately controversial. They expand and enrich the field, but are forever debated. In epistemology, externalism and contextualism are programs of this sort.

KFI falls into another category: books that create new structures.

Fred Dretske (1932-2013)

Brian Leiter has reported the passing of Fred Dretske; Brian also links to this gem on the Gettier paper.  I met Dretske only a few times in graduate school and spent a few days with him when he visited Syracuse. (Chalmers has some nice pictures, including one of Dretske and Murat Aydede, who enthusiastically introduced me to Dretske's views in graduate school.) I recall a memorable exchange between Alva Noë and Dretske, where from the audience (I think) Dretske forcefully pressed his case against the embodied cognition approach.

Dretske got his PhD (1960) at age 28 at a very good (but not great) department (Minnesota--then in the grip of logical positivism, I suspect). Unlike a lot of twentieth century, analytic boy-wonders, he did not have a break-out (still famous) paper at the start of his career. (Correct me if I am wrong.) Rather, he published on a very regular basis in top journals on a range (of sometimes very quirky) topics, including time-travel--this morning I enjoyed reading "Counting to Infinity," which reminds us of that alternative world in which analytic metaphysics could have come in its own by  reflection on the nature of infinity (recall my post). After a decade (or so), he published Seeing and Knowing and a remarkable group of papers, including a classic one on Epistemic Operators.

Between Knowledge and the Flow of Information (1981) and Naturalizing the Mind (presented in 1994) he seemed to capture and define the common sense of a whole philosophical era. A remarkable achievement.

A tribute to Gillian Howie

Radical Philosophy has published a moving tribute to Gillian Howie, who died, much too soon, earlier this year.

Kenneth Appel 1932-2013

An annoyingly inaccurate, but touching obituary in the Washington Post. Not only did he solve one of the grand conjectures - and one of the easiest to explain to non-mathematicians - but he launched a subliterature in epistemology, by providing the classic case of indirect evidence of the existence of a proof. 

Ronald Dworkin Dies, aged 81

The AP reports that the well known professor of law at New York University and emeritus professor at University College London, Ronald Dworkin, has died at age 81. [HT Barry Stocker on facebook.]

Joseph L Camp Jr

As we get on in life, we begin to collect first deaths: first grandparent to die, first parent, first friend.  For many of us who have devoted much of our lives to intellectual pursuits, there is another category that is as important as these: teacher. I don't mean just someone who stands in the official role of teacher, someone with whom we took a class, but someone who guided our intellectual development, nurtured our intellectual autonomy, someone whose voice pops into our head at crucial and unexpected moments as we think through issues.  For me, Joe Camp was such a person, and he is my first such teacher-death. (Adding to the pain of this moment is that it brings fresh to my mind also the untimely death of  Joe's former partner Tamara Horowitz, with whom I took a class, but who I think of more as a dear friend and one of the finest humans I have known.)  

RIP: James M. Buchanan (1919-2013)

Tyler Cowen reports that the economist, James M. Buchanan (Nobel, 1986), has just passed away. Together with his sometime co-author and colleague, Gordon Tullock, Buchanan 'invented' public choice economics. Buchanan had a non-trivial impact on the development of political philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century; he was a keen student of and interlocutor with philosophers, especially Rawls. I will always be very proud to have a paper published alongside the Buchanan-Rawls correspondence.

I also owe a personal debt to Buchanan: he participated in the very first conference on Adam Smith that I co-organized. He was very generous and critical, and made all the young scholars present feel that they were active in an important enterprise. (It's the conference where New Voices on Adam Smith was conceived.)

Some other time I may post a bit more on Buchanan's intellectual development alongside the 'Chicago' and 'Virginia' economists (Nutter, Vining, Knight, etc.) that are part of my scholarly focus (and occasional blogging here).

Oscar Niemeyer dies at age 104

Oscar Niemeyer, the great Brazilian architect, just passed away at age 104, 10 days short of turning 105. The news has been a bit everywhere, so I suppose most readers will have seen it already, but some will be surprised to hear that he was actually still alive until yesterday. What most people probably do not know is that Niemeyer was not only alive but also kicking: he continued to be productive as an architect all the way until the end of his life. It was particularly remarkable that he continued to get involved in projects whose completion he knew he would not live long enough to see, but this did not deter him. (An uncle of mine was a long-time collaborator of Niemeyer, from whom I heard this and other interesting bits about Niemeyer.)

It is fair to say that Niemeyer was one of the greatest, most influential architects of the 20^th century. He is perhaps best known for his design of the government buildings of Brasilia, the built-from-scratch capital of Brazil inaugurated in 1960, but his projects are everywhere to be seen, mostly in Brazil but also elsewhere. (Check here for a complete list of his works, H/T Luca Baptista.) If one had to use only two words to define Niemeyer’s work, these would be: concrete and curves. He explored like no one else the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete, in particular through curvilinear shapes; see for example the famous Sambadrome arch in Rio de Janeiro (below the fold).

RIP: Ray Frey (1941-2012)

The transition between graduate school and a tenure track position is (the few 'chosen' excepted) anxiety driven, and worse. I experienced APAs where I was apparently invisible to others at the Smoker. Papers would get rejected by journals without comment after a year's wait. So, all small tokens of kindness were much appreciated. The few genuine, critical engagements with my work, thus, stand out in memory.

Brian Leiter just reported that Ray Frey (1941-2012) passed away. I was not very close to Ray, and saw him less frequently than I would have liked. But I learned from him each time we met. In particular, he was the commentator on my paper at the "Adam Society" meeting at the central APA in 2003. (The article got published here.) It was the last "graveyard" session of the conference, and there were more people on stage than in the room when I started my talk. Ray offered incisive criticism. I emailed him after the conference, and much to my amazement he sent me detailed, elaborate further comments; we went back and forth, and then I finally realized I had to learn how to do real thinking. Five years later, I sent him a publication with a footnote that states, "This paper originates as a response to a serious question by Ray Frey on a paper." He wrote me to tell me how much he liked the paper, and that now he would have to think about his response. I had never felt more proud, and so grateful.

In Memoriam: Annette Baier, by Lynne Tirrell

Most of our readers will know that Annette Baier died recently.  This is a loss that is shared by students, friends, and philosophers in general. I invite others to post rememberances, thoughts, etc. in the comments to Lynne's post.  (ML)

In Memoriam: Annette Baier

 Annette Baier was my teacher and a steadfast friend for over 30 years. That number staggers me, in part because I realize that I am now around the age Annette was when we first met, back in 1980, when I arrived at Pitt. She was such a brilliant, sophisticated, witty, and cosmopolitan person—unlike anyone I had ever met. With annual hikes in the Alps, traveling the earth from end to end, befriending people everywhere, Annette had a commodious life. Coming into her own, as she really did after 50, she showed us, by example, that one’s best work may be yet to come.  Those who know her writing are familiar with her insightful approach to the history of philosophy, are awed by the depth and breadth of her knowledge, and swayed by the power of her original ideas. But to those who knew her personally, Annette was a generous, compassionate, and deeply loyal friend. When Annette was in your corner, you were lucky indeed, because her confidence in you was a great gift through thick and thin.

Elinor Ostrom, Policies that Crowd out Reciprocity and Collective Action

Eric recently paid tribute to Elinor Ostrom (here and here). I thought I'd take up the relay and post some notes I made on an article of hers: "Policies that Crowd out Reciprocity and Collective Action." In Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005: 253-275. (There's a PDF version here, on the page for a course on Evolution and Biology of Morality I've been teaching fairly regularly.)

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Ostrom begins by reviewing evidence for strong reciprocators, which contradicts RCT's assumption that rational egoists (utility maximizers driven only by external rewards / punishments) are the only type of agent that needs to be modeled to account for social behavior. Thus we need to model different ratios of strong reciprocators and rational egoists and how those ratios change over time given different conditions.

In memoriam: Lambertus Marie de Rijk

Today I heard the sad news of the passing of the great Dutch medievalist Lambertus Marie de Rijk, at age 87. De Rijk almost singlehandedly founded the field of inquiry on Latin medieval logic and semantics, in particular but not exclusively thanks to his painstaking and groundbreaking work as an editor of manuscripts. The field would not be what it now is had not been for the publication of his seminal work Logica Modernorum (vol.1 in 1962, vol. 2 in 1967), where he retraces the birth of the ‘modern’ tradition in Latin medieval logic (i.e. the body of doctrines and theories which do not refer directly to Aristotle’s logical texts), including the edition of a large number of fundamental (often anonymous) texts.

