Philip Johnson-Laird

Philip N. Johnson-Laird (born 12 October 1936) is a professor at Princeton University's Department of Psychology and author of several notable books on human cognition and the psychology of reasoning.

He was educated at Culford School and University College London where he won the Rosa Morison Medal in 1964 and a James Sully Scholarship between 1964–66. He achieved a BA there in 1964 and a PhD in 1967. He was elected to a Fellowship in 1994.

He is currently the Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology

His entry in Who's Who (2007 edition) records the following career history:

• Ten years of miscellaneous jobs, as surveyor, musician, hospital porter (alternative to National Service), librarian, before going to university.
• Assistant Lecturer, then Lecturer, in Psychology, UCL, 1966–73
• Visiting Member, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, 1971–72
• Reader, 1973, Professor, 1978, in Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex
• Visiting Fellow, Stanford University, 1980
• Assistant Director, MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge University, 1983–89
• Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge, 1984–89
• Visiting Professorships: Stanford University, 1985; Princeton Univ., 1986.

Johnson-Laird is a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the British Academy, a William James Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from: Göteborg, 1983; Padua, 1997; Madrid, 2000; Dublin, 2000; Ghent, 2002; Palermo, 2005. He won the Spearman Medal in 1974, the British Psychological Society President's Award in 1985, and the International Prize from Fyssen Foundation in 2002.

Along with several other scholars, Johnson-Laird delivered the 2001 Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow, published as The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding (ed. Anthony Sanford, T & T Clark, 2003). He has been a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences since 2007.