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1899Disjunctive theories of perception and actionIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 227--243. 2008.A comparison of disjunctive theories of action and perception. The development of a theory of action that warrants the name, a disjunctive theory. On this theory, there is an exclusive disjunction: either an action or an event (in one sense). It follows that in that sense basic actions do not have events intrinsic to them.
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66Marx, Necessity and ScienceRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 14 39-56. 1982.Among the very many questions we might wish to ask of any particular science, two of them concern the nature of the objects of the science and the character of the laws which describe the behaviour of those objects. What I wish to do is to raise those two questions about historical materialism. That is, I want to ask what it is that one studies in Capital for example, and in what ways of behaving does the nomic or lawlike behaviour of those objects consist. Both are ontological questions of a so…Read more
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45Book review of Nicholas Rescher, 'Conceptual Idealism'Mind 85 (337): 138-140. 1976.Book review of Nicholas rescher, 'Conceptual Idealism'
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222Lewis and the Problem of Causal SufficiencyAnalysis 41 (1): 38-41. 1980.Lewis' counterfactual account of deterministic causation has no way in which to represent causal sufficiency. In the case in which the cause and effect actually occur, the conditional, c box-arrow e is trivially true, equivalent to the material conditional. Yet in deterministic causation, one needs a notion of causal sufficiency that is stronger than that.
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Articles on realism and relativismIn Jonathan Rée & J. O. Urmson (eds.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy, Routledge. 2004.general discussion of relativism and of realism
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42IntroductionIn Explanation, Oxford University Press. 1993.Book synopsis: This volume presents a selection of the most important recent writings on the nature of explanation. It covers a broad range of topics from the philosophy of science to the central philosophical terrain of the theory of knowledge.
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115The Ontology of ExplanationIn Fred D'Agostino & I. C. Jarvie (eds.), Freedom and Rationality: Essays in Honor of John Watkins, 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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197Explaining Contrastive FactsAnalysis 47 (1): 35-37. 1987.Are explanations contrastive? I argue that any contrastive argument and can be reduced to a non-contrastive one, and hence a theory of explanation need not treat them as an additional kind of explanation.
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1467On 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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2353Marxism and materialism: a study in Marxist theory of knowledgeHumanities Press. 1979.Argument that Marx has a realist ontology and a correspondence theory of truth. His views are compared to both Hegel's and Kant's. This interpretation departs from more Hegelian, 'idealist' interpretations that often rely on misunderstanding some of the work of the early Marx. There is also a discussion and partial defence of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
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913Karl MarxIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), German Philosophy Since Kant, Cambridge University Press. pp. 65-79. 1999.Although it was, until recently, unfashionable in certain circles to say this, Marx was not a philosopher in any interesting sense. He was a social theorist. As social theory, I am thinking primarily of two areas : the methodology of social inquiry, and its metaphysical presuppositions, and normative philosophy
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139Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social SciencePhilosophical Review 102 (1): 120. 1993.
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190A counterfactual theory of causal explanationNoûs 28 (4): 465-481. 1994.An analysis of causal explanation, using counterfactuals and omitting laws or lawlike generalisations.
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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 |