Tamar Szabó Gendler | |
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Born | December 20, 1965 Princeton, New Jersey |
Residence | New Haven, Connecticut |
Citizenship | U.S.A. |
Fields | Philosophy |
Institutions | Yale University, Cornell University, Syracuse University |
Alma mater | Harvard University, Yale University |
Doctoral advisor | Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Hilary Putnam |
Tamar Szabó Gendler (born December 1965) is a Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Yale University, and Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy. Her primary interests include metaphysics, epistemology and philosophical psychology.
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Gendler was born in 1965 in Princeton, New Jersey to Mary and Everett Gendler.[1] She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where she attended the Andover public schools and then Phillips Academy Andover.[2]
As an undergraduate, she studied at Yale University, where she was a championship debater in the American Parliamentary Debate Association.[3] She graduated summa cum laude in 1987 with Distinction in Humanities and Math-&-Philosophy.
After graduating from college, she worked for several years as an assistant to Linda Darling-Hammond at the RAND Corporation’s education policy division in Washington, DC.[4]
In 1996, she earned her Philosophy PhD program at Harvard University, with Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit and Hilary Putnam as her advisors.[5]
Gendler taught Philosophy at Yale University (1996–97), Syracuse University(1997–2003) and Cornell University (2003–06), before returning to Yale in 2006 as Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Yale University Cognitive Science Program (2006–2010).[6] On July 1, 2010, she became Chair of the Yale University Department of Philosophy, becoming the first woman to hold that position in the department’s history and the first female graduate of Yale College to Chair a Yale Department.
Gendler is married to Zoltan Gendler Szabo,[7] a philosopher and linguist who is also a professor at Yale University.[8] They have two sons.
Gendler has held Fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship Program in the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies/Ryskamp Fellowship Program,[9] the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Program.[10]
She is the author of Thought Experiments: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (Routledge, 2000) and Intuition, Imagination and Philosophical Methodology (Oxford, 2010), and editor or co-editor of The Elements of Philosophy (Oxford 2008), Perceptual Experience (Oxford, 2006), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford 2002). She is also co-editor of the journal Oxford Studies in Epistemology.
Her philosophical articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Philosophical Perspectives, Mind & Language, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and The Philosophical Quarterly. Her 2008 essay “Alief and Belief” was selected by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the 10 best articles published in philosophy in 2008.[11]
She also lectures occasionally for non-professional audiences as a professor with One Day University[12] and as a diavlogger on bloggingheads.tv.[13]
She is best known for her work on thought experiments,[14] imagination – particularly on the phenomenon of imaginative resistance[15] -- and for coining the term alief.[16]