Alexander Rosenberg (who generally publishes as "Alex") is an American philosopher and novelist. He is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...

, well known for contributions to philosophy of biology and philosophy of economics. Rosenberg describes himself as a "naturalist".

Education and career

Rosenberg graduated from

Stuyvesant High School , motto_translation = For knowledge and wisdom , address = 345 Chambers Street , city = New York , state = New York , zipcode = 10282 , country ...

in 1963 (along with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and

Richard Axel Richard Axel (born July 2, 1946) is an American molecular biologist and university professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work on the olfactory system won ...

) and from the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

in 1967. He received his Ph.D. from the

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

in 1971. He has taught philosophy at

Dalhousie University Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus in Saint John, New Brunswick. Dalhousie offer ...

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban dist ...

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

and, since 2000, at

. He has been a visiting professor at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

, the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the ed ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

and

Bristol University , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

. He was a

Guggenheim fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1981, an

American Council of Learned Societies American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

fellow in 1983, won the

Lakatos Award The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the prev ...

in 1993 and was the National

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...

Romanell Lecturer in 2006. Rosenberg is an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, and a metaphysical naturalist.

Philosophical work

Rosenberg's early work focused on the

philosophy of social science The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences (psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, etc...). Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities be ...

and especially the philosophy of economics. His doctoral dissertation, published as ''Microeconomic Laws'' in 1976, was the first treatment of the nature of economics by a contemporary philosopher of science. Over the period of the next decade he became increasingly skeptical about

neoclassical economics Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...

as an empirical theory. He later shifted to work on issues in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

that are raised by biology. He became especially interested in the relationship between molecular biology and other parts of biology. Rosenberg introduced the concept of supervenience to the treatment of intertheoretical relations in biology, soon after Donald Davidson began to exploit Richard Hare's notion in the philosophy of psychology. Rosenberg is among the few biologists and fewer philosophers of science who reject the consensus view that combines

physicalism In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...

with antireductionism (see his 2010 on-line debate with John Dupré at Philosophy TV). Rosenberg also coauthored an influential book on

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...

with

Tom Beauchamp Tom Lamar Beauchamp (born 1939) is an American philosopher specializing in the work of David Hume, moral philosophy, bioethics, and animal ethics. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University, where he was Senior Research Schola ...

, ''Hume and the Problem of Causation'', arguing that Hume was not a skeptic about induction but an opponent of rationalist theories of inductive inference.

''The Atheist's Guide to Reality''

Alex Rosenberg asserts the radical opinion that there is no enduring self on atheism. The existence of the self, he says, is "an illusion." In 2011 Rosenberg published a defense of what he called " Scientism"—the claim that "the persistent questions" people ask about the nature of reality, the purpose of things, the foundations of value and morality, the way the mind works, the basis of personal identity, and the course of human history, could all be answered by the resources of science. This book was attacked on the front cover of

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

Leon Wieseltier Leon Wieseltier (; born June 14, 1952) is an American critic and magazine editor. From 1983 to 2014, he was the literary editor of ''The New Republic''. He was a contributing editor and critic at ''The Atlantic'' until October 27, 2017, when the ...

as "The worst book of the year". Leon Wiseltier's claim, in turn, was critiqued as exaggeration by Philip Kitcher in

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

. On February 1, 2013, Rosenberg debated Christian apologist William Lane Craig on the question 'Is Faith in God Reasonable?' during which some of the arguments of the book were discussed. Rosenberg has contributed articles to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' Op/Ed series The Stone, on naturalism, science and the humanities, and meta-ethics, and the mind's powers to understand itself by introspection that arise from the views he advanced in ''The Atheist's Guide to Reality.''

''How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of our Addiction to Stories''

In 2018 Rosenberg published ''How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of our Addiction to Stories''. This work develops the

eliminative materialism Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that majority of the mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent ...

of ''The Atheist’s Guide to Reality'', applying it to the role ‘the theory of mind’ plays in history and other forms of story telling. Rosenberg argues that the work of

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winners, Eric Kandel, John O'Keefe and

May-Britt Moser May-Britt Moser (born 4 January 1963) is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She and her then-husband, Edvard Moser, shar ...

along with

Edvard Moser Edvard Ingjald Moser (; born 27 April 1962) is a Norwegian professor of psychology and neuroscience at thKavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. In 2005, he and May-Brit ...

reveals that the ‘‘theory of mind‘‘ employed in every day life and narrative history has no basis in the organization of the brain. Evidence from evolutionary anthropology, child psychology, medical diagnosis and neural imaging reveals it is an innate or almost innate tool that arose in

Hominini The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The ...

evolution to foster collaboration among small numbers of individuals in immediate contact over the near future, but whose predictive weakness beyond this domain reveals its explanatory emptiness.

