Susan Haack

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Susan Haack
Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
M.A. 1969, Oxford and Cambridge
B. Phil. 1968, Oxford
Ph.D. 1972, Cambridge

Telephone: 305-284-3541   |   Fax: 305-284-6506
Office: B455   |   E-mail: shaack@law.miami.edu
Publications   |   SSRN   |   Curriculum Vitae

Background

Susan Haack was educated at Oxford (B.A., 1966, B.Phil. 1968), and Cambridge (Ph.D.,1972). She was a Fellow of New Hall, Cambridge (1968-71), and then Lecturer (1971-6), Reader (1976-82), and Professor of Philosophy (1982-90) at the University of Warwick, U.K. Since 1990 she has taught at the University of Miami, where she is presently Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law, and teaches each year a course for the philosophy department, an interdisciplinary course for the College of Arts and Sciences, and a course in the Law School. In 1997-8 she was national Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professor of Philosophy; and in the course of her career she has held visiting professorships at the University of Guelph (Canada), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), the University of Virginia, the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Aarhus University (Denmark), and (in the faculty of laws) the University of Bologna (Italy) and the University of Girona (Spain), as well as a Fellowship in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and a Harkness Fellowship at Princeton.

Books

Haack is the author of Deviant Logic; Philosophy of Logics; Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology; Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism; Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays; and Defending Science -- Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. Two new books, Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture; and Sciencia, sociedad y cultura, appeared in 2008, and the expanded 2nd edition of Evidence and Inquiry in 2009.

Haack is also editor (with Associate Editor Robert Lane) of Pragmatism, Old and New: Selected Writings (2006). A Chinese version of this anthology – prepared, in collaboration with Chen Bo and Shang Xin Jian of Peking University, before the English edition – appeared under the title Meaning, Truth, and Action in 2007.

Articles

Haack has also published numerous articles: in professional philosophy journals, in scientific publications including the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Proceedings of the New York Academy of Sciences, Epidemiology, and The American Journal of Public Health; in legal journals such as the American Journal of Jurisprudence, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Law and Contemporary Problems, the Journal of Biomedical and Health Law, the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, and Ratio Juris, in such general-interest magazines as The Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry; and in literary magazines including The Times Literary Supplement, Partisan Review, New Literary History, and The New Criterion.

Influence of Haack's work

The distinction between deviant and extended logics that Haack articulated in her first book is still cited by writers in the field more than 30 years later; the book remains in print, now in a new, expanded edition. Haack's second book, Philosophy of Logics, continuously in print in English since 1978 and translated into six languages from Portuguese to Korean, has long been valued for its scope and clarity by students and teachers not only in philosophy but also in linguistics, psychology, etc.. This book is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, on the logical meaning of "variable." In 2008, during a visit to Chile, Prof. Haack gave a well-attended lecture entitled "Philosophy of Logics – After 30 Years" at the University of Valparaíso, where the book has been in use since the beginning.

With Evidence and Inquiry, Haack turned her attention to a new field: epistemology. This book has also appeared in Spanish and Chinese editions, and a Romanian translation is under contract. Here Haack presents a new theory of evidence, "foundherentism." The new term, and the new theory, is now represented in the Dictionary of Modern Thought published jointly by Fontana and Norton; several chapters of the book have been anthologized — including one in a volume edited by Baroness Warnock, Women Philosophers, "from Anne Conway in the seventeenth century to Susan Haack in the twentieth"; and Haack's paper summarizing the key ideas of foundherentism has been anthologized half-a-dozen times. The crossword analogy on which Haack relied in this book to articulate the structure of evidence has been found helpful not only by philosophers, but also by economists, medical scientists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars.

With Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate — described by reviewer in Spain as "a passionate work, and obligatory reading," by a reviewer in Canada as "a deep and splendid book," and by a reviewer in Sweden as "a refusal to lay down the arms of philosophical analysis, instead to use them where they have most bite" — Haack brought her analytic skills to bear not only on issues in metaphysics and philosophy of language, but also on issues of public concern such as multiculturalism and feminism, the state of the academy, and the future of philosophy itself.

In Defending Science — Within Reason, described in Publishers' Weekly as offering "one thought-provoking discussion after another," in The New Scientist as "analytic and colourful, learned and fun," in The Times Higher Education Supplement as "exceptionally thoughtful," and in the Journal of Chemical Education as "a marvelous book, not to be missed," and reviewed in the Netherlands under the delightful title "Forget Popper — Read Susan Haack!", Haack has continued to expand her range as she tackles not only questions about scientific evidence and scientific method but also the relation of science and literature, the tensions between science and religion, the role of scientific testimony in court, and predictions of the end of science. This book has been used in a seminar at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, and by the members of the Leverhulme Evidence Project; it was the subject of a lecture series Dr. Haack gave in the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City in the summer of 2005. A Chinese edition appeared in 2008, and a Catalan edition is under contract.

