Chair No. 7 - Åsa Wikforss

Philosopher.
Elected: 2019.

Åsa Wikforss’s research falls within the philosophy of language and the philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the nature of both knowledge and resistance to knowledge.

Born in Gothenburg in 1961, Åsa Wikforss grew up in the suburb of Högsbohöjd. After graduating from Hvitfeldtska Secondary School, she worked for a time as a substitute teacher. Through evening classes in literary studies, she developed a strong interest in text interpretation, which soon led to the subject of philosophy. She herself maintains that she knew immediately upon commencing undergraduate studies in the autumn of 1982 that it was to philosophy she wished to devote her academic life. After pursuing her doctoral studies at New York’s Columbia University, she in 1996 defended her thesis entitled Linguistic Freedom: An Essay on Meaning and Rules. Centred upon normativity and language, her study challenges the general view that speaking a language is, in its essence, a rule-governed activity. A fundamental question is to what extent we must follow semantic rules in order for the words we use to have any meaning.

Following her doctoral defence, Wikforss published a series of scholarly articles that also deal with the intersection between the philosophy of language and the philosophy of consciousness. Upon being awarded a readership at Stockholm University in 2002, she became Sweden’s first female reader in theoretical philosophy. The following year, she was awarded a two-year research grant from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the Knowing One’s Own Thoughts project, whose purpose can simply be summarised as investigating what we know about our own thoughts and beliefs. In 2008, she was appointed Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm University, thus becoming one of the first two female professors in the subject in Sweden. The second professorship went to Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, with whom Wikforss has worked on several occasions. One such collaboration was the five-year project The Nature of Belief, for which they were awarded a grant from the Swedish Research Council in 2013.

Wikforss is a sought-after lecturer both in Sweden and abroad. In recent years, she has also branched out into the medium of popular science, participating in the radio programmes Vetandets värld (The World of Knowledge) and Filosofiska rummet (The Philosophical Room). Through her book Alternativa fakta – om kunskapen och dess fiender (Alternative Facts – On Knowledge and Its Enemies, 2017) and 2018 participation in the radio show Sommar i P1, she found wide public recognition that contributed to boosting the general interest in philosophy in Sweden. The book examines the much-debated phenomenon of resistance to knowledge from a philosophical perspective. She discusses what knowledge is, the psychological mechanisms that lie behind resistance to it, how these interact with disinformation and what we can do to address the threats to knowledge. A recurring example is Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. At the initiative of Björn Ulvaeus, one of the founders of the Fri Tanke publishing house, the book was distributed to around 110,000 secondary school students in the 2019/2020 academic year.

Wikforss has lead a large interdisciplinary research program at Stockholm University, where the nature and causes of knowledge resistance have been studied systematically, both empirically and theoretically. The program was funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and includes researchers in psychology, political science, media studies and philosophy.

Åsa Wikforss’s many honorary appointments include membership in Academia Europea. In 2018, she was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 2019, she succeeded Sara Danius on chair number 7 of the Swedish Academy.