-
53Corporate 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
-
45The Determinacy of Republican Policy: A Reply to McMahonPhilosophy and Public Affairs 34 (3): 275-283. 2006.
-
828Three Methods of Ethics: A DebateWiley-Blackwell. 1997.During the past decade ethical theory has been in a lively state of development, and three basic approaches to ethics - Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics - have assumed positions of particular prominence
-
78A 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
-
308Making 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
-
6Chapter five. Using words to incorporateIn Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Princeton University Press. pp. 70-83. 2009.
-
146The common mind: an essay on psychology, society, and politicsOxford University Press. 1993.What makes human beings intentional and thinking subjects? How does their intentionality and thought connect with their social nature and their communal experience? How do the answers to these questions shape the assumptions which it is legitimate to make in social explanation and political evaluation? These are the broad-ranging issues which Pettit addresses in this novel study. The Common Mind argues for an original way of marking off thinking subjects, in particular human beings, from other i…Read more
-
79Functional 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
-
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.
-
133Subject, Thought, And Context (edited book)Clarendon Press. 1986.Are mental states "in the head"? Or do they intrinsically involve aspects of the subject's physical and social context? This volume presents a number of essays dealing with the compass of the mind. The contributors broach a range of issues with a commmon view that physical and social magnets do act upon mental states. The approaches that run through these papers make the volume challenging to cognitive psychologists, theorists of artificial intelligence, social theorists, and philosophers.
-
Philosophy and the Human Sciences an Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the University of Bradford on 23 January 1979University of Bradford. 1979.
-
Democracia y evaluaciones compartidasIsonomía. Revista de Teoría y Filosofía Del Derecho 23 51-58. 2005.
-
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 ...
-
92On rule-following, folk psychology, and the economy of esteem: A reply to Boghossian, Dreier and Smith (review)Philosophical Studies 124 (2): 233-259. 2005.
-
74The Possibility of Special DutiesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (4). 1986.In common-sense morality, certain special obligations loom large. These are duties which are laid upon agents, be they individuals or groups, in virtue of their distinctive identities, relationships or histories: because of who they are, how they are linked to others or what they have done in the past. The particularistic basis of these obligations means that no one but the agent in question is engaged by such a duty. It is that agent's alone.These special obligations include duties towards ones…Read more
-
BackmatterIn Philip Pettit & Christopher Hookway (eds.), Handlung Und Interpretation: Studien Zur Philosophie der Sozialwissenschaften, De Gruyter. pp. 225-226. 1982.
Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |