•  59
    (A) Books: (3) Kant, Science, and Human Nature (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming). (2) Rationality and Logic (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming). (1) Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon/OUP, 2001 [pbk., 2004]). (B) Articles: (30) "Kant, Wittgenstein, and the Fate of Analysis," in M. Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn (London: Routledge, forthcoming.) (29) "Kant and the Analytic Tradition," in C. Boundas (ed.), A Companion to the Twentieth-Century Philosophies (Edinburgh: Univ…Read more
  •  52
    The Trouble with Truth in Kant's Theory of Meaning
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 10 (1): 1-20. 1993.
  •  45
    A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them
  •  44
    Robert Hanna works out a unified contemporary Kantian theory of rational human cognition and knowledge. Along the way, he provides accounts of intentionality and its contents, sense perception and perceptual knowledge, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the nature of logic, and a priori truth and knowledge in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. This book is specifically intended to reach out to two very different audiences: contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and knowledge, and contempor…Read more
  •  38
    cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural …Read more
  •  32
    The Unity of Understanding (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 44 (4): 864-865. 1991.
    To think is to think-about objects; this simple fact is of course what philosophers of mind have dubbed "intentionality." The traditional doctrine of intentionality has it that the mind pictures or in some sense represents its objects to itself. Kant initiates a radical departure from this doctrine by insisting that the mind forms or in some sense constructs its objects. This power of mental construction Kant calls the "understanding".
  •  30
    THERE IS A NOTORIOUS THESIS in the philosophy of language which runs as follows: meanings are wholly mind-dependent, in the sense that they exist only in particular human minds. We might call this "the thesis of semantic psychologism." Versions of this thesis have been attacked and rejected by some of the most important philosophers of language in the twentieth century: Frege, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and, most recently, Hilary Putnam.
  •  30
    Kant's Transcendental Psychology (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 45 (1): 132-134. 1991.
    Of all the well-known doctrines in Kant's first Critique, the transcendental psychology is perhaps the most notorious. Frege's and Husserl's famous fin de siècle critiques of "logical psychologism," together with Strawson's withering scorn in The Bounds of Sense, have combined to make Kant's explicitly psychological approach to issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of meaning seem old-fashioned at best and simply embarrassing at worst. Patricia Kitcher's Kant's Transcendental Psych…Read more
  •  22
    Perspective in Whitehead's Metaphysics (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 37 (3): 650-652. 1984.
    Recent books on Whitehead have shown a marked tendency to use Whiteheadian notions in ways not strictly compatible with Whitehead's own explicit views. This fact may suggest either the fecundity of Whitehead's ideas, or a general dissatisfaction with the fully developed cosmological scheme as outlined in Process and Reality. In any case, Ross's book continues in the recent tradition of "neo-Whiteheadian" as opposed to "strictly Whiteheadian" interpretations of Whitehead's thought. The purpose of…Read more
  •  17
    The Realm of Rhetoric (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 37 (2): 412-414. 1983.
    The nebulous area between natural language and formal logic has always puzzled philosophers. The connections between informal logic, rhetoric, dialectic, and metaphor along with the other tropes, have not been made conceptually perspicuous. The theoretical tendency on the part of philosophers has generally been to label the whole field "logically ill-behaved" and to turn over its keeping to Sophists, composition-masters, and literary scholars. Recently, this trend of philosophical neglect has be…Read more
  •  7
    Critical Notice
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (3): 453-470. 1998.
  •  1
    It is nowadays a commonplace of Kant-interpretation that Kant's response to Hume in the Analogies of Experience is not strictly speaking a refutation of Hume but in fact only an extended critical response to Hume's skeptical accounts of object-identity and causation, that also accepts many of Hume's working assumptions. But this approach can significantly underestimate the extent to which Kant's conception of the representational mind is radically distinct from Hume's. In particular, Kant's conc…Read more
  • Colin McGinn, Mental Content Reviewed by
    Philosophy in Review 9 (11): 452-454. 1989.
  • Simple or "standard" empirical judgments--as expressed in such statements as "The rose is red" or "Socrates is mortal"--are logically basic for theoretical rationality. All the more complex forms of judgment presuppose the existence and tenability of judgments of the "standard" type. The overall aim of this study is twofold: to show how the traditional theory of standard empirical judgments--as represented by Kant's doctrine of judgment--is subject to a through-going form of skepticism that I en…Read more
  • Colin McGinn, Mental Content (review)
    Philosophy in Review 9 452-454. 1989.