Delia Graff Fara
Delia Graff Fara (1969-2017) was an American philosopher who was professor of philosophy at Princeton University. She specialized in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophical logic.
Education and career
A 1991 graduate of Harvard University, Graff Fara earned her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997 under the supervision of George Boolos and Robert Stalnaker.[1] She joined the Princeton faculty the same year as an assistant professor, moving to Cornell University in 2001 and then returning to Princeton as a tenured associate professor in 2005. She died in July 2017.
Philosophical work
Graff Fara is best known for her work on the problem of vagueness, where she defends a kind of "contextualism." On her view, "interest relativity extends to all vague words. For instance, ‘child’ means a degree of immaturity that is significant to the speaker. Since the interests of the speaker shifts over time, there is an opportunity for a shift in the extension of ‘child’."[2]
Selected publications
- "Shifting Sands: An Interest Relative Theory of Vagueness." Philosophical Topics 28 (2000):45–81.
- "Descriptions As Predicates." Philosophical Studies 102 (2001):1-42.
- "Phenomenal Continua and the Sorites." Mind 110 (2001):905-935.
- The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language (co-editr with Gillian Russell). Routledge, 2011.
- "Names Are Predicates." Philosophical Review 124 (2015):59-117.[3]
References
- ↑ "Delia Graff Fara : CV" (PDF). Princeton.edu. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
- ↑ "Vagueness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
- ↑ "Profile for Delia Graff Fara". PhilPapers.org. Retrieved 2016-01-27.