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Letters


Letters


The Conversion of Lewis • Heaven and Earth • Disgusted of SE14 • What Do Women Know? • Virtuous Thoughts • An Acrobat Writes • SF: Two Gurus Write • SF: A Body Snatcher Writes • Darwinian Politics? • The Moon Illusion • Does Science Close Philosophical Doors?


The Conversion of Lewis


DEAR EDITOR: I was sorry to learn of the death of David Lewis. I thought you should know that there is something wrong with the Philosophy Now obituary (Issue 34).


I first met David Lewis in the Michaelmas Semester of 1959, which I was spending at Swarthmore College. He was in one of my classes, and asked me to support his application to Harvard. I find it rather difficult to see how he could have been “converted” from science to philosophy by encountering Gilbert Ryle at Oxford at the age of 19 when he clearly was already committed to a career in philosophy before that, when he was in my class at Swarthmore.


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