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57The Ontology of ExplanationIn Fred D'Agostino & I. C. Jarvie (eds.), Freedom and Rationality, Reidel. pp. 67--85. 1989.In an explanation, what does the explaining and what gets explained? What are the relata of the explanation relation? Candidates include: people, events, facts, sentences, statements, and propositions.
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27From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and SciencePhilosophical Quarterly 23 (93): 377. 1973.
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170A conditional theory of tryingPhilosophical Studies 173 (1): 271-287. 2016.What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence and be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of tr…Read more
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344Review: H ow We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions (review)Mind 114 (455): 734-737. 2005.A review of Berent Enc's How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions.
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202Causal Scepticism or Invisible CementRatio (Misc.) 24 (2): 161. 1982.I defend the view, hardly original with me, that there is no evidence, deductive or non-deductive, for any of our causal beliefs, that does not already assume that there are some causal connections, and hence that there is no way in which experience on its own, or with causalität-free principles, can support the structure of out causal knowledge. The deductive case is perhaps obvious. In the case of non-deductive arguments, I consider how experience of constant conjunctions, together with the em…Read more
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22Mental Overpopulation and the Problem of ActionJournal of Philosophical Research 20 511-524. 1995.
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9MarxismIn Ernest Sosa (ed.), A Companion to Metaphysics, Blackwell. 1994.Book synopsis: A Companion to Metaphysics provides a survey of the whole of metaphysics and includes articles by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field.
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42Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social SciencePhilosophical Review 102 (1): 120. 1993.
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38II_– _David-Hillel RubenAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1): 229-246. 1997.One of the essential distinctions in action theory is that between activity and passivity. I address this distinction in this article.
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12Review of Peter Achinstein: The nature of explanation (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (3): 377-384. 1986.
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Explanation in History and Social ScienceIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1998.
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44Realism in the Social SciencesIn Hilary Lawson & Lisa Appignanesi (eds.), Dismantling Truth, Weidenfeld. 1989.To what extend do the standard tests for realism, say in the philosophy of mind, apply to the social sciences?
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49Actions and Their PartsIn Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Metaphysics, . pp. 73-80. 1999.Do all actions have parts, and, if so, are their parts also actions? If they have parts, are there basic parts of actions which themselves have no further parts?
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311On SearlePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (2): 443-447. 1997.Some problems in John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality. I express some doubts about his constitutive v. regulative rule distinction, and press some objections against his unanalysed idea of acceptance or agreement.
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123Trying in Some WayAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (4): 719-733. 2013.Does 'Person P tried to A' entail that there is some particular, whether a mental act or a brain state or whatever, that is a trying? Most discussions of trying assume that this entailment holds. There is no good reason for holding that this is a valid inference. In particular, I examine one 'Davidsonian' argument that might be used to justify the validity of such an inference and argue that the argument is not sound. See: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IxsuPqt7rvdzqMxpFiTv/full
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391Going in circlesIn Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, Cambridge University Press. pp. 312. 2009.What might it mean to say that there is such a thing as a hermeneutic circle in the social sciences? A consideration of some remarks by Charles Taylor and others and an interpretive reconstruction, and assessment, of the idea of such a circle.
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Marxism and the Jewish QuestionIn Martin Eve & David Musson (eds.), The Socialist Register, Merlin Press. 1982.
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1Book review of Morton White, 'What Is & What Ought to be Done' (review)Mind 92 (368): 631-633. 1983.Book review of Morton White, 'What Is & What Ought to be Done'
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Birkbeck, University of LondonDepartment of PhilosophyEmeritus Professor, Honorary Research Fellow
London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Social Science |