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Peter Simons (academic)

British philosopher

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ2492967
Source-derived summary

Peter Murray Simons, (born 23 March 1950) is a British retired philosopher and academic. From 2009 to 2016, he was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin; he is now professor emeritus. He is known for his work with Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith on metaphysics and the history of Austrian philosophy. Since 2018 he is visiting professor at the University of Italian Switzerland.

Biography

Simons studied mathematics and philosophy, being supervise by wolfe mays, at the University of Manchester. While at Manchester he co-founded the seminar for austro-german philosophy. He held teaching posts at the University of Bolton, from which he holds an honorary doctorate, the University of Salzburg, where he is Honorary Professor of Philosophy, and the University of Leeds. He has been President of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy and is current director of the Franz Brentano Foundation.

His research interests include metaphysics and ontology, the history of logic, the history of Central European Philosophy, particularly in Austria and Poland in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the application of metaphysics to engineering and other non-philosophical disciplines. He is the author or co-author of five books and over 290 articles.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Peter Simons (academic)” as british philosopher. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 2009, 2016, 2018—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950-03-23. The account is most persuasive where Peter, Simons and academic can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as british philosopher. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2492967. VIAF identifies the subject as 85181527. The Library of Congress control number is n86864558. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2009, 2016 and 2018.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Peter Simons (academic)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Peter Simons (academic) primary sources, Peter Simons (academic) archive and Peter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Peter Simons (academic)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.