Kit Fine

Kit Fine (born 26 March 1946) is a British philosopher who is the Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University. Prior to joining the philosophy department of NYU in 1997, he taught at the University of Edinburgh, University of California, Irvine, University of Michigan and UCLA. The author of multiple books and over 100 articles in international academic journals, he has made notable contributions to the fields of philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language and also has written on ancient philosophy, in particular on Aristotle's account of logic and modality.

He is also a distinguished research professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, England. Since 2018, Fine is visiting professor at the University of Italian Switzerland.

Education, family and career After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford (B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 1967), Fine received his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick in 1969, under the supervision of A. N. Prior. He then taught at the University of Edinburgh, University of California, Irvine, University of Michigan, and UCLA, before moving to New York University as the Silver Professor and University Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics.

He was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2006. He has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and is a former editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic.

Fine has two daughters from his former marriage to Anne Fine. Anne Fine is an author of children's books; Cordelia Fine is a professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne; Ione Fine is a professor at the University of Washington.

Philosophical work In addition to his primary areas of research, he has written papers in ancient philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and economic theory.

Fine has described his general approach to philosophy as follows: "I’m firmly of the opinion that real progress in philosophy can only come from taking common sense seriously. A departure from common sense is usually an indication that a mistake has been made."

Awards In 2013, Fine held the Gödel Lecture, titled Truthmaker semantics.