Colin Howson (1945 – 5 January 2020) was a British philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he joined the faculty on 1 July 2008. Previously, he was Professor of Logic at the London School of Economics. He completed a PhD on the philosophy of probability in 1981. In the late 1960s he had been a research assistant of Imre Lakatos at LSE. He died on Sunday 5 January 2020.

Work

Howson's research interests included philosophy of science, logic, and foundations of probability. He was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science from 2003-2005. His book, Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach (with Peter Urbach) is considered the canonical philosophical defense of Bayesian reasoning. Professor Howson was married to Margaret Morrison, a Canadian philosopher of science who was also a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Publications

Books

Articles

His articles include: