Philosopher Zeynep Soysal believes in building bridges, both between fields of inquiry and between philosophy and the wider world.
鈥淚 think there are basic clarifications that philosophers make, and they can be helpful in solving problems. They can have a big effect on how people view thinking and rationality,鈥� she says.
Soysal, who joined 91原创鈥檚 faculty this year as an assistant professor of philosophy, works at the place where mathematics and the philosophy of language converge: she investigates how meaning is constructed in mathematical language. A specialist in both the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of language, she uses tools from each to help illuminate questions in the other.
鈥淢athematics has always been a very important test case for philosophical views, right from the beginning of philosophy,鈥� she says. Mathematical knowledge is distinctive and complex, and philosophers aren鈥檛 in agreement about how it functions. Empiricists鈥擠avid Hume and John Locke are two of the most famous鈥攈old that people derive knowledge from sense experience. But math is a problem for empiricists, because mathematical and logical truths aren鈥檛 the product of experience. By contrast, rationalist thinkers鈥攕uch as Ren茅 Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz鈥攃ontend that sense experience isn鈥檛 at the root of all understanding, and that mathematics provides a model of thinking with which sensory experience must be reconciled.
Mathematics isn鈥檛 just about numbers, in other words. It鈥檚 a hotbed of philosophical questions.
A double major in mathematics and philosophy at Cornell, Soysal went on to earn her PhD in philosophy at Harvard in 2017. She works in the tradition of the logical empiricists. Such thinkers argue that mathematical knowledge operates as linguistic knowledge does: the truth of mathematical statements is a result of the way mathematical terms are defined.
Randall Curren, the chair of the , says that philosophy is unique for the way it addresses the nature of knowledge, meaning, and being in a wide range of disciplines鈥攁nd for the tools of analysis it offers for answering questions of broad public interest. 鈥淢aking the most of its potential requires sustained engagement across the disciplinary divides, and this is a hallmark of Zeynep鈥檚 research and teaching,鈥� he says.
Soysal says she鈥檚 discovered an environment at 91原创 that encourages such interdisciplinarity. She was surprised to be invited, in her first semester on campus, to give a lecture to the math department. She has already forged ties with linguists on campus, too. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an openness to philosophy in the University that鈥檚 very rare,鈥� she says.
Philosophical thinking can help in almost any endeavor, she says. She鈥檚 been teaching 鈥淩eason and Argument鈥� this spring, a course intended to teach students how to engage in rational argument. Introduced by Richard Feldman, a professor of philosophy and currently the University鈥檚 interim president, the course is 鈥渃oncerned with how you teach people the habits of mind, and also the expectations of others, that help you get at the truth,鈥� says Soysal.
鈥淭hinking clearly and systematically, in the way we鈥檙e trained for in philosophy, is incredibly powerful. But taking a philosophy class or a formal logic class might not enable students to make those connections in real life.鈥� And so, she looks for ways to help people discover the connections鈥攚hen she鈥檚 teaching, as a certified mediator, and as a member of the governing board of Boston-based educational nonprofit ThinkerAnalytix. In partnership with Harvard鈥檚 philosophy department and pre-college classroom teachers, the group is working to help teach school-age students about argument analysis and reasoning.
Immediately before joining the Rochester faculty, Zeynep was a fellow in Harvard鈥檚 philosophy department and a postdoctoral associate at Boston University. There, she was part of a project titled Researchers in philosophy and communications at Boston University led the group, and a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar grant supported its work.
The experience gave Soysal the chance to take a philosophical look at journalism. She began by thinking about the very different ways that mathematicians and journalists approach expertise and meaning.
鈥淢athematics is very special, in the sense that there is an accepted set of axioms that everybody works from. You write the axioms down and everybody basically agrees with them. It鈥檚 a unique feature of the mathematical community. There are people who contribute to determining meanings, and there are people who have to defer to the experts in the mathematical community.鈥�
But authority isn鈥檛 granted so neatly in the rowdy world of journalism, especially in the digital age. What, Soysal wondered, is journalistic expertise鈥攁nd what does that reveal about the basic social function of journalism?
She calls journalism a 鈥減hilosophically rich topic,鈥� though it is one to which philosophers have paid scant attention. She鈥檚 helping to change that, with her chapter, 鈥淭ruth in Journalism,鈥� in the forthcoming Journalism and Truth in an Age of Social Media. Edited by James E. Katz and Kate Mays, the book will be published by Oxford University Press.
鈥淚n journalism, you need to present truths in a way that will be accessible to people and usable for them,鈥� Soysal says. 鈥淏ut journalists鈥� responsibilities can pull them in different directions, and as a result, truth can be compromised. There鈥檚 so much distrust of the news these days, but when truth is compromised, it鈥檚 not necessarily happening because journalists are bad at their jobs. For instance, simplification or using narratives can help a journalist convey information more clearly. It might skew the truth a little, but I argue that it鈥檚 inevitable.鈥�
Soysal argues that transparency鈥攍etting news readers and listeners know what the journalists鈥� evidence is for a particular story, how strong it is, and why they鈥檙e presenting the information as they are鈥攊s crucial. 鈥淏asic clarification like this can help people become better consumers of news, and better producers of it, too,鈥� she says.
For journalism, as for so many things, philosophy can offer useful insight, Soysal holds.
鈥淧hilosophical thinking can help you do whatever you want to do.鈥�
