Philosophy

BACK ROW: Courtney Campbell, Chair; Michael Scanlan, Associate Professor; Bill Uzgalis, Associate Professor; Jonathan Kaplan, Associate Professor; Jim Blumenthal, Associate Professor; Leonora Rianda, Office Assistant; Rachel Wagner, Visiting Assistant Professor (2004-2006); Joseph Orosco, Assistant Professor FRONT ROW: Marcus Borg, Distinguished Professor; Flo Leibowitz, Professor; Lani Roberts, Assistant Professor; Lois Robertson, Office Manager; Sharyn Clough, Associate Professor; Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor

By Peter C. List
Professor Emeritus
December 2003

In the past 135 years, Oregon State University (OSU) has evolved officially from a private religious college to a land-grant college to a university. During that history, philosophy and religious studies have been present in the curriculum in varying degrees at different times. In the nineteenth century colleges in America typically taught the two subjects within a "moral sciences" department that included other areas of the humanities and social sciences, such as history and literature, and this was true of OSU in its original format. However, until the late 1940s the number of courses in philosophy and religious studies was quite limited at what was then called Oregon State College (OSC), in contrast with most other land-grant colleges in the United States. The humanities and social sciences were part of the "Lower Division" and existed to "serve" the needs of the professional and technical disciplines such as Engineering and Pharmacy. From the 1930s up to the establishment of a full-blown College of Liberal Arts in the early 1970s, Oregon State's "Lower Division" offered courses in the following disciplines: English, Modern Languages, Speech, Economics, History, Political Science, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Religion, and also Art and Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Journalism, and Music.

The primary functions of the "Lower Division" included coordinating instruction from what (at the time) were called "non-major" departments; laying a foundation for a broad and general education; offering coursework for students preparing for subsequent specialization; and providing academic courses of study for students not necessarily interested in pursuing technical or professional school degrees. When OSC joined the national movement of state colleges in the 1950s and 1960s to expand programs and aspire to be identified as a university, this began to change. By the mid-1960s, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (H&SS) at OSC was rapidly initiating new undergraduate major programs in its liberal arts departments.

For many years the only graduate program available in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) was an interdisciplinary masters degree (the MAIS) shared by CLA departments and some other departments in the university. In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of CLA departments introduced graduate programs at the masters level, such as Anthropology and English, and this process continues today. Still, the pace toward more complete university status continues to be slow at OSU, and PhD programs exist in only two CLA departments. The situation in philosophy and religious studies reflects these historical developments.

Philosophy and religious studies were combined in one department at OSC in the 1930s, when the department was part of the lower division. Historically it was not uncommon for the two disciplines to be part of the same administrative unit at many land-grant colleges, but that was no longer generally true by the 1960s, and OSC thus belatedly followed standard, national practice in separating them. Before the split, new undergraduate major programs (BA and BS) in philosophy and religious studies were established in the early 1960s. In the fall of 1967, the two disciplines were formally separated into two departments, and during the 1970s and 1980s each had a faculty of five members. In Religious Studies this included Ronald Clarke (Yale University), Warren Hovland (Yale), Tim Hosoi (University of Chicago), John King (Emory University), and Nicholas Yonker (Columbia University). In Philosophy it consisted of Peter Anton (Indiana University), Robert Dale (U. of California, Berkeley), Frederick P. Harris (Columbia), Peter C. List (Michigan State University), and William Frank (University of Pennsylvania). Subsequently, Marcus Borg (Oxford University), David Arnold (Emory), and Courtney Campbell (University of Virginia) were hired to fill positions in the Religious Studies Department. And Kathleen Dean Moore (University of Colorado), Flora Leibowitz (Johns Hopkins University), William Uzgalis (Stanford University), and Michael Scanlan (SUNY at Buffalo) were hired in the Philosophy Department.

