Sidney Morgenbesser

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Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Columbia University philosopher. Born in New York City, he undertook rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary, then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis under the direction of Nelson Goodman. Morgenbesser returned to Columbia to teach in 1953 and, in 1975, was named the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy there. Morgenbesser was known particularly for his sharp witticisms and humor, which often penetrated to the heart of the philosophical issue at hand. He published little, and established no school, but was revered for his extraordinary intelligence and moral seriousness. He was a famously influential teacher; his former students include: Jerry Fodor, Raymond Geuss, and Robert Nozick.

Morgenbesser's areas of expertise included the philosophy of the social sciences, political philosophy, epistemology, and the history of American Pragmatism. He founded the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs along with G.A. Cohen, Thomas Nagel and others.

[edit] Stories and quotations

During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah." (Some have it quoted as "Yeah, right." See litotes for the actual linguistic status of this hypothesis.)

Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not inside it, and hadn't lit up yet anyway. The cop replied, "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." The professor replied, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" The word "Kant" was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.

On the independence of irrelevant alternatives: After finishing dinner, Sidney Morgenbesser decides to order dessert. The waitress tells him he has two choices: apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney orders the apple pie. After a few minutes the waitress returns and says that they also have cherry pie at which point Morgenbesser says "In that case I'll have the blueberry pie."

Morgenbesser said the following of George Santayana: “There’s a guy who asserted both p and not-p, and then drew out all the consequences…”

Interrogated by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao’s view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, Morgenbesser replied “Well, I do and I don’t.”

During campus protests of the 1960s Sidney Morgenbesser was hit on the head by police. When asked whether he had been treated unfairly or unjustly, he responded “Unfairly yes, unjustly no. It was unfair to be hit over the head but not unjust since they hit everyone else over the head, too.” Some of his students then argued that it may have been unjust, in that no guilt had been proved against him, but it was by no means unfair as all his fellow demonstrators got the same treatment. This alternative version is sometimes attributed to Morgenbesser himself.

To B.F. Skinner, "Let me see if I understand your thesis. You think we shouldn’t anthropomorphize people?"

Morgenbesser described Gentile ethics as entailing “ought implies can” while in Jewish ethics “can implies don’t.”

Morgenbesser once set this as an exam question: “It is often said that Marx and Freud went too far. How far would you go?”

"Moses published one book. What did he do after that?"

"If P, so why not Q?"

"Pragmatism is great in theory, but doesn't work in practice."

Someone asked the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" His response: "Even if there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"

At a conference on cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, one scholar was presenting what was at the time a popular line on how "madness" had no real referent and was merely a product of power-laden "othering." His response: "You mean to tell me that it's all in my head?"

A few weeks before his death, he asked another Columbia philosopher, David Albert, about God. "Why is God making me suffer so much?" he asked. "Just because I don't believe in him?"^[1]