Background
Albritton, Rogers Garland was born on August 15, 1923 in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Son of Errett Cyril and Rietta (Garland) Albritton.
Albritton, Rogers Garland was born on August 15, 1923 in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Son of Errett Cyril and Rietta (Garland) Albritton.
Student, Swarthmore College, 1941. AB, St. John's College, Annapolis, 1948. Master of Arts in Philosophy, Princeton University, 1952.
Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1955.
Albritton"s specialties included ancient philosophy, philosophy of mind, free will, skepticism, metaphysics and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Albritton was born in Columbus, Ohio. He was admitted to Swarthmore at the age of 15, but left to serve in the Army Air Corps in World World War World War II He received his Bachelor of Arts from Saint John"s College, Annapolis in 1948.
He taught for a year at Saint John"s, and began teaching full-time at Cornell after completing 3 years of graduate work at Princeton University.
He received his Doctor of Philosophy from Princeton in 1955, taught at Cornell for one more year, before being appointed to Harvard in 1956. He made tenure at Harvard in 1960, and served as chair from 1963 to 1970.
In 1972, he moved to University of California, Los Angeles where he served as chair from 1979 to 1981. In 1984 he was president of the Western (then Pacific) Division of the American Philosophical Association.
He died in 2002 of chronic emphysema.
Albritton"s 1985 presidential address to the APA, "Freedom of Will and Freedom of Action," distinguished freedom of action (the freedom to do what we will) from freedom of the will itself. This was unusual, because free will had been identified with freedom of action by compatibilists since Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. "Where there"s a will, there just isn"t always a way," as he put lieutenant
Served with United States Army Air Force, 1943-1946. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member American Philosophical Association (vice president Pacific division 1983-1984, president 1984-1985).