Margaret Gilbert

Professor of Philosophy

Thank you for checking my web page! Here you will find:

1. How to find me: my mailing address and other particulars
2. My research interests
3. Topics I teach at the graduate level
4. A link to my publications --- which may not be completely up to date...

1. How to find me:

Department of Philosophy U-54
University of Connecticut
103 Manchester Hall
Storrs, Ct. 06269-2054 USA

Office: 213 Manchester Hall
Office phone and voice mail: 860-486-3359
Department phone: 860-486-4416
FAX: 860-486-0387
e-mail: margaret.gilbert@uconn.edu

2. My research interest

Over some years my work has focussed in and around what I have come to call philosophical social theory. This is a relatively new but growing field in philosophy., which can be seen as a branch of the philosophy of social science or as a philosophical part of social science itself. It concerns the nature of central social phenomena such as social groups, social conventions, group beliefs and emotions, shared (or collective) intention and action. What is a social group...and so on?

In my book On Social Facts (1989) I began to expound what I now refer to as plural subject theory. Social groups... or social groups of a central type...are plural subjects in a sense that I explain. My books Living Together (1996) and Sociality and Responsibility (2000) elaborate upon and develops plural subject theory further.

When I was writing On Social Facts I realized that the theory of plural subjects that I was developing had implications for a number of issues in political philosophy, in particular the problem of political obligation and the problem of collective responsibility. (In both cases the problem might be succinctly stated: is there any such thing?) It also bears on some concerns of moral theorists, such as the way in which agreements and promises obligate, whether our knowledge of the obligatoriness of agreements is a priori, and so on. A significant part of my current work focuses on such issues. I have a book in progress on politica l obligation, and have been writing a series of articles around the topic of collective responsibility and some of the emotions, both individual and collective, that may be evoked by a group's actions. I also have a forthcoming paper on obligation.

Though my work is not primarily historical, I have paid and continue to pay quite close attention to certain classics of sociology and philosophy that bear on my primary concerns. I also have an interest in game-theoretical models of social processes, and have published papers on aspects of these models ( in particular that of David Lewis in his book Convention) and of the scope and limitations of rationality in the game-theorist's sense.

3. Teaching (graduate)

I mostly teach graduate courses in philosophy of social science and contemporary political philosophy. Sometimes these are highly focussed on one or two topics; at other times they move further in the direction of 'survey' courses. I usually spend some time on plural subject theory as it relates to one or more of the topics at hand. Recently Ruth Millikan visited my graduate philosophy of social science class (from down the hall) and we had an exciting and helpful discussion of her recently published paper on convention, comparing and contrasting her views with my own discussions of convention in various places.