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Susanne Bobzien

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Susanne Bobzien in 2012

Susanne BobzienFBA(born 1960) is a German-born philosopher[1]whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy.[2]She currently is senior research fellow atAll Souls College, Oxfordand professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Oxford.[3]

Early life

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Bobzien was born inHamburg,Germany, in 1960.[1]She graduated in 1985 with an M.A. atBonn University,and in 1993 with a doctorate in philosophy (D.Phil.) atOxford University,where from 1987 to 1989 she was affiliated withSomerville College.[3]

Academic career

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Bobzien currently holds the position of senior research fellow atAll Souls College, Oxfordand is professor of philosophy atOxford University.[3]She was appointed to a senior professorship in philosophy at Yale in 2001[4]and held this position from 2002 to 2010.[3]From 1993 to 2002 she had a tenured position at Oxford University.[3]From 1990 to 2002, she was fellow and praelector in philosophy atThe Queen's College.Before that she was tutorial fellow in philosophy atBalliol College.[3]

Among her awards are a British Academy Research Readership (2000–2002),[5]and a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2008–09).[6]In 2014 she was elected aFellow of the British Academy,the United Kingdom'snational academyfor the humanities and social sciences.[7]Bobzien has published several books and numerous articles in leading academic journals and collections.[1]

Philosophical work

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Determinism and freedom

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Bobzien's major workDeterminism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy[4]is "the first full-scale modern study of the [Stoic] theory [of determinism]".[8]"It explores... the views of the Stoics on causality, fate, the modalities, divination, rational agency, the non-futility of action, moral responsibility, [and the] formation of character".[9]In this book and in her articles "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" and "Did Epicurus discover the Free-Will Problem?" Bobzien argues that the problem of determinism and free-will, as conceived in contemporary philosophy, was not considered by Aristotle, Epicurus or the Stoics, as was previously thought, but only in the 2nd century CE, as the result of a conflation of Stoic and Aristotelian theory.[8][10]

Bobzien's "Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (The Categories of Freedom in Kant) has been described as an article "that has long been the starting point for any German reader seeking to deepen his understanding of the second chapter of the Analytic of Kant'sCritique of Practical Reason."It differentiates the main functions of Kant's Categories of Freedom: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated.[11]

History of logic

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Bobzien'sDie stoische Modallogik[12]is the first monograph on Stoic modal logic.[13]In her paper "Stoic Syllogistic" Bobzien sets out the evidence for Stoic syllogistic. She argues that this should not be assimilated into standard propositional calculus, but treated as a distinct system which bears important similarities torelevance logicandconnexive logic.[14]In "Stoic Sequent Logic and Proof Theory", she argues that stoic deduction resembles backward proof search forGentzen-style substructuralsequentlogics as developed instructural proof theory,[15]and in the co-authored "Stoic Logic and Multiple Generality" she lays out evidence that Stoic logic could handle theproblem of multiple generalityin a variable-freefirst-order logic.[16]

Bobzien's paper "The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity" traces the earliest development ofmodus ponens(or Law of Detachment).[17][18]She has also reconstructed the ancient history ofhypothetical syllogisms[19]and Galen's representation of peripatetic hypothetical syllogistic, and shown these differ from stoic syllogistic and contemporary propositional logic.[20]

In the 2021 extended essay "Frege plagiarized the Stoics", based on her 2016 Keeling Lecture, Bobzien argues in detail that Frege plagiarized them on a large scale in his work on the philosophy of logic and language, written mainly between 1890 and his death in 1925.[21][22][23]

Vagueness and paradoxes

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Bobzien has worked on the philosophical application of themodal logicS4.1 to vagueness and paradoxes. She has introduced and developed the philosophical ideas of columnar higher-order vagueness, borderline nestings, and semi-determinability.[24][25][26]

In "Gestalt Shifts in the Liar", presented in her2017 Jacobsen Lecture,Bobzien analyses three features ofliarsentences and shows how their combination leads to the liar's paradoxicality: salience-basedbistability,context sensitivity, and assessment sensitivity. On this basis she proposes the modal logic S4.1 as governing the truth operator and offers a revenge-free solution to the liar paradox that relates to Herzberger'srevision theoryof truth.[26]

Bobzien has proposed a logic of higher-ordervagueness(the quantified modal logic S4.1 supplemented withMax Cresswell's Finality Axiom) that delivers a generic solution to theSorites paradoxand avoids higher-order vagueness paradoxes and sharp boundaries.[27][28]The proposed logic is weaker thanclassical logicand stronger thanintuitionistic logic.It is amodal companionto thesuperintuitionistic logicQH+KF.[29]

Selected publications

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Determinism and freedom

  • Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy(Oxford 1998).ISBN0199247676
  • Freedom, and Moral Responsibility: Essays in Ancient Philosophy(Oxford 2021).ISBN0198866739
  • "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" (Phronesis43, 1998)
  • "Did Epicurus Discover the Free-Will Problem?" (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy19, 2000)
  • "Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (inKant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritikvol. 1, Würzburg, 1988)

History of logic

Vagueness and paradoxes

See also

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References

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  1. ^abcWho'sWho in America 2012, 64th Edition
  2. ^Bobzien's British Academy Page
  3. ^abcdefAll Souls Faculty Page
  4. ^abYale Daily News 3/23/2001, "Philosophy hires rising Oxford star"Archived3 October 2012 at theWayback Machine
  5. ^British Academy Research Readerships 2000–2002.
  6. ^NEH Fellowships at Independent Research Institutions, announced June 2008.
  7. ^"British Academy announces 42 new fellows".Times Higher Education. 18 July 2014.Retrieved18 July2014.
  8. ^abTimes Literary Supplement (15 September 2000) "Chrysippus and the seamless web"
  9. ^Mind 109 (2000) p. 855
  10. ^PhilPapers archive link to Bobzien's professional papers
  11. ^Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2010.11.06, of K. Ameriks, O. Höffe (eds.) Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy, Cambridge 2009.
  12. ^Die stoische Modallogik (Würzburg 1986)
  13. ^K. Hülser,Die Fragmente zur Dialektik der Stoiker,vol. 3. p. VI.
  14. ^Review of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XIV, 1996.
  15. ^History and Philosophy of Logic2019.
  16. ^Philosophers' Imprint2020.
  17. ^PhilPapers
  18. ^The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity ",Phronesis47, 2002
  19. ^Phronesis45, 2002, 87–137.
  20. ^Rhizai Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science2, 2004, 57–102.
  21. ^Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy: Keeling Lectures 2011-18London: 2020.
  22. ^"Did Frege Plagiarize the Stoics?".3 February 2021.
  23. ^"Le logicien Gottlob Frege n'est-il qu'un vulgaire plagiaire?".24 February 2021.
  24. ^Mormann,Erkenntnis2020.
  25. ^Analytic Philosophy2013.
  26. ^abNotre Dame Philosophical Review.
  27. ^Philosophers' Imprint2010
  28. ^Aristotelian Society Suppl.89, 2015.
  29. ^Bobzien Faculty Page
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