Pragmatic Philosophy

Robert Stalnaker, faculty

Philosophy’s concerns can seem remote. But MIT’s most famous philosopher has built a career around seemingly quotidian issues: how we imagine hypothetical alternatives, for example, or how people understand each other. Since joining the faculty in 1988, Stalnaker has probed the nature of speech, thought, and decision-making, influencing developments in game theory, linguistics, and economics. “Understanding the physical world, at least on a commonsense level, is easy,” says Stalnaker. “What’s mysterious is what’s going on in our minds.”