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57Feyerabend's conquest of abundanceInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (2). 2002.(2002). Feyerabend's Conquest of Abundance. Inquiry: Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 249-267.
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56Changing Kinds: Aristotle and the AristoteliansDiametros 45 19-34. 2015.Aristotle is routinely blamed for several errors that, it is supposed, held 'science' back for centuries - among others, a belief in distinct, homogenous and unchanging species of living creatures, an essentialist account of human nature, and a suggestion that 'slavery' was a natural institution. This paper briefly examines Aristotle's own arguments and opinions, and the perils posed by a contrary belief in changeable species. Contrary to received opinion even amongst some of his followers, Aris…Read more
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54Living high and letting die: Our illusion of innocence by Peter Unger. Oxford university press: New York & oxford, 1996, 199pp; ISBN 0195075897 £35.00; 0195108590 £13.50 (review)Philosophy 74 (1): 122-139. 1999.
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54Book Reviews STEPHEN R. L. CLARK, Religious Studies, FirstView Article
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52Where have all the Angels Gone?1: STEPHEN R. L. CLARKReligious Studies 28 (2): 221-234. 1992.Anyone who wishes to talk about angels has to respond to the mocking question, how many of them can dance on the point of a pin. The answer is: ‘just as many as they please’. Angels being immaterial intellects do not occupy space to the exclusion of any other such intellectual substance, and their being ‘on’ the point of a pin can only mean that they attend to it. The question, however, is not one that concerned our mediaeval predecessors, although it seems as difficult to persuade anyone of thi…Read more
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52What's in a name?The Philosophers' Magazine 23 (23): 43-45. 2003.A brief discussion of the differences between catarrhines and platyrrhines, as these are conceived in the practice of UK animal experimentalists: I conclude that there are no adequate objective differences sufficient to warrant different treatment, and that the historical and subjective differences lie behind the lesser standing given to platyrrhines (that is, New World monkeys) over against their cousins (Old World monkeys, apes, and us).
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51Philosophical PapersVol. I Realism, Rationalism & Scientific MethodVol. II Problems of EmpiricismPhilosophical Quarterly 34 (135): 172. 1984.
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50Aristotle's classification of animals. Biology and the conceptual unity of the aristotelian corpusJournal of the History of Philosophy 27 (2): 300-302. 1989.
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48Plotinus: Charms and CountercharmsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 65 215-231. 2009.For the last few years, thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, I've been largely absent from my department, working on the late antique philosopher Plotinus. To speak personally – it's been a difficult few years, since my youngest daughter has been afflicted with anorexia during this period, and my own bowel cancer was discovered, serendipitously, and removed, at the end of 2005. Since then I've had ample occasion to consider the importance – and the difficulty – of the practice of detachment, and also…Read more
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48Tolstoy on Aesthetics: What is Art? By H. O. Mounce (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2001), pp viii + 115, £xxxx, ISBN 0 7546 0488 8 (review)Philosophy 78 (2): 289-307. 2003.
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46Commentary on "Multiple Personality and Moral Responsibility"Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 3 (1): 55-57. 1996.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Multiple Personality and Moral Responsibility”Stephen R. L. Clark (bio)Theaitetos sleeping is not quite “the same” as Theaitetos waking, any more than Alcibiades drunk is Alcibiades sober. Nor am I, at fifty, quite “the same” as Stephen was when he was five. In one way, my sober fifty-year-old waking self can reasonably disclaim responsibility for what Stephen did or seemed to do when he was dreaming, drunk, or five ye…Read more
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45How Many Selves Make Me?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 29 213-233. 1991.Cartesian accounts of the mental make it axiomatic that consciousness is transparent: what I feel, I know I feel, however many errors I may make about its cause. ‘I’ names a simple, unextended, irreducible substance, created ex nihilo or eternally existent, and only associated with the complete, extended, dissoluble substance or pretend-substance that is ‘my’ body by divine fiat. Good moderns take it for granted that ‘we’ now realize how shifting, foggy and deconstructible are the boundaries of …Read more
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45Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (4). 2011.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 811-815, July 2011
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45Religious Commitment and Secular ReasonPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (206): 134-137. 2002.Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rul…Read more
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43Animal Rights - Daniel A. Dombrowski: The Philosophy of Vegetarianism. Pp. iv+188. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. $20.00 (review)The Classical Review 37 (2): 224-225. 1987.
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41How to Become UnconsciousRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67 21-44. 2010.Consistent materialists are almost bound to suggest that ‘conscious experience’, if it exists at all, is no more than epiphenomenal. A correct understanding of the real requires that everything we do and say is no more than a product of whatever processes are best described by physics, without any privileged place, person, time or scale of action. Consciousness is a myth, or at least a figment. Plotinus was no materialist: for him, it is Soul and Intellect that are more real than the phenomena w…Read more
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41Slaves and CitizensPhilosophy 60 (231): 27-. 1985.R. M. Hare has argued 1 that there are conceivable circumstances in which it would be right not to abolish the institution of slavery: in the imaginary land of Juba established slave-plantations are managed by a benevolent elite for the good of all, no ‘cruel or unusual ’ punishments are in use, and citizens of the neighbouring island of Camaica, ‘free ’but impoverished, regularly seek to become slaves. Hare adds that it is unlikely, given human nature, that ‘masters ’would treat ‘slaves ’humane…Read more
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40Global ReligionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 36 113-128. 1994.The social and environmental problems that we face at this tail end of twentieth-century progress require us to identify some cause, some spirit that transcends the petty limits of our time and place. It is easy to believe that there is no crisis. We have been told too often that the oceans will soon die, the air be poisonous, our energy reserves run dry; that the world will grow warmer, coastlands be flooded and the climate change; that plague, famine and war will be the necessary checks on pop…Read more
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40Sexual Ontology and Group MarriagePhilosophy 58 (224): 215-227. 1983.Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are generally condemned. In a society wh…Read more
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University of BristolHonorary Research Fellow
Liverpool, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Philosophical Traditions |