Tamara Horowitz

Tamara Horowitz (November 7, 1950 – January 30, 2000) was an American philosopher who worked on epistemology, feminist philosophy and the philosophy of science. She spent much of her career at the University of Pittsburgh, and was appointed chair of the philosophy department there in September 1999, but died a few months later.

Life and career Horowitz was born on November 7, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York, as well as the first woman to receive a doctorate from MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. During her mid-twenties, she spent a period of two years not looking in mirrors; though initially this was done as part of a questioning of attachment to appearance, it led her to believe that sense of self can be distorted through a focus on physical appearance. before teaching variously at Vassar College (instructor/assistant professor of philosophy 1974–78), New York University (assistant professor of philosophy, 1978–83) and Purchase State College, State University of New York (visiting assistant professor of philosophy, 1983-4). an article which was included in volume VIII of the Philosopher's Annual as one of the year's best philosophy papers. She became an assistant professor on the faculty at Pitt the following year. She was promoted to associate professor in philosophy and associate professor in women's studies in 1993, as well as being named the associate director of the university's Center for the Philosophy of Science. Colin MacCabe described Horowitz in an editorial for the issue as someone who

had no time whatsoever for the pompous or the pretentious; her concern was always with argument and debate, with the elaboration of human knowledge. ... [She was] a logician of the first rank who was also committed to a project of social emancipation.

He explained how Horowitz situated her work in the tradition of logical positivism, and intended to return to work on the socialist legacy of the Vienna Circle once her work on belief paradoxes, upon which she had focused later in her life, was complete.

Selected bibliography Much of Horowitz's work was concerned with either the epistemology of a priori knowledge or with feminist philosophy. Her works include:

Horowitz, Tamara (1983). "Stipulation and Epistemological Privilege". Philosophical Studies 44 (3): 305–18.

Horowitz, Tamara, and Allen I. Janis, eds. (1993). Scientific Failure. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.