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the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
September 7, 2001
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Baker caps 'remarkable year' with Gifford lectures Philosopher joins elite group of thinkers who have given endowed talks on 'natural theology' in Scotland By Sarah R. Buchholz, News Office staff
 ynne Rudder Baker joined an elite group this week when the Philosophy professor traveled to Scotland's University of Glasgow to give two Gifford lectures. Endowed in 1887 by Lord Gifford, the lectures on "natural theology" in its broadest sense take place at four historic universities in Scotland: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and St. Andrews. They have been called "the foremost intellectual event in the matter of religion" and have drawn scholars from across many fields of inquiry. Scientists Niels Bohr and Carl Sagan were Gifford lecturers. So were archaeologist William Ramsay, historian Steven Runciman, author Iris Murdoch, and the multidisciplinary Albert Schweitzer. And eminent theologians and philosophers heavily populate the list, among them Alfred North Whitehead, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Archbishop William Temple, Etienne Gilson and Karl Barth. "I have long admired the Gifford lecturers," Baker said, "and I was very honored (and surprised) to be invited to be listed among them." Baker might be surprised, but others in her college say she is consistently outstanding. "Being asked to give the Gifford Lectures is just one of the many honors that have - deservedly - been awarded to professor Baker," said Humanities and Fine Arts dean Lee Edwards. "Her eminence in the area of philosophy of mind is unassailable. In addition, it's particularly wonderful to have her for a colleague, since her personal qualities, her devotion to the department, and her commitment to her students are as outstanding as her scholarship." "This is capping a remarkable year in which she's received invitations to deliver about 10 different papers, including six abroad, some of them at quite prestigious universities," said Phillip Bricker, head of Philosophy. "It's very prestigious to be invited to give these lectures. The Philosophy Department is very proud of her invitation." In addition to two Gifford Lectures, in the past 10 months Baker has delivered papers at Harvard, Brown, Calvin College, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, the New University of Lisbon in Portugal, and the International Center for Semiotic and Cognitive Studies in San Marino. Because the University of Glasgow is celebrating its 550th anniversary, the UK's biggest science conference, the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Annual Festival, took place on its campus this week. The Glasgow Gifford Lectures were incorporated within the framework of the festival in a special format that included five speakers, each of whom gave two lectures and participated in a round table discussion. The theme of the lectures is "The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding." Baker gave a talk on "First-person Knowledge" Sept. 4 and "Third-person Understanding" Sept. 7. "In the first one, I try to show that there is genuine first-person knowledge that is irreducible to third-person knowledge," Baker said. She gives an example: "No third-person sentence, I argue, can express the thought that I express if I say, 'Now I know how I'm going to die.' "First-person knowledge eludes science insofar as science is third-personal. "In the second lecture, I try to show that we have a commonsense understanding of the world that is unsystematic but ineliminable. E.g., when David went out to slay Goliath, he knew that stones would make better projectiles than twigs. The justification of this belief did not depend on the deliverances of any science (like physics). "Here, then, are two examples-first-person knowledge and commonsense understanding - of knowledge that is independent of science. My overall conclusion is that, contrary to the views of many contemporary philosophers, not all knowledge is scientific knowledge." The other 2001 Glasgow Gifford lecturers are Philip N. Johnson-Laird, Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton; George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley; Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University; and the Rev. Canon Brian Hebblethwaite, Life Fellow of Queens' College Cambridge. Baker is the author of three books, "Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism," published by Princeton University Press, and "Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind" and "Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View," both published by Cambridge University Press. And her work is the subject of the forthcoming "Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and her Critics," Anthonie Meijers, editor. She has written an additional 20 book chapters, more than 30 journal articles and 10 reviews and has given more than 120 lectures, papers and addresses.
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