Donald Cary Williams
Donald Cary Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 May 1899 |
| Died | 16 January 1983 |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic Nominalism |
| Notable students | Nicholas Wolterstorff David Lewis |
Main interests | Epistemology |
Notable ideas | The reliability of statistical sampling solves the problem of induction |
Donald Cary Williams (28 May 1899 – 16 January 1983) was an American philosopher and a professor at both the University of California Los Angeles and at Harvard University (from 1939 to 1967).
Education
- English Literature at Occidental College (BA 1922)
- Philosophy, Harvard University (AM 1924)
- Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley (no degree, 1925–27)
- Philosophy, Harvard University (PhD 1928)[1]
Philosophical work
Williams advocated nominalism in metaphysics[1] where he is best known for his expression of trope theory as the "alphabet of Being".[1]
He also published a book on the problem of induction, The Ground of Induction (1947), which argued that the reliability of statistical sampling solves Hume's skepticism about induction.
Legacy
He had both Nicholas Wolterstorff and David Lewis as graduate students.[2]
References
- ^ a b c Campbell, Keith; Franklin, James; Ehring, Douglas (28 January 2013). "Donald Cary Williams". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
- ^ Wolterstorff, Nicholas (November 2007). "A Life in Philosophy". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 81 (2). JSTOR 27653995.
External links
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