Haack's papers — more than 50 of which have been reprinted or anthologized, some several times, and/or translated, some into several languages — have also been influential.

Her 1977 paper tracing Kantian elements in Carnap's Aufbau is now acknowledged as having broken new ground. Another piece from the same year appeared in Spanish translation twenty years later in a volume of new work on Peirce and Popper, and is now acknowledged as pioneering work on this topic. Two 1978 pieces of hers on topics in metaphysics were reprinted in a recent anthology; and Haack's critique of fuzzy logic, first published in 1979, is still cited and requested by electrical engineers. "Epistemology With a Knowing Subject," also from the late 1970s, was recently the subject of a symposium in a journal published by the Romanian National Academy, and is regularly used in the philosophy department at East China Normal University in Shanghai. Among Haack's more recent papers, "Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist," "Staying for an answer," "'We Pragmatists …': Peirce and Rorty in Conversation," "Reflections on Relativism: From Momentous Tautology to Seductive Contradiction," "As for that phrase 'studying in a literary spirit' …," and "On Logic in the Law" have proven especially popular; her "Trial and Error: The Supreme Court's Philosophy of Science," first published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005, was reprinted in the International Society of Barristers Quarterly in 2006, and appeared in Italian translation in Ars Interpretandi: Annuario di ermeneutics giuridica later that year.

Interdisciplinary work

Haack's recent work is strongly interdisciplinary.

Science

Since she began to interest herself in issues in philosophy of science Haack has spoken with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg and physicist/historian of science Gerald Holton at a panel on "What Can the Natural Sciences Know, and How Do They Know It?"; at a conference on "The Flight From Science and Reason" at the New York Academy; with Nobelist Jerome Friedman and historian of science Peter Galison on a panel on the Humanities and the Sciences organized by the ACLS; at a Seminar on Issues in Science and the Humanities at Yale; at the seminar on evidence at the LSE; at the Committee on Science, Technology and Law at the National Academies of Science; and as keynote lecturer at the annual meeting of the Society of University Neurosurgeons—to mention just a few.

Law

Haack's first legal paper, "An Epistemologist in the Bramble Bush: At the Supreme Court with Mr. Joiner," was used as background material for a panel on Science-Based Medical Evidence at the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, published with the panelists' papers as the lead article in a special issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, and shortly thereafter excerpted in George Fisher's textbook on the law of evidence. A talk Haack gave in a symposium on Law and Truth at Yale Law School in 2002 appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy the following year. After that, Haack wrote papers on science and the law for Daedalus, for two conferences on Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, for a conference on the "New Evidence Scholarship" at Cardozo Law School, and for the World Congress of the Internationale Vereinigung fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie in Lund, Sweden, in 2003; and since then she has published a whole series of papers, published in law reviews and legal journals, on the peer review process, on litigation-driven science, and on proof of causation. An anthology of these papers, under the title Truth in Science, Truth in Law, is in preparation in Chinese.

In fall 2004 Haack gave the Olin Lecture in Jurisprudence at Notre Dame Law School; in spring 2005 she gave a series of lectures as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Laws at the University of Bologna; in summer 2005 she spoke at the Instituto de Investigaciones Juridicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; in fall 2005 she spoke at a National Institute of Justice conference on science and law; in summer 2006 she spoke in the Faculty of Laws at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the University of Oslo; and in 2007 Haack gave her second plenary presentation at the World Congress of the IVR. This work has resulted in a series of papers on jurisprudence, including "Epistemology Legalized: Or, Truth, Justice, and the American Way" (2004); "On Legal Pragmatism: Where Does 'The Path of the Law' Lead Us?" (2005); "On Logic in the Law: Something, but not All" (2005); "The Pluralistic Universe of Law: Towards a Neo-Classical Legal Pragmatism" (2008); and "The Growth of Meaning and the Limits of Formalism, in Science and Law" (2009). An anthology of this work, entitled Legal Philosophy: Pragmatist Perspectives, is to appear in Portuguese in Brazil, and in Spanish in Spain.

Haack serves on the Editorial Board of Philosophy, Science, and Law, and the Advisory Board of Ratio Juris, and edited an issue of the American Philosophical Association's Newsletter on Philosophy and Law on Science in the Law. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Italian Society for Law and Literature. She works with the Miami-Dade Public Defender's office on cases involving scientific testimony.

Literature

Haack has also explored issues in philosophy of literature: she has wrote on metaphor in Manifesto; articulated similarities and differences between science and literature in Defending Science; published an article in The New Criterion on the feminist philosophy implicit in Dorothy Sayers' detective novel, Gaudy Night; and a paper on Samuel Butler's The Way of all Flesh, "The Ideal of Intellectual Integrity, in Life and Literature," presented at a conference on "virtue epistemology," which appeared in New Literary History.

The strongly interdisciplinary character of Haack's work is reflected in her recent book Putting Philosophy to Work, which offers essays "on science, law, religion, literature, and life." This has been described as "a great collection," of interest to "every reader who cares about wisdom, truth, and the world."

Writing

Haack's writing is known for its clarity, directness, tough-mindedness, and humor. Referring to her Manifesto, celebrated economist Robert Heilbroner asked: "Is it possible for a philosopher to have a kindly heart, a wicked wit, a passion for clarity, and a conclusive argument that crossword puzzles are, for thinkers, what laboratories are for scientists?" and replied: "It is, if her name is Susan Haack." And in his Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Critics, Steven Weinberg described Haack as "one of those rare contemporary philosophers I can read with pleasure." In 2006 she was the recipient of the Forkosch Award for excellence in writing given by the Council for Secular Humanism.

Speaking engagements

Haack is also in demand as a speaker, and counts altogether over 500 external speaking engagements (so far!). These have taken her not only to numerous philosophy departments and Law Schools, but also to departments of English, Humanities Institutes, Liberal Arts programs, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, and various scientific conferences. She has given many named and endowed public lectures and lecture series, including, most recently, besides the Olin Lecture at Notre Dame, the Wunsch Lecture at the Technion (Israel), Stanislaw Kamiński Memorial Lectures at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, the Sellars Lecture at Bucknell University, and th eLinus Pauling Memorial Lecture at the Institute for Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. In 2008 her speaking engagements included the National Academies of Science in Washington, DC (where she spoke on the use of peer review as an indicator of legal reliability); the Faculty of Laws at the University of Alicante, Spain (where she spoke on tensions between science and law), and the evidence meeting of the AALS; in 2009 her engagements have included the School of Law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, the University of Minnesota School of Law, and the Faculty of Laws at Diego Portales University, Chile (where she spoke on causation evidence); in 2009 they took her to the Institute for Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (Portland, Oregon), the European University Institute in Fiesole (Italy), the University of Kent at Canterbury (U.K.), the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Medical Research, Basel (Switerzerland), the University of Minnesota Law School, Diego Portales University and the University of Valparaíso (Chile) Universidad de Los Andes and Universidad Católica de Colombia (Colombia), and her second marathon lecture tour in China.

International

Haack's work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Korean, Chinese, and Croatian; and she has lectured at universities, colleges, and conferences not only across the US and Canada, but in 25 countries around the world – including those extended lecture tours of China in 2004 and 2009. She is joint editor, with Professor Chen Bo of Peking University, of a new book series, Contemporary Western Philosophy in Translation, published by Renmin University Press (Beijing); and she serves on the Editorial Boards of journals in Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Romania, and Uruguay as well as in the U.S. and the U.K.

Service to the Profession

Haack is a member of the Advisory Board of the Peirce Edition Project (based at Indiana University), and of the Advisory board of the Italian Association for Law and Literature. She has been elected (British) delegate to the Institut International de Philosophie, and served on the Board of the Leverhulme Evidence Project (based at University College, London). From 1994-2004 she served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia; in 2005 she served on a panel writing the Fordham Foundation report on K-12 Science Standards across the United States. She is an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi, a past President of the Charles S. Peirce Society, and a past member of the U.S./U.K. Educational Commission.

Teaching

Haack's former graduate students have found tenured, tenure-track, or other permanent positions at the University of Calgary; the University of Toronto; Saint Cross College, Oxford; University of Hertfordshire; Vanderbilt University; Indiana University/Purdue University; the University of West Georgia; Georgia Tech; Virginia Tech; Florida International University; MDC; Philander Smith College; and the Tsing Hua National University of Taiwan.

Honors

Haack was awarded the Principal's Prize at St. Hilda's College in 1965, and held a Harkness Fellowship at Princeton in 1975-6. She has held several Orovitz summer awards from UM, and an NEH summer stipend. Haack has received Awards for Excellence in Teaching from the American Philosophical Association and from the University of Miami, where she has also received the Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentor, the Provost's Award for Research, and the Faculty Senate Distinguished Scholar Award.

In 2004 Haack was included in Peter J. King, 100 Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers (New York: Barron), which includes philosophers, from the East as well as the West, from Thales and Confucius to the present day; she is one of the handful of living philosophers so honored. In 2005 she was included in a list in the Sunday Independent (London) of the ten most important women philosophers of all time. (She prefers the less sexist tribute.) 2007 saw the publication of a volume of essays on her work and her replies, edited by Cornelis de Waal, entitled Susan Haack: A Lady of Distinctions.