Ray Briggs is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. They work on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, and are particularly interested in time, causation, probability, personal identity, and gender. They are the co-author with B.R. George of What Even Is Gender? (2023, Routledge), and one of the hosts of the syndicated radio program Philosophy Talk. They received their PhD from MIT in 2009, and have held academic positions at the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, The University of Queensland, and Stanford University.
Selected Publications
What Even Is Gender? with B. R. George (2023)
An Accuracy-Dominance Argument for Conditionalization with Richard Pettigrew (2020)
Two Interpretations of the Ramsey Test (2017)
The Growing-Block: just one thing after another? with Graeme Forbes (2017)
Utility Monsters for the Fission Age with Daniel Nolan (2015)
Interventionist Counterfactuals (2012)
The Real Truth About the Unreal Future with Graeme Forbes (2011)
Decision Theoretic Paradoxes as Voting Paradoxes (2010)
The Anatomy of the Big Bad Bug (2009)
Distorted Reflection (2009)
Media
Philosophy Talk is a nationally-syndicated public radio program and podcast hosted by professors Josh Landy (Stanford) and Ray Briggs (UChicago). Known as “the program that questions everything—except your intelligence” Philosophy Talk challenges listeners to question their assumptions and to think about things in new ways.
Recent Courses
PHIL 27351/37351 Personal Identity
This course provides an overview of the metaphysics of personal identity, addressing questions like: “What makes an entity a person, rather than a non-person?”, “What does it take for a person to survive, rather than perish?”, “Why is surviving important (if it is)?”, and “What makes you you?” We will consider a range of theories of personal identity, including nihilism, psychological continuity theories, and narrative approaches. (B) (II)
For undergraduates, PHIL 23000: Introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology.
PHIL 55403 Transfeminism
Trans experience raises interesting philosophical questions about how people understand and misunderstand each other as gendered beings, how our internal senses of ourselves relate to the way society perceives us, and how to re-imagine our ideas of a good or normal body. This graduate seminar explores some of these questions through readings in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy that center trans and feminist perspectives. (I)
PHIL 22960/32960 Introduction to Bayesian Epistemology
Epistemology is the study of belief, and addresses questions like “what are we justified in believing?” and “when does a belief count as knowledge?” This course will provide an overview of Bayesian epistemology, which treats belief as coming in degrees, and addresses questions like “when does rationality require us to be more confident of one proposition than another?", “how should we measure the amount of confirmation that a piece of evidence provides for a theory?”, and “which actions should we choose, based on our judgments about how probable various consequences are?” (B) (II)
PHIL 29420/39420 Non-Classical Logic
This course introduces non-classical extensions and alternatives to classical logic, and the philosophical debates surrounding them. Topics include modal logic (the logic of possibility and necessity), intuitionistic and many-valued logics (in which sentences may be neither true nor false, or both true and false), and relevant logic (which tries to refine the classical concept of entailment to capture the idea that the premises of arguments should be relevant to their conclusions).
Students will learn tableau-style proof theories and Kripke frame semantics for a variety of non-classical logics, and will discuss adjacent philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity and possibility, the metaphysics of ordinary objects and fictional characters, the nature of truth, and the relationship between the world and the logical theories we use to describe it. (B) (II)
Introduction to Logic (or Accelerated Introduction to Logic).