Background
Peacocke, Christopher Arthur Bruce was born on May 22, 1950 in Birmingham, England. Son of Arthur Robert and Rosemary (Mann) Peacocke.
Peacocke, Christopher Arthur Bruce was born on May 22, 1950 in Birmingham, England. Son of Arthur Robert and Rosemary (Mann) Peacocke.
Bachelor, Oxford (England) University, 1971; Bachelor of Philosophy, Oxford (England) University, 1974; Doctor of Philosophy, Oxford (England) University, 1979.
Junior research fellow in philosophy The Queen's College, Oxford, 1973-1975. Visiting lecturer University California, Berkeley, 1975-1976. Fellow All Souls College, Oxford, 1975-1979.
Fellow, lecturer in philosophy New College, 1979-1985. Stebbing professor King's College, London, 1985-1988. Waynflete professor metaphysical philosophy Oxford University, 1989-2000, Leverhulme Trust personal research professor, 1996-2000.
Professor philosophy New York University, New York City, 2000—2004, Columbia University, New York City, since 2004. Visiting associate professor University Michigan, 1978, University of California at Los Angeles, 1981, New York University, 1996-1999. Whitehead lecturer Harvard University, 2001.
Immanuel Kant lecturer Stanford University, 2003, Truly Understood, 2008, Evans lecturer, Oxford University, 2010.
Although Christopher Peacocke’s work definitely belongs within the mainstream of ‘analytic philosophy, as practised at Oxford University, his thought has at least three distinguishing characteristics. First—and most importantly—a* long with mainly G. Evans and C. McGinn, Peacocke has been instrumental in redirecting analytic philosophy away from a sole preoccupation with the analysis of language towards a more direct approach to the analysis of concepts and thoughts, or ‘contents’. Thus, contrary to the views of, for example, Frege and Dummett, explanatory patterns in the philosophy of mind and action, as well as possession and attribution conditions for a thinker’s mastery of concepts, admit of investigation independently of a prior resolution of problems pertaining to the philosophy of language. Second, Peacocke’s thought is influenced by contemporary thinkers in the USA to an extent not paralleled in that of his leading Oxford-based predecessors. Third, particularly m later years, Peacocke has explicity striven to map interconnections between his own work and that of researchers in the cognitive sciences. Peacocke’s contributions are multifarious, influential and cover a wide area of interest mainly the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language and logic, the philosophy of action and the philosophy of space and time. More specifically, he argues, in reply to Dummett’s anti-realist challenge to the realist conception of meaning, that the semantical realist can embrace what is found in the principle that linguistic meaning is ‘manifestable and thus fully public. On a sane construction ot verificationism that doctrines does not rule out realism, according to Peacocke.
President Mind Association, England, 1986. Fellow: American Academy Arts & Sciences.
Married Teresa Anne Rosen, January 3, 1980. 2 children.