Roderick Firth

Roderick Firth (January 30, 1917 – December 22, 1987)^[1] was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1953 until his death.^[1][2]

Firth earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1943. His thesis, supervised by C. I. Lewis, was entitled Sense-Data and the Principle of Reduction.

He taught at Brown University before joining the Harvard faculty in 1953.^[1]

Firth is noted for his defense of the ideal observer theory in ethics^[3] and for his exploration of radical empiricism.^[4] Firth also defended a form of semantic holism which he referred to as a "coherence theory of concepts" distinct from both the coherence theory of truth and coherence theory of justification.^[5] Firth debated his views on the nature of concept formation and epistemic privilege with Wilfrid Sellars against whom he defended the views of C. I. Lewis.^[6][7]

• Phenomenalism