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104The 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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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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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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22Action 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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61Trust, 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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592Political 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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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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BackmatterIn Philip Pettit & Christopher Hookway (eds.), Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften, De Gruyter. pp. 225-226. 1982.
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103On 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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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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30Esteem, 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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162There 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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178Groups with minds of their ownIn Alvin I. Goldman & Dennis Whitcomb (eds.), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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19Appendix: The jury theorem and the discursive dilemmaPhilosophical Issues 11 (1): 295-299. 2001.
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430Republican 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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21Non-consequentialism and Political PhilosophyEnfoques 18 (1-2): 27-49. 2006.Robert Nozick has shown in which ways the theory of natural law (in John Locke, for instance) can be invoked to defend a libertarian theory of State. This paper suggests that Nozick does not prove that invoking natural rights may be a proof against the consequentionalist challenge. An overview of no..
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90Rawls’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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4Chapter two. Minds with wordsIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 24-41. 2009.
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128Three conceptions of democratic controlConstellations 15 (1): 46-55. 2008.The idea of control or power is central to the notion of democracy, since the ideal is one of giving kratos to the demos: giving maximal or at least significant control over government to the people. But it turns out that the notion of kratos or control is definable in various ways and that as the notion is differently understood, so the ideal of democracy is differently interpreted. In this little reflection, I distinguish between three different notions of popular control, arguing that only on…Read more
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42Free persons and freee choicesHistory of Political Thought 28 (4): 709-718. 2007.Social freedom may be taken to be primarily a property of persons, derivatively a property of choices, or the other way round. Nowadays it is standard to take it the other way round. But there is much to be said for the person-based rather than the choice- based way of thinking. And this way of thinking is characteristic of the neo-Roman, republican tradition
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