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The power of a democratic publicIn Reiko Gotoh & Paul Dumouchel (eds.), Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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8Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften (edited book)De Gruyter. 1982.Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Handlung und Interpretation" verfügbar.
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261A theory of justice?Theory and Decision 4 (3-4): 311-324. 1974.AnsrRAcr. This is a critical analysis of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls offers a theoretical justihcation of social democratic principles of justice. He argues that they are the principles which rational men would choose, under defined constraints, in an original position of social contract. The author criticises Rawls’s assumption that men of any background, of any socialisation, would choose these principles in the original position. He argues that the choice which Rawls imputes to hi…Read more
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94Construing Sen on commitmentEconomics and Philosophy 21 (1): 15-32. 2005.Why does Sen maintain that people are capable of putting their own goals offline and deliberating and acting out of sheer commitment to others? How can he endorse such a rejection of the belief-desire model of agency? The paper canvasses three explanations and favors one that ascribes an unusual position to Sen: the belief that so far as agents remain in the belief-desire mould, they cannot deliberate on the basis of reasons other than those that derive from standing goals that form an integrate…Read more
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27Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal JusticeOxford University Press UK. 1992.A new approach to sentencing Not Just Deserts inaugurates a radical shift in the research agenda of criminology. The authors attack currently fashionable retributivist theories of punishment, arguing that the criminal justice system is so integrated that sentencing policy has to be considered in the system-wide context. They offer a comprehensive theory of criminal justice which draws on a philosophical view of the good and the right, and which points the way to practical intervention in the rea…Read more
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183The Instability of Freedom as Noninterference: The Case of Isaiah BerlinEthics 121 (4): 693-716. 2011.In Hobbes, freedom of choice requires nonfrustration: the option you prefer must be accessible. In Berlin, it requires noninterference: every option, preferred or unpreferred, must be accessible—every door must be open. But Berlin’s argument against Hobbes suggests a parallel argument that freedom requires something stronger still: that each option be accessible and that no one have the power to block access; the doors should be open, and there should be no powerful doorkeepers. This is freedom …Read more
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29AUTHOR: The following queries have arisen during the editing of your manuscript. Please answer the queries by making the necessary corrections on the CATS online corrections form. Once you have added all your corrections, please press the SUBMIT button.
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154Looks as powersPhilosophical Issues 13 (1): 221-52. 2003.Although they may differ on the reason why, many philosophers hold that it is a priori that an object is red if and only if it is such as to look red to normal observers in normal conditions.
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51I approach these questions in the step-by-step, unnuanced manner of the philosopher. In the first section, I characterise the republican tradition in its broad historical sweep, drawing on an earlier book on republicanism, and then, in the second section, I give an account of what the system of culture should be..
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35The Determinacy of Republican Policy: A Reply to McMahonPhilosophy and Public Affairs 34 (3): 275-283. 2006.
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471Freedom in Hobbes's Ontology and Semantics: A Comment on Quentin SkinnerJournal of the History of Ideas 73 (1): 111-126. 2012.
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166The recent debates about the nature of social freedom, understood in a broadly negative way, have generated three main views of the topic: these represent freedom respectively as non-limitation, non-interference and non-domination. The participants in these debates often go different ways, however, because they address different topics under common names, not because they hold different intuitions on common topics. Social freedom is sometimes understood as option-freedom, sometimes as agency-fre…Read more
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159Consequentialism and moral psychologyInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1). 1994.Consequentialism ought not to make an impact, explicit or implicit, on every decision. All it ought generally to enjoy is what I describe as a virtual presence in the deliberation that produces decisions. [...] The argument that we have conducted suggests that the virtuous agent ought in general to remain faithful to his or her instincts and ingrained habits, only occasionally breaking with them in the name of promoting the best consequences.
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112Practical belief and philosophical theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1). 1998.Philosophy invariably starts with the attempt to spell out ideas and beliefs that we already hold, whether on topics like time or causality, colour or value, consciousness or free will, democracy or justice or freedom. It may go well beyond such pre-philosophical assumptions in its further developments, regimenting them in unexpected ways, revising them on novel lines, even discarding them entirely in favour of other views. But philosophy always begins with the articulation of ordinary ideas and…Read more
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154The common mind: an essay on psychology, society, and politicsOxford University Press. 1993.What makes human beings intentional and thinking subjects? How does their intentionality and thought connect with their social nature and their communal experience? How do the answers to these questions shape the assumptions which it is legitimate to make in social explanation and political evaluation? These are the broad-ranging issues which Pettit addresses in this novel study. The Common Mind argues for an original way of marking off thinking subjects, in particular human beings, from other i…Read more
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Embracing objectivity in ethicsIn Brian Leiter (ed.), Objectivity in Law and Morals, Cambridge University Press. pp. 234--86. 2000.
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Action and Interpretation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social SciencesPhilosophy and Rhetoric 13 (3): 219-221. 1980.
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Kelsen on Justice. A Charitable ReadingIn Richard Tur & William Twining (eds.), Essays on Kelsen, Clarendon Press. 1986.
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1Brian Barry, "The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in 'A Theory of Justice', by John Rawls"Theory and Decision 4 (3/4): 379. 1974.
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62On Thinking How to Live: A Cognitivist View (review)Mind 115 (460). 2006.Allan Gibbard’s strategy in his new book is to begin by describing a psychology of thinking and planning that certain agents might instantiate, then to argue that this psychology involves an ‘expressivism’ about thought that bears on what to do, and, finally, to try to show that ascribing that same psychology to human beings would explain the way we deploy various concepts in practical and normative deliberation. The idea is to construct an imaginary normative psychology, purportedly conforming …Read more
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97Subject, Thought, And Context (edited book)Clarendon Press. 1986.Are mental states "in the head"? Or do they intrinsically involve aspects of the subject's physical and social context? This volume presents a number of essays dealing with the compass of the mind. The contributors broach a range of issues with a commmon view that physical and social magnets do act upon mental states. The approaches that run through these papers make the volume challenging to cognitive psychologists, theorists of artificial intelligence, social theorists, and philosophers.
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75‘By political thcory," ]0hn Plamcnatz wrote, "I d0 not mean explanations of how governments function; I mean systematic thinking about the purposes of govcrnmcnt."l Political theory is a normative disciplinc, designed t0 let us evaluate rather than explain; in this it resembles moral or ethical theory. What distinguishes it among normative disciplines is that it is designed to facilitate in particular the evaluation of government or, if that is something more general, the statc.2 We are to ident…Read more
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Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |