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7Chapter six. Words and the warping of appetiteIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 84-97. 2009.
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389 The common goodIn Keith M. Dowding, Robert E. Goodin, Carole Pateman & Brian Barry (eds.), Justice and Democracy: Essays for Brian Barry, Cambridge University Press. pp. 150. 2004.
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677Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical FictionsErkenntnis 79 (S9): 1641-1662. 2014.Group agents have been represented as expressive fictions by those who treat ascriptions of agency to groups as metaphorical; as pragmatic fictions by those who think that the agency ascribed to groups belongs in the first place to a distinct individual or set of individuals; and as theoretical fictions by those who think that postulating group agents serves no indispensable role in our theory of the social world. This paper identifies, criticizes and rejects each of these views, defending a str…Read more
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62Trust, Reliance and the InternetAnalyse & Kritik 26 (1): 108-121. 2004.Trusting someone in an intuitive, rich sense of the term involves not just relying on that person, but manifesting reliance on them in the expectation that this manifestation of reliance will increase their reason and motive to prove reliable. Can trust between people be formed on the basis of Internet contact alone? Forming the required expectation in regard to another person, and so trusting them on some matter, may be due to believing that they are trustworthy; to believing that they seek es …Read more
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1Liberal/communitarianism : Macintyre's mesmeric dichotomyIn John P. Horton & Susan Mendus (eds.), After Macintyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Macintyre, University of Notre Dame Press. 1994.
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608Political realism meets civic republicanismCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (3): 331-347. 2017.The paper offers five desiderata on a realist normative theory of politics: that it should avoid moralism, deontologism, transcendentalism, utopianism, and vanguardism. These desiderata argue for a theory that begins from values rooted in a people’s experience; that avoids prescribing a collective deontological constraint; that makes the comparison of imperfect regimes possible; that takes feasibility and sustainability into account; and that makes room for the claims of democracy. The paper arg…Read more
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2Freedom in the spirit of senIn Christopher W. Morris (ed.), Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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28Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a Difference with Quentin SkinnerPhilosophy Today 30 (3): 339-356. 2002.
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378Consciousness and the Frustrations of PhysicalismIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 163. 2009.This chapter sketches what is considered the best interpretation of physicalism, rehearses the best way of defending it, and shows that the physicalism forthcoming is still going to be less than fully satisfying; it is going to leave us short of the satisfaction that might be expected from a philosophical theory. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first section gives an interpretation of physicalism in the spirit of Frank Jackson's; this involves a rich version under which the way…Read more
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4Penser en société: essais de métaphysique sociale et de méthodologiePresses Universitaires de France - PUF. 2004.À quoi servent les explications du comportement humain qui nous présentent comme des êtres rationnels animés par des motifs égoïstes, si, en réalité, nous agissons la plupart du temps conformément à des motifs qui ne le sont pas? À quoi servent les explications fonctionnalistes des institutions humaines qui les présentent comme ayant été retenues au cours de l'histoire de nos sociétés en raison de leurs avantages adaptatifs, si, en réalité, il n'existe aucune histoire documentée des mécanismes d…Read more
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35Response to Commentaries on Made with WordsHobbes Studies 22 (2): 208-218. 2009.This reply argues five points, in response to the commentaries on my book, “Made with Words”. First, that Hobbes's theory of language may have supported his materialism, as his materialism supported the theory of language. Second, that for Hobbes legal penalties as such do not take from freedom, only legal obligations. Third, that his emphasis on maker's knowledge explains his theory of a priori demonstrable knowledge and, in particular, the importance he gives to definitions. Fourth, that Hobbe…Read more
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168There are three major issues which crop up in the discussion of metaphor among philosophers of language. They are: whether metaphor is cognitive, whether it is descriptive, and whether it is innovative. Those who deny that metaphor is cognitive are a group more often imagined than encountered, but if they existed they would consign the study of metaphor to affective stylistics, stressing the ornamentative and related effects which the phenomenon is likely to have.‘ Those who admit that metaphor …Read more
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1ŤIntroductionŤ, u: Philip Pettit & John McDowell (ur.)In Subject, Thought, And Context, Clarendon Press. 1986.
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311Broome on reasoning and rule-followingPhilosophical Studies 173 (12): 3373-3384. 2016.John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning is a trail-blazing study of the nature of rationality, the nature of reasoning and the connection between the two. But it may be somewhat misleading in two respects. First, his theory of reasoning is consistent with the meta-propositional view that he rejects; it develops a broadly similar theory but in much greater detail. And while his discussion of rule-following helps to explain the role of rules in reasoning, it does not constitute a response to t…Read more
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451Republican Theory and Criminal PunishmentUtilitas 9 (1): 59. 1997.Suppose we embrace the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination: freedom as immunity to arbitrary interference. In that case those acts that call uncontroversially for criminalization will usually be objectionable on three grounds: the offender assumes a dominating position in relation to the victim, the offender reduces the range or ease of undominated choice on the part of the victim, and the offender raises a spectre of domination for others like the victim. And in that case, so it appea…Read more
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234On the people's terms: a republican theory and model of democracyCambridge University Press. 2012.According to republican theory, we are free persons to the extent that we are protected and secured in the same fundamental choices, on the same public basis, as one another. But there is no public protection or security without a coercive state. Does this mean that any freedom we enjoy is a superficial good that presupposes a deeper, political form of subjection? Philip Pettit addresses this crucial question in On the People's Terms. He argues that state coercion will not involve individual sub…Read more
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91Rawls’s political ontologyPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 4 (2): 157-174. 2005.The background thesis is that an implicit ontology of the people and the relation between the people and the state often shapes how we think in normative terms about politics. This article attempts to defend that thesis in relation to Rawls. The argument is that the rejection of an image of the people as a group agent connects with his objection to utilitarianism and the rejection of an image of the people as a mere aggregate connects with his objection to libertarianism. Rawls, it is argued, ho…Read more
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181Descriptivism, rigidified and anchoredPhilosophical Studies 118 (1-2): 323-338. 2004.Stalnaker argues that, while the two-dimensional framework can be used to give expression to the claims associated with rigidified descriptivism, it cannot be used to support that position. He also puts forward some objections to rigidified descriptivism. I agree that rigidified descriptivism cannot be supported by appeal to the two-dimensional framework. But I think that Stalnaker’s objections can be avoided under a descriptivism that introduces a causal as well as a descriptive element – a descri…Read more
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12A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2 Volume Set (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2007.This new edition of _A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy_ has been extended significantly to include 55 chapters across two volumes written by some of today's most distinguished scholars. New contributors include some of today’s most distinguished scholars, among them Thomas Pogge, Charles Beitz, and Michael Doyle Provides in-depth coverage of contemporary philosophical debate in all major related disciplines, such as economics, history, law, political science, international relatio…Read more
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21How the folk understand folk psychologyProtoSociology 14 26-38. 2000.Let folk psychology consist in the network of concepts, and associated beliefs, in terms of which we make sense of minded performance.This paper addresses the question of how we, the folk, come to understand those concepts: this, as distinct from the separate question as to how we come to apply them in the interpretation of particular minds, our own and those of others.The argument is that even though the network of concepts is akin to a set of theoretical, interdefined terms, still it is possib…Read more
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78A theory of normal and ideal conditionsPhilosophical Studies 96 (1): 21-44. 1999.It is a priori on many accounts of colour concepts that something is red if and only if it is such that it would look red to normal observers in normal circumstances: it is such that it would look red, as we can say, under normal conditions of observation. And as this sort of formula is widely applied to colour concepts, so similar schemas are commonly defended in relation to a variety of other concepts too. Not only are colour concepts connected in such a fashion with human responses, so by man…Read more
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6Why and how philosophy mattersIn Robert E. Goodin & Charles Tilly (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, Oxford University Press. pp. 35. 2006.
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