Tamar Gendler
Encyclopedia
Tamar Szabó Gendler is a Professor of Philosophy
and Cognitive Science
at Yale University
, and Chair
of the Yale University Department of Philosophy. Her primary interests include metaphysics
, epistemology and philosophical psychology.
to Mary and Everett Gendler
. She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she attended the Andover public schools and then Phillips Academy Andover
.
As an undergraduate, she studied at Yale University
, where she was a championship debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association. She graduated summa cum laude in 1987 with Distinction in Humanities and Math-&-Philosophy.
After graduating from college, she worked for several years as an assistant to Linda Darling-Hammond
at the RAND Corporation’s education policy division in Washington, DC.
In 1996, she earned her Philosophy PhD program at Harvard University, with Robert Nozick
, Derek Parfit
and Hilary Putnam
as her advisors.
Gendler taught Philosophy
at Yale University
(1996–97), Syracuse University
(1997–2003) and Cornell University
(2003–06), before returning to Yale in 2006 as Professor of Philosophy
and Chair of the Yale University Cognitive Science
Program (2006–2010). On July 1, 2010, she became Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the department’s history and the first female graduate of Yale College to Chair a Yale Department.
Gendler is married to Zoltan Gendler Szabo, a philosopher and linguist who is also a professor at Yale University. They have two sons.
Fellowship Program in the Humanities, the National Science Foundation
, the American Council of Learned Societies
/Ryskamp Fellowship Program, the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
New Directions Program.
She is the author of Thought Experiments: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (Routledge, 2000) and Intuition, Imagination and Philosophical Methodology (Oxford, 2010), and editor or co-editor of The Elements of Philosophy (Oxford 2008), Perceptual Experience (Oxford, 2006), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford 2002). She is also co-editor of the journal Oxford Studies in Epistemology.
Her philosophical articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy
, Mind
, Philosophical Perspectives
, Mind & Language
, Midwest Studies in Philosophy
, Philosophical Studies
, and The Philosophical Quarterly
. Her 2008 essay “Alief and Belief” was selected by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the 10 best articles published in philosophy in 2008.
She also lectures occasionally for non-professional audiences as a professor with One Day University
and as a diavlogger on bloggingheads.tv
.
She is best known for her work on thought experiments, imagination
– particularly on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance
-- and for coining the term alief
.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and Cognitive Science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, and Chair
Chair (official)
The chairman is the highest officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office is typically elected or appointed by the members of the group. The chairman presides over meetings of the assembled group and conducts its business in an...
of the Yale University Department of Philosophy. Her primary interests include metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
, epistemology and philosophical psychology.
Education and Employment
Gendler was born in 1965 in Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
to Mary and Everett Gendler
Everett Gendler
Everett Gendler is an American rabbi, known for his involvement in progressive causes, including the American civil rights movement, Jewish nonviolence, and the egalitarian Jewish Havurah movement. From 1978-1995, he served as the first Jewish Chaplain at Phillips Academy, Andover...
. She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she attended the Andover public schools and then Phillips Academy Andover
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
.
As an undergraduate, she studied at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where she was a championship debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association. She graduated summa cum laude in 1987 with Distinction in Humanities and Math-&-Philosophy.
After graduating from college, she worked for several years as an assistant to Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at the Stanford University School of Education, where she launched the , the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, and the . Darling-Hammond is author or editor of more than a dozen books and more than 300 articles on...
at the RAND Corporation’s education policy division in Washington, DC.
In 1996, she earned her Philosophy PhD program at Harvard University, with Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
, Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit is a British philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. His 1984 book Reasons and Persons has been very influential...
and Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
as her advisors.
Gendler taught Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(1996–97), Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
(1997–2003) and Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
(2003–06), before returning to Yale in 2006 as Professor of Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and Chair of the Yale University Cognitive Science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
Program (2006–2010). On July 1, 2010, she became Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the department’s history and the first female graduate of Yale College to Chair a Yale Department.
Gendler is married to Zoltan Gendler Szabo, a philosopher and linguist who is also a professor at Yale University. They have two sons.
Honors and Professional Accomplishments
Gendler has held Fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon FoundationAndrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City and Princeton, New Jersey in the United States, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, endowed with wealth accumulated by the late Andrew W. Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969...
Fellowship Program in the Humanities, the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, the American Council of Learned Societies
American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...
/Ryskamp Fellowship Program, the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City and Princeton, New Jersey in the United States, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, endowed with wealth accumulated by the late Andrew W. Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the product of the 1969...
New Directions Program.
She is the author of Thought Experiments: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (Routledge, 2000) and Intuition, Imagination and Philosophical Methodology (Oxford, 2010), and editor or co-editor of The Elements of Philosophy (Oxford 2008), Perceptual Experience (Oxford, 2006), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford 2002). She is also co-editor of the journal Oxford Studies in Epistemology.
Her philosophical articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy
Journal of Philosophy
The Journal of Philosophy is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, especially the exploration of the borderline between philosophy and other disciplines." The...
, Mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
, Philosophical Perspectives
Philosophical Perspectives
Philosophical Perspectives is a journal of philosophy that publishes an annual volume on a specific theme addressing philosophical problems. James E. Tomberlin is the founding editor and edited the series from 1987 to 2002....
, Mind & Language
Mind & Language
Mind & Language is a peer-reviewed academic journal published five times a year by Wiley-Blackwell. It covers research in the study of mind and language primarily from the fields of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive anthropology. The editor-in-chief is...
, Midwest Studies in Philosophy
Midwest Studies in Philosophy
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, is an annual journal in the analytic tradition that covers one topic in each issue. In 2007, the editors are Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein....
, Philosophical Studies
Philosophical Studies
Philosophical Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal for philosophy in the analytic tradition. The journal is devoted to the publication of papers in exclusively analytic philosophy and welcomes papers applying formal techniques to philosophical problems...
, and The Philosophical Quarterly
The Philosophical Quarterly
The Philosophical Quarterly is a quarterly academic journal of philosophy established in 1950. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Club and the University of St Andrews. The current editor-in-chief is Tim Mulgan. Every year the journal holds an Essay...
. Her 2008 essay “Alief and Belief” was selected by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the 10 best articles published in philosophy in 2008.
She also lectures occasionally for non-professional audiences as a professor with One Day University
One Day University
One Day University is an adult education program founded by Steven Schragis and John Galvin in 2006. The program's one-day sessions feature four or five lectures by leading American university professors. Originally based in the New York City area, the program has spread to Boston, Philadelphia,...
and as a diavlogger on bloggingheads.tv
Bloggingheads.tv
Bloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers...
.
She is best known for her work on thought experiments, imagination
Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses...
– particularly on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance
Aesthetic emotions
Aesthetic emotions refer to emotions that are felt during aesthetic activity and/or appreciation. These emotions may be of the everyday variety or may be specific to aesthetic contexts. Examples of the latter include the sublime, the beautiful, and the kitsch...
-- and for coining the term alief
Alief (belief)
In philosophy and psychology, an alief is an automatic or habitual belief-like attitude, particularly one that is in tension with a person’s explicit beliefs....
.
External links
- Tamar Szabó Gendler’s personal homepage
- Tamar Szabó Gendler’s Yale webpage
- Lecture Slides from "Five Ancient Secrets to Modern Happiness"
- Bloggingheads.tv: Paul Bloom & Tamar Szabó Gendler, Percontations: Beliefs, Aliefs, and Daydreams (May 31, 2009)
Sources
- Tamar Szabó Gendler’s Yale webpage
- Tamar Szabó Gendler’s personal homepage
- Yale Daily News, "Professor goes back to school" (2009)
- PhilPapers archive link to Gendler's professional papers
- Cornell Sun, "Cornell Loses Philosophy Profs" (2006)
- Yale Daily News', "Philosophy Takes Steps to Rebuild" (2006)