Earl Conee

Earl Conee
Name	Earl Conee
Birth date	1946
Birth place	United States
Occupation	Philosopher
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Institutions	Indiana University Bloomington; University of Rochester
Alma mater	University of Rochester; Swarthmore College
Notable works	"The Intentional Ascent"

Earl Conee is an American analytic philosopher known for influential work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. His career spans teaching, research, and numerous contributions to debates involving justification, self-knowledge, and Bayesianism. He has held positions at major universities and participated in scholarly exchanges with leading philosophers across institutions and societies.

Early life and education

Conee was born in the United States and received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College before undertaking graduate studies at the University of Rochester. At Rochester he studied under philosophers associated with analytic traditions linked to Wilfrid Sellars, Roderick Chisholm, and Nelson Goodman. His doctoral work engaged with themes prominent in programs fostered at institutions such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, and McGill University. During this period he interacted with visiting scholars from Oxford University, Cambridge University, Stanford University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Academic career

Conee held faculty appointments including significant service at Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Rochester, where he taught courses touching topics discussed at conferences organized by the American Philosophical Association, the Society for Exact Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Science Association. He supervised graduate students who went on to positions at universities including University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and Cornell University. He delivered invited lectures at venues such as Columbia University, New York University, Duke University, Brown University, and research institutes like the National Humanities Center and the Institute for Advanced Study.

Throughout his career Conee participated in editorial work for journals comparable to The Journal of Philosophy, Noûs, Philosophical Review, Mind (journal), and Synthese. He was active in professional networks represented by organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and panels at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Philosophical work and contributions

Conee's research concentrates on epistemology and philosophy of mind, engaging with debates tied to theories advanced by philosophers such as Edmund Gettier, Alvin Goldman, Edmund Husserl, Gottlob Frege, David Lewis, Hilary Putnam, and Donald Davidson. He is well known for defending versions of internalist justification and the phenomenology of epistemic justification, dialoguing with positions associated with Gilbert Harman, Susan Haack, Timothy Williamson, John McDowell, and Ernest Sosa.

Conee argued for views about epistemic justification that intersect with Bayesian confirmation theory developed by Thomas Bayes, Bruno de Finetti, and contemporary proponents at institutions like Carnegie Mellon University and University College London. His analyses of self-knowledge and privileged access interact with arguments by Sydney Shoemaker, Richard Moran, Ned Block, Tyler Burge, and Frank Jackson. Conee has addressed skepticism in conversation with classical sources such as René Descartes, David Hume, and modern defenders like Peter Unger.

In philosophy of action and mental causation he engaged with work by Donald Davidson, Jaegwon Kim, Daniel Dennett, and Jerry Fodor, contributing to discussions about intentional explanation, reasons-responsiveness, and the role of rational evaluation in agency. He has participated in symposia alongside scholars from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory style interdisciplinary collaborations linking cognitive science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and psychology departments at Princeton University and University of Chicago.

Major publications

Conee authored and edited numerous books and articles published in venues comparable to presses such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and Princeton University Press. His influential monographs and essays include work addressing epistemic justification, internalism, and the metaphysics of mind, cited alongside canonical texts by Immanuel Kant, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Locke, and Thomas Reid. He contributed chapters to collections edited by scholars at Harvard University Press, Yale University Press, and in anthologies used in graduate seminars at University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

Selected types of publications: - Monographs and edited volumes engaging with issues central to analytic philosophy and debates at the American Philosophical Association. - Peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Philosophical Studies, Erkenntnis, and Canadian Journal of Philosophy. - Conference papers presented at meetings of societies like the Mind Association and the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Awards and honors

Conee received recognition from academic institutions and scholarly societies, including invited fellowships and visiting professorships at institutions such as All Souls College, Oxford, Wolfson College, Cambridge, and research awards sponsored by foundations like the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation. He was honored with distinctions often granted by the American Philosophical Association and elected to boards or committees at organizations parallel to the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Category:American philosophers Category:Epistemologists Category:Philosophers of mind