NEWARK, Del. — May 15, 2018 — The American Philosophical Association is pleased to announce that Dr. Cameron Buckner (University of Houston) has been awarded the 2018 Article Prize for his article, “Rational Inference: The Lowest Bounds,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2017).
The Article Prize, which includes a $2,000 monetary award, is awarded every other year in even years, recognizing the best, published article by a younger scholar.
The chair of the selection committee, Shannon Spaulding (Oklahoma State University), said, “Buckner’s paper articulates and defends a conception of rational inference that non-human animals exhibit. The arguments are sophisticated and nuanced. Impressively, the paper is at the same time accessible to a general philosophical audience, broad in terms of its philosophical and empirical scope, and the implications of the arguments are far reaching. Though many of the nominations were excellent, Buckner’s paper stands out as distinctively outstanding.”
Dr. Buckner began his career in computer science—in non-monotonic logic-based approaches to artificial intelligence. He received his PhD in philosophy in 2011 from Indiana University, Bloomington. He has been with the University of Houston since 2011 and is currently an assistant professor in the department of philosophy. His areas of specialization are philosophy of psychology and cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Buckner’s current work focuses on the relationship between learning and meaning.
