Rebecca Goldstein
| Rebecca Goldstein | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Rebecca Newberger February 23, 1950 White Plains, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
City College of New York UCLA Barnard College Princeton University |
| Spouse(s) | Sheldon Goldstein (divorced) Steven Pinker |
| Institutions |
Columbia University Rutgers University Trinity College Harvard University New York University |
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (born February 23, 1950) is an American philosopher who is also a novelist and public intellectual. She is the author of ten books, many of which cross the divide between fiction and non-fiction. Her Princeton Ph.D. was in philosophy of science, and she is sometimes grouped with novelists, such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.
In her three non-fiction works she has shown an affinity for philosophical rationalism, as well as a strong conviction that philosophy, like science, makes progress and that scientific progress is itself supported by philosophical arguments. She has also stressed the role that secular philosophical reason has made in moral advances.
Increasingly, in her talks and interviews, she has been exploring what she has called “mattering theory” as an alternative to traditional utilitarianism. This theory is a continuation of her idea of “the mattering map” that she had first suggested in her novel The Mind-Body Problem. The concept of the mattering map has been widely adopted in contexts as diverse as cultural criticism, psychology, and behavioral economics.
Goldstein is a MacArthur Fellow and has received the National Humanities Medal, the National Jewish Book Award, and numerous other honors.
Goldstein, born Rebecca Newberger, grew up in White Plains, New York, and did her undergraduate work at City College of New York, UCLA, and Barnard College, where she graduated as valedictorian in 1972. She was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. She has one older brother who is an Orthodox Rabbi, and she also has a younger sister, Sarah Stern. An older sister, Mynda Barenholtz, died in 2001.
After earning her Ph.D. from Princeton University, where she studied with Thomas Nagel and wrote a dissertation on "Reduction, Realism and the Mind," she returned to Barnard as a professor of philosophy. There she published her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem (1983), a serio-comic tale of the conflict between emotion and intelligence, combined with reflections on the nature of mathematical genius, the challenges faced by intellectual women, and Jewish tradition and identity. Goldstein said she wrote the book to "...insert 'real life' intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."
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