Philip Kitcher

Within philosophy, Kitcher is best known for his work in philosophy of biology, science, and mathematics, and outside academia for his work examining creationism and sociobiology. His works attempt to connect the questions raised in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mathematics with the central philosophical issues of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. He has also published papers on John Stuart Mill, Kant and other figures in the history of philosophy. His 2012 book documented his developing interest in John Dewey and a pragmatic approach to philosophical issues. He sees pragmatism as providing a unifying and reconstructive approach to traditional philosophy issues. He had, a year earlier, published a book outlining a naturalistic approach to ethics, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press, 2011). He has also done work on the philosophy of climate change.

Kitcher is past president of the American Philosophical Association. In 2002, Kitcher was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was awarded the inaugural Prometheus Prize from the American Philosophical Association in 2006 in honour of extended achievement in the philosophy of science. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. Kitcher was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science from 1994 to 1999, was also a member of the NIH/DOE Working Group on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Human Genome Project from 1995 to 1997.

Born in London, Kitcher spent his early life in Eastbourne, East Sussex, on the south coast of the United Kingdom, where another distinguished philosopher of an earlier generation (A.J. Ayer) was also at school. Kitcher himself went to school at Christ's Hospital, Horsham, West Sussex. He earned his B.A. in Mathematics/History and Philosophy of Science from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1969, and his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Princeton University in 1974, where he worked closely with Carl Hempel and Thomas Kuhn.

Philip Stuart Kitcher (born 20 February 1947) is a British philosopher who is John Dewey Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Columbia University. He specialises in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of literature, and more recently pragmatism.