Susan Anderson Obituary

Susan Leigh Anderson, Ph.D, Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, passed away in her home in New Milford, CT on Saturday, July 30, 2022 of complications due to ALS. Born November 13, 1944 in Portland, OR, the first child of Paul Lynge Smith and Viola Malm Smith, she was 77 years old. Susan is survived by two siblings Peter Smith and Ann Duncan, as well as her husband Michael Anderson, her son Alexander Anderson, and her granddaughter Gwyneth Anderson. Susan will be interred beside her parents in Miner Cemetery, Middletown, CT.

Susan's formative years were spent in Fairfield, CT where she readily admitted her life mirrored the warm, safe world of the Dick and Jane books of mid-twentieth century America. Music was her first love. She often recalled singing Ave Maria in a Christmas pageant at her church and she cherished an enchanting photograph of herself in full ballet costume, dancing the lead in a production of Swan Lake put on by her ballet class. Susan graduated from Fairfield's Rodger Ludlow High School in 1962 and went on to major in philosophy at Vassar College, earning her undergraduate degree in 1966. After a year teaching mathematics at a girl's preparatory school, Susan pursued her doctorate at UCLA studying with (and receiving glowing letters from) such luminaires of philosophy and logic as Alonzo Church, Rudolf Carnap, and David Lewis. Susan's 1974 dissertation "A Philosophical Analysis of the Phenomenon of Multiple Personalities in Connection with the Problem of Personal Identity" was later noted, by her thesis chair John Perry, to presage Marvin Minsky's seminal Society of Mind (1986) by over a decade.

A favorite professor at the University of Connecticut and member of the American Philosophical Association, Susan taught a wide variety of courses in philosophy and published extensively in the field. She was especially pleased by a trio of volumes she wrote for the Wadsworth Philosophers Series: On Dostoyevsky, On Mill, and On Kierkegaard. These have been translated into many languages and read worldwide. She spent many summers on National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship grants with Richard Rorty at Princeton University, Roderick Chisholm at Brown University, and others. Notably, Susan won the "2002 Centennial Prize for Best Op-Ed Piece Published by a Philosopher," given by the American Philosophical Association. It draws a timely a lesson about the dangers of relativism, just after the 9/11 attacks.

Susan spent the last two decades of her life championing machine ethics, a field of ethics and artificial intelligence she was instrumental in creating. Notable achievements of her National Science Foundation supported research in this field include the creation of the first machine to behave ethically- reported by Scientific American, Artificial Intelligence Journal, and the Proceedings of the IEEE- and co-editing the seminal collection of articles on the subject Machine Ethics, published by Cambridge University Press.

Susan loved to travel and kept journals as well as photo books on each of the dozens of journeys she took around the globe. She was also an avid collector of beautiful things, her Victorian "mansionette" filled to the brim with treasures she found along the way. And if there is any castle anywhere in the world that she did not visit, it was only because someone forgot to tell her about it. Later in life, she created her own dream tour of India, a romantic idyll of a sojourn to the precious stone inlayed Taj Mahal, an elephant ride up to Amir Fort in Jaipur, a barefoot pilgrimage to the Golden Temple of Amritsar, and an excursion to the Victorian Gothic splendors of Mumbai. It was a trip of a lifetime.

On a wall of Susan's study, displayed in a place of prominence, is a letter received from yet another philosophical luminary concerning a talk that she had given:

"I'm sorry I lost sight of you Saturday noon in Portland, as I wanted to say how much I appreciated your demonstration that sane & sober discussion of explosive topics is, after all, possible. Your rationality shone like a good deed in a naughty world." -Wallace Matson

Susan was an accomplished philosopher, a respected professor, a world traveler, and a beloved daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother. She once wrote that she had "a life that has been more wonderful than what I ever envisioned for myself." The lives of those who knew and loved her have been far richer than they could have ever been without her.

Susan died as she had lived, on her own terms.