View source for Biography:Susanne Bobzien

{{Short description|German-born British philosopher (born 1960)}}
{{EngvarB|date=September 2014}}
[[File:Susanne Bobzien.jpg|thumb|Susanne Bobzien in 2012]]
'''Susanne Bobzien''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FBA}} (born 1960) is a German-born philosopher<ref name=whoswho>Who'sWho in America 2012, 64th Edition</ref> whose research interests focus on philosophy of logic and language, determinism and freedom, and ancient philosophy.<ref name=yale>[http://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/fellows/susanne-bobzien-FBA Bobzien's British Academy Page]</ref> She currently is senior research fellow at [[Organization:All Souls College, Oxford|All Souls College, Oxford]] and professor of philosophy at the [[Organization:University of Oxford|University of Oxford]].<ref name=allsouls>[http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=2155 All Souls Faculty Page]</ref>

==Early life==
Bobzien was born in [[Place:Hamburg|Hamburg]], Germany, in 1960.<ref name=whoswho /> She graduated in 1985 with an M.A. at Bonn University, and in 1993 with a doctorate in philosophy (D.Phil.) at Oxford University, where from 1987 to 1989 she was affiliated with Somerville College.<ref name=allsouls/>

==Academic career==
Bobzien currently holds the position of senior research fellow at [[Organization:All Souls College, Oxford|All Souls College, Oxford]] and is professor of philosophy at Oxford University.<ref name=allsouls/> She was appointed to a senior professorship in philosophy at Yale in 2001<ref name=yaleDailyNews>[http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2001/mar/23/philosophy-hires-rising-oxford-star/ Yale Daily News 3/23/2001, "Philosophy hires rising Oxford star"] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121003051121/http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2001/mar/23/philosophy-hires-rising-oxford-star/ |date=3 October 2012}}</ref> and held this position from 2002 to 2010.<ref name=allsouls/> From 1993 to 2002 she had a tenured position at Oxford University.<ref name=allsouls/> From 1990 to 2002, she was fellow and praelector in philosophy at The Queen's College. Before that she was tutorial fellow in philosophy at Balliol College.<ref name=allsouls/>

Among her awards are a British Academy Research Readership (2000–2002),<ref name=barr>[http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/awards/posts/rrsrf2000.cfm British Academy Research Readerships 2000–2002.]</ref> and a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities (2008–09).<ref name=nah>[http://www.neh.gov/news/awards/fpiri_fellows09.html NEH Fellowships at Independent Research Institutions, announced June 2008.]</ref> In 2014 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.<ref name="BA Fellow">{{Cite web |url=http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/british-academy-announces-42-new-fellows/2014585.article |title=British Academy announces 42 new fellows |publisher=Times Higher Education |date=18 July 2014 |accessdate=18 July 2014}}</ref> Bobzien has published several books and numerous articles in leading academic journals and collections.<ref name=whoswho/>

==Philosophical work==
===Determinism and freedom===
Bobzien's major work ''Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy'' <ref name=yaleDailyNews/> is "the first full-scale modern study of the [Stoic] theory [of determinism]".<ref name=time2000>Times Literary Supplement (15 September 2000) "Chrysippus and the seamless web"</ref> "It explores ... the views of the Stoics on causality, fate, the modalities, divination, rational agency, the non-futility of action, moral responsibility, [and the] formation of character".<ref name=mind>Mind 109 (2000) p. 855</ref> In this book and in her articles "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" and "Did Epicurus discover the Free-Will Problem?" Bobzien argues that the problem of determinism and free-will, as conceived in contemporary philosophy, was not considered by Aristotle, Epicurus or the Stoics, as was previously thought, but only in the 2nd century CE, as the result of a conflation of Stoic and Aristotelian theory.<ref name=time2000/><ref name=philPapers>[http://philpapers.org/s/susanne%20bobzien PhilPapers archive link to Bobzien's professional papers]</ref>

Bobzien's "Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (The Categories of Freedom in Kant) has been described as an article "that has long been the starting point for any German reader seeking to deepen his understanding of the second chapter of the Analytic of Kant's [[Philosophy:Critique of Practical Reason|Critique of Practical Reason]]." It differentiates the main functions of Kant's Categories of Freedom: as conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to be morally evaluated.<ref name=notreDame>[http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24535-kant-s-moral-and-legal-philosophy/ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2010.11.06, of K. Ameriks, O. Höffe (eds.) Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy, Cambridge 2009.]</ref>

