•  75
    Finding inspiration in Hume
    The Philosophers' Magazine 54 69-74. 2011.
    As time moves on, both our philosophical language and our conceptual frameworks evolve, since they are highly abstract and not closely tethered to the relatively solid ground of ordinary life. So to understand Hume’s thinking, it becomes necessary to “translate” what he says into categories increasingly different from his own.
  •  26
    The traditional extreme sceptic portrayed The traditional extreme sceptic portrayed e.g. by Flew (1961) and Stove (1973): e.g. by Flew (1961) and Stove (1973): Deductivism Deductivism..
  •  59
    The Christian tradition has always taken a generally negative view of abortion, but the moral basis and perceived implications of this negative view have varied greatly. In the early Church abortion and contraception were often seen as broadly equivalent, both involving interference with the natural reproductive process (and an association with sexual immorality which even led some to see contraception as the more sinful of the two). But the tendency to conflate abortion with contraception, and …Read more
  •  334
    The word ‘induction’ is derived from Cicero’s ‘inductio’, itself a translation of Aristotle’s ‘epagôgê’. In its traditional sense this denotes the inference of general laws from particular instances, but within modern philosophy it has usually been understood in a related but broader sense, covering any non-demonstrative reasoning that is founded on experience. As such it encompasses reasoning from observed to unobserved, both inference of general laws and of further particular instances, but it…Read more
  •  259
    Hume’s Determinism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (4): 611-642. 2010.
    David Hume has traditionally been assumed to be a soft determinist or compatibilist, at least in the ‘reconciling project’ that he presents in Section 8 of the first Enquiry, entitled ‘Of liberty and necessity.’ Indeed, in encyclopedias and textbooks of Philosophy he is standardly taken to be one of the paradigm compatibilists, rivalled in significance only by Hobbes within the tradition passed down through Locke, Mill, Schlick and Ayer to recent writers such as Dennett and Frankfurt. Many Hume …Read more
  •  271
    The one fatal flaw in Anselm's argument
    Mind 113 (451): 437-476. 2004.
    Anselm's Ontological Argument fails, but not for any of the various reasons commonly adduced. In particular, its failure has nothing to do with violating deep Kantian principles by treating ‘exists’ as a predicate or making reference to ‘Meinongian’ entities. Its one fatal flaw, so far from being metaphysically deep, is in fact logically shallow, deriving from a subtle scope ambiguity in Anselm's key phrase. If we avoid this ambiguity, and the indeterminacy of reference to which it gives rise, t…Read more
  •  101
    Over a period of more than twenty years, Sybil Wolfram gave lectures at Oxford University on Philosophical Logic, a major component of most of the undergraduate degree programmes. She herself had been introduced to the subject by Peter Strawson, and saw herself as working very much within the Strawsonian tradition. Central to this tradition, which began with Strawson's seminal attack on Russell's theory of descriptions in ‘On Referring' (1950), is the distinction between a sentence and what is s…Read more
  •  37
    Perinetti’s paper is interesting and provocative, covering a broad range and suggesting fruitful readings that deserve to be explored further and in detail. Unfortunately, time prevents me from doing these justice, so I shall confine myself mainly to comments on and objections to his general approach. In brief, I shall suggest that his interesting ideas about Hume’s theory of ideas and their limits might be better divorced from his consideration of Humean “sceptical solutions”
  •  52
    Probabilities range from 0 to 1. If a proposition has a probability of 0, then it’s certainly false; if 1, then it’s certainly true. A proposition with a probability of ½ (or 0.5, or 50%) is equally likely to be true as false, and a proposition with a probability of ¾ (or 0.75, or 75%) is three times as likely to be true as false.
  •  96
    `Hume's theorem' concerning miracles
    Philosophical Quarterly 44 (173): 489-495. 1994.
  •  27
    themselves seen the Enquiry as the most reliable indicator of Hume’s mature position.3 • On this nexus of topics in particular, the Enquiry is philosophically and expositionally superior.4 This handout is designed to set the scene, by sketching the various positions and theses to be discussed (together with references), and providing some other materials that will be referred to in my talk.
  •  24
    This is just one typical example of a class of arguments which are sometimes used to attack those (such as the author of this article) who presume to criticise philosophers with different views, or from different cultures, by "dogmatically" appealing to the principles of logic. There is, as we shall see, something very odd about this sort of argument, but it does have a certain superficial plausibility, and also an air of moral virtue through its spirit of generous open-mindedness. Who are we to…Read more
  •  79
    In October 1775, David Hume wrote to his printer William Strahan, requesting that an ‘Advertisement’ should be attached to remaining copies of the second volume of his Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. This volume contained his two Enquiries, the Dissertation on the Passions, and The Natural History of Religion, and the Advertisement states that these works should ‘alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles’ (E 2). In the covering letter, Hume comments th…Read more
  •  24
    An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2008.
    The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought and argues that we should liberate ourselves from the 'superstition' of false metaphysics and religion. This edition places the work in its historical and philosophical context.