De Rijk officially retired in 1988, but remained intellectually active all the way until the end of his life – as an editor of medieval manuscripts, of course, but also as a historian of philosophy more generally. In particular, he published a two-volume monograph on Aristotle, Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology, in 2002. De Rijk is without a doubt the founding father of the field of Latin medieval logic and semantics in the Netherlands, but his influence is almost equally felt in all parts of the world where the field is alive and kicking. An annotated bibliography retracing his impressive productivity is available in four chronological parts:

 Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Tim Kreider's ode to Ray Bradbury

If apropos anything, someone asks you what side you are on, it is always felicitous to respond, "truth and beauty."

In this respect, I highly recommend Tim Kreider's NY Times tribute to Ray Bradbury HERE (if you are blocked by the pay-wall, just reset your cookies or "Clear Recent History" in Firefox).

When I read Bradbury's books as a young child I had no idea that the stuff of his nightmares were actually coming to pass. Nor could I have realized the extent to which I would later organize my life around fleeing those very things.

Kreider's conclusion is perfect:

I think of Ray Bradbury’s work often these days. I remember “The Murderer” whenever I ask for directions or make a joke to someone who can’t hear me because of her ear buds, when I see two friends standing back-to-back in a crowd yelling “Where are you?” into their phones, or I’m forced to eavesdrop on somebody prattling on Bluetooth in that sanctum sanctorum, the library. I think of “Fahrenheit 451” every time I see a TV screen in an elevator or a taxi or a gas pump or over a urinal. When the entire hellish engine of the media seemed geared toward the concerted goal of forcing me to know, against my will, about a product called “Lady Gaga,” I thought: Denham’s Dentifrice.

It is thanks to Ray Bradbury that I understand this world I grew into for what it is: a dystopian future. And it is thanks to him that we know how to conduct ourselves in such a world: arm yourself with books. Assassinate your television. Go for walks, and talk with your neighbors. Cherish beauty; defend it with your life. Become a Martian.

Also check out the song at right. Bowie understood Ray Bradbury. For all the suffering it entails, it is still infinitely better to be Martian than caveman.

In memoriam: Frits Staal

 With some delay, today I found out that the Dutch philosopher and Indologist Frits Staal, Emeritus Professor of philosophy and South/Southeast Asian studies at Berkeley (having retired in 1992), passed away on February 19^th at age 81 in Thailand, where he had lived since his retirement. Staal was in particular a specialist on Vedic rituals and mantras; he also wrote extensively on the Indian grammarian Panini, and on the history of science in general. He argued convincingly for the view that the development of science in the so-called western world can only be understood as a very complex story, involving intertwined events in at least three continents (Europe, Africa and Asia).

In Memoriam: Jonathan E. Adler

Leiter brings us the sad news of the untimely death of Jonathan E. Adler, professor of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Since Leiter did not open the post for comments, I thought it would be nice to have a place where we can share our memories and impressions of Jonathan.

I remember him with much fondness from the time I spent at the CUNY GC as a post-doc in 2005/2006. We mostly interacted at the legendary Wednesday Faculty Colloquium at the CG; he made an impression on me not only for the philosophical sharpness of his questions and remarks, but also for his extreme friendliness. For a while he was in charge of the colloquium, and so took the speakers out for dinner; I would often join the group, and chatting with Jonathan was always a pleasure.

I haven’t been in touch or seen him since, but in 2008 he published a very important volume co-edited with Lance Rips: Reasoning – Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations. The volume is the first real attempt at bringing together psychologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers to talk about reasoning and thinking – something that should have happened ages ago. It is a great volume, one which I often consult (I hardly ever buy books, but this one I did not hesitate for a minute before getting it).

This is a real loss for the philosophical community; Jonathan will be dearly missed.

Ruth Barcan Marcus, 1921 - 2012

I first met Ruth Barcan Marcus when I was first starting out in philosophy. She was sometimes attending the meetings of the American Philosophical Association. Someone -- I don't recall who -- introduced me to this legend, a woman I had only read about in books, a person whose logic I had studied for years. Of course, I already knew that Ruth would be extremely insightful but I quickly learned that she was also a lot of fun, supportive, forward-looking and adventurous.

After our initial encounter at the smoker we agreed to have lunch the following day. I was still addicted to cigarettes back then and after lunch I was going out for a quick smoke. To my surprise Ruth joined me. She even had half a cigarette with me. "I haven't smoked for years," she said, "but I still enjoy one now and then." Ruth told me that she was working on a grand theory of belief. Sadly, she never finished it.

NYT's The Stone: Remembering Michael Dummett

Comments from readers are invited at The Stone.