Critical discussions of Rosenberg’s work

In ''How History Gets Things Wrong'' Rosenberg claims people never really think about anything. Therefore, it is simply an illusion that people possess intentional states. He admits that therefore the (apparently derived) intentionality of inscriptions and speech cannot be derived from the (original) intentionality of thought. Rosenberg has not provided an account of the intentionality of speech and writing, and may in fact deny that they bear any either. In ''The Atheist's Guide to Reality'' he states that its sentences are tools for moving information into the reader's brain, triggering new neural firings. However, critics note that doing so cannot be Rosenberg's purpose in writing the book because on his position no one really has any purposes. While attracting some interest for its arguments about the philosophy of mind, Rosenberg's critique of narrative history in ''How History Gets Things Wrong'' has attracted criticism in academic reviews. Reviewers including Alexandre Leskanich in '' The English Historical Review'', Jacob Ivey in '' Philosophia'', and Michael Douma in ''

Journal of Value Inquiry The ''Journal of Value Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed philosophical journal focused on value studies. It was founded in 1967 by James Wilbur. The journal publishes essays, letters, book reviews, interviews, dialogues, reports, and news. According ...

'' faulted the book for failing to engage with literature in the

philosophy of history Philosophy of history is the philosophical study of history and its discipline. The term was coined by French philosopher Voltaire. In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between ''speculative'' philosophy of history and ''crit ...

and narratology and for oversimplified treatment of historical examples. Ivey also argued that Rosenberg's call for a Darwinian approach to historical explanation failed to acknowledge the limitations of past attempts to apply this approach and the complicated relationship in practice between Darwinian and humanistic methods in history. Rosenberg's treatment of fitness as a supervenient property, which is an undefined concept in the theory of natural selection, is criticized by Brandon and Beatty. His original development of how the supervenience of Mendelian concepts blocks traditional derivational reduction was examined critically by

C. Kenneth Waters C. Kenneth Waters holds the Canada Research Chair in Logic and the Philosophy of Science and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary, where he specializes in philosophy of biology. Education and career Waters received his underg ...

. His later account of reduction in developmental biology was criticized by

Günter Wagner Gunter or Günter may refer to: * Gunter rig, a type of rig used in sailing, especially in small boats * Gunter Annex, Alabama, a United States Air Force installation * Gunter, Texas, city in the United States People Surname * Chris Gunter ( ...

. Elliott Sober's "Multiple realization arguments against reductionism" reflects a shift towards Rosenberg's critique of anti-reductionist arguments of Putnam's and

Fodor The surname Fodor may refer to the following notable people: * Benjamin Fodor alias Phoenix Jones (born 1988), American real-life superhero * Carel Anton Fodor (1768–1846), Dutch conductor and composer * Carl Fodor (born 1963), American footbal ...

's. Sober has also challenged Rosenberg's view that the principle of natural selection is the only biological law. The explanatory role of the principle of natural selection and the nature of evolutionary probabilities defended by Rosenberg were subject to counter arguments by Brandon and later by Denis Walsh. Rosenberg's account of the nature of

genetic drift Genetic drift, also known as allelic drift or the Wright effect, is the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) in a population due to random chance. Genetic drift may cause gene variants to disappear completely and there ...

and the role of probability in the theory of natural selection draws on significant parallels between the principle of natural selection and the second law of thermodynamics. In the philosophy of social science, Rosenberg's more skeptical views about

microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Microeconomics fo ...

were challenged first by Wade Hands, and later by Daniel Hausman in several books and articles. The

financial crisis of 2007–08 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of f ...

resulted in renewed attention to Rosenberg's skeptical views about

. Biologist Richard Lewontin and historian Joseph Fracchia express skepticism about Rosenberg's claim that functional explanations in social science require Darwinian underlying mechanisms.

Literary work

''The Girl From Krakow''

Rosenberg's 2015 novel, ''The Girl From Krakow'', Lake Union Publishing, is a narrative about a young woman named Rita Feuerstahl from 1935 to 1947, mainly focusing on her struggles to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland and later in Germany, under a false identity. A secondary plot involves her lover's experiences in France and Spain during its Civil War in the 1930s and then in Moscow during the war. Rosenberg has acknowledged that the novel is based on the wartime experiences of people he knew. He has also admitted the incongruity of writing a narrative, given his attack on the form in ''The Atheist’s Guide to Reality''. He has said that ''The Girl from Krakow'' began as an attempt to put some of the difficult arguments of ''The Atheist’s Guide to Reality'' into a form easier to grasp". ''The Girl From Krakow'' has been translated into Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Hebrew and Croatian.

''Autumn in Oxford''

In 2016 Rosenberg's second novel, ''Autumn in Oxford'', appeared, also published by Lake Union Publishing. An afterword identifies the large number of real persons—academics, civil rights advocates, military officers, politicians and intelligence agents from the 1940s and '50s who figure in the narrative.

''The Intrigues of Jennie Lee''

in 2020 Rosenberg's third novel was published by Top Hat Books. An afterword identities the large number of public figures from Great Britain in the '30s who figure in the novel, including Jennie Lee,

Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Heal ...

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the ...

--the subsequent centenarian Queen Mother, Lady Astor, Ellen Wilkinson, Ramsay MacDonald and Oswald Mosley.

''In the Shadows of Enigma''

Rosenberg's fourth historical novel, a sequel to “The Girl from Krakow”, was published in 2021, also by Top Hat Books. This novel offers an explanation of why the Western Allies—the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia—kept the breaking of the German Enigma code secret for 30 years after the end of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. Four characters from his earlier novel figure in the sequel, Rita Feuerstahl, her partner Gil Romero, her son Stefan and a former

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

detective still working for the

German Federal Republic BRD (german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland ; English: FRG/Federal Republic of Germany) is an unofficial abbreviation for the Federal Republic of Germany, informally known in English as West Germany until 1990, and just Germany since reunification. I ...

, Otto Schulke.

Role in Duke Lacrosse controversy

During the

2006 Duke University lacrosse case The Duke lacrosse case was a widely reported 2006 criminal case in Durham, North Carolina, United States in which three members of the Duke University men's lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape. The three students were David Evans, Collin ...

, Rosenberg was one of the so-called Group of 88 professors who, shortly after members of the university's lacrosse team were accused of rape, signed a controversial letter attacking the players and thanking protesters for "making a collective noise" on "what happened to this young woman."The Johnsville News: Duke Case: The 'listening' statement
/ref> The following year, North Carolina Attorney General

Roy Cooper Roy Asberry Cooper III (born June 13, 1957) is an American attorney and politician, serving as the 75th governor of North Carolina since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th attorney general of North Carolina from 200 ...

, a Democrat, dropped all charges and declared the accused players innocent, stating that the players were victims of a "tragic rush to accuse."

Bibliography

* ''Microeconomic Laws: A Philosophical Analysis'' (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976) * ''Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Basil Blackwell, 1981) * ''Hume and the Problem of Causation'' (Oxford University Press, 1981) (with T.L. Beauchamp) * ''The Structure of Biological Science'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985) * ''Philosophy of Social Science'' (Clarendon Press, Oxford and Westview Press, 1988, fifth Edition, 2015), translation in Greek * ''Economics: Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminishing Returns?'' (University of Chicago Press, 1992) * ''Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science'' (University of Chicago Press, 1994) * ''Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy'' (Cambridge University Press, 2000) * ''Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Approach'' (Routledge, 2000, third edition 2011), translations in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Turkish. * ''Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology'' (University of Chicago Press, 2006) * ''The Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction'' (Routledge, 2007) (with Daniel McShea) * ''Philosophy of Biology: An Anthology'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) (with Robert Arp) * ''The Atheist's Guide to Reality'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011) * ''The Girl From Krakow'' (Lake Union, 2015), translations in Polish, Italian, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Croatian * ''Autumn in Oxford'' (Lake Union, 2016) * ''The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Social Science'' (Routledge, 2017) (with Lee McIntyre) * ''How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories'' (MIT Press, 2018) * ''The Intrigues of Jennie Lee'' (Top Hat Books, 2020) * ''Reduction and Mechanism'' (Cambridge University Press, 2020) * ''In the Shadow of Enigma'' (Top Hat Books, 2021)

References

External links

Alex Rosenberg’s home page

Alex Rosenberg and David Levine on Economics at Bloggingheads

John Dupré and Alex Rosenberg on Reductionism at Philosophy TV

Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg on Naturalism at Philosophy TV

"The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality."
* *
Alex Rosenberg on Atheist's Guide to Reality at Minnesota Atheists

Richard Marshall reviews "Atheist's Guide to Reality"
in 3:AM Magazine
Alex Rosenberg on Atheist's Guide to Reality at American Free Thought

Alex Rosenberg, Samir Okasha, Julian Baggini on "Atheist's Guide to Reality" at Microphilosophy

Talking_Philosophy_interview_with_Alex_Rosenberg_on_"Atheist's_Guide_to_Reality"_[now_hosted_on_Rosenberg's_homepage
/nowiki>.html" ;"title="ow hosted on Rosenberg's homepage">Talking Philosophy interview with Alex Rosenberg on "Atheist's Guide to Reality" [now hosted on Rosenberg's homepage
/nowiki>">ow hosted on Rosenberg's homepage">Talking Philosophy interview with Alex Rosenberg on "Atheist's Guide to Reality" [now hosted on Rosenberg's homepage
/nowiki>
Alex Rosenberg, "Bodies-in-Motion-An Exchange."

Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain, "What Is Economics Good For?"

Alex Rosenberg, "Can moral disputes be resolved?"

Alex Rosenberg, an extended film interview with transcripts for the 'Why Are We Here?' documentary series

* [https://www.salon.com/writer/alex-rosenberg/ Alex Rosenberg, "Why most narrative history is wrong"]
Alex Rosenberg, "Can we learn from history?"

Alex Rosenberg, "Humans are hardwired to tell history in stories"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenberg, Alexander Philosophers from North Carolina American atheists Atheist philosophers City College of New York alumni Duke University faculty Syracuse University faculty Johns Hopkins University alumni Stuyvesant High School alumni Living people Naturalism (philosophy) Philosophers of biology 1946 births Philosophers of social science Writers about religion and science 20th-century atheists 21st-century atheists Lakatos Award winners