Roderick Firth (January 30, 1917 – December 22, 1987)
was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
from 1953 until his death.
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Education
Firth earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1943. His thesis was entitled ''Sense-Data and the Principle of Reduction''.
Career
He taught at Brown University before joining the Harvard faculty in 1953.[
Firth is noted for his defense of the ]ideal observer theory Ideal observer theory is the meta-ethical view which claims that ethical sentences express truth-apt propositions about the attitudes of a hypothetical ''ideal observer''. In other words, ideal observer theory states that ethical judgments should b ...
in ethics and for his exploration of radical empiricism.[1964 ''Journal of Philosophy'' 61 (19):545-557.]
See also
*Phenomenalism
In metaphysics, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in s ...
References
Harvard University faculty
Brown University alumni
1917 births
1987 deaths
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
20th-century American philosophers
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