Barry Stroud
Barry Stroud in 2009
Born	(1935-05-18)May 18, 1935 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	August 9, 2019(2019-08-09) (aged 84) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Academic background
Education	East York Collegiate
Alma mater	University of Toronto Harvard University (PhD)
Thesis	Two Conventionalist Theories of Logical Truth (1962)
Doctoral advisor	Morton White
Academic work
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School or tradition	Analytic philosophy
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley
Main interests	Philosophical skepticism,David Hume,Ludwig Wittgenstein
Notable ideas	Transcendental approach to dealing withphilosophical skepticism[1]

Barry Stroud (/straʊd/; 18 May 1935 – 9 August 2019) was aCanadian philosopher and professor at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Known especially for his work onphilosophical skepticism, he wrote aboutDavid Hume,Ludwig Wittgenstein, the metaphysics of color, and many other topics.

Barry Greenwood Stroud was born on 18 May 1935 in Toronto, Canada.^[2][3] He was the second of two sons to William and Florence Stroud (who were both born in the U.K. but emigrated to Canada as children).^[3] He attended high school at theEast York Collegiate.^[4]

Stroud received a B.A. in philosophy from theUniversity of Toronto in 1958.^[3] AtHarvard University he received anA.M. in 1960.^[3] With a thesis titledTwo Conventionalistic Theories of Logical Truth, written under the direction ofMorton White, he received hisPh.D. there in 1962.^[3][5][6]

From 1961, until his retirement, Stroud worked at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2][7] He was made a full professor there in 1974 and, from 1994, served as the Mills Professor of Metaphysics and Epistemology.^[2][3] In 2007 he was named Willis S. and Marion SlusserProfessor ofPhilosophy in the Berkeley Philosophy Department, a position he held until he retired asprofessor emeritus.^[8] Though officially retiring at the end of the 2015-2016academic year, he continued his research, teaching and advising as a professor of the Graduate School.^[7] During his tenure he had served as departmental chair from 1978 to 1981, 1984 to 1985, and in 1998.^[9][2]

Stroud was a visiting professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Oslo (1974), at theNational Autonomous University of Mexico (1979), and at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles (1983-1984, and 1997).^[3] In 1981 Stroud was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship.^[10] and spent a sabbatical year in Venice.^[3] He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1987, and a corresponding fellow of theBritish Academy in 1993.^[8][11][12]

Over 1986–1987, as a visiting fellow ofNew College andAll Souls College, Stroud gave theJohn Locke Lectures atOxford University under the title 'The Quest for Reality.'^[13][2] He also delivered theGareth Evans Memorial Lecture at Oxford and Whitehead Lectures atHarvard.^[9] To theAmerican Philosophical Association, which he served as Pacific Division president in 1995–1996,^[2] he gave theDewey Lecture in 2008^[14][15] and the Patrick Romanell Lecture in 2009.^[16][17] Stroud also delivered theTanner Lectures on Human Values at theUniversity of Buenos Aires in 1988.^[4] He returned to Brazil, where several of his works have been translated intoPortuguese and discussed in print,^[18][19] in 2014 to participate in the 16th ANPOF conference inCampos do Jordão,^[20][21][22]

Stroud's first bookHume (1977),^[23] which received positive reviews fromR. F. Atkinson inHume Studies^[24] andDonald W. Livingston^[25] amongst others,^[26][27] won theMatchette Prize in 1979.^[9] It would be followed, in 1984, byThe Significance of Philosophical Scepticism^[28] and, in 1999, byThe Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour.^[29][30][31] Stroud'sEngagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction: Modality and Value was published in 2011.^[32]

2011 would also see the publication of the first book-length critical treatment of Stroud's thought,The Possibility of Philosophical Understanding: Reflections on the Thought of Barry Stroud.^[1] It included essay contributions fromRobert Fogelin,Ernest Sosa,John McDowell, Sarah Stroud^[33] and UC Berkeley colleagueHannah Ginsborg^[34] amongst others.^[35] Some of the central themes of his philosophical work are interpreted and elaborated upon in the volume editors' introduction to that work.^[36]

