•  9
    Truth Matters is the first full-length introduction to response-dependence, a topic that has become a main focus of interest for philosophers across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas.The response-dependence claim, in brief, is to provide a 'third way' between the realist (or objectivist) conception of truth as always potentially transcending the limits of human ascertainment and the anti-realist (or verificationist) case that truth cannot possibly transcend those limits since then we…Read more
  •  2
    Truth and the Ethics of Criticism
    Manchester University Press. 1994.
    This text is a reply to some of the more doctrinaire beliefs that pass for "radical" thinking. For the most part, Norris argues, these ideas are based on a false understanding of crucial episodes in their own pre-history.
  • Roy Bhaskar Interviewed
    The Philosophers' Magazine. Issue-8. forthcoming.
  • Metaphor, Ontology, and the New Antirealism
    Common Knowledge 6 69-97. 1997.
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    This essay argues a case for viewing Derrida's work in the context of recent French epistemology and philosophy of science; more specifically, the critical‐rationalist approach exemplified by thinkers such as Bachelard and Canguilhem. I trace this line of descent principally through Derrida's essay ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’. My conclusions are (1) that we get Derrida wrong if we read him as a fargone antirealist for whom there is nothing ‘outside the text'; (2) that h…Read more
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    William Empson and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism
    with A. D. Nuttall and William Empson
    Philosophical Quarterly 29 (117): 380. 1979.
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    This article examines various (in my view) failed or problematic attempts to overcome the limits of logical empiricism in epistemology and philosophy of science. It focuses on Quine's influential critique of that doctrine and on subsequent critiques of Quine that challenge his appeal to the scheme/content dichotomy as a third residual 'dogma' of empiricism (Davidson) or his espousal of a radically physicalist approach that rejects the possibility of quantifying into modal contexts (Marcus). I en…Read more
  •  2
    Alain Badiou: Truth, Ethics and the Formal Imperative
    Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 65 (1). 2009.
  •  2
    Derrida At Yale: The "Deconstructive Moment" in Modernist Poetics
    Philosophy and Literature 4 (2): 242-256. 1980.
    Christopher Norris DERRIDA AT YALE: THE "DECONSTRUCTIVE MOMENT" IN MODERNIST POETICS IN seven types of ambiguity, William Empson breezily remarked of his critical method that it was "either all nonsense or all very startling and new." The reactions went very much as Empson predicted, with a whole new school of criticism eagerly latching on to the idea of multiple meanings in poetry, while the sober-sided scholars indignantly attacked his wayward "misreadings" and flagrant anachronisms. At presen…Read more
  •  2
    Tolstoy's Major Fiction (review)
    Philosophy and Literature 2 (2): 267-269. 1978.
  •  4
    Image and Parable: Readings of Walter Benjamin
    Philosophy and Literature 7 (1): 15-31. 1983.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christopher Norris IMAGE AND PARABLE: READINGS OF WALTER BENJAMIN Marxist literary criticism is a house with many mansions, most of diem claiming a privileged access to the great central chamber of history and truth. Only the most blinkered polemicist could nowadays attack "Marxist criticism" as if it presented a uniform front or even a clearly delineated target. Differences of oudook have developed to a point where debates within Ma…Read more
  •  10
    Home Thoughts from Abroad: Derrida, Austin, and the Oxford Connection
    Philosophy and Literature 10 (1): 1-25. 1986.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christopher Norris HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD: DERRIDA, AUSTIN, AND THE OXFORD CONNECTION THERE IS NO philosophical school or tradition that does not carry along with it a background narrative linking up present and past concerns. Most often this selective prehistory entails not only an approving account of ideas that fit in with the current picture but also an effort to repress or marginalize anytíiing that fails so to fit. Bertrand …Read more
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    ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE has tended to define itself squarely against the kinds of so-called metaphysical approaches that have characterized so-called continental philosophy in the line of descent from Husserl. Indeed, Husserl’s project of phenomenological enquiry was the target of criticism by Frege—and later by Gilbert Ryle—which pretty much set the agenda for subsequent debate. That project seemed to them some form of argument that reveals his basically psychologistic approach, on…Read more
  •  5
    Collected Writings (review)
    Philosophy and History 11 (2): 123-126. 1978.
  •  3
    Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music (review)
    Philosophy and History 9 (2): 178-182. 1976.
  •  6
    Badiou on Set Theory, Ontology and Truth
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 3 (2): 29-46. 2009.
    Alain Badiou is a highly original, indeed decidedly iconoclastic thinker whose work has ranged widely over areas of equal concern to philosophers in the ‘continental’ and mainstream analytic traditions. These areas include ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, and – above all – philosophy of mathematics. It is unfortunate, and symptomatic of prevailing attitudes, that his work has so far receivedminimal attention from commentators in the analytic line of descent. Here I try to help the proce…Read more
  •  12
    On the Philosophy of Music (review)
    Philosophy and History 9 (1): 9-15. 1976.
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    On Noam Chomsky
    Theoria 45 (91): 45-52. 1998.
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    McDowell on Kant: Redrawing the Bounds of Sense
    Metaphilosophy 31 (4): 382-411. 2000.
    John McDowell’s Mind and World is a notable attempt to redirect the interest of analytic philosophers toward certain themes in Kantian and more recent continental thought. Only thus, he believes, can we move beyond the various failed attempts – by Quine, Davidson, Rorty, and others – to achieve a naturalised epistemology that casts off the various residual “dogmas” of old-style logical empiricism. In particular, McDowell suggests that we return to Kant's ideas of “spontaneity” and “receptivity” …Read more
  •  9
    Hilary Putnam: realism, reason, and the uses of uncertainty
    Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave. 2002.
    In this detailed study, Christopher Norris defends the kinds of arguments advanced by the early realist, Hilary Putnam. Norris makes a point of placing Putnam's work in a wider philosophical context, and relating it to various current debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. Much like Putnam, Norris is willing to take full account of opposed viewpoints while maintaining a vigorously argued commitment to the values of debate and enquiry.
  •  3
    Les plaisirs Des clercs: Barthes's latest writing
    British Journal of Aesthetics 14 (3): 250-257. 1974.
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    Book reviews (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (4): 281-283. 1975.