Steven Kuhn

Steven Kuhn is a philosophy professor at Georgetown University whose research focuses on logic, ethics and the philosophy of language.

Early life, family and education

Kuhn earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Career

Prior to his position at Georgetown, he taught at the University of Michigan, UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania.

Kuhn is the author of the two-volume Many-sorted Modal Logics (1977) and contributed the article on the prisoner's dilemma to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Kuhn has written extensively on the Prisoner's dilemma. In his article 'Pure and Utilitarian Prisoner's dilemmas' , he distinguishes between a 'pure' prisoner's dilemma and an impure prisoner's dilemma. A "pure dilemma" is defined when no mixed strategies improve outcomes over mutual cooperation; it's an "impure dilemma" when such strategies exist. Kuhn then points out that even in a pure dilemma, if utilities are transferable (i.e., one can compensate the other), universal cooperation might not be the optimal collective strategy. The scenario with possible utility transfers that benefit both players is termed a "nonutilitarian dilemma," and "utilitarian dilemma" otherwise. These distinctions in the prisoner's dilemma have practical implications, such as in the formulation of moral rules or the structuring of legal contracts, where the type of dilemma can influence recommended or optimal behaviors.

In Pragmatics of Tense , Kuhn argues applies a framework inspired by Montague's to analyze the English tense system, suggesting that shared knowledge impacts the use of tenses, hence the use of the word pragmatics. This principle, Kuhn argues, could also apply to other linguistic elements such as pronouns and ambiguity.

He has 1084 citations and an h-index of 13 on Google Scholar.

External links

• Steven Kuhn faculty page at Georgetown University
• Steven Kuhn publications indexed by Google Scholar