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1148Parity and Procedural JusticeEssays in Philosophy 7 (1): 4. 2006.In this paper I briefly set out Susan Moller Okin’s liberal feminist position and then rehearse a number of criticisms of Okin which together suggest that dismantling the gender system and adopting the principle of androgyny would not be compatible with liberalism. This incompatibility appears to vindicate an extreme feminist critique of liberalism. I argue that nevertheless a liberal feminism is possible. The liberal feminist ought to adopt the principle of parity, that is, guaranteed equal rep…Read more
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116Is a logic for belief sentences possible?Philosophical Studies 47 (1). 1985.In this paper I distinguish normative and descriptive reasons for attempting to construct a logic for belief sentences, and argue that because the interpretation of the content of an attribution of belief is context sensitive and ambiguous, no simple logic is adequate.
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81A 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
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117Women'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
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153A 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
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138Rawls, Women and the Priority of LibertyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (S1): 26-36. 1986.
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74Madeleine 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
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222Frege 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
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1Brooke A. Ackerly, Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (review)Philosophy in Review 22 1-3. 2002.
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105Women, 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
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1Will the real Enlightenment historian please stand up? Catharine Macaulay versus David HumeIn Craig Taylor & Stephen Buckle (eds.), Hume and the Enlightenment, Pickering & Chatto Publishing. 2011.Argues that on an interpretation of the Enlightenment which emphasises its radical potential and importance for the development of democracy Catharine Macaulay should be recognised as a more centrally Enlightenment historian than David Hume.
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84Val PlumwoodAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2). 2008.This Article does not have an abstract
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105Reason 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
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51Dummett'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
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65Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400-1800 (edited book)Springer. 2007.This volume challenges the view that women have not contributed to the historical development of political ideas, and highlights the depth and complexity of women’s political thought in the centuries prior to the French Revolution. From the late medieval period to the enlightenment, a significant number of European women wrote works dealing with themes of political significance. The essays in this collection examine their writings with particular reference to the ideas of virtue, liberty, and to…Read more
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250Was 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
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From Le Miroir des dames to Le Livre des trois vertusIn Karen Green & Mews Constant J. (eds.), Virtue Ethics for Women 1250-1550, Springer. 2011.
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216The 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
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2Marilyn Friedman and Jan Narveson, Political Correctness: For and Against Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 15 (4): 241-243. 1995.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Specialization
| Philosophy of Language |
| Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
| 17th/18th Century Philosophy |
| Continental Philosophy |