William J. Rapaport

William J. Rapaport is CSE Eminent Professor Emeritus in the Department of Computer Science

and Engineering, an affiliated faculty member emeritus in the Departments of Philosophy and of Linguistics,

and a member emeritus of the Center for Cognitive Science, all at State University of New York at Buffalo.

Prior to that, he was Associate Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia.

He received a BA in mathematics from the University of Rochester, a PhD in philosophy from

Indiana University, and an MS in computer science from SUNY Buffalo. He also taught secondary-school

mathematics at Inwood Jr. High School 52 Manhattan and at the Walden School, both in New York City.

His research interests are in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics,

knowledge representation and reasoning, contextual vocabulary acquisition, philosophy of mind, philosophy

of language, critical thinking, and cognitive development. His research has been supported by the National

Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He is the author of Philosophy of Computer Science: An Introduction to the Issues and the Literature,

a co-author of Logic: A Computer Approach, the co-editor of Thought, Language, and

Ontology: Essays in Memory of Hector-Neri Castaņeda; has written over 100 articles in computer science,

philosophy, cognitive science, and education; and has been Review Editor of the cognitive science journal

Minds and Machines and on the editorial boards of the journals Computational Linguistics and Machine

Translation, the philosophy journal Noûs, the cognitive science book series Studies in Cognitive Systems, and

the American Philosophical Association Newsletters on Teaching Philosophy and on Pre-College Instruction

in Philosophy. A complete list of his writings can be found at: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/papers.html

He is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the International

Association for Computing and Philosophy’s Covey Award for “senior scholars with a substantial record

of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived”, and the American

Philosophical Association’s Barwise Prize “for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to

philosophy and computing by an APA member”.

He was the editor and publisher of Bill Rapaport’s Buffalo Restaurant Guide on the Web, is the

author of “How to Study” (also on the Web), and is one of the discoverers of the grammatically correct

sentence “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.” (or, in one of its lengthier versions, “Buffalo buffalo

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”).

Rapaport can be reached at rapaport@buffalo.edu; visit his website: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport