David Wiggins

Background

WIGGINS, David was born on March 8, 1933 in London. Son of Noiman Wiggins and Diana (nee Priestley) Wiggins.

Education

Oxford University. BA 1955. Manuscripts and Archives 1958. /nfls: Heraclitus, Aristotle, Leibniz, Hume, Frege, Peirce, Tarski, P. Strawson, B. Williams.

J. L. Austin. Putnam, Kripke. R. Cartwright. McDowell and G. Evans.

Career

Assistant principal Home Civil Service, 1957-1958. Jane Eliza Proctor visiting fellow Princeton University, 1958-1959. Fellow New College Oxford, 1960-1967.

Professor philosophy Bedford College University London, 1967-1980. Fellow, praelector in philosophy University College, Oxford, 1981-1989. Professor philosophy Birkbeck College University London, 1989-1994.

Wykeham professor Logic University Oxford, 1993-1900. Visiting professor Stanford (California) University, 1962-1963, 63-64. Visiting fellow All Souls College, Oxford, 1973.

Visiting professor Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968. James Loeb visiting fellow in classical philosophy, 1972. Meyer professor School of Law New York University, 1989.

Visiting lecturer Istituto della Storia della Filosofia, University Padua, Italy, 1983. John Locke lecturer in philosophy of medicine Society Apothecaries, City of London, 1982. Chairman Transport Users Consultative Committee for South East, 1978-1981, president, Austotelian Society, 2000-2001.

Achievements

• David Wiggins has been listed as a noteworthy Philosophy educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Sameness and Substance Renewed

    (In this book, which revises and greatly expands his class...)

  • Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value

    (Needs, Values, Truth brings together of some of the most ...)

  • Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (Aristotelian Society Series)

    (This collection of essays passes to and fro between probl...)

  • Ethics: Twelve Lectures

    (Almost everyone has wondered at some time or another why ...)

  • Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality

    ( Almost every thoughtful person wonders at some time why...)

  • Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality Hardcover - May 30, 2006

    (Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)

  • Sameness and Substance

    (Book by Wiggins, David)

  • (Sameness and Substance Renewed) Author: David Wiggins published on (February, 2006)
  • Sameness and Substance
  • Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life. Hertz Philosophical Lecture, British Academy. 1976.
  • (Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value ) Author: David Wiggins Aug-1998
  • Sameness and Substance Renewed 2nd edition by Wiggins, David (2001) Paperback
  • Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value 3rd edition by Wiggins, David (1998) Paperback
  • Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value by David Wiggins (1998-08-27)
  • Sameness and Substance Renewed by David Wiggins (2001-09-17)
  • Sameness and Substance by David Wiggins (1980-07-03)

Politics

Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality defends a position he calls "moral objectivism". "Towards a reasonable libertarianism" (Essays on Freedom of Action, 1973 - Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Views

Wiggins's two main books, published in 1967 and 1980, focus on problems concerning identity—and indeed illustrate this, since the latter started by revising the former but kept only half a chapter. Starting from an Aristotelian distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of constitution, he insists on two theses which go together, despite often being taken to clash, and which have both proved controversial. First, identity is absolute, not relative, i.e.acannot be the same /-thing as b while not being the same g-thing as b. But, second, a and b cannot simply be the same, without there being some kind / such that they are the same /-thing. A substance must have some sortal property, obeying certain restrictions, which applies to it throughout its history, and the implications of this are discussed for natural kind terms, artifacts, works of art, and persons. The later chapters of Sameness and Substance develop a moderate essentialism, on the basis of argument not presupposing modal logic. According to Wiggins moderate essentialism which individuals belong essentially to some kind or species. Individual essences are dispensed with, however, even though the necessity of identity is vindicated. Wiggins defends his view of identity and individualism against certain constrasting extreme positions of simple realism and outright conceptualism. He bases the concept of a person on an objective view of human beings as animals, partly rescuing Locke’s use of memory from Butler’s charge of circularity by making memory one but only one ingredient in what identifies persons. Persons are conscious continuants, conscious of their states as continuants. They are things in nature, i.e. animals, but animals that interpret one another in the light of ‘norms of rationality and reciprocity. Needs, Values, and Truth (1987) contains one of the few systematic treatments in analytical philosophy of the idea of a need as it figures in moral and political argument, and explores many other themes relating philosophy with metaphysics and the philosophy of language. But it is perhaps most noted for developing a kind of pluralism concerning values which is cognitivist, objectivist and subjectivist. Wiggins deprecates the term ‘moral realism’; he relies on a view of truth which owes something to both Peirce and Tarski and rejects the correspondence theory.

Membership

Fellow British Academy. Member American Association for the Advancement of Science (honorary foreign member), Institute International Philosophy. M C.

Interests

• Metaphysics; philosophy of language.

Connections

Father:

Noiman Wiggins

Mother:

Diana (nee Priestley) Wiggins