Allan Gibbard is the Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Education
After teaching mathematics and physics in Ghana with the Peace Corps (1963-1965), Gibbard studied philosophy at Harvard University, participating in the seminar on social and political philosophy with John Rawls, Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Senator, and Robert Nozick. In 1971 Gibbard earned his Doctor of Philosophy, writing a dissertation under the direction of John Rawls.
Career
Gibbard has made major contributions to contemporary ethical theory, in particular metaethics, where he has developed a contemporary version of non-cognitivism. He has also published articles in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and social choice theory. Education and Gibbard received his Bachelor in mathematics from Swarthmore College in 1963 with minors in physics and philosophy.
He served as professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago (1969-1974), and the University of Pittsburgh (1974-1977), before joining the University of Michigan.
Gibbard chaired the University of Michigan"s Philosophy Department (1987-1988) and has held the title of Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy since 1994. He retired in 2016. and the Econometric Society, and has also received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
He served as President of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association from 2001 to 2002. He gave the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006.
Soon after his doctoral degree, Gibbard provided a first proof of a conjecture that strategic voting was an intrinsic feature of non-dictatorial voting systems with at least three choices, a conjecture of Michael Dummett and Robin Farquharson.
Once established, this result has been known as the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. Gibbard is best-known in philosophy for his contributions to ethical theory. He is the author of three books in this area.
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (1990) develops a general theory of moral judgment and judgments of rationality.
Gibbard argues that when we endorse someone"s action, belief, or feeling as "rational" or warranted we are expressing acceptance of a system of norms that permits lieutenant More narrowly, morality is about norms relating to the aptness of moral feelings (such as guilt and resentment).
Thinking How to Live (2003) offers an argument for reconfiguring the distinctions between normative and descriptive discourse, with implications as to the "long-standing debate" over "objectivity" in ethics and "factuality" in ethics. Reconciling Our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics (2008), from the Tanner Lectures, argues in favour of a broadly utilitarian approach to ethics.
A recent review, including extensive citing of Gibbard"s work above, is in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015).
More recently, Gibbard has written Meaning and Normativity (2012). Gibbard, Allan (2009). "7 A pragmatic justification of morality".
In Voorhoeve, Alex.
Conversations on ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 157–178.
Membership
National Academy of Sciences.