-
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
-
110Review: On thinking how to live: A cognitivist view (review)Mind 115 (460): 1083-1106. 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 t…Read more
-
28AUTHOR: 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.
-
35My thanks to the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also had the benefit of an exchange with Christopher McMahon. 1. Christopher McMahon, “The Indeterminacy of Republican Policy,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2005): 67–93, at p. 89. All parenthetical references in the text are to this article.
-
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
-
200Restrictive consequentialismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (4). 1986.paper offers both explication and defence. Standard consequentialism is a theory of decision. It attempts to identify, for any set of alternative options, that which it is right that an agent should..
-
449Freedom in Hobbes's Ontology and Semantics: A Comment on Quentin SkinnerJournal of the History of Ideas 73 (1): 111-126. 2012.
-
165The 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
-
34This book is in three sections, with two chapters in each. It begins with questions of psychology: questions to do with what it means to be an intentional agent and, in particular, what it means to be an agent with the capacity for thought. Having sketched an overall view of the intentional, thinking agent, it then goes on to explore the difference that social life makes to the mentality of such agents; in effect, it outlines a social ontology. And, having developed a picture of the mind in soci…Read more
-
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.
-
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..
-
17Wittgenstein and case for structuralismJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 3 (1): 46-57. 1972.
-
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
-
40Physicalism without pop-outIn David Braddon-Mitchell & Robert Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, Mit Press. 2009.Imagine a very fi ne grid or graph on which dots are placed at various coordinates so that, as a consequence, this or that shape materializes there. Depending on the coordinates of the dots, different shapes will appear, and for every shape there will be a pattern in the coordinates that guarantees its appearance. Take, for example, the diagonal line that slopes rightward and upward at an angle of 45 degrees from the origin. This line is bound to make an appearance so long as the coordinates sat…Read more
-
Embracing objectivity in ethicsIn Brian Leiter (ed.), Objectivity in Law and Morals, Cambridge University Press. pp. 234--86. 2001.
-
Action and Interpretation: Studies in the Philosophy of the Social SciencesPhilosophy and Rhetoric 13 (3): 219-221. 1980.
-
25Three Aspects of Rational ExplanationProtoSociology 8 170-182. 1996.Rational explanation, as I understand it here, is the sort of explanation we practise when we try to make intentional sense of a person’s attitudes and actions. We may postulate various obstacles to rationality in the course of offering such explanations but the point of the exercise is generally to present the individual as a more or less rational subject: as a subject who, within the constraints of the obstacles postulated - and they can be quite severe - displays a rational pattern of attitud…Read more
-
Kelsen on Justice. A Charitable ReadingIn Richard Tur & William L. Twining (eds.), Essays on Kelsen, Clarendon Press. 1986.
-
157Consequentialism 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.
-
3The reality of group agentsIn Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
-
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
-
21Social Holism and Moral Theory: A Defence of Bradley's ThesisProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86 (1). 1986.Philip Pettit; X*—Social Holism and Moral Theory: A Defence of Bradley's Thesis, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 86, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages.
-
20Instituting a research ethic: Chilling and cautionary talesBioethics 6 (2). 1992.I want to sound a warning note and suggest some changes that are needed in the practice of ethical review. It is easy to assume that with a policy as high-minded as the policy of reviewing research on human beings, the only difficulties will be the obstacles put in its way by recalcitrant and unreformed paries: by the special-interest groups affected. But this is not always true of high-minded policies and it is not true, in particular, of the policy of reviewing research. Ethical review is enda…Read more
-
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.
-
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
-
3Chapter three. Using words to ratiocinateIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 42-54. 2009.
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |