Name Elmer Sprague Role Professor | Education University of Oxford | |
Books What is Philosophy?: A Short Introduction, Persons and Their Minds, Metaphysical Thinking | ||
Elmer Sprague is professor emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he taught philosophy for 44 years. He has a B.A. from the University of Nebraska, and a B.A. and D.Phil. from Oxford. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1948–51), and was the Paul Robert and Jean Shuman Hanna Professor of Philosophy at Hamline University (1987).
His previous publications include articles on Ryle and Hume, and the books, Metaphysical Thinking and What is Philosophy published by New York Oxford Press in 1961. His specialties are the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His book Persons and their Minds, published in 1999, is a Wittgensteinian-Ryleian critique of modern philosophy of mind.
Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, "where Lee Lawrie's sculptures on the state capitol dominate the city" led to Sprague's interest in "sculpture watching," which in turn led him to publishing Brooklyn Public Monuments: Sculpture for Civic Memory and Urban Pride.