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60Introduction: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Space of ReasonsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (3): 313-315. 2010.(2010). Introduction: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Space of Reasons. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 18, Naturalism, Normativity, and the Space of Reasons, pp. 313-315. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2010.494434
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53An Interview with John McDowell on his 2013 Agnes Cuming Lectures (UCD), ‘Two Questions About Perception’International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (1): 1-17. 2023.In 2013 John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, delivered the Agnes Cuming Lectures that are hosted annually by the School of Philosophy at...
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32Objective Truth and the Practice Relativity of Justification in the Pragmatic TurnEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 3 (2): 216-222. 2011.In the beginning, as they say, was the ‘pragmatic maxim’ of Peirce and James. Peirce’s early formulation of the maxim in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” ran as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (Peirce 1878: 132; cf. Bernstein 2010: 2-3; and O’Shea 2008: 208-13) At its core, pragmatism thus originated as a method for...
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29Critical Direct Realism? New Realism, Roy Wood Sellars, and Wilfrid SellarsTopoi 43 (1): 135-145. 2024.The overall contention of this paper, conducted through an examination of the idea of a ‘critical direct realism’ as this was developed across the twentieth century first in the thought of Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) and then in a different form by his son Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), is that such a view, in both its conceptual and sensory representational dimensions, is plausible as a form of direct realism. However, to the extent that the mediating sensory or qualitative dimension was itself …Read more
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27A Tension in Pragmatist and Neo-Pragmatist Conceptions of Meaning and ExperienceEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 6 (2). 2014.This paper examines a lasting tension in pragmatism between broadly functionalist outlooks on meaning and a primacy placed on what can be revealed by direct experiential or practical encounters. Both the inferentialist and experiential emphases can be traced back to Peirce’s original pragmatic maxim. Here the tension is examined first in William James’s insightful views on intentionality and experience, followed by a diagnosis of the problem as it has arisen in neopragmatist debates concerning …Read more
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27Review of Bernhard Weiss, Jeremy wanderer (eds.), Reading Brandom: On Making It Explicit (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (12). 2010.
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19Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Critical Guide (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2017.Kant's monumental book the Critique of Pure Reason was arguably the most conceptually revolutionary work in the history of philosophy and its impact continues to be felt throughout philosophical debates today. However, it is a notoriously difficult work whose basic meaning and lasting philosophical significance are both subject to ongoing controversy. In this Critical Guide, an international team of leading Kant scholars addresses the challenges, clarifying Kant's basic terms and arguments and e…Read more
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16Wilfrid Sellars and His LegacyOxford University Press UK. 2016.This collection of new essays on the systematic thought and intellectual legacy of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989) comes at a time when Sellars’s influence on contemporary debates about mind, meaning, knowledge, and metaphysics has never been greater. Sellars was among the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and many of his central ideas have become philosophical stock-in-trade: for example, his conceptions of the ‘myth of the given’, the ‘logical space of …Read more
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14On Kant’s Janus-Faced Transcendental and Empirical Conception of the Human BeingInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (2): 242-252. 2023.Recent decades have seen increased attention to the empirical and naturalistic dimensions of Kant’s philosophy, across both his theoretical and practical philosophy. Anik Waldow’s impressively wide...
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13Sellars and His Legacy (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2016.This collection of new essays on the systematic thought and intellectual legacy of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars comes at a time when Sellars's influence on contemporary debates about mind, meaning, knowledge, and metaphysics has never been greater. A team of well-known contemporary philosophers who have been strongly influenced by Sellars critically examines the groundbreaking ideas by means of which Sellars sought to integrate our thought, perception, and rational agency within a na…Read more
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11Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Critical Guide (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2019.Kant's monumental book the Critique of Pure Reason was arguably the most conceptually revolutionary work in the history of philosophy and its impact continues to be felt throughout philosophical debates today. However, it is a notoriously difficult work whose basic meaning and lasting philosophical significance are both subject to ongoing controversy. In this Critical Guide, an international team of leading Kant scholars addresses the challenges, clarifying Kant's basic terms and arguments, and …Read more
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11Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: An IntroductionRoutledge. 2011."Kant's Critique of Pure Reason" remains one of the landmark works of Western philosophy. Most philosophy students encounter it at some point in their studies but at nearly 700 pages of detailed and complex argument it is also a demanding and intimidating read. James O'Shea's short introduction to "CPR" aims to make it less so. Aimed at students coming to the book for the first time, it provides step by step analysis in clear, unambiguous prose. The conceptual problems Kant sought to resolve are…Read more
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9Conceptual Connections: Kant and the Twentieth‐Century Analytic TraditionIn Graham Bird (ed.), A Companion to Kant, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Central Themes in Kant's Conceptual Revolution Frege, Russell, and the Synthetic A Priori The Rise and Fall of the Analytic A Priori and the Idea of a Relativized A Priori Transcendental Arguments and the Resurgence of Kantian Analytic Philosophy.
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7Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction and InterpretationRoutledge. 2012.Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) remains a landmark work of philosophy and one that most students will encounter at some point in their studies. At nearly seven hundred pages of detailed and complex argument it is a demanding and intimidating read. James O’Shea’s introduction to the Critique seeks to make it less so. Aimed primarily at students coming to the book for the first time, it provides step-by-step analysis in clear, unambiguous prose. The conceptual problems Kant sought t…Read more
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2Problems of Substance: Perception and Object in Hume and KantDissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1992.At the center of both Humean and Kantian experience is a connection between the objectivity of perception and the concept of substantial identity. In the course of examining both systems as responses to structurally similar problems of perceptual objectivity, I argue that Kant's conception of substantial persistence is superior to Hume's account of the idea of identity. ;There are deep tensions in Hume's account of perception that are partially explicable in terms of his complex and naturalistic…Read more
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2On the structure of Sellars's naturalism with a normative turnIn Willem A. DeVries (ed.), Empiricism, Perceptual Knowledge, Normativity, and Realism: Essays on Wilfrid Sellars, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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1Review of 'Wilfrid Sellars' (James O'Shea 2007) and 'Wilfrid Sellars' (Willem deVries 2005)Erkenntnis 69 (1): 131-135. 2008.A review of deVries' and O'Shea's books, both titled "Wilfrid Sellars". By Jaroslav Peregrin
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Review: Langton, Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in ThemselvesInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (2): 253-257. 1999.
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Review: Edwards, Jeffrey, Substance, Force, and the Possibility of Knowledge: On Kant's Philosophy of Material Nature (review)Philosophy in Review 21 29-31. 2001.
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