-
12Freedom to ActIn Ernie Lepore & Kurt Ludwig (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Donald Davidson, Blackwell. 2013.This chapter presents and discusses Donald Davidson's contribution to the debate about what freedom to act is, and the relationship between this contribution and Davidson's causal theory of action. It presents and evaluates issues in accounting for the content of “can x” (where “can” seems to stand for a capacity or an ability) by conditionals with “would do x” in the consequent. The discussion also throws light on the relationship between Davidson's work on the freedom issues and that of predec…Read more
-
8Quine on ObservationalityIn Ernie Lepore & Gilbert Harman (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.Sandra Lapointe: Bolzano, Quine, and Logical Truth: According to the standard interpretation, the similarity between Bolzano and Quine comes from the fact that they are both “demarcating logic […] with the help of a set of logical particles which are held constant, while the other non‐logical expressions are freely substituted for each other.” This interpretation assumes that Bolzano and Quine share at least some substantial views about what makes a term a “logical” term. My paper has four parts…Read more
-
6On “Meaning and Experience”In Michael Frauchiger (ed.), Reference, Rationality, and Phenomenology: Themes from Føllesdal, De Gruyter. pp. 221-234. 2013.
-
Quine on ObservationalityIn Gilbert Harman & Ernest LePore (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.
-
15Dagfinn Føllesdal: Et personlig og faglig portrettNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 55 (1): 6-19. 2020.
-
14Om Næss, Skjervheim og den store striden i norsk filosofiNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 51 (2): 55-66. 2016.
-
15On enthusiasm in history and elsewhereInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (3): 350-364. 2021.ABSTRACT This paper engages in a discussion about a select few of the crucial questions raised by Jon Elster's paper on Enthusiasm and Anger in History. It focusses on enthusiasm and engages in particular with Elster's questions and arguments about whether enthusiasm is an emotion or not. In doing so, I am led to ask some general questions about current theories of emotions in the discipline of psychology and their relationship to common sense psychological notions of emotional types. I argue th…Read more
-
56Addiction and Responsibility: A Survey of OpinionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 56 (5). 2013.ABSTRACT This article reports the result of a survey about causal beliefs, normative conceptions and moral evaluations of addicts and addiction in the general population. Specifically, we focused on four issues: To what extent are the normative conceptions of addiction current in the philosophical and scientific literature reflected in laypersons' conception of addiction? How do laypersons rate addicts on perceived responsibility? Which factors influence laypersons' responsibility attributions i…Read more
-
15Integrering, en skotsk idealist og CSMN- Svar til Alastair HannayNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 44 (2): 158-161. 2009.
-
28Philosophy, Addiction and InquiryInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 56 (5). 2013.ABSTRACT This introductory paper raises, partly as a preparation for the other papers in this issue, questions about how philosophy ought to proceed in the light of knowledge we have in surrounding disciplines, with a focus on the case of addiction. It also raises issues about how addiction research might be enlightened by philosophical work. In the background for the paper are two competing approaches to the evidential grounding of philosophical insight. According to a widespread view, philosop…Read more
-
89A Kripkean objection to Kripke's argument against identity-theoriesInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 30 (4). 1987.This paper analyses and criticizes S. Kripke's celebrated argument against materialist identity?theories. While criticisms of Kripke in the literature attack one or more of his premisses, an attempt is made here to show that Kripke's conclusion is unjustified even if his premisses are accepted. Kripke's premisses have sufficient independent plausibility to make this strategy interesting. Having stated Kripke's argument, it is pointed out that Kripke must assume that the contents of the Cartesian…Read more
-
44Knowledge and error : a new approach to radical interpretationIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental, Oxford University Press. pp. 167. 2012.
-
122Dretske on knowledge and contentSynthese 86 (March): 425-41. 1991.In this paper I discuss Fred Dretske's account of knowledge critically, and try to bring out how his account of informational content leads to cases of extreme epistemic good luck in his treatment of knowledge. My main interest, however, is to establish that the cases of epistemic luck arise because Dretske's account of knowledge in a fundamental way fails to take into account the role our actual recognitional capacities and powers of discrimination play in perceptually based knowledge. This res…Read more
-
37Anscombe and Davidson on Practical Knowledge. A Reply to HunterJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (6). 2017.David Hunter has recently argued that Donald Davidson and Elizabeth Anscombe were in basic agreement about practical knowledge. In this reply, it is my contention that Hunter’s fascinating claim may not be satisfactorily warranted. To throw light on why, a more careful consideration of the role of the notion of practical knowledge in Anscombe’s approach to intentional action is undertaken. The result indicates a possible need to distinguish between what is called ‘practical knowledge’ and ‘ know…Read more
-
39Review of Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid, G. Lynn Stephens (eds.), Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Cognition and Social Context (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (1). 2008.
-
59On the location of actions and tryings: Criticism of an internalist view (review)Erkenntnis 33 (1). 1990.
-
261What is Wrong with the Brains of Addicts?"Neuroethics 10 (1): 1-8. 2016.In his target article and recent interesting book about addiction and the brain, Marc Lewis claims that the prevalent medical view of addiction as a brain disease or a disorder, is mistaken. In this commentary we critically examine his arguments for this claim. We find these arguments to rest on some problematical and largely undefended assumptions about notions of disease, disorder and the demarcation between them and good health. Even if addiction does seem to differ from some typical brain di…Read more
-
40Representational content and the explanation of behaviourInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 33 (3). 1990.No abstract
-
49Philosophy as Interdisciplinary ResearchIn Hanne Andersen, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Thomas Uebel & Gregory Wheeler (eds.), New Challenges to Philosophy of Science, Springer Verlag. pp. 447--455. 2013.
-
39Causal explanation provides knowledge whyIn Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation, Springer. pp. 69--92. 2007.
-
41Tracking truth and solving puzzlesInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 40 (2). 1997.No abstract
-
42Paradox Lost, but in which Envelope?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2 (3): 353-362. 2002.The aim of this paper is to diagnose the so-called two envelopes paradox. Many writers have claimed that there is something genuinely paradoxical in the situation with the two envelopes, and some writers are now developing non-standards theories of expected utility. I claim that there is no paradox for expected utility theory as I understand that theory, and that contrary claims are confused. Expected utility theory is completely unaffected by the two-envelope paradox.
Oslo, Norway
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |