Edouard Machery (University of Pittsburgh, History and Philosophy of Science), Clark Barrett (UCLA, anthropology), and Stephen Stich (Rutgers University, Philosophy) are delighted to announce that the John Templeton Foundation has awarded them a 3-year (2018-21), $2.6 million grant for a project entitled “The Geography of Philosophy: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Exploration of Universality and Diversity in Fundamental Philosophical Concepts.”
Throughout the history of philosophy, many thinkers have urged that some fundamental philosophical concepts are universal–used by all people. Historians and anthropologists have often been skeptical of these claims. Recently, cultural psychologists and experimental philosophers have begun to explore empirically whether fundamental philosophical concepts are shared across cultures. Our multi-cultural, interdisciplinary project will involve over a hundred philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, neuroscientists and economists in 10 regions around the world in order to determine whether, and to what extent, the concepts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom are shared across cultural groups.