Name Brie Gertler Role Philosopher | Books Arguing About the Mind | |
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Education University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Swarth College | ||
Brie Gertler is an American philosopher who works primarily on problems in the philosophy of mind. A mind-body dualist, she is Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. Her special interests include introspection, consciousness and mental content.
Contents
Among Gertler's other fields of study are epistemology and the philosophy of language. She has edited Privileged Access (2003), an anthology of papers on self-knowledge, and co-edited (with Lawrence Shapiro) "Arguing about the Mind" (2007), a reader in the philosophy of mind.
Education and employment
Gertler has written numerous papers on her research and is a seasoned book reviewer. She received a BA with High Honours in Philosophy from Swarthmore College in June 1989 and an MA at the University of Pennsylvania three years later. In June 1997, she was granted a PhD by Brown University.
Gertler first found employment as an assistant professor at The College of William & Mary, where she worked from 1997 to 2001, before moving on to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she earned tenure. She moved to her University of Virginia position in 2004.
"In Defence of Mind-Body Dualism"
To the thirteenth edition of the Joel Feinberg- and Russ Shafer-Landau-edited Reason & Responsibility, Gertler contributed a paper in support of dualism. It explored the fundamentals of the mind-body problem and defended her philosophy against charges of "spookiness". Her argument is founded on the claim that, in feeling pain, we know the essence of the mental state of pain.