Penelope Mackie, a thinker on the College of Nottingham, has died.
The next obituary was supplied by Mark Jago (Nottingham).
It’s with nice unhappiness that we announce the demise of our good friend and colleague, Penelope Mackie, following a interval of sickness. Penelope was born into an instructional household. Her paternal grandfather Alexander was professor of schooling on the College of Sydney, and her father was the thinker J.L. Mackie (whose philosophical papers she co-edited). She went to Somerville Faculty, Oxford, in 1971, the place she took the BPhil in Philosophy with a thesis, Identification and Continuity, in 1978, and later the DPhil in 1987, with a thesis, How Issues Would possibly Have Been: A Research in Essentialism. After her DPhil, Penelope moved to the US, first as a visiting lecturer on the College of Maryland (1986–1987) after which as Assistant Professor of philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth College (1987–1990). She then returned to Oxford, this time as a fellow of New Faculty (1990–1994), earlier than shifting to Birmingham in 1994 after which to Nottingham in 2004, the place she labored till her demise.
Penelope’s philosophical interests had been broad, together with historic Greek philosophy, early fashionable philosophy (significantly Berkeley and Hume), free will, causation, essence and modality, identification, and the metaphysics of fabric objects. Her best-known work is her 2006 guide, How Things Might Have Been. In it, she defends the view that objects have naked identities. An individual, or another object, merely is the factor it’s and couldn’t have been another, though it may have been some radically totally different sort of factor. You might have been a toadstool, or the quantity seven, and nonetheless remained you, she argued. Reviewers praised the guide as ‘one of many clearest and fullest discussions of up to date essentialism that has appeared for fairly a while’.
The readability and carefulness of Penelope’s philosophical work was additionally persistently utilized to her instructing and administrative duties. She was famend amongst colleagues for her meticulousness, carefulness, and diligence, together with throughout her tenure as Head of Division at Nottingham from 2007 to 2010. These excessive requirements had been additionally demonstrated in her instructing. Penelope’s feedback on pupil essays had been legendary, generally nearing the word-count of the essay itself.
She was a staunch good friend and colleague, significantly supporting early-career philosophers, and well-known to visiting audio system for asking form and considerate questions which, as a rule, additionally occurred to be knock-down objections. She continued her work via her sickness, finishing revisions to her Stanford Encyclopaedia article on “Transworld Identity” over the summer season of 2022, eager that it ought to replicate the most recent work within the space.
Exterior of analysis and instructing, Penelope was additionally a fabulous character. She had a mischievous sense of humour and a fast wit, as colleagues fondly recall, and was cheerful firm at division drinks. Many had been additionally delighted to find her expertise for humorous verse, which she generally turned to philosophical subjects. Some examples had been even printed in Thoughts, together with “A Modern Metaphysical Song.” It’s a hilarious, but extremely correct, story of the physicalist’s woes:
I’ve nageling doubts that science has a spot for subjectivity
That what it’s wish to be a bat will be simply mind exercise.
And who else however Penelope may have put their objection to Davidson’s anomalous monism so:
It tries to make thoughts matter, however with curious anomaly
Implies that psychological attributes exist epiphenom’nally.
With the demise of Penelope Mackie, we have now misplaced an impressive thinker, a devoted trainer, and a colleague with a uncommon sense of responsibility and diligence. We’re drastically saddened by her loss and privileged to have recognized her.
Penelope died on fifth December 2022, along with her husband Robert Frazier at her bedside. She additionally leaves her brother and sister, David and Hilary Mackie.
