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60Critical review: Richard B. Brandt, a theory of the good and the right (review)Philosophical Studies 42 (1). 1982.
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59Scott Sehon argues for a complex view about the relation between commonsense psychology and the physical sciences.1 He rejects any sort of Cartesian dualism and believes that the common-sense psychological facts supervene on the physical facts. Nevertheless he asserts that there is an important respect in which common-sense psychology is independent of the physical sciences. Despite supervenience, we are not to expect any sort of reduction of common-sense psychology to physical science, nor are …Read more
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54On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays.Noam Chomsky, Linguistics and PhilosophyPhilosophical Quarterly 26 (103): 187-189. 1976.
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53Explaining ValueSocial Philosophy and Policy 11 (1): 229-248. 1994.I am concerned with values in the descriptive rather than in the normative sense. I am interested in theories that seek to explain one or another aspect of people's moral psychology. Why do people value what they value? Why do they have other moral reactions? What accounts for their feelings, their motivations to act morally, and their opinions about obligation, duty, rights, justice, and what people ought to do? A moral theory like utilitarianism may be put forward as offering the correct norma…Read more
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51Hawthorne discusses (without endorsing) the following instance of our (T1) , “One knows that one is seeing a desk by taking for granted, but without knowing, that one is not a brain in a vat” (510). We believe that this is a commonsensical way of describing an ordinary situation. Intuitively, one knows one is seeing a desk. Intuitively one is normally justified in taking it for granted that one is not a brain in a vat, but one does not know one isn’t a brain in a vat.
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50An introduction to 'translation and meaning' chapter two ofword and objectSynthese 19 (1-2): 14-26. 1968.
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47Doubts about conceptual analysisIn John O'Leary-Hawthorne & Michaelis Michael (eds.), Philosophy in Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 43--48. 1994.
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44"What Is Cognitive Access?" PDF. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2007 [published 2008]): 505. Brief comments on a paper of Ned Block's. "Mechanical Mind," a review of Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science by Margaret Boden. Online Published Version . From American Scientist (2008): 76-81.
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44In (Harman 2007) I argued “that a purely objective account of conscious experience cannot always by itself give an understanding of what it is like to have that experience.” Following Nagel (1974), I suggested that such a gap “has no obvious metaphysical implications. It [merely] reflects the distinction between two kinds of understanding,” objective and subjective, where subjective understanding or “Das Verstehen” (Dilthey 1883/1989) of another creature’s experience involves knowing what it is …Read more
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42Chapter 9. Evidence One Does Not PossessIn Thought, Princeton University Press. pp. 142-154. 2015.
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42Beliefs and Concepts: Comments on Brian Loar, "Must Beliefs Be Sentences?"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.Concepts, not the beliefs employing them, have uses or roles in thought. Most conceptual roles cannot be specified solipsistically, and do not have inner aspects that can be specified solipsistically. (To think otherwise is to confuse function with misfunction.) A theory of truth conditions plays no useful part in any adequate account of conceptual role. Ordinary views about beliefs assign them conceptual structures which figure in explanations of functional relations. Which conceptual structure…Read more
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38Logic and probability theory versus canons of rationalityBehavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (2): 251-251. 1983.
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37Thomson against Moral ExplanationsMoral Relativism and Moral ObjectivityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1): 199. 1998.
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37The Fragmentation of Reason: Precis of Two ChaptersPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1): 179-183. 1991.
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37Phenomenal fallacies and conflationsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2): 256-257. 1995.A “fallacy” is something like the sense-datum fallacy, involving a logically invalid argument. A “conflation” is something like Block's conflation of the (alleged) raw feel of an experience with what it is like to have the experience. Trivially, a self is conscious of something only if it accesses it. Substantive issues concern the nature of the conscious self and the nature of access.
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35A Companion to W. V. O. Quine (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2013.This Companion brings together a team of leading figures in contemporary philosophy to provide an in-depth exposition and analysis of Quine’s extensive influence across philosophy’s many sub-fields, highlighting the breadth of his work, and revealing his continued significance today.
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