Dorothy Edgington

Dorothy Edgington
Born (1941-04-29) 29 April 1941 (age 83)
SpouseJohn Edgington
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
Main interests
philosophical logic, vagueness, conditionals, probability

Dorothy Margaret Doig Edgington FBA (née Milne, born 29 April 1941) is a philosopher active in metaphysics and philosophical logic.[1] She is particularly known for her work on the logic of conditionals and vagueness.[2]

Life and education

Dorothy Edgington was born on 29 April 1941 to Edward Milne and his wife Rhoda née Blair. She attended St Leonards School before going to St Hilda's College, Oxford to read PPE. She obtained her BA in 1964, followed in 1967 by a BPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford.[3]

Career

Most of Edgington's career was spent at Birkbeck College. Her first academic post in 1968, was as Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck and she remained there until 1996. From 1996 until 2001 she was appointed Fellow of University College, Oxford. This was followed by a professorship at Birkbeck from 2001 to 2003. She was then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford[2] from 2003[4] until 2006. She is now Emeritus Professor, and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and teaches at Birkbeck again[4] part-time.

Birkbeck College hosts a lecture series named after Edgington; in 2012, the lectures were given by John McDowell, in 2014 they were given by Rae Langton, and in 2016 the Edgington Lectures were given by Kit Fine.[5]

From 2004 to 2005 she was President of the Mind Association 2004–5 and she was President of the Aristotelian Society for 2007–8. She is a Fellow of the British Academy.[6]

In 2023 she was elected a member of the Academia Europaea.[7]

Selected publications

  • 'The Paradox of Knowability' (1985), Mind 94:557–568. Presents a resolution of Fitch's paradox based on situation semantics.
  • 'On Conditionals' (1995), Mind 104:235–329. Defends an epistemic theory of conditionals against a truth-functional one, as part of the Mind's state of the art series.
  • 'Vagueness by Degrees'. In Rosanna Keefe & Peter Smith (eds.), Vagueness: A Reader. MIT Press (1997)
  • 'Counterfactuals and the Benefit of Hindsight'. In Phil Dowe & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World. Routledge (2004)
  • Conditionals (2006), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

References

  1. ^ EDGINGTON, Prof. Dorothy Margaret Doig', Who's Who 2017, A & C Black, 2017; online edn, Oxford University Press, Nov 2016; online edn, Nov 2016 accessed 9 Aug 2017
  2. ^ a b Sue James (5 November 2004). "Department audit". The Times. Retrieved 25 December 2010.
  3. ^ EDGINGTON, Prof. Dorothy Margaret Doig', Who's Who 2017, A & C Black, 2017; online edn, Oxford University Press, Nov 2016; online edn, Nov 2016 accessed 9 Aug 2017
  4. ^ a b "Prof. Dorothy Edgington returns to Birkbeck". Archived from the original on 15 June 2011. Retrieved 25 December 2010.
  5. ^ "Edgington Lectures". The Edgington Lectures. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
  6. ^ "Professor Dorothy Edgington". British Academy. Retrieved 16 August 2017.
  7. ^ "Dorothy Edgington". Member. Academia Europaea. Retrieved 24 December 2024.