It is with sadness that the department announces the passing of our late colleague, Professor Emeritus Peter H. Hess. Born in Germany on September 22, 1934, Hess moved to Canada in 1957 and obtained an undergraduate degree from what was then the University of Western Ontario. He enrolled in the graduate program at Brown University, where he came under the influence of Roderick Chisholm. After completing his PhD, Hess was appointed to the Department of Ethics at Victoria College in 1969, cross-appointed like other Vic philosophers to the University Department of Philosophy. He was the last person appointed to the Vic department before its amalgamation with the University Department in 1975.
Hess researched in the areas of epistemology and philosophy of mind, within a broadly analytic framework. His major work was the book Thought and Experience, published by the University of Toronto Press in 1988. In this work, Hess approaches some central issues in epistemology, such as skepticism, via a study of belief and perception. Hess also wrote a seminal article on Donald Davidson’s Anomalous Monism (in Analysis 1981). Hess was an early proponent of the Epiphenomenalism Objection to this theory, arguing that Davidson’s tight connection between mental causality and strict physical laws made the mental properties of mental events epiphenomenal, a concept Hess carefully defined. He also published articles on the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief.
As Professor Emeritus Mark Thornton, a former chair of the Department of Philosophy, remembers, Hess was deeply involved with the life of Victoria, serving on many committees and as a longtime member of the Board of Regents (which oversees Vic and the theological college, Emmanuel). Hess took early retirement in 1996 and moved to a farm on the Bruce Peninsula. He and his wife Maria had two daughters, born 21 years apart, to whom he stayed close until the end of his days. Hess, a widower since 2017, passed away in Barrie, Ontario, on May 6, 2025, at the age of 90. He is dearly missed by all who knew him.
Read Peter Hess’s obituary written by his daughters.
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