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19Erratum: Aspects of the infinite in KantMind 97 (387). 1988.The wrong version of my article ‘Aspects of the Infinite in Kant’ was printed in the last issue of Mind (pp. 205–23). I should like to correct an error that thereby appeared on page 207. In A430–2/B458–60 of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant does not deny that what is (mathematically) infinite should be what I called an actual measurable totality—if, by its measure, we mean ‘the multiplicity of given units which it contains’. His point is simply that what makes it infinite cannot be the fact that…Read more
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84Bird on Kant's Mathematical AntinomiesKantian Review 16 (2): 235-243. 2011.This essay is concerned with Graham Bird’s treatment, in The Revolutionary Kant, of Kant’s mathematical antinomies. On Bird’s interpretation, our error in these antinomies is to think that we can settle certain issues about the limits of physical reality by pure reason whereas in fact we cannot settle them at all. On the rival interpretation advocated in this essay, it is not true that we cannot settle these issues. Our error is to presuppose that the concept of the unconditioned has application…Read more
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13Beauty in the transcendental idealism of Kant and WittgensteinBritish Journal of Aesthetics 27 (2): 129-137. 1987.
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88A note on Kant's first antinomyPhilosophical Quarterly 42 (169): 480-485. 1992.An interpretation of Kant's first antinomy is defended whereby both its thesis and its antithesis depend on a common basic principle that Kant endorses, namely that there cannot be an ‘infinite contingency’, by which is meant a contingent fact about how an infinite region of space or time is occupied. The greatest problem with this interpretation is that Kant explicitly declines to apply counterparts of the temporal arguments in the antinomy to the world’s future, even though, if the interpretat…Read more
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8Reason, freedom and Kant: An exchangeKantian Review 12 (1): 113-133. 2007.According to Kant, being purely rational or purely reasonable and being autonomously free are one and the same thing. But how can this be so? How can my innate capacity for pure reason ever motivate me to do anything, whether the right thing or the wrong thing? What I will suggest is that the fundamental connection between reason and freedom, both for Kant and in reality, is precisely our human biological life and spontaneity of the will, a conjunctive intrinsic structural property of our animal…Read more
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31Language, World, and Limits: Essays in the Philosophy of Language and MetaphysicsOxford University Press. 2019.A.W. Moore presents eighteen of his philosophical essays, written since 1986, on representing how things are. He sketches out the nature, scope, and limits of representation through language, and pays particular attention to linguistic representation, states of knowledge, the character of what is represented, and objective facts or truths.
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90What are these Familiar Words Doing Here?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51 147-171. 2002.This essay is concerned with six linguistic moves that we commonly make, each of which is considered in turn. These are: stating rules of representation; representing things categorically; mentioning expressions; saying truly or falsely how things are; saying vaguely how things are; and stating rules of rules of representation. A common-sense view is defended of what is involved in our doing each of these six things against a much more sceptical view emanating from the idea that linguistic behav…Read more
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20Kantian humility: Our ignorance of things in themselvesPhilosophical Review 110 (1): 117-120. 2001.Kant once wrote, “Many historians of philosophy... let the philosophers speak mere nonsense.... They cannot see beyond what the philosophers actually said to what they really meant to say.’ Rae Langton begins her book with this quotation. She concludes it, after a final pithy summary of the position that she attributes to Kant, with the comment, “That, it seems to me, is what Kant said, and meant to say”. In between are some two hundred pages of admirably clear, tightly argued exegesis, suppleme…Read more
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10Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in ThemselvesPhilosophical Review 110 (1): 117. 2001.Kant once wrote, “Many historians of philosophy... let the philosophers speak mere nonsense.... They cannot see beyond what the philosophers actually said to what they really meant to say.’ Rae Langton begins her book with this quotation. She concludes it, after a final pithy summary of the position that she attributes to Kant, with the comment, “That, it seems to me, is what Kant said, and meant to say”. In between are some two hundred pages of admirably clear, tightly argued exegesis, suppleme…Read more
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92The underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction and the analytic/synthetic distinctionErkenntnis 46 (1): 5-32. 1997.Two of Quine's most familiar doctrines are: that there is a distinction between underdetermination and indeterminacy; and that there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. An argument is given that these two doctrines are incompatible. In terms wholly acceptable to Quine and based on the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, an exhaustive and exclusive distinction is drawn between two kinds of true sentences, which, it is argued, corresponds to the traditional analytic/…Read more
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100Transcendental idealism in Wittgenstein, and theories of meaningPhilosophical Quarterly 35 (139): 134-155. 1985.This essay involves exploration of certain repercussions of Bernard Williams’ view that there is, in Wittgenstein’s later work, a transcendental idealism akin to that found in the Tractatus—sharing with it the feature that it cannot be satisfactorily stated. It is argued that, if Williams is right, then Wittgenstein’s later work precludes a philosophically substantial theory of meaning; for such a theory would force us to try to state the idealism. In a postscript written for the reprint of the …Read more
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88Ineffability and nonsenseAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1). 2003.[A. W. Moore] Criteria of ineffability are presented which, it is claimed, preclude the possibility of truths that are ineffable, but not the possibility of other things that are ineffable—not even the possibility of other things that are non-trivially ineffable. Specifically, they do not preclude the possibility of states of understanding that are ineffable. This, it is argued, allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and …Read more
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10Was the author of the Tractatus a transcendental idealist?In Peter M. Sullivan & Michael D. Potter (eds.), Wittgenstein's Tractatus: history and interpretation, Oxford University Press. pp. 239. 2013.
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1Wittgenstein and infinityIn Oskari Kuusela & Marie McGinn (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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10Wittgenstein and transcendental idealismIn Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian & Oskari Kuusela (eds.), Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 174--199. 2007.
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3The transcendental doctrine of methodIn Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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4The Philosophy of W. V. Quine (review)Idealistic Studies 22 (3): 271-273. 1992.This is volume XVIII in the Library of Living Philosophers. It contains Quine’s intellectual autobiography, “approximately one fifth [of which] recurs sporadically” in the much more inclusive The Time of My Life ; there follow twenty-four critical essays covering all aspects of his work by some of the most eminent living philosophers, with a reply by Quine to each; and finally there is a bibliography of his publications, running, remarkably, to eighteen pages and including seventeen books. The v…Read more
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2QuineIn Christopher Belshaw & Gary Kemp (eds.), 12 Modern Philosophers, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Carnap's Logical Positivism Quine's Naturalism The External/Internal Distinction and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction The Indeterminacy of Translation Quine's Conception of Philosophy I: Metaphysics Quine's Conception of Philosophy II: Ontology Quine's Influence References.
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73On Saying and Showing: A. W. MoorePhilosophy 62 (242). 1987.This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that a saying/showing distinction arises there to…Read more
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11Meaning and reference (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1993.This volume presents a selection of the most important writings in the debate on the nature of meaning and reference which started one hundred years ago with Frege's classic essay "On Sense and Reference." Contributors include Bertrand Russell, P.F. Strawson, W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, John McDowell, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, David Wiggins, and Gareth Evans. The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selecte…Read more
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1Hacker, PMS-Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic PhilosophyPhilosophical Books 38 242-244. 1997.
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1Review of P. Mancosu, ed., From Brouwer to Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s (review)Philosophia Mathematica 7 (1): 126-128. 1999.
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Carruthers, Peter, "Tractarian Semantics: Finding Sense in Wittgenstein's Tractatus" (review)Mind 99 (n/a): 482. 1990.