The Ruth Barcan Marcus Memorial Lecture

October 3, 2018

On Thursday, October 25, 2018, Judith Jarvis Thomson (MIT) will deliver the inaugural Ruth Barcan Marcus Memorial Lecture.  The title of her talk is “Modus Ponens et Alia.”

The lecture will take place on October 25, 2018 at 4pm in room 101 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LC) on Yale’s Old Campus.  A reception will follow the lecture.

This lecture series is made possible by the generosity of Professor Marcus’ family, friends, and colleagues and is in honor of her extraordinary achievements, mentorship, and leadership in philosophy and in academia.  Professor Marcus’ pioneering work–while still a student–permanently shaped modal logic and introduced insights the depth of which shows no signs of being exhausted.  Her contributions to philosophy of language, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of mind are equally ground-breaking.  Generations of philosophers have benefited from not only Professor Marcus’ scholarship and rigor, but also from her friendship, loyalty, and steadfast courage.  And it is in recognition of all these remarkable qualities that our department is honored to host this event.

Judith Jarvis Thomson is one of the leading philosophers of our time.  A longtime member of the philosophy department at MIT, she is the author of numerous contemporary classics in moral philosophy, including “A Defense of Abortion” (1971) and “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem” (1976)  – each of which has spawned a huge literature – as well as several books in ethics and in metaphysics, such as Acts and Other Events (1977), The Realm of Rights (1990), Goodness and Advice (2001), and Normativity (2008).  A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Thomson has been a visiting professor at Berkeley, UCLA, Princeton, and Yale.