Barry Loewer is a philosopher and Chairperson of the Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 Department of Philosophy and director of the Rutgers Center for Philosophy and the Sciences. He obtained his BA from Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 (1965) and his PhD from Stanford (under the direction of Jaakko Hintikka

Jaakko Hintikka

Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka is a Finnish philosopher and logician.Hintikka was born in Vantaa. After teaching for a number of years at Florida State University, Stanford, University of Helsinki, and the Academy of Finland, he is currently Professor of Philosophy at Boston University...

). Loewer has published in many areas of philosophy including philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...

, metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

, epistemology, history of philosophy

History of philosophy

The history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...

, philosophical logic

Philosophical logic

Philosophical logic is a term introduced by Bertrand Russell to represent his idea that the workings of natural language and thought can only be adequately represented by an artificial language; essentially it was his formalization program for the natural language...

, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science

Philosophy of science

The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

. He is especially known for work on mental causation, the metaphysics of laws and chance, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Loewer has collaborated with Marvin Belzer (on deontic logic

Deontic logic

Deontic logic is the field of logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. Alternatively, a deontic logic is a formal system that attempts to capture the essential logical features of these concepts...

), Ernest Lepore

Ernest Lepore

Ernest Lepore is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is currently Acting Director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, and a professor at Rutgers University...

 (on philosophy of language

Philosophy of language

Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...

), and David Albert

David Albert

David Z Albert, Ph.D., is Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy and Director of the M.A. Program in The Philosophical Foundations of Physics at Columbia University in New York. He received his B.S. in physics from Columbia College and his doctorate in theoretical physics from The...

 (on the interpretation of quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

 and the role of chance in statistical mechanics

Statistical mechanics

Statistical mechanics or statistical thermodynamicsThe terms statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics are used interchangeably...

). In his work with Albert he is known for developing the "many-minds interpretation

Many-minds interpretation

The many-minds interpretation of quantum mechanics extends the many-worlds interpretation by proposing that the distinction between worlds should be made at the level of the mind of an individual observer. The concept was first introduced in 1970 by H...

" of quantum theory

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

. The point of this work was not so much to advocate this view as to argue that many worlds interpretations need to be modified to accommodate probabilities. This has become a much discussed and contended issue.