===History of logic===
Bobzien's ''Die stoische Modallogik''<ref name=modallogik>Die stoische Modallogik (Würzburg 1986)</ref> is the first monograph on Stoic modal logic.<ref name=huelser>K. Hülser, ''Die Fragmente zur Dialektik der Stoiker'', vol. 3. p. VI.</ref> In her paper "Stoic Syllogistic" Bobzien sets out the evidence for Stoic syllogistic. She argues that this should not be assimilated into standard propositional calculus, but treated as a distinct system which bears important similarities to [[Philosophy:Relevance logic|relevance logic]] and [[Philosophy:Connexive logic|connexive logic]].<ref name=reviewAncient>Review of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XIV, 1996.</ref> In "Stoic Sequent Logic and Proof Theory", she argues that stoic deduction resembles backward proof search for Gentzen-style substructural [[Sequent|sequent]] logics as developed in [[Philosophy:Structural proof theory|structural proof theory]],<ref name=HistPhilLog>[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01445340.2019.1579624?journalCode=thpl20 ''History and Philosophy of Logic'' 2019.]</ref> and in the co-authored "Stoic Logic and Multiple Generality" she lays out evidence that Stoic logic could handle the [[Philosophy:Problem of multiple generality|problem of multiple generality]] in a variable-free [[First-order logic|first-order logic]].<ref name=PhilosophersImprint>[http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0020.031 ''Philosophers' Imprint'' 2020.]</ref>

Bobzien's paper "The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity" traces the earliest development of [[Modus ponens|modus ponens]] (or Law of Detachment).<ref name=philpapers>[http://philpapers.org/rec/BOBTDO-2 PhilPapers]</ref><ref name=phronesis>[https://www.jstor.org/pss/4182708 The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity", ''Phronesis'' 47, 2002]</ref> She has also reconstructed the ancient history of [[Hypothetical syllogism|hypothetical syllogism]]s<ref name=HypotheticalSyllogistic>[http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852800510144 ''Phronesis'' 45, 2002, 87–137.]</ref> and Galen's representation of peripatetic hypothetical syllogistic, and shown these differ from stoic syllogistic and contemporary propositional logic.<ref name=GalenSyllogistic>''Rhizai Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science'' 2, 2004, 57–102.</ref>

In the 2021 extended essay "Frege plagiarized the Stoics", based on her 2016 Keeling Lecture, Bobzien argues in detail that Frege plagiarized them on a large scale in his work on the philosophy of logic and language, written mainly between 1890 and his death in 1925.<ref name=FregePlagiarismStoics>[http://ics.sas.ac.uk/publications/themes-plato-aristotle-and-hellenistic-philosophy?fbclid=IwAR0FmeF913u6_OeYi4zIJ-fi5a3ZRRuLNn-FMk-vGzsgo2JPwfT9vHsoIzs ''Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy: Keeling Lectures 2011-18''] London: 2020.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://dailynous.com/2021/02/03/frege-plagiarize-stoics/|title = Did Frege Plagiarize the Stoics?|date = 3 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-chronique-daurelien-bellanger/la-chronique-daurelien-bellanger-chronique-du-mercredi-24-fevrier-2021|title=Le logicien Gottlob Frege n'est-il qu'un vulgaire plagiaire ?|date=24 February 2021 }}</ref>

===Vagueness and paradoxes===
Bobzien has worked on the philosophical application of the [[Modal logic|modal logic]] S4.1 to vagueness and paradoxes. She has introduced and developed the philosophical ideas of columnar higher-order vagueness, borderline nestings, and semi-determinability.<ref name=Mormann>[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-019-00214-2 Mormann, ''Erkenntnis'' 2020.]</ref><ref name=AnalyticPhilosophy>[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phib.12006 ''Analytic Philosophy'' 2013.]</ref><ref name=NotreDamePR>[http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/reflections-on-the-liar/ ''Notre Dame Philosophical Review''.]</ref>

In "Gestalt Shifts in the Liar", presented in her [https://philosophy.sas.ac.uk/events/event/6758 2017 Jacobsen Lecture], Bobzien analyses three features of [[Philosophy:Liar paradox|liar]] sentences and shows how their combination leads to the liar's paradoxicality: salience-based [[Bistability|bistability]], context sensitivity, and assessment sensitivity. On this basis she proposes the modal logic S4.1 as governing the truth operator and offers a revenge-free solution to the liar paradox that relates to Herzberger's [[Philosophy:Revision theory|revision theory]] of truth.<ref name="NotreDamePR"/>

Bobzien has proposed a logic of higher-order [[Vagueness|vagueness]] (the quantified modal logic S4.1 supplemented with Max Cresswell's Finality Axiom) that delivers a generic solution to the [[Sorites paradox]] and avoids higher-order vagueness paradoxes and sharp boundaries.<ref name=imprint>[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/3521354.0010.010?view=toc ''Philosophers' Imprint'' 2010]</ref><ref name=AristSocSuppl>[http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2015.00244.x ''Aristotelian Society Suppl.'' 89, 2015.]</ref> The proposed logic is weaker than [[Philosophy:Classical logic|classical logic]] and stronger than [[Intuitionistic logic|intuitionistic logic]]. It is a [[Philosophy:Modal companion|modal companion]] to the superintuitionistic logic QH+KF.<ref name=FacultyPage>[http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/susanne-bobzien#tab-1834806 Bobzien Faculty Page]</ref>

==Selected publications==
'''Determinism and freedom'''
*[https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0199247676.001.0001''Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy''] (Oxford 1998). {{ISBN|0199247676}}
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=JxUuEAAAQBAJ Freedom, and Moral Responsibility: Essays in Ancient Philosophy''] (Oxford 2021). {{ISBN|0198866739}}
*"The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem" (''Phronesis'' 43, 1998)
*"Did Epicurus Discover the Free-Will Problem?" (''Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy'' 19, 2000)
*"Die Kategorien der Freiheit bei Kant" (in ''Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik'' vol. 1, Würzburg, 1988)

'''History of logic'''
*''Die stoische Modallogik'' (Würzburg 1986). {{ISBN|3884792849}}
*''Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.1-7'', with J. Barnes, K. Flannery, K. Ierodiakonou (London 1991). {{ISBN|0715623478}}
*"Stoic Syllogistic" (''Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy'' 14, 1996). {{ISBN|0198236700}}
*"The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity" (''Phronesis'' 47, 2002)
*[http://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2019.1579624 "Stoic Sequent Logic and Proof Theory"] (''History and Philosophy of Logic'' 40, 2019) 
*[http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0020.031 "Stoic Logic and Multiple Generality"], with Simon Shogry (''Philosophers' Imprint'' 20, 2020)
*[http://ics.sas.ac.uk/publications/themes-plato-aristotle-and-hellenistic-philosophy?fbclid=IwAR0FmeF913u6_OeYi4zIJ-fi5a3ZRRuLNn-FMk-vGzsgo2JPwfT9vHsoIzs "Frege Plagiarized the Stoics"] (in ''Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy: Keeling Lectures 2011-18'', London 2021)

'''Vagueness and paradoxes'''
*[http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/3521354.0010.010?view=toc "Higher-order Vagueness, Radical Unclarity, and Absolute Agnosticism"] (''Philosophers' Imprint'' 10, 2010)
*[https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9704-8 "In Defense of True Higher-Order Vagueness"] (''Synthese'' 180, 2011)
*[https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696482.003.0010 "If it's Clear, then it's Clear that it's Clear, or is it? – Higher-Order Vagueness and the S4 Axiom"] (Oxford 2012)
*[https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/phib.12006 "Higher-Order Vagueness and Borderline Nestings – a Persistent Confusion"] (''Analytic Philosophy'' 54.1, 2013).
*[http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2015.00244.x "Columnar Higher-order Vagueness or Vagueness is Higher-Order Vagueness"] (''Aristotelian Society Suppl.'' 89, 2015)
*[http://dx.DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199896042.003.0004 "Gestalt Shifts in the Liar or Why KT4M is the Logic of Semantic Modalities"] (in ''Reflections on the Liar'', Oxford 2017)
*[http://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-019-09507-x "Intuitionism and the Modal Logic of Vagueness"], with Ian Rumfitt (''Journal of Philosophical Logic'' 49, 2020)

==See also==
*[[Philosophy:Free will in antiquity#Epicureanism|Free will in antiquity]]
*[[Stoic logic]]
*[[Philosophy:Stoicism|Stoicism]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=2155 Homepage at All Souls College, Oxford]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20161106131757/http://loriweb.org/women-in-philosophy-of-logic-and-philosophical-logic/ Women in Logic]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bobzien, Susanne}}
[[Category:Philosophers of language]]

{{Sourceattribution|Susanne Bobzien}}