LETTER FROM THE CHAIR

I am honored to write to you for the first time as department chair. We are deeply indebted to my predecessor, Alan Sidelle, who served as department chair last year before retiring, rounding out a 33-year career in philosophy at UW-Madison. I couldn’t have had a better model of conscientious leadership, and will particularly miss Alan’s good-natured humor, which always made the department such a fun, welcoming place.

Our department has been undergoing many changes. We lost two giants in the department last year with the retirement of Alan Sidelle and Elliott Sober, who served 33 and 49 years, respectively.

We celebrated and reminisced with both of them at a joint retirement party in April. They are both sorely missed, but we are fortunate to see them now and then at department events.

We welcomed three new colleagues to campus in the fall, Aja Watkins (philosophy of science), Alex Roberts (metaphysics), and Annina Loets (metaphysics), each of whom is profiled below. We also look forward to welcoming Alex Meehan (philosophy of science, currently completing a postdoc at Yale) next fall. You may have noticed another change to our faculty page this year: we have added an “Affiliate Faculty” section, to recognize and enhance ties with philosophy-connected colleagues across campus. Our affiliate faculty are Clinton Castro (Information School), Karola Kreitmair (Medical History and Bioethics), and Alan Rubel (Information School).

Even with our bounty of new colleagues, the hiring continues! We are currently running two faculty searches, one in epistemology and the other in moral, social and political philosophy, broadly construed. We are excited to hire more excellent professors in areas that will complement and build on our research strengths, as well as meet our expanding teaching needs.

On the subject of teaching, we have continued to see high demand for our undergraduate classes. We are holding strong at over 200 philosophy majors, many of them double majors from computer science, economics, and other sciences. We also have some exciting new course offerings, developed by two of our recent hires: Aja Watkins is offering a newly conceived version of “Philosophy and the Sciences”, and Annette Zimmermann is developing an entirely new course entitled “The Ethics of AI and Machine Learning.”

Another exciting development for our undergraduate teaching mission is the creation of dedicated philosophy tutoring positions, which graduate students fill in lieu of regular TA or lecturer positions. We piloted this idea in the fall with a logic tutor, since we knew there was existing demand for logic tutoring that the campus tutoring center was not equipped to meet. In past semesters, some students have hired private logic tutors, but this is cost prohibitive for many. The demand for logic tutoring this fall was even higher than we anticipated, and we were proud to be offering this support for free to all of our students. We will continue with the logic tutoring position this spring and add a dedicated writing tutor, to boot.

Outside the classroom, it has also been an active year for philosophy on campus. Two of our colleagues, Annette Zimmermann and Jimmy Goodrich, have been putting UW-Madison philosophy on the map in the rapidly changing field of AI and data ethics. This article in the L&S Magazine details some of their research activities. They are developing a Research Lab focusing on the intersection of political philosophy, philosophy of economics, and AI and data. This Fall, they established a regular workshop, drawing an interdisciplinary group of researchers from across campus to share work-in-progress. We look forward to new developments on this front in the coming year.

James Messina delivered our annual Philosophers at Work public talk in November, titled “Kant’s Philosophical Revolution: His Radical View of Reality and Space.” He gave a gripping account of how Kant developed his views on space against the backdrop of contemporary debates. The talk was astonishingly detailed and rigorous, while also being accessible and entertaining. The turnout was exceptionally high—we had to bring in additional seats—and there were many more hands than we could call on in the Q&A that followed. The talk was sponsored by the very generous Charles Manthey Winter Philosophy Department Endowment Fund.  We are very grateful to Charlie, and all of you who generously support our department with your kind donations.

Wishing everyone energy and creative inspiration in the coming year. As Plato wrote, “Let us begin with the longer path; while we are fresh, we shall get on better.”

All the best, and with thanks to you all.

Emily Fletcher

Philosophy Department Chair

emily.fletcher@wisc.edu