WCPA 2010: Keynote Address

Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan

Allan Gibbard is the Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  He earned his undergraduate degree, with High Honors, from Swarthmore College in 1963.  After two years teaching math and physics at the Achimota School in Achimota, Ghana as part of the U.S. Peace Corps, he entered the Philosophy Ph.D. program at Harvard University, completing it, with Distinction, in 1971.  Since then, he has held teaching positions at the University of Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Michigan, as well as visiting positions at Stanford University and All Souls College, Oxford.  In addition to writing numerous articles on issues ranging from manipulating voting schemes to the metaphysics of identity, Gibbard is the author of three influential monographs in metaethics: Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (1990), Thinking How to Live (2003), and Reconciling Our Aims (2008).  He has been President of Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has been elected as a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences.