1938 – 2021
Gilbert Harman (1938-2021) was an American philosopher who spent his career at Princeton University, making influential contributions to epistemology, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and philosophy of language. He is best known for developing and naming the concept of 'inference to the best explanation' and for his skepticism about character traits in moral psychology.
Coined and developed 'inference to the best explanation' as a mode of reasoning
Authored the influential 1973 book 'Thought' on epistemology and philosophy of mind
Advanced moral relativism and challenged the existence of robust character traits
Contributed to the Quinean tradition on meaning, logic, and reasoning
Long-time Princeton professor who trained generations of analytic philosophers
There is a fundamental tension between treating logical knowledge as a priori and the computational intractability of deciding logical validity.
claimBoyd's abductive argument for scientific methodology's reliability still stands
claimA priori justification is similar to, but significantly different from, a posteriori justification