News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
I am saddened to hear of Professor Reynolds’ passing. He was kind enough to sit on my masters thesis committee…
The following is the text of my Facebook post on Sunday, March 22. That FB post is set to Public,…
Alan Musgrave: Life and Work We mourn the death of Emeritus Professor Alan Musgrave (1940-2026) who will be remembered as…
Second this; seems about time for a new round of temperature check.
Now that it’s been a couple of years since the splintering of JPP and PPA to Political Philosophy and Free…
My experience on Pangram is that it does not (seem to) give many false positives, but that it does allow…
Professor Halbach raises three concerns. One is about the availability of PDFs of OUP monographs. Another is about version discrepancies…
Professor Reynolds, a longtime member of the philosophy faculty at Arizona State University (where he was emeritus), was well-known for his work on a variety of topics in epistemology. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Reynolds or for those who would like to comment on the significance of his work.
The following is the text of my Facebook post on Sunday, March 22. That FB post is set to Public, and many of the ensuing comments there may be of interest.
“RIP Steven Louis Reynolds, 1956-2026. He died yesterday, March 21, in Salt Lake City, Utah, of complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was my colleague and also my close philosophical conversation partner since UCLA graduate school in the early 1980s. He had a sharp mind, excellent philosophical values and instincts, and a dry wit. He supported me through occasional difficult times. He published on the nature of knowledge and justification, the epistemology of perception, skepticism, varieties of philosophical realism, and the meaning of the word ‘real’. His fine 2017 book, Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony, argues that the concept of knowledge functions to express a naturally developing kind of social control, a complex social norm, and that the main purpose of our practice of saying and thinking that people ‘know’ is to improve our system for exchanging information, which is testimony. My heartfelt condolences to his wife Sharman and to their sons Andrew, Ben, and Danny. Steven will be missed and long remembered. Ave atque vale, old friend.”
Brian Leiter, thank you for this blog post.
I am saddened to hear of Professor Reynolds’ passing. He was kind enough to sit on my masters thesis committee back in 2013 when I was a 63 year old student studying philosophy after a prior career in engineering and business management. I very much enjoyed his classes. Aside from his deep understanding of epistemology, he was generous with his time and charitable with his comments regarding my writing. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to study under him.
Leave a Reply to Thomas J Fournier Cancel reply