1 32.2 In Memoriam JONATHAN ADLER F 


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In Memoriam: JONATHAN ADLER 
1949 – 2012 

 
It is with great sadness that the Editors of Informal Logic inform 
our readers that Jonathan Adler has died, on March 26th, 2012, 
after a long illness.  
 Jonathan graduated from Brooklyn College in 1970; he 
received a Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1974 and a D.Phil. 
from Oxford in 1978.  
 Over the three decades since then he established himself 
as a prominent and innovative thinker in contemporary episte-
mology. He authored nearly 70 articles covering a wide range of 
epistemological topics, including skepticism, induction, testi-
mony, the argument from ignorance and fanatical reasoning; he 
also wrote on philosophy of language, ethics and the philosophy 
of education.  His monograph, Belief's Own Ethics (MIT 2002), 
is a defense of a strong version of evidentialism, the view that 
one's beliefs should be proportionate to the evidence. He co-
edited (with Catherine Z. Elgin) an introductory anthology in 
philosophy, Philosophical Inquiry: Classic and Contemporary 
Readings (Hackett 2007) and (with Lance Rips) the authoritative 
anthology on cognitive philosophy and psychology, Reasoning: 
Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundations (Cambridge 
2008).  
 During his distinguished career he won important teaching 
and research awards, including a Wolfe Institute Fellowship at 
Brooklyn College and two fellowships from the National En-
dowment for the Humanities (1991–1992 and 2008–2009).  
 Jonathan supported informal logic from the very begin-
ning, and was an active contributor to this journal. He was our 
first Book Review Editor, from 1992 to 2001 and he published 
five articles in Informal Logic: “Why Be Charitable?” Vol. 4, 
No. 2 (1981); “Where are the Limits to Reconstruction?” Vol. 7, 
No. 1 (1985); “Alternatives, Writing, and the Formulation of a 
Thesis” Vol. 9, No. 2 (1987); “Critical Thinking, A Deflated 
Defense: A Critical Study of John E. McPeck's Teaching Criti-
cal Thinking: Dialogue and Dialectic” Vol. 13, No. 2 (1991); 
“Belief and Negation” Vol. 20, No. 3 (2000). He also served as 
president of the Association for Informal Logic and Critical 
Thinking (AILACT) from 1992 to1995. 
 Jonathan was a wonderful colleague and a thoroughly en-
gaging person. We at Informal Logic join the many, many col-
leagues and friends who mourn his untimely death and will miss 
his always constructive and upbeat presence in our lives. 
 

J. Anthony Blair, Ralph H. Johnson,  
Hans V. Hansen, Christopher W. Tindale