-
12Dummett's Ought from IsDialectica 45 (1): 67-82. 1991.SummaryDummett has offered an argument which begins with certain criteria of adequacy for any account of the way in which communication functions and which ends with normative and revisionary conclusions concerning our logical practice. This argument, which hinges on Dummett's criticisms of holism, is inadequate as it stands, for the holist can give an adequate description of the functioning of communication. There is a plausible defence of intuitionism to be extracted from Dummett's writing, bu…Read more
-
50Women's Writing and the Early Modern Genre WarsHypatia 28 (3): 499-515. 2013.This paper explores two phases of the early modern genre wars. The first was fought by Marie de Gournay, in her “Preface” to Montaigne's Essays, on behalf of her adoptive father and in defense of his naked and masculine prose. The second was fought half a century later by Nicholas Boileau in opposition to Gournay's feminizing successor, Madeleine de Scudéry. In this debate Gournay's position is egalitarian, whereas Scudéry's approximates to a feminism of difference. It is claimed that both femal…Read more
-
54A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1700–1800Cambridge University Press. 2014.During the eighteenth century, elite women participated in the philosophical, scientific, and political controversies that resulted in the overthrow of monarchy, the reconceptualisation of marriage, and the emergence of modern, democratic institutions. In this comprehensive study, Karen Green outlines and discusses the ideas and arguments of these women, exploring the development of their distinctive and contrasting political positions, and their engagement with the works of political thinkers s…Read more
-
82Rawls, Women and the Priority of LibertyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (S1): 26-36. 1986.
-
Isolated individual or member of a Feminine Courtly Community? Christine de Pizan’s milieuIn Constant J. Mews & Crossley John (eds.), Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe 1100-1500, Brepols Publishers. 2011.
-
36Madeleine de Scudéry on love and the emergence of the "private sphere"History of Political Thought 30 (2): 272-85. 2009.Madeleine de Scudery played a previously unrecognized part in the development of modern ideas of married friendship, and the eighteenth-century version of the distinction between the public and private spheres, through the influence of her novels on the political views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Her development of the notions of tender friendship and tender love between the sexes helped change the way in which married love was conceptualized. She transformed the chivalric idea that women rule men…Read more
-
160Frege on Existence and Non‐existenceTheoria 81 (4): 293-310. 2015.Despite its importance for early analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege's account of existence statements, according to which they classify concepts, has been thought to succumb to a number of well-worn criticisms. This article does two things. First, it argues that, by remaining faithful to the letter of Frege's claim that concepts are functions, the Fregean account can be saved from many of the standard criticisms. Second, it examines the problem that Frege's account fails to generalize to cases w…Read more
-
59Women, Hegel, and Recognition in The Second SexHypatia 25 (2). 2010.This paper develops a new account of Beauvoir's "Hegelianism" and argues that the strand of contemporary interpretation of Beauvoir that seeks to represent her thought in isolation from that of Jean-Paul Sartre constitutes a betrayal of the philosophy of recognition that she denves from Hegel. It underscores the extent to which Beauvoir influenced Sartre's Being and Nothingness and shows that Sartre and Beauvoir both adapted Hegel's ideas and agreed in rejecting his optimism
-
29Val PlumwoodAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
-
39Reason and feeling: Resisting the dichotomyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (4). 1993.It is argued that it is not enough for feminist standpoint theory to argue that a feminine standpoint is better than a masculine one because of its genesis in female psycho-sexuality, it needs to show that its content is actually objectively more accurate. It then argues that historical feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, have in fact tended to adopt a justice perspective, grounded in reason, which is objectively of greater value than that developed by many male authors, because these histor…Read more
-
56Dummett: philosophy of languagePolity Press. 2001.Dummett's output has been prolific and highly influential, but not always as accessible as it deserves to be. This book sets out to rectify this situation.
