Professor Ken Gemes

Email: k.gemes@bbk.ac.uk

Ken Gemes got his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1990. He came to Birkbeck in 2000 having taught for ten years at Yale University. His interests range from technical issues concerning logical content and confirmation to Nietzsche’s account of how philosophy is merely the last manifestation of the ascetic ideal.

The Gemes/Leiter Nietzsche Seminar Autumn 2005

Areas of research supervision

• Philosophy of science; philosophical logic; Nietzsche; epistemology; Freud.

Select bibliography

• 'Freud and Nietzsche on Sublimation' In Journal Of Nietzsche Studies 38:38-59, 2009
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• 'We Remain of Necessity Stranger to Ourselves': The Key Message of Nietzsche’s Genealogy”, pp. 191-208 in Acampora, Christa Davis, ed. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
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• 'Post-Modernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche,' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52: 337-360, 2001
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• 'Hypothetico-Deductivism: The Current State of Play; The Criterion of Empirical Significance Endgame,' Erkenntnis, 49:1-20, 1998
• 'Logical Content & Empirical Significance,' in The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. by P. Weingartner, G. Schurz and G. Dorn, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, 1998
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• "A New Theory of Content II: Model Theory and Some Alternatives," Journal of Philosophical Logic, 26:449-476, 1997
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• "Inductive Skepticism and the Probability Calculus I: Popper and Earman on the Probability of Laws," in Philosophy of Science, 64:113-130, 1997
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• "Information Loss Versus Information Degradation," in Intelligent Relevance, (Technical Report FS-94-02), AAI Press, 1995
• "A New Theory of Content I: Basic Content," Journal of Philosophical Logic, 23:596-620,1994
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• "Explanation, Unification, & Content," Nous, 28:225-240, 1994
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• "Hypothetico-Deductivism, Content, and The Natural Axiomatization of Theories," Philosophy of Science, 60:477-487, 1993
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• "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52:47-65, 1992, reprinted in Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Nietzsche, edited by B. Leiter and J. Richardson, Oxford University Press, 2001.
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• "The Indeterminacy Thesis Reformulated," Journal of Philosophy, 91:91-108, 1991
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• "Horwich, Hempel, & Hypothetico-Deductivism," Philosophy of Science 57:699-702, 1990
• "A Refutation of Popper's Inductive Scepticism," British Journal the Philosophy of Science, 40:183-184, 1989
• "The World In Itself: Neither Uniform nor Physical," Synthese, 73:301-318, 1987. Reprinted in Nelson Goodman's New Riddle of Induction, Ed. C. Elgin, Garland Publishing Inc., New York, 1997
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Unpublished work

• Strangers to Ourselves: Nietzsche on The Will to Truth, The Scientific Spirit, Free Will, and Genuine Selfhood
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• Content & Watkins' Account of Natural Axiomatizations
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• The Problem of Evil and its Solution
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• Carnap-Confirmation, Content-Cutting, & Real Confirmation
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• Epistemological Vs. Causal Explanation in Quine, or Quine: Sic et Non
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Forthcoming events

13-14 July 2012, Conference on Nietzsche and Affirmation, Oxford
• 23 May 2012 - Berliner Nietzsche Colloquium, Freie Universitaet Berlin.
• 9-10 May 2012 at 10:30am - Two-day Conference: 'Free Will Then and Now' Institute of Philosophy, The Senate Room (Senate House, First Floor).
• 15-17 April 2012, Nietzsche and Community, Wake Forest University

Podcasts

• http://www.philosophynow.org/podcasts/The_Tragedy_of_Life
• http://www.philosophynow.org/podcasts/The_Thoughts_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche
• http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/05/ken-gemes-nietzsche-on-nihilism-and-the-death-of-god/
• http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/05/ken-gemes-nietzsche-on-the-value-of-truth/