Norman Malcolm

Norman Adrian Malcolm (11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosopher. Malcolm was primarily active in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology. He was born in Selden, Kansas, and studied philosophy at the University of Nebraska and Harvard University, where C. I. Lewis was his doctoral advisor. In 1938–39, he met G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge University, becoming one of Wittgenstein's closest friends. Malcolm's memoir of Wittgenstein is highly regarded. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1947, where he taught until his retirement. He was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Helsinki and served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. Malcolm's notable works include *Dreaming* (1959), where he discussed dreams and skepticism, and *Knowledge and Certainty* (1963). He is known for his advocacy of common sense and ordinary language philosophy, his critique of Cartesian skepticism, and his defense of a modal version of Anselm's ontological argument, arguing that God must necessarily exist if at all. He spent the last 12 years of his life in London, where he was a visiting professor and fellow at King's College London.