Frank Jackson

Professor Frank Cameron Jackson took mathematics and philosophy at the University of Melbourne and a PhD in philosophy at La Trobe University. He taught at Adelaide for a year (1967) before moving to La Trobe and then to a chair at Monash University (1978). He joined the Australian National University in 1986 as Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences. At Australian National University he has served as Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies (1998-2001) and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) (2001).

Prof. Jackson was appointed Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University in 2003, Director, Research School of Social Sciences in 2004 and Convener of the College of Arts and Social Sciences in 2005. He has held visiting appointments at State University of New York at Buffalo, Victoria University of Wellington, Otago University (as William Evans Visiting Fellow, and again as Daniel Taylor Visiting Fellow), Harvard University, Princeton University (as a Senior Humanities Council Fellow), Oxford University (as John Locke Lecturer), the University of Michigan (as James B. and Grace J. Nelson Philosopher in Residence), Cambridge University (as St John’s Overseas Visiting Scholar), and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (as Erskine Visitor).

In 1995, Professor Jackson gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University. In 2003 he gave the Patrick Romanell Lecture at the American Philosophical Association and gave the Heffer lecture at Cambridge University in 2005. In 2006 he will give the Brown-Blackwell Lectures at Brown University. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

In Janurary this year, Professor Jackson was awarded the Order of Australia for service to education, particularly in the disciplines of philosophy and social sciences, as an academic, admisistrator and researcher.

Professor Jackson’s research covers Philosophical Logic, Cognitive Science, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Meta-Ethics.

His publications include Perception: A Representative Theory, Cambridge University Press, 1977, reprinted in Gregg Revivals, 1994; Conditionals, Basil Blackwell, 1987; The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, Basil Blackwell, 1996 (with David Braddon-Mitchell); From Metaphysics to Ethics, Oxford University Press, 1997; and his collected papers Mind, Method, and Conditionals: Selected Essays, Routledge, 1998. He is the editor of Conditionals, Oxford University Press, 1991; Consciousness, The International Research Library of Philosophy, Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1998; Lewisian Themes: the Philosophy of David K. Lewis, Oxford University Press, 2004 (with Graham Priest); and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2005 (with Michael Smith).

As the sixth laureate of the Tang Chun-I Visiting Professorship, Professor Jackson will offer a public lecture entitled “Philosophy and the Departments of Knowledge,” a four-week graduate seminar on “Mind and Meaning in the Age of Materialism,” and a staff seminar in the Department of Philosophy on “Indicative Conditionals Revisited.”