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40Responses to Critics of The Construction of Social RealityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (2): 449-458. 1997.
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4Review of Alan Garfinkel: Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33 (4): 438-441. 1982.
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52Issues in Marxist Philosophy. Vol. I. Dialectics and Method. Vol. 2. Materialism. Vol. 3. Epistemology, Science, Ideology (review)Philosophical Review 91 (4): 632-637. 1982.
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18Marxism and the Jewish questionIn Martin Eve & David Musson (eds.), The Socialist Register, Merlin Press. pp. 19--19. 1982.A number of interrelated questions about Jewry, collectively referred to as 'the Jewish question', have been discussed by many Marxists, beginning with Marx himself in his essay, 'On the Jewish Question'. Perhaps the phrase has been forever discredited by those who not long ago offered the world its final solution. Names aside, the substantive issues are still of great importance for historical materialism. For example, we still have no plausible comprehensive account of the causes of anti-Semit…Read more
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59ACHINSTEIN, PETER [1983]: The Nature of Explanation. Oxford University Press. ix+385 pp. (ISBN 0-19-503215-2) (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (3): 377-384. 1986.
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12ExplanationIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1996.Book synopsis: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the most ambitious international philosophy project in many years. Edited by Edward Craig and assisted by thirty specialist subject editors, the REP consists of ten volumes of the world's most eminent philosophers writing for the needs of students and teachers of philosophy internationally. The REP is a project on an unparalleled scale.
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19Singular explanation and the social sciencesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 15 (1): 130-149. 1990.
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55The active and the passive: David -Hillel RubenAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1): 229-246. 1997.How to draw the distinction between activity and passivity? Whatever that might be, the causal theory of action cannot give the right answer, as it offers an essentially passive account of human action.
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38Explanation (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1993.The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading. This volume presents a selection of the most importan…Read more
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18Our Knowledge of the External World: a Marxist Perspectiveder 16. Weltkongress Für Philosophie 2 1138-1145. 1983.This paper, an extract from my Marxism and Materialism: Studies in Marxist Theory of Knowledge, discusses the epistemological status of philosophical realism. I take realism to be a necessary part of what Marx meant by 'materialism'. I argue that there are no valid, non-question-begging, decuctive arguments for the truth of realism; nor does empirical science inductively 'confirm' realism, in any technical sense of 'confirmation'. I argue that the relationship between realism and science is one …Read more
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838Traditions and True SuccessorsSocial Epistemology 27 (1). 2013.What constitutes numerically one and the same tradition diachronically, at different times? This question is the focus of often violent dispute in societies. Is it capable of a rational resolution? Many accounts attempt that resolution with a diagnosis of ambiguity of the disputed concept-Islam, Marxism, or democracy for example. The diagnosis offered is in terms of vagueness, namely the vague criteria for sameness or similarity of central beliefs and practices.
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568Con-reasons as causesIn Constantine Sandis (ed.), New essays on the explanation of action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 62--74. 2009.Book synopsis: This collection of previously unpublished essays presents the newest developments in the thought of international scholars working on the explanation of action. The contributions focus on a wide range of interlocking issues relating to agency, deliberation, motivation, mental causation, teleology, interprative explanation and the ontology of actions and their reasons. Challenging numerous current orthodoxies, and offering positive suggestions from a variety of different perspectiv…Read more
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23Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of KnowledgeScience and Society 44 (3): 360-363. 1977.
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576Beyond Supervenience and ConstructionJournal of Social Ontology 1 (1): 121-141. 2014.If reduction of the social to the physical fail, what options remain for understanding their relationship? Two such options are supervenience and constructivism. Both are vitiated by a similar fault. So the choices are limited: reduction after all, or emergence.
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246Warnock on rulesPhilosophical Quarterly 22 (89): 349-354. 1972.A discussion of Geoffrey Warnock's views on the analysis of rules.
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6Karl MarxRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 44 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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59The 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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30From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and SciencePhilosophical Quarterly 23 (93): 377. 1973.
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175A 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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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 |