Adam Morton (1945-2020)

The Department of Philosophy is sad to learn of the death of friend and former colleague, Professor Adam Morton. Before Professor Morton (PhD Princeton, 1971) joined our department as a Canada Research Chair in Epistemology and Decision Theory, Adam held teaching positions at Princeton University, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Bristol. After his retirement from the University of Alberta in 2011, he followed his wife Susanna Braund, Canada Research Chair in Latin Poetry and its Reception, to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he held an Adjunct Professor appointment until July 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2006.

He was the author of numerous books, including Should We Colonize Other Planets? (2018), Emotion and Imagination (2013), Bounded Thinking: Intellectual Virtues for Limited Agents (2012), On Evil (2005), The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology as Ethics (2002), and Frames of Mind: Constraints on the Common-Sense Conception of the Mental (1980).

He will be greatly missed. As well as being a brilliant philosopher, he was a valued colleague, engaging teacher, witty raconteur, and, to this day, the only faculty member ever to master the unicycle.  We understand a memorial website is to be created. In the meantime, much of his work is available to revisit at philpeople.org