Robert Dale served as the first and acting chair of philosophy in 1966-67 before its separation from religious studies, and one of his main tasks was to search for a permanent chair and hire a new instructor for 1967. The person selected as chair was Frederick P. Harris, and Peter List was hired as an instructor at the same time. Fred's responsibility was to get the department on its feet, help organize its teaching and curriculum, and respond to H&SS and university policy issues. Fred received his PhD from Columbia University in 1942 and also gained certification in Japanese language from the University of Michigan in 1944. After WWII, he taught philosophy at Rutgers and Case Western Reserve, where he chaired the Department of Philosophy. In 1955 he went to Japan as Fulbright visiting professor of philosophy and education at Kyoto University, and from 1957 to 1966 was headmaster of the American School in Tokyo. His educational and cross-cultural work in Japan was recognized as outstanding in 1966 when the library at the American School was named in his honor. At OSU he taught courses in the philosophy of education, Asian philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the history of western philosophy. Fred was particularly supportive of international education programs for Oregon college students, and helped develop foreign study programs in several areas of the world for OSU and the Oregon University System (OUS). He retired in 1977 and died at the age of 90 in 2001, in Portland, Oregon, his long-time home. After Fred's term, the Philosophy Department was chaired by the following faculty members, in succession: Peter List (1975 to 1979), Robert Dale (1979 to 1984), Peter List (1984 to 1992), Kathleen Moore (1992 to 2000), Peter List (2000-2002), and Courtney Campbell (2002 to the present).

Peter Anton came to OSU in 1956 after two years as a Fulbright scholar at Cambridge University. During his years at OSU, he taught courses in ethics, logic, and philosophy of science, and was a Fulbright lecturer at Tokyo and Kyoto Universities in Japan. Like Fred Harris, Peter believed that students benefited from living and studying abroad, and in the summer of 1967, OSU commissioned him to make a feasibility study in Japan for a program there. He was the first Resident Director of the Japan Studies Program bringing students from Oregon State University, University of Oregon, and other Northwestern schools to Waseda University in Tokyo. He was a senior editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica Japan Project, and during his many visits to Japan, lectured to university students for the USIA. Peter retired in 1983 after 27 years at OSU. Bill Frank came to OSU from the University of Pennsylvania, after completing his PhD in mathematical logic. He held a joint position in the philosophy and computer science departments for several years. Bill taught mathematical logic, Boolean algebra, and philosophy of science to science students and did research on the esoteric subject of string theory. He also held a research position, while on leave from OSU, at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. Eventually he resigned from the department and founded his own computing consulting company in New York. Like Peter Anton, Robert Dale was also interested in the philosophy of language, and, after undergraduate work in engineering at Oregon State, went on to graduate school in philosophy at the University of California, Berkley, where he eventually received his PhD. Bob believed that philosophy could best be taught through rigorous study of the ideas and writings of the important historical figures in philosophy, such as Descartes and Hume. He taught courses on logic, analytic philosophy, philosophy of language, and various "great figures." He had a strong hand in shaping the destiny of the new department, in its curricular, personnel, and administrative functions, and enlivened faculty meetings and personal relationships with his intelligent and spontaneous wit. Bob retired in 1993.

I was hired as an instructor in 1967, and for several years taught a variety of subjects, including epistemology, history of ancient and early modern philosophy, American philosophy, ethics, and such great figures as Plato and Descartes. In the early 1970s, I began to focus my teaching attention more and more on contemporary social and applied ethics, particularly environmental ethics. My interest in the latter was stimulated by substituting for Ron Clarke in an interdisciplinary university course on environmental studies, while he was on sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1974 and 1975. The following year I designed a new course entitled "the Land Ethic in America" that studied the philosophical evolution of American attitudes toward the land and nature. Later, beginning in 1990, I combined my interests in professional and environmental ethics to do interdisciplinary research and teaching about forestry and other applied environmental sciences, with colleagues in the social sciences, humanities, and environmental sciences who have been part of the Sustainable Forestry Program at OSU. I also published the first and still the only anthology on environmental ethics and forestry in 2000. I retired in June 2002, though will continue to teach in the new graduate certificate program in sustainable natural resources offered through the College of Forestry.

Kathleen Moore began teaching part-time in the department in 1975, and was responsible for creating the department's first courses in philosophy of law and legal reasoning. These courses were wildly popular because of her outstanding teaching abilities, and Kathleen has won several high-level college and university teaching awards over the years. She has long had a strong interest in informal logic and reasoning, and invigorated the teaching of critical thinking and scientific reasoning at OSU and nationally through publication of several teaching texts. More recently she introduced an acclaimed course on Native-American philosophies, working with Native American students on campus and with visiting Native-American scholars, thinkers, and elders. She also published what has been described as "the book" on the pardoning power of the presidency. In recent years she has distinguished herself nationally in the area of philosophy and nature writing, winning the Sigurd Olson Award for Nature Writing in 2001 for her book Riverwalking. This was followed by Holdfast in 1999 and a third such book entitled The Pine Island Paradox is being published shortly. Four years ago, with support from a private donor, Kathleen founded the department's Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, an innovative program that brings together philosophers, scientists, writers, citizens, and others, to "find new ways to understand and re-imagine our relations to the natural world." Finally, Kathleen was recently honored by being named a "distinguished professor" at OSU.

Flo Leibowitz was hired in 1977 as a philosopher of science, to replace Bill Frank and to teach courses in this and other subjects. She wrote her dissertation on "Inference to the Best Explanation: A Study in the Philosophy of Science." Because she also had strong interests in the arts and theories about art, she eventually developed several special courses and seminars in philosophy of the arts and film aesthetics that have attracted a keen following among art and philosophy students at OSU. As a result of her participation in professional aesthetics associations and conferences, and her aesthetics publications, she was named president of the western division of the American Society for Aesthetics several years ago, after serving as its annual conference program chair. For seven years she was the department's first graduate advisor, helping to regularize procedures and to effectively counsel and supervise graduate students. Flo has also performed considerable service to the department, the College of Liberal Arts, and the University on a variety of committees relating to such things as curriculum and administrative affairs, and is an excellent philosophical thinker and critic.

Bill Uzgalis and Michael Scanlan both came to OSU in the fall of 1980. Bill is known professionally for his work on the history of early modern western philosophy and has focused his research and writing on two subjects in that history: the philosophy of personal identity in the 17th and 18th century and issues relating to racism in the writings of John Locke and other philosophers. He has also maintained a professional interest in the intricacies of Socratic philosophy. Bill teaches several courses in the history of western philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics for the department. He created one of the earliest web-based philosophy courses in the nation, taking Phl 302, History of Early Modern Western Philosophy, and designing an ingenious website for the course, then engaging students in web-based thinking exercises in class and out. His interests in computing have led to service on several important university committees that are concerned with computing services for faculty, and, with Jon Dorbolo, a former instructor in the department and continuing OSU staff member, has helped organize and run the west coast branch of the Society for Computers and Philosophy (CAP). This has included help with editing the society's newsletter and working with Jon to organize excellent west coast conferences of the Society at OSU, the past three years. For this and other work he has done with computers in education, he received a special Computers and Philosophy award in 2002, and was invited by CAP to give an invited lecture at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Michael Scanlan is the department's main logician, and teaches courses in critical thinking, and formal and mathematical logic, in addition to epistemology, philosophy of science, classical western philosophy, and Aristotle. He has been quite active doing research as a historian of logic, having written his PhD under Jon Corcoran at SUNY Buffalo, a famous historian of ancient logic. Several times Michael has published articles on the American postulate theorists of the early 20th century, and thus made original contributions to the history of American philosophy. Recently he spent his sabbatical leave near Dartmouth College, where he held a visiting position, and commuted to Harvard's Widener Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he has been sorting out and interpreting the papers and notes of Henry Sheffer, a noted Harvard logician of 100 years ago. He has also served the department well in a variety of ways, helping it to formulate policy on such matters as curriculum, personnel, and library issues, among many others.

Unfortunately, for reasons not altogether clear to members of both departments and despite objections made by the department chairs at the time (Marcus Borg and Peter List) to the administration of the CLA and university, the OSU higher administration closed down the Religious Studies Department in 1992 as two senior religious studies faculty were nearing retirement, Nick Yonker, and Ron Clarke. Three remaining Religious Studies faculty members, Marc, Courtney Campbell, and Tim Hosoi were subsequently welcomed into the Philosophy Department and much of the former religious studies curriculum was added to the philosophy curriculum as well. Over time the combined faculty has ventured to reformulate and integrate the study of these disciplines into a more unified curriculum and major program, and the synergies that resulted from this unfortunate decision have been beneficial.

Marc is an expert on Jesus, an acclaimed member of the international Jesus Seminar, and a well-known author and lecturer nationally and internationally. He has reinterpreted Jesus' teachings and personal history in a unique way that elevates the metaphorical and the spiritual qualities of Jesus' life and teachings, and has presented his ideas about a related form of religious commitment in a number of successful books that have attracted a large readership outside of the academy. Because of the quality of his scholarship and ideas, the university received a large endowment in December 1993 from an alumnus, Al Hundere, to fund the Hundere Endowed Professorship in Religion and Culture, a position Marc has held for the past ten years. Marc has used Hundere funds for other purposes as well, particularly to support programs in the Philosophy Department. This has been quite helpful because financial support for states universities and colleges from the State of Oregon general fund has been consistently cut back from meager to measly in the past decade. Upon the retirement of Warren Hovland in 1987, Marc succeeded Warren as chair of Religious Studies.

Tim Hosoi, now retired, is a scholar of ancient religions, and, for many years, taught courses in Japanese religion and the early religions of the ancient world at OSU. He studied under the famous scholar Mircea Eliade at Chicago and brought a new, non-western, intellectual dimension to the study of religion by OSU students that had formerly been lacking. He prepared his lectures carefully, and introduced new and popular courses in the history of non-western religions and religious ideas. More than any other faculty member until recently, he has been responsible for acquainting OSU undergrads with the features of ancient and early religions of the world. As a native of Japan, he was also one of OSU's intermediaries with Japanese students, visitors, and others interested in Japanese society.

Courtney Campbell was hired in the Religious Studies Department in 1990 as a replacement for Nick Yonker. He received his PhD on the topic of just war theory at the University of Virginia and, for several years, was editor of The Hastings Center Report at the well-known Hastings Center in New York before coming to OSU. He has distinguished himself nationally as a scholar and thinker on a variety of topics in bioethics, including issues relating to death and dying and to human cloning. His research on these subjects has received national attention inside and outside of his profession. Courtney has also written cogently, intelligently, and profusely on other areas of science and medicine that raise difficult ethical questions. For eight years he was director of the department's Program for Ethics, Science, and the Environment (PESE), a program that recently enjoyed its tenth anniversary. Under his indefatigable leadership, PESE successfully made various efforts to provide interdisciplinary education and research programs on campus, in the intersections of these three topics, and sponsored a large number of stimulating local and visiting lectures on ethical issues in society and the sciences. Courtney has also been responsible for creating many new courses in the department and the University Honors Program, lectures frequently on ethics in the university and elsewhere, and collaborates actively with a large group of OSU faculty on ethical issues and ethics teaching in their own disciplines.

The Philosophy Department has blossomed and matured a great deal since the 1960s. At OSC teaching loads for humanities and social science faculty were originally quite heavy by national university standards, amounting to twelve courses per year. This was subsequently reduced several times until it reached the current load of six, and with these changes has come an increasing emphasis on research and scholarly publication. Increasingly philosophy faculty have received grants to do research and writing, and, as philosophy enrollments expanded in the 1980s and 1990s, the university began to make special funds available to hire adjuncts as replacements, instead of adding regular, tenure-track positions. As a result, the productivity of department faculty in research, publication, and involvement in professional activities has increased considerably, despite the fact that salary rewards have not expanded significantly and new tenure track positions have not been created. Today the total number of tenure-track and tenured positions in philosophy and religious studies is roughly the same as it was in the 1970s (ten positions), and the department typically employs four to six adjuncts each term.

Despite budgetary stringencies, student enrollments and student interest in both introductory and more advanced philosophy courses are at an all-time high at OSU, and the number of undergraduate majors and minors is also at unprecedented levels. In addition the department has added special programs for non-majors that have generated added enrollment, such as the Applied Ethics Certificate that focuses on ethics in three areas of concentration: scientific inquiry; the environment; and health and medicine. Interest in graduate studies in the department has also grown and the number of graduate students has slowly risen. Moreover, in 2002, after over two years of hard work by several department faculty members, the State Board of the Oregon University System approved the department's first, free-standing MA program, the MA in Applied Ethics. This program has been launched in earnest as of fall 2003, and is offered alongside the older MAIS degree, a degree of choice for graduate students who wish to study other areas of philosophy and religion.

Despite the increasing emphasis on research and publication, teaching has remained a central function of the department, and, following the lead of Socrates, has long been seen as an essential part of philosophy itself. Department faculty have received numerous awards for their teaching prowess, from the College of Liberal Arts, the university, student groups on campus, and the Honors College, and also from national professional associations and organizations. Every year, several philosophy faculty offer special seminars for honors students, and several have been designated "master teachers" by the CLA.

Philosophy faculty have regularly taught new courses in subjects that push the limits of traditional philosophy and extend the scope of the curriculum into areas formerly not considered acceptable objects of philosophical study and research. Some of this innovation has been created to respond to the special character of OSU as a land grant and applied scientific and technical institution, and in any case is a direct result of faculty creativity. This process began during the early and mid 1970s when more courses in value theory were taught, such as contemporary social ethics, environmental ethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of the arts. In more recent years it has included courses in such areas as feminism, non-western philosophy and religion, the arts and morality, and applied ethics and politics. Moreover department faculty have regularly offered many stimulating senior-level seminars on special subjects that reflect their research interests. Faculty have as well focused on improvements in student advising and have worked closely with majors and minors, and campus students groups, as advisors and mentors. Despite the fact that the department is quite diverse intellectually and personally, and there are some differences of opinion about program directions, department faculty have made a strong effort to work together cooperatively and the working atmosphere has been fairly collegial in the past thirty-five years.

This diversity can be seen in recent faculty hiring. Thus in 1989 Lani Roberts (University of Oregon) was hired to teach ethics and feminist philosophy. Since then she has become a central anchoring point in the department's new MA program, a mentor to many students, an acclaimed and honored teacher, and an activist in the community on issues of diversity and social justice. She supervises the department's certificate program in applied ethics for non-majors and serves as the second director of its graduate programs. Lani is also actively publishing and giving talks on the philosophy of oppression and diversity issues in organizations and society. She has been a key link in the department's relationships with women students and students of color, and has created several new and popular courses, such as "ethics of diversity" and "philosophies of feminism."

In 1993, a veteran philosophy teacher, Manuel Pacheco (University of Oregon), was hired with a joint appointment in philosophy and ethnic studies to teach courses in political philosophy and Mexican-American cultural studies. In his teaching and writing, Manuel did an inspiring job inveighing against the evils of cultural insensitivity and political imperialism, and clarifying the significance of his dual identity as an American born into mainstream American and also Latino culture. Manuel introduced several new courses into the curriculum, such as Pre-Columbian Philosophy, and taught various special courses in political philosophy, such as a seminar on globalization. He attracted new Chicano and Chicana students to the department, and worked as an advisor to several Latino student groups on campus. He was very instrumental in the development of the University's new Ethnic Studies Department, helping to design its curriculum and then to argue for its creation before the OSU Faculty Senate and the State Board of Higher Education. Tragically, Manuel died of a brain tumor in the fall of 2000, some two years before his intended retirement, and his career ended prematurely. The department has honored his memory by designating part of its library in his name.

In 1994, the department hired Jeffry Ramsey (University of Chicago) to teach courses in philosophy of science and critical thinking. Jeffry had just completed a post-doctoral program at the University of Minnesota, and he helped to rebuild interest in philosophy of science courses among OSU science and philosophy students. Aside from the department's regular course in philosophy of science, Jeffry taught several new courses in this area, such as a course on science and environmental policy. He also worked closely with Mary Jo Nye, Horning Professor in the History Department, on research related to their mutual interests in the philosophy of chemistry. After six years at OSU, and just as he was granted indefinite tenure, he left for a new position at Smith College.

James Blumenthal (University of Wisconsin) was hired in 1999 to replace Tim Hosoi. Jim is an emerging scholar, internationally, on Tibetan Buddhism, translating ancient Buddhist texts into English. In addition to working closely and very effectively with philosophy student groups, Jim has helped the department evaluate its religious studies curriculum, expanded its courses in Buddhist studies, and generated local and regional interest in this important world religion through his contacts with important Buddhist luminaries and scholars. Jim also spent time in South India, on leave, working on a translation of the ancient Buddhist text, The Ornament of the Middle Way. In 2001, after the death of Manuel, the department was also fortunate to hire Jose-Antonio Orosco (U. of California, Riverside) to replace Manuel in the areas of political and social philosophy, and Chicano-Chicana cultural studies. During his first years of teaching, Joseph has thrown himself fully into scholarly and university affairs, taught several new courses, and, like Jim, has endeared himself to students, student groups, and faculty alike. Joseph is quite active in scholarly publication and in national scholarly groups as well. A paper he authored received two prestigious awards from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. More recently, the department has reinvested in its philosophy of science program by hiring two excellent, young philosophers with interests, experience, and publications in this subject, Jonathan Kaplan and Sharyn Clough. The department's vacant position in environmental ethics is on hold, however, until budgetary problems ease in the state.

The Philosophy Department has benefited over the years from the work of many philosophers who have come as visiting professors, filled in as replacements for faculty on leave, or served as full or part-time faculty. Visitors have included Abraham Kaplan (University of Michigan), a regular summer visitor in the 1960s, Herbert Schneider (Columbia University), a year-long visitor in 1968, and more recently Viola Cordova (University of New Mexico) who taught native-American philosophy in 1995. Adjunct faculty have been dedicated and excellent teachers and researchers who have usually taught several sections of large, introductory classes, sometimes every term. Some of them departed long ago for other ventures, such as John Walker, Susan Anderson, Brooks Colburn, Jon Dorbolo (still at OSU), Jamie Ross (now at Portland State University), David DeMoss (now at Pacific University), Linda Williams, John Bauman, Maurice Hammington, Katherine Jefferts-Shorey (now the Episcopal Bishop of Nevada), and Katherine Powers. Plus there are others who currently do yeoman service for the department, namely Richard Anderson, David Lay, Dave Arnold, Steve Brence, Will Cowling, Jon Dorbolo, Tony Vogt, Judy Ringle, Madronna Holden, Paul Medeiros, Isaac Ruedin, and Ken Pendleton. The department has also enjoyed the excellent service of its long-time office staff over the years, particularly Nola Shearer, for many years secretary of the Philosophy Department, Pat Rogerson, former secretary of Religious Studies Department, Lois Robertson, our very able current office manager and also former secretary of Religious Studies, and Leonora Rianda. Through their efforts, our department offices have become known to be "student friendly," and their good humor, tact, and helpfulness have been much appreciated by faculty.

The philosophy program at OSU is in many respects a good deal different and much stronger than it was twenty-seven years ago as a result of the hard work and cooperation of faculty, students, and staff. This has occurred in spite of the difficulties that the humanities have faced at OSU because of historical and cultural factors in the institution and state, and rather severe budgetary restrictions from the state legislature. No longer is the department a purely service department, concerned mostly with general education. No longer must it rely on students from other disciplines and majors at OSU to populate its advanced courses. Its programs are much improved and more diverse intellectually and canonically, and its faculty continues to innovate in designing new ones. The department has a very active and successful, annual lecture series that is open to the public, in its Ideas Matter series, and sponsors a variety of other talks by visitors to the university. Moreover philosophy faculty are more involved in research, publication, and service regionally and nationally, and have been active in reaching beyond departmental boundaries to cooperate with faculty in many other departments and colleges. Student enrollment continues to be strong, and advanced students are better prepared to do philosophical work. While the development of graduate programs has been slow compared to almost all other Pac-10 institutions, the department will continue to mature as it seeks to expand and deepen its offerings in both traditional and new subjects, western and non-western, and as it attracts new faculty and students. This will occur in spite of financial problems in the state, as it always has in the past.