Synthese (2013) 190:1–2 DOI 10.1007/s11229-012-0178-8
The Formal Epistemology Project Igor Douven
Received: 5 September 2012 / Accepted: 5 September 2012 / Published online: 11 September 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
From 2007 till 2010, I headed the Formal Epistemology Project at the University of Leuven. The project was generously funded by an Odysseus grant from the Government of the Flemish Community in Belgium and by a smaller grant from the Research Council of the University of Leuven. The project employed eight post docs, five research assistants, and a financial manager. In addition, there were three visiting professors and a great many visiting fellows. The research concerned, not surprisingly, topics in formal epistemology. All who have been in Leuven in those years will agree that the project was a true research paradise at the Institute of Philosophy. The atmosphere was friendly, inspiring, and supportive from the start. All involved in the project, myself included, benefited greatly from this. Photographic and other evidence of many of the activities related to the project can be found on the project’s website that was (and is) maintained by Sebastian Sequoiah–Grayson (http://formalphilosophy.org). Unfortunately, the sudden presence of a great number of very active analytic philosophers at a department that is traditionally continental and not oriented towards research led to tensions which eventually made me accept a position at another university. But as long as it lasted, it was a privilege to lead a group of unexceptionably highly gifted and productive young researchers. Firstly, I would like to thank Mrs. Fientje Moerman, who, as Minister of Economics of the Flemish government, took the initiative for the Odysseus program. When in early 2007 word got out that I was among the final candidates for the Odysseus grants, several newspapers complained that it would be a waste of the tax payers’ money to spend it on a Dutch philosopher. (What exactly had angered the journalists, the fact that I am a philosopher, the fact that I am Dutch, or the combination of the two, has
I. Douven (B) University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail:
[email protected]
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never become clear.) Mrs. Moerman could, in response, have said—truthfully—that she was not involved in the selection process. Instead, she publicly defended me and the project that I had proposed. That was an act of political courage, something that has become rare in the Low Countries. Secondly, I am grateful to the many philosophers who visited the project, for longer or shorter periods of time, to present their recent work and to discuss it with us in sessions that could last for several hours, not counting the time that was spent discussing their work during drinks and dinner after the presentation. I learned as much of these events as I enjoyed them. I am sure the other members of the group would say the same. Thirdly, I would like to thank Vincent Hendricks. When he visited Leuven in 2008, he was so impressed by the quality of the young people working on the project that he suggested to devote a special issue of Synthese to research that was coming out of the project. Lastly, and most of all, I would like to thank the members of the group. For me, many—what I am sure will be life-long—friendships began in the years between 2007 and 2010. All members of the group contributed equally to an atmosphere that gave me the impression that I was with friends rather than with a group of researchers that I had to manage. Jointly we proved that a project can be run in this ‘among friends’ kind of way and still be successful scientifically. That now, more than two years after the project officially ended, there are still frequent contacts between most of the members of the project suggests that the project has not really ended. It never should.
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