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91The Matter of Chance. By D. H. Mellor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Toronto, Macmillan of Canada. 1971. Pp. xiii, 190. $12.95 (review)Dialogue 12 (1): 154-156. 1973.review of Mellor's *The Matter of Chance*
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1201Denying the doctrine and changing the subjectJournal of Philosophy 70 (15): 503-510. 1973.I discuss Quine's claim that anyone denying what we now take to be a logical truth would be using logical words in a novel way. I trace this to a confusions between outright denial and failure to assert, and assertion of a negation. (This abstract is written from memory decades after the article.)
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623Knowing what to think about: when epistemology meets the theory of choiceIn Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology futures, Oxford University Press. pp. 111--30. 2006.
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616Review of McGinn *Ethics, Evil, and Fiction* (review)The Times Literary Supplement (4946): 28-29. 1998.I try to distinguish McGinn's separation of evil from mere wrong from his aesthetic theory of morality. I argue that the combination is dangeroous.
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1189The chaology of mindAnalysis 48 (3): 135. 1988.I explore the possibility that mentality can be characterized as a level in between the functional and the neurological, namely as a physical system exhibiting a specific kind of chaos. The argument is meant to make a case for this kind of characterization rather than giving one in specific detail.
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1403Conventional Norms of ReasoningDialogue 50 (2): 247-260. 2011.I describe conventions not of correct reasoning but of giving and taking advice about reasoning. This article is asn anticipation of part of the first chapter of my forthcoming *Bounded Thinking*, OUP 2012.
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1383Inequity/Iniquity: Card on Balancing Injustice and evilHypatia 19 (4): 199-203. 2004.Card argues that we should not give injustice priority over evil. I agree. But I think Card sets us up for some difficult balancings, for example of small evils against middle sized injustices. I suggest some ways of staying off the tightrope.
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783Skookumchuck, Kiidk’yaas, Gibbard: normativity, meaning, and idealizationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1): 148-161. 2014.I tried to tease out what Gilbert means by "normative". It isn't obvious. I conclude that assumptions about ideal agents – not just ideal in the sense of error-free but also ideal in the sense of unlimited – and assumptions about ideal placement of oneself in another person's situation, are essential to what he means. I conclude that what he says is very plausible given these assumptions, though they themselves are very problematic. Especially problematic is the idea of an unlimited simulation o…Read more
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1128Causation: A Realist ApproachPhilosophical Books 30 (3): 157-161. 1989.a review of Tooley's Causation: a realist approach*, with emphasis on his use of probability and Ramsey sentences.
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560From tracking relations to propositional attitudesEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (2): 7-18. 2009.I explore the possibility that propositional attitudes are not basic in folk psychology, and that what we really ascribe to people are relations to individuals, those that the apparently propositional contents of beliefs, desires, and other states concern. In particular, the relation between a state and the individuals that it tracks shows how ascription of propositional attitudes could grow out of ascription of relations between people and objects.
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641Review of Yablo *Aboutness* (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2014-09-14). 2014.expanded version of NDPR review of Yablo's Abpoutness
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576Review of McLennen *Rationality and Dynamic Choice* (review)Mind 101 (402): 381-383. 1992.review of McLennen's *Rationality and Dynamic Choice*. The topic is important and the discussion is powerful. Some connection with modelling and simulation would be valuable.
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64Who Am I?Cogito 4 (3): 186-191. 1990.This is a popularisation of ideas current when it was written, on personal identity and the concept of a person, making a link with problems about 'knowing who' on the border of epistemology and the philosophy of language.
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791A note on comparing death and painBioethics 2 (2). 1988.I give ways of comparing the disvalue of death and of pain by comparing each to other evils.
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83Teaching PhilosophyCogito 8 (1): 73-79. 1994.I discuss techniques for group discussion in a large class.
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1159Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexityNoûs 38 (3). 2004.I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.
