Gareth Evans

Michael Gareth Justin Evans (12 May 1946 – 10 August 1980) was a British philosopher who made substantial contributions to logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. He is best known for his posthumous work The Varieties of Reference (1982), edited by John McDowell. The book considers different kinds of reference to objects, and argues for a number of conditions that must obtain for reference to occur. Evans died prematurely at age 34 of cancer. He was educated at Dulwich College and University College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His philosophy tutor was Peter Strawson. Evans became close friends with philosopher Derek Parfit and other prominent members of his academic field such as Christopher Peacocke and Crispin Wright. He was a senior scholar at Christ Church, Oxford and a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley. Evans then returned to Oxford, where he was a fellow and then, from 1979, the Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy. During this time he also held visiting positions at the University of Minnesota and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He died in London in 1980 of cancer at the age of 34. His collected papers (1985) and his major work, The Varieties of Reference (1982), were published posthumously. Gregory McCulloch, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, writes of Evans that his "very early death was, like Ramsey's, a serious loss for British philosophy." In the acknowledgements of his Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit writes "I owe much to the intensity of his love of truth, and his extraordinary vitality."