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89A Priori Principles and Action-ExplanationAnalysis 46 (1). 1986.This paper is a defence of the view that action explanation deploys (relatively) a priori principles. The argument is that this is so because action explanation succeeds, Not just through revealing regularity, But through exhibiting the presence of an expected and privileged pattern. Its job is to 'normalise' action, Not just 'regularise' it
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349Making Up Your Mind: How Language Enables Self‐Knowledge, Self‐Knowability and PersonhoodEuropean Journal of Philosophy 24 (1): 3-26. 2016.If language is to serve the basic purpose of communicating our attitudes, we must be constructed so as to form beliefs in those propositions that we truthfully assert on the basis of careful assent. Thus, other things being equal, I can rely on believing those things to which I give my careful assent. And so my ability to assent or dissent amounts to an ability to make up my mind about what I believe. This capacity, in tandem with a similar capacity in respect of other attitudes, supports three …Read more
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170The consequentialist can recognise rightsPhilosophical Quarterly 38 (150): 42-55. 1988.consequentialist, even being a utilitarian, allows one still to recognise rights.' I believe that these efforts are well motivated, for I think that any moral doctrine is suspect if one of its effects is to make agents unable to take one another's rights seriously
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57Corporate Responsibility RevisitedNetherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy 38 (2): 159-176. 2009.This paper responds to four commentaries on “Responsibility Incorporated”, restating, revising, and expanding on existing work. In particular, it looks again at a set of issues related primarily to responsibility at the individual level; it reconsiders responsibility at the corporate level; it examines the connection of this discussion to issues of responsibility in law and politics
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24The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and RespectOxford University Press. 2015.Philip Pettit offers a new insight into moral psychology. He shows that attachments such as love, and certain virtues such as honesty, require their characteristic behaviours not only as things actually are, but also in cases where things are different from how they actually are. He explores the implications of this idea for key moral issues.
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103Functional explanation and virtual selectionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (2): 291-302. 1996.Invoking its social function can explain why we find a certain functional trait or institution only if we can identify a mechanism whereby the playing of the function connects with the explanandum. That is the main claim in the missing-mechanism critique of functionalism. Is it correct? Yes, if functional explanation is meant to make sense of the actual presence of the trait or institution. No, if it is meant to make sense of why the trait or institution is resilient: why we can rely on it to su…Read more
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Liberty and LibertiesIn Matthew Kramer, Claire Grant, Ben Colburn & Antony Hatzistavrou (eds.), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, Political and Moral Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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14'A Definition of Physicalism ', Analysis, Vol. 53, 1993, pp. 213-23. 'A Problem for Expressivists ' (with Frank Jackson), Analysis, Vol. 58, 1998, pp. 239-51. 'A Sensible Perspectivism ' in Maria Baghramian and Attracta Ingram, eds., Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity , New York, Routledge, 2000, pp. 60-82.
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8Chapter five. Using words to incorporateIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 70-83. 2009.
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Democracia y evaluaciones compartidasIsonomía. Revista de Teoría y Filosofía Del Derecho 23 51-58. 2005.
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23Action and interpretation: studies in the philosophy of the social sciences (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1977.Whether the interpretations made by social scientists of the thoughts, utterances and actions of other people, including those from an alien culture or a ...
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Philosophy and the Human Sciences an Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the University of Bradford on 23 January 1979University of Bradford. 1979.
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223Rationality, Reasoning and Group AgencyDialectica 61 (4): 495-519. 2007.The rationality of individual agents is secured for the most part by their make-up or design. Some agents, however – in particular, human beings – rely on the intentional exercise of thinking or reasoning in order to promote their rationality further; this is the activity that is classically exemplified in Rodin’s sculpture of Le Penseur. Do group agents have to rely on reasoning in order to maintain a rational profile? Recent results in the theory of judgment aggregation show that under a range o…Read more
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2BackmatterIn Philip Pettit & Christopher Hookway (eds.), Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften, De Gruyter. pp. 225-226. 1982.
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112On rule-following, folk psychology, and the economy of esteem: A reply to Boghossian, Dreier and Smith (review)Philosophical Studies 124 (2): 233-259. 2005.
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34Esteem, Identifiability, and the Internet1In M. J. van den Joven & J. Weckert (eds.), Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 175. 2008.
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137Winch’s double-edged idea of a social scienceHistory of the Human Sciences 13 (1): 63-77. 2000.Peter Winch’s 1958 book The Idea of a Social Science contains two distinguishable sets of theses, one set bearing on the individual-level understanding of human beings, the other on the society-level understanding of the regularities and institutions to which human beings give rise. The first set of claims is persuasive and significant but the second is a mixed bunch: none is well established and only some are sound
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184Groups with minds of their ownIn Alvin I. Goldman & Dennis Whitcomb (eds.), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press. 2011.
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |