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61Akrasia, collective and individualIn Sarah Stroud & Christine Tappolet (eds.), Weakness of will and practical irrationality, Oxford University Press. pp. 68--97. 2003.Examines what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia, and what steps such a group might take to establish self‐control. The topic has some interest in itself, and the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal of agency. This image fits well wit…Read more
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27Rules, Reasons and NormsPhilosophical Studies 124 (2): 185-197. 2005.Philip Pettit has drawn together here a series of interconnected essays on three subjects to which he has made notable contributions. The first part of the book discusses the rule-following character of thought. The second considers how choice can be responsive to different sorts of factors, while still being under the control of thought and the reasons that thought marshals. The third examines the implications of this view of choice and rationality for the normative regulation of social behavio…Read more
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250Legitimate International Institutions: A Neo-Republican PerspectiveIn Samantha Besson & John Tasioulas (eds.), The philosophy of international law, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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10Chapter one. Mind in natureIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 9-23. 2009.
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251Freedom in the marketPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 5 (2): 131-149. 2006.The market is traditionally hailed as the very exemplar of a system under which people enjoy freedom, in particular the negative sort of freedom associated with liberal and libertarian thought: freedom as noninterference. But how does the market appear from the perspective of a rival conception of freedom (freedom as non-domination) that is linked with the Roman and neo-Roman tradition of republicanism? The republican conception of freedom argues for important normative constraints on property, …Read more
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Reply : Evaluative "realism" and interpretationIn Steven H. Holtzman & Christopher M. Leich (eds.), Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, Routledge. 1981.
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170Keeping Republican Freedom SimplePolitical Theory 30 (3): 339-356. 2002.There has recently been a good deal of interest in the republican tradition, particularly in the political conception of freedom maintained within that tradition. I look here at the characterisation of republican liberty in a recent work of Quentin Skinner1and argue on historical and conceptual grounds for a small amendment—a simplification—that would make it equivalent to the view that freedom in political contexts should be identified with nondomination.
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62Preference, Deliberation and SatisfactionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 59 131-154. 2006.In his famous lecture on ‘The Concept of Preference’ Amartya Sen (1982) opened up the topic of preference and preference-satisfaction to critical, philosophical debate. He pointed out that preference in the sense in which choice reveals one’s preference need not be preference in the sense in which people are personally better off for having their preferences satisfied. And on the basis of that observation he built a powerful critique of some common assumptions in welfare economics.
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7FrontmatterIn Philip Pettit & Christopher Hookway (eds.), Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften, De Gruyter. 1982.
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256When to defer to majority testimony – and when notAnalysis 66 (3). 2006.How sensitive should you be to the testimony of others? You saw the car that caused an accident going through traffic lights on the red; or so you thought. Should you revise your belief on discovering that the majority of bystanders, equally well-equipped, equally well-positioned and equally impartial, reported that it went through on the green? Or take another case. You believe that intelligent design is the best explanation for the order of the living universe. Should you revise that belief on …Read more
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185Rawls: ‘A Theory of Justice' and its CriticsStanford University Press. 1990.1 A New Departure 'No commanding work of political theory has appeared in the 20th century.' So said Isaiah Berlin, writing in 1962 . ...
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4In Elucidation of the Common Mind: A Reply To Raimo TuomelaInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (2): 322. 1994.
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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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1David Papineau, "For Science in the Social Sciences" (review)Theory and Decision 12 (2): 207. 1980.
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112The Virtual Reality of Homo EconomicusThe Monist 78 (3): 308-329. 1995.The economic explanation of individual behaviour, even behaviour outside the traditional province of the market, projects a distinctively economic image on the minds of the agents involved. It suggests that, in regard to motivation and rationality, they conform to the profile of homo economicus. But this suggestion, by many lights, flies in the face of common sense; it conflicts with our ordinary assumptions about how we each feel and think in most situations, certainly most non-market situation…Read more
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1A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of AgencyPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (212): 473-476. 2003.
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1Neorepublicanism and Sen's economic, legal, and ethical desiderataIn Reiko Gotoh & Paul Dumouchel (eds.), Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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56DesireRoutledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 1998.If an agent is to be moved to action, then two requirements have to be fulfilled: first, the agent must possess beliefs about the way things actually are, about the actions possible given the way things are, and about the likely effects of those actions on how things are; and, second, the agent must have or form desires to change the way things are by resorting to this or that course of action. The beliefs tell the agent about how things are and about how they can be altered; the desires attract…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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143Hands invisible and intangibleSynthese 94 (2). 1993.The notion of a spontaneous social order, an order in human affairs which operates without the intervention of any directly ordering mind, has a natural fascination for social and political theorists. This paper provides a taxonomy under which there are two broadly contrasting sorts of spontaneous social order. One is the familiar invisible hand; the other is an arrangement that we describe as the intangible hand. The paper is designed to serve two main purposes. First, to provide a pure account…Read more
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617Political 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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