Several collections of Stroud's essays would also be published in his lifetime, the last of these appearing in 2018.^[37][6]

Having been diagnosed with advanced stage brain cancer just two months prior, Barry Stroud died on 9 August 2019.^[38]

Announcing his death, Berkeley Philosophy Department recorded that:

His body of work, his influence on generations of students, his imprint on the character of our department, the example that he set of the purest philosophical inquiry — all of it is beyond reckoning. As hard as it is to imagine what philosophy at Berkeley will be like without him, it is even harder to imagine what it would have been.^[38]

A memorial by former student, and fellow philosopher, John Schwenkler was published by3 Quarks Daily on 19 August 2019.^[39]

Obituaries in theUCBerkeley News andThe Daily Californian followed shortly after.^[40][41]

• (1977)Hume(Arguments of the Philosophers)Routledge.ISBN 0415203635,9780415203630.^[42][43]
• (1984)The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism.Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-824761-6,doi:10.1093/0198247613.001.0001.^[44][45]
• (1999)The Quest for Reality: Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-513388-2,doi:10.1093/0195151887.001.0001.^[46]
• (2000)Understanding Human Knowledge: Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-825033-3.
• (2000)Meaning, Understanding, and Practice: Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-825034-0.
• (2011)Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction: Modality and Value. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-976496-9.
• (2011)Philosophers Past and Present: Selected Essays. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-960859-1,doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608591.001.0001
• (2018)Seeing, Knowing, Understanding: Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-880975-3,doi:10.1093/oso/9780198809753.001.0001

• (1965)Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity (1965). Reprinted in:A Priori Knowledge, 1987
• (1968)Transcendental ArgumentsThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 65, No. 9 (May 2, 1968), pp. 241–256
• (1980)Berkeley v. Locke on Primary QualitiesPhilosophy, Vol. 55, No. 212 (Apr., 1980), pp. 149–166
• (1984)The Problem of the External World Chapter I ofThe Significance of Philosophical Skepticism (1984)
• (1984)The Disappearing ‘We’, Jonathan Lear, Barry Stroud,Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 58, Issue 1, 1 July 1984, pp. 219–258,
• (1984)G. E. Moore and Scepticism: ‘Internal’ and ‘External,Chapter III ofThe Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
• (1985)An End to Anxiety: Review of four books on Wittgenstein,The London Review of Books 18 July 1985
• (1987)XV—The Physical World,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, pp. 263–277
• (1988)The Study of Human Nature and the Subjectivity of Value,TheTanner Lectures on Human Values.
• (1994)Philosophical Scepticism, Ernest Sosa, Barry StroudProceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 68 (1994), pp. 263–307
• (1996)The Charm of Naturalism,Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 70 (2):43 - 55 (1996)
• (2008)Modes of philosophizing: A round table debate withJonathan Barnes,Myles Burnyeat andRaymond Geuss,Eurozine, May 2008
• (2011)Feelings and the Ascription of Feelings,Teorema, January 2011 pp. 25–33
• (2016)Responses to Sceptical EssaysSképsis,ISSN 1981-4194, ANO VII, Nº 14, 2016, p. 218-233.

Full publications list:at UC Berkeley homepage.

• Canadian philosophy
• List of Canadian philosophers

• Barry Stroud tribute page
• Barry Stroud on Scepticism,Philosophy Bites podcast interview, December 16, 2007
• Stroud in conversation withDonald Davidson on skepticism,video (1997)

• Canadian epistemologists
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Corresponding fellows of the British Academy
• Academics from Toronto
• University of Toronto alumni
• Harvard University alumni
• University of California, Berkeley faculty
• 20th-century Canadian philosophers
• 21st-century Canadian philosophers
• Wittgensteinian philosophers
• 1935 births
• 2019 deaths

• CS1 Portuguese-language sources (pt)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards