Greetings, friends of Wisconsin philosophy!

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.

Read the full letter from the Philosophy Dept. Chair, Emily Fletcher, HERE

Some people think of philosophy as arcane and remote from the concerns of ordinary life. In his play The Clouds, Aristophanes lampoons philosophers like Socrates for having his head, quite literally, in the clouds. The members of Madison Public Philosophy, founded by UW-Madison philosophy graduate students in 2016, beg to differ. They see philosophy as a source of questions and methods that can potentially enrich the lives of everyone. Prometheus-like, they have made it their mission to bring philosophy to the Madison public— including kids. I recently got together with Katie Deaven, who has been a very active member of MPP, to ask her about some of the things MPP has done in the past and what she envisions for future public philosophy in Madison.

Read the full article HERE

What does it look like when kids try to reason like philosophers? Would they flail pathetically? Or might they surprise us with their wisdom?  Our newsletter staff wanted to get to the bottom of this issue, which meant finding children and testing how well they did on two fundamental philosophical tasks:  asking big questions, and answering big questions.

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One kid I got to speak with was Charlie Messina (age 6). I asked her if there were any big questions that had been bothering her that she would like a professional philosopher to answer. After pondering for a moment, she posed the following questions (questions have been lightly edited for clarity).          

Read the full article HERE

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Amelia              Interview by Jesse Steinberg, answers to Amelia’s questions by Russ Shafer-Landau

Amelia is nine years-old and has been talking with her dad about accidents and whether some people can be responsible for things even if what they did wasn't on purpose. Some of this discussion had to do with questions about our intentions and how our motives play a role in what we do and what we're responsible for doing. After some discussion, Amelia came up with some cases to tease out some of the issues and get a better handle on some of the questions she had. She then decided to contact Russ Shafer-Landau to help get to the bottom of things. Here's Amelia's case and questions:   

Read the full article HERE

by James Messina

Mike Tiboris grew up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and got his BA in philosophy from UW-Madison in 2003.

He went on to get his PhD in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. After a period of

time teaching for San Diego State University and helping to build its Institute for Ethics and Public

Affairs, Tiboris became a resident fellow at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, focusing on issues around water. Life’s currents then brought him back to Madison, where he works as a director of agriculture and water policy at the River Alliance of Wisconsin. In addition, he is a non-resident Global Water Fellow for the Chicago Council on

Global Affairs’ Food and Agriculture Program, and regularly teaches graduate courses on water governance at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson School for Environmental Studies and the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. I recently got the chance to talk with Mike about his experience as an undergraduate philosophy major at UW-Madison; his path after getting a PhD; and the ways in which his background in philosophy have allowed him to pursue jobs that make a positive impact on the world.

Read the full article HERE

She was nineteen (what Pythagoras would have called a “number”). By happenstance we found ourselves in the same Introduction to Philosophy course. Fortune seated her in the chair next to mine (cf.  Laplace, P.: Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités). I swiveled to introduce myself and fell mute, so bewitching were the powers of her eyes’ primary qualities to produce in me a sensation of coffee-brownness (Locke, J.: Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.8.8). As my lingering gaze took in her other secondary qualities (and some primary ones as well), I made a promise to myself: someday a love as fierce as Alcibiades’ for Socrates (Plato: Symposium 222c1–2) would bind us. I would sacrifice anything for her – even the clothes on my back if she were drowning in a pond, which would not be supererogatory (Singer, P.: “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”). I wanted de re this alluring collection of undetached parts (Quine, W.V.O.: Word and Object, Ch. 2) but would settle for de dicto if it came to that. Yet first I had to be sure of her commitment to philosophy. I needed a sign or indicator (Dretske, F.: Explaining Behavior) of her dedication. Powers of speech barely revived, I stammered “Are you sure you are in the right class?”

She turned her head, looking me square (Pythagoras, again) in the face, her expressive eyebrows expressing confusion, “I think I am”. Descartes (Meditation II)!

New Assistant Professor

Interviewed by Emily Fletcher

Read the full interview HERE

Read the full interview HERE

New Assistant Professor        

Interviewed by Emily Fletcher

Read the full interview  HERE

End of semester gathering. Prof. Martha Gibson and graduate student Greg Nirshberg

May Banquet 2023.

Colonel Jerome Ellis Goodrich, USMC (Retired) Scholarship

Colonel Jerome Goodrich and guest Audrey

May Banquet 2023.

Charles Manthey Winter Philosophy Scholarship Charles Winter and guest Irene Wheeler

End of semester gathering. Professor Farid Masrour and Professor Steve Nadler.

End of semester gathering. Professor Paula Gottlieb with gradiate students. (Henry Curcio, Cristian Vulpe, and Callum Orme)

Above photos by Rob Streiffer

By Larry Shapiro

and Thalia Skaleris