Alan R. White

Alan R. White (as he was usually cited) was born in Toronto on 9 October 1922, the elder of two children born to George Albert White and Jean Gabriel White (née Kingston).[1]

He was educated at Middleton College. Cork, and at Trinity College, Dublin where he served as President of the University Philosophical Society.[2][3] Obtaining firsts in classics and mental and moral philosophy at Trinity he is said to have scored over 100 per cent in his exams by taking them in Gaelic, (for which extra credit was supposedly given).[2] White completed his PhD at the University of London under the supervision of A.J. Ayer.[2]

After briefly serving as a deputy lecturer at Trinity, Dublin, White was appointed as an assistant lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hull in 1946. At the time the departmental staff consisted solely of himself and Professor T.E. Jessop. White succeeded Jessop to become the second Ferens Professor of Philosophy at Hull in 1961, a post he retained until his retirement in 1989. He was also a Visiting Professor at a number of American universities and served as Secretary, and then president, of the Mind Association and as President of the Aristotelian Society.[2][3]

White retired to Nottingham, where he had been appointed Special Professor in 1986.[3] He died at his home in Sherwood, Nottingham on 23 February 1992.[1]

His papers are held at Hull University Archives.[3]

A volume of White's selected papers, as edited by Constantine Sandis (who credits White's Grounds of Liability as "a huge influence")[4] with John Preston and David Dolby is forthcoming.[5][6]

Authored Books

• G.E. Moore: a Critical Exposition, Oxford: Blackwell (1958)[7][8]
• Attention, Oxford: Blackwell (1964
• The Philosophy of Mind, New York: Random House (1967)[9]
• Truth, London: Macmillan (1970)[10]
• Modal Thinking, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1975)[11][12]
• The Nature of Knowledge, Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield (1982)
• Rights, Oxford: Clarendon-Press (1984)[13][14]
• Grounds of Liability: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1985)[15]
• Methods of Metaphysics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1987)
• The Language of Imagination (1990)
• Misleading Cases, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1991)[16]
• Attempting the Impossible in Liability and Responsibility. New York: Cambridge University Press (1991)

Edited Books

• The Philosophy of Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967 (Includes Introduction by White).

Select Papers

• "Moore’s appeal to Common Sense", Philosophy, Vol. 33, No. 126 (Jul., 1958), pp. 221–239[17]
• "The Concept of Care" The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 10, Issue 40, July 1960, Pages 271–274,
• "Thinking that and Knowing that",The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 11, Issue 42, January 1961, Pages 68–73,
• "Symposium: The Causal Theory of Perception" (with H. P. Grice), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 35 (1961), pp. 121–168[17]
• "As I remember…" The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 39, Issue 154, January 1989, Pages 94–97
• "Imaginary Imagining", Analysis-. March 1989; 49: 81-83

A more complete listing of White's publications can be found at PhilPapers.[18]