| 1 | Name: | Dr. Tyler Burge | |
| Institution: | University of California, Los Angeles | ||
| Year Elected: | 2007 | ||
| Class: | 4. Humanities | ||
| Subdivision: | 406. Linguistics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1946 | ||
Tyler Burge is one of the leading contemporary figures in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and epistemology. His work centers on the essential embeddedness of the individual subject in the social world of which he is a member, and the logical inseparability of ascriptions to an individual of thought, meaning, and knowledge from the objective facts of this social context - even when the individual is not fully aware of those facts. This is not just the evident empirical point that individuals acquire their concepts by social learning. It is a claim about the content of those concepts, and its logical dependence on the world around them and on other speakers of their language. This "anti-individualist" approach casts a new light on the way in which the mind is part of the world. It goes against a venerable tradition extending from Descartes through Frege. As Burge observes, it has some affinities with the tradition of Hegel. His work is also related to that of Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson. He has explored the implications of these ideas not only for mental content but for meaning, for the objectivity of norms, and for self-knowledge - which is much more puzzling when the boundaries between the self and the world are complicated in this way. These writings are widely cited and very influential. He also has done serious work in the history of philosophy, notably on Frege and Kant. Dr. Burge is presently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. | |||