Career
Gibbard has written three books in ethical theory: Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (1990) develops a general theory of moral judgment and judgments of rationality; Thinking How to Live (2003) offers an argument for reconfiguring the distinctions between normative and descriptive discourse; Reconciling Our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics (2008) argues in favour of a broadly utilitarian approach to ethics.
Gibbard has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He served as President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association from 2001 to 2002.
Gibbard received his BA in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1963 with minors in physics and philosophy. After teaching mathematics and physics in Ghana with the Peace Corps (1963-1965), Gibbard studied philosophy at Harvard University, participating in the seminar on social and political philosophy with John Rawls, Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen, and Robert Nozick. In 1971 Gibbard earned his Ph.D., writing a dissertation under the direction of John Rawls.
Soon after his doctoral degree, Gibbard provided a first proof of a conjecture that strategic voting was an intrinsic feature of non-dictatorial voting systems with at least three choices, a conjecture of Michael Dummett and Robin Farquharson. Once established, this result has been known as the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem.
He served as professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (1969-1974), and the University of Pittsburgh (1974-1977), before joining the University of Michigan. Gibbard chaired the University of Michigan's Philosophy Department (1987-1988) and has held the title of Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy since 1994.
In 2009, Gibbard became one of three living philosophers to be elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read more about this topic: Allan Gibbard
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)