-
100Was Wittgenstein Frege's heir?Philosophical Quarterly 49 (196): 289-308. 1999.This paper argues that Dummett’s interpretation of the relationship between Frege’s anti-psychologism and Wittgenstein’s doctrine that meaning is use results in a misreading of Frege. It points out that anti-mentalism is a form of anti-psychologism, but that mentalism is not the only version of psycholgism. Thus, while Frege and Wittgenstein are united in their opposition to mentalism, they are not equally opposed to psychologism, and from Frege’s point of view, the doctrine that meaning is use …Read more
-
133A Pinch of Salt for FregeSynthese 150 (2): 209-228. 2006.Michael Dummett has argued that a formal semantics for our language is inadequate unless it can be shown to illuminate to our actual practice of speaking and understanding. This paper argues that Frege’s account of the semantics of predicate expressions according to which the reference of a predicate is a concept (a function from objects to truth values) has exactly the required characteristics. The first part of the paper develops a model for understanding the distinction between objects and co…Read more
-
140The Context Principle and Dummett's Argument for Anti-realismTheoria 71 (2): 92-117. 2005.Dummettian anti-realism–the refusal to endorse bivalence–is generally thought to be associated with idealism This paper argues that this is only true of the position developed by early Dummett. In a later manifestation Dummettian anti-realism is better thought of as providing the logic for anti-realisms of an error theoretic kind. Early on Dummett distinguished deep from shallow arguments for giving up bivalence: deep arguments followed a strong ‘sufficiency’ reading of Frege’s context principle…Read more
-
184On the Error of Treating Functions as ObjectsAnalysis and Metaphysics 15. 2016.In his late fragment, ‘Sources of Knowledge of Mathematics and Natural Sciences’ Frege laments the tendency to confuse functions with objects and says, ‘It is here that the tendency of language by its use of the definite article to stamp as an object what is a function and hence a non-object, proves itself to be the source of inaccurate and misleading expressions and also of errors of thought. Probably most of the impurities that contaminate the logical source of knowledge have their origins in …Read more
-
2Marilyn Friedman and Jan Narveson, Political Correctness: For and Against Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 15 (4): 241-243. 1995.
-
80When is a contract theorist not a contract theorist? Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay as critics of Thomas HobbesIn Nancy Hirschmann Joanne Wright (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, Penn State. pp. 169-89. 2012.Although Catharine Macaulay was a contract theorist and early feminist her philosophy is not based on a concept of liberty like that of Hobbes, but on a notion of individual liberty as self government close to that accepted by Mary Astell. This raises the question of whether criticisms of liberal feminism which assume that it is rooted in Hobbes's suspect notion of freedom and consent may miss there mark.
-
61A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700Cambridge University Press. 2009.This ground-breaking book surveys the history of women's political thought in Europe from the late medieval period to the early modern era. The authors examine women's ideas about topics such as the basis of political authority, the best form of political organisation, justifications of obedience and resistance, and concepts of liberty, toleration, sociability, equality, and self-preservation. Women's ideas concerning relations between the sexes are discussed in tandem with their broader politic…Read more
-
11Review of Engaging with Irigaray ed. Carolyn Burke, Naomi Shor and Margaret Whitford (review)International Studies in Philosophy 31. 1999.
-
61A Moral Philosophy of Their Own? The Moral and Political Thought of Eighteenth-Century British WomenThe Monist 98 (1): 89-101. 2015.Despite the fact that the High-Church Tory, Mary Astell, held political views diametrically opposed to the Whiggish Catharine Trotter Cockburn and Catharine Macaulay, it is here argued that their metaethical views were surprisingly similar. All were influenced by a blend of Christian universalism and Aristotelian eudaimonism, which accepted the existence of a law of nature, that we strive for happiness, and that happiness results from living in accord with our God-given nature. They differed wit…Read more
-
36Liberty and Virtue in Catherine Macaulay's Enlightenment PhilosophyIntellectual History Review 22 (3): 411-426. 2012.Argues that like more conservative feminist writers, Gabrielle Suchon and Mary Astell, writing earlier in the Eighteenth Century, Macaulay's concept of liberty is closely tied to virtue and involves free self government according to reason. Unlike these earlier writers from this concept of liberty she deduces the rationality of democratic republican government. Thus the grounds on which she builds her republicanism involve a very different concept of rational self interest to that usually assume…Read more
-
52Does science persecute women? The case of the 16th–17th century witch-HuntsPhilosophy 73 (2): 195-217. 1998.I. Logic, rationality and ideology Herbert Marcuse once claimed that the ‘“rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.’ He echoed a widespread folk belief that a world in which people were rational would be a better world. This could be taken as an optimistic empirical conjecture: if people were more rational then probably the world would be a better place (a trust that ‘virtue will be rewarded’, so to speak). However, it…Read more
-
136Prostitution, Exploitation and TabooPhilosophy 64 (250). 1989.It is so generally accepted that prostitution is immoral, that this is one of the least discussed of all ethical issues. Few serious philosophical treatments of the subject have been published. Of these, at least one, Lars Ericsson's, ‘Charges against Prostitution’, throws into stark relief the apparent inconsistency of our community attitudes. For it demonstrates that, from the point of view of the simple free market liberalism, to which many subscribe, there is nothing immoral about prostituti…Read more
-
1Brooke A. Ackerly, Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 22 (1): 1-3. 2002.
-
15The woman of reason: feminism, humanism, and political thoughtContinuum. 1995.This is a timely re-appraisal of feminist political thinkers and their male contemporaries, providing a re-evaluation of feminist humanism.
Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |