Gila Sher is an American logician and professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. She has worked extensively in the theory of

truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...

and

philosophy of logic Philosophy of logic is the area of philosophy that studies the scope and nature of logic. It investigates the philosophical problems raised by logic, such as the presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories of logic and in their applicatio ...

. Sher is a leading advocate of foundational

holism Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. Julian Tudor Hart (2010''The Political Economy of Health Care''pp.106, 258 The aphorism "The whole is greater than t ...

, a holistic theory of

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

Education and career

In 1989, Sher earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

,CV
/ref> where she studied the works of

Willard Quine Willard Van Orman Quine ( ; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth centur ...

and

Alfred Tarski Alfred Tarski (; ; born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician ...

. Her dissertation was directed by Charles Parsons. Since 2017, Sher has been an editor of the

Journal of Philosophy ''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, es ...

, and from 2012 to 2017, she was an editor-in-chief of the journal ''

Synthese ''Synthese'' () is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the epistemology, methodology, and philosophy of science, and related issues. The name ''Synthese'' (from the Dutch for '' synthesis'') finds its origin in the intentions of its f ...

''. Sher has also served as the president of the International Society for Formal Ontology since 2017.

Philosophical work

Her early work focused on Tarski's definition of truth. Her reformulation of this definition has been influential in modern truth theory. Her dissertation was expanded into the book ''The Bounds of Logic'' (1991),Sher, Gila. (1991), ''The Bounds of Logic'', Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. in which Sher also formalized definitions for unique second-order quantifiers such as 'most'. Sher has pursued research into

logical positivism Logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism or neo-positivism, was a philosophical movement, in the empiricist tradition, that sought to formulate a scientific philosophy in which philosophical discourse would be, in the perception of ...

and logical

foundationalism Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises.Simon Blackburn, ''The Oxford Dict ...

. She has argued that strict-ordering foundationalism, in the vein of

Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...

, is untenable, supporting Quine's argument from ''

Two Dogmas of Empiricism "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a canonical essay by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper ssometimes regarded as the most impor ...

''. She has, however, resisted the mainstream move toward all-or-nothing and

semantic holism Semantic holism is a theory in the philosophy of language to the effect that a certain part of language, be it a term or a complete sentence, can only be understood through its relations to a (previously understood) larger segment of language. Th ...

. The former view she considers unexplanatory, and the latter she considers untenable (see:

Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor ( ; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of min ...

). Sher has also written more generally on the

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

of truth. She put forward a criticism of

John Etchemendy John W. Etchemendy (born 1952) is an American logician and philosopher who served as Stanford University's twelfth Provost (education), Provost. He succeeded John L. Hennessy to the post on September 1, 2000 and stepped down on January 31, 2017 ...

in the article "Did Tarski Commit Tarski's Fallacy?" This article defended Tarskian truth theory from the radical attack posed by Etchemendy. She is also a leading Quine scholar, writing about the place of philosophy in his theory of naturalized epistemology.Sher, Gila. (1999), ''Is There a Place for Philosophy in Quine's Theory?'', The Journal of Philosophy 96, 491-524.

Books

* 1991. ''The Bounds of Logic'', MIT. * 2000. ''Between Logic and Intuition: Essays in Honor of Charles Parsons.'' Editor (with R. Tieszen), Cambridge. * 2016. ''Epistemic Friction: An Essay on Knowledge, Truth, and Logic''. Oxford University Press.

References

External links

Academic homepage at UCSD
* https://web.archive.org/web/20070926235300/http://www.logika.umk.pl/llp/02/br.pdf * http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=9403 {{DEFAULTSORT:Sher, Gila 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Analytic philosophers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American logicians American epistemologists Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni American women philosophers 20th-century American women 21st-century American women