Isaac Levi (June 30, 1930 – December 25, 2018) was an American philosopher who served as the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is noted for his work in epistemology and decision theory.[1][2][3][4]
Isaac Levi | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 30, 1930 |
| Died | December 25, 2018 (aged 88) |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Neopragmatism |
Main interests | Pragmatism, epistemology, decision theory, philosophy of science |
Notable ideas | Commitment/performance distinction, corrigibilism/fallibilism distinction, indeterminate probability, Levi identity, unity of reason thesis |
Education and career
Levi was one of several doctoral students of Ernest Nagel at Columbia University who were influential in American post-war philosophy; others were Morton White, Patrick Suppes, and Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. Levi taught at Case Western Reserve University before joining the Columbia faculty in 1970.[5] He was elected in 1986 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Levi also served as doctoral advisor to prominent formal philosophers, including Horacio Arló-Costa and Teddy Seidenfeld, and acted as a mentor to Cheryl Misak during her year at Columbia.[6] There was a debate between Kyburg and Levi on topics in what has come to be known as formal epistemology.
Philosophical work
Levi first made a name for himself with his first book, Gambling with Truth. In the text Levi offered a decision theoretic reconstruction of epistemology with a close-eye towards the classical pragmatist philosophers like William James and Charles Sanders Peirce. Levi was known for his work in belief revision and imprecise probability.
Major publications
Books
- Levi, Isaac (1973) [1967]. Gambling with truth: an essay on induction and the aims of science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262620260. Originally issued by Knopf (1967).
- Levi, Isaac (1980). The enterprise of knowledge: an essay on knowledge, credal probability, and chance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262620437.
- Levi, Isaac (1984). Decisions and revisions: philosophical essays on knowledge and value. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521027625.
- Levi, Isaac (1986). Hard choices: decision making under unresolved conflict. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521386302.
- Levi, Isaac (1991). The fixation of belief and its undoing: changing beliefs through inquiry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521110297.
- Levi, Isaac (1996). For the sake of the argument: Ramsey Test conditionals, inductive inference and nonmonotonic reasoning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521039017.
- Levi, Isaac (1997). The covenant of reason: rationality and the commitments of thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139173032.
Chapters in books
- Levi, Isaac (2009), "Convexity and separability in representing consensus", in Kanbur, Ravi; Basu, Kaushik (eds.), Arguments for a better world: essays in honor of Amartya Sen | Volume I: Ethics, welfare, and measurement, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 193–212, ISBN 9780199239115.