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21Brentano's ProblemGrazer Philosophische Studien 35 (1): 1-32. 1989.Contemporary writers often refer to 'Brentano's Problem' meaning by this the issue of whether all intentional phenomena can be accounted for in terms of a materialist ontology. This, however, was not the problem of intentionaUty which concerned Brentano himself. Rather, the difficulty which he identified is that of how to explain the very contentfulness of mental states, and in particular their apparently relational character. This essay explores something of Brentano's own views on this issue a…Read more
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72Rational and Other AnimalsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 41 17-28. 1996.The soul has two cognitive powers. One is the act of a corporeal organ, which naturally knows things existing in individual matter; hence sense knows only the singular. But there is another kind of power called the intellect. Though natures only exist in individual matter, the intellectual power knows them not as individualised, but as they are abstracted from matter by the intellect's attention and reflection. Thus, through the intellect we can understand natures in a universal manner; and this…Read more
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162A return to form in the philosophy of mindRatio 11 (3): 253-277. 1998.In recent decades philosophy of mind has undergone a number of important transformations. In the first part of this essay I review a survey of the subject provided by Daniel Dennett some twenty years ago and consider the current state of affairs. Notwithstanding the rise of physicalist causal theories, the field now displays a degree of diversity that suggests disarray. In the second part of the essay I examine three central issues: the nature of persons, of thought, and of action, and present a…Read more
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16The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine AffectationSt. Augustine's Press. 2007.This new edition of The Heart is the flagship volume in a series of Dietrich von Hildebrand's works to be published by St. Augustine's Press in collaboration with the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project. Founded in 2004, the Legacy Project exists in the first place to translate the many German writings of von Hildebrand into English. While many revere von Hildebrand as a religious author, few realize that he was a philosopher of great stature and importance. Those who knew von Hildebrand as p…Read more
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4An Intelligent Person's Guide to ReligionBloomsbury Academic. 2003.This polemical book argues that philosophy's silencing of religion as irrational thinking is wrong and that only religion can offer cogent answers when it comes to understanding life.
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Folk Psychology and the Explanation of Human BehaviourAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 62 209-254. 1988.
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27The Life of SignsReview of Metaphysics 47 (3). 1994.IN HIS COMMENTARY on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Garth Hallett records Wittgenstein's extensive reading of Augustine's Confessions. By contrast, he remarks that Wittgenstein never read anything of Aristotle. However, he also reports Rush Rhees as saying that at the time of his death Wittgenstein had in his possession the first two volumes of a German-Latin edition of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, containing questions 1-26 of the Prima Pars. Question 13 concerns the Divine Names, t…Read more
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Education, Values and Culture the Victor Cook Memorial Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews and King's College, University of LondonUniversity of St. Andrews Centre for Philosophy and Public Affairs. 1992.
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66Atheism and TheismPhilosophical Review 107 (3): 462. 1998.In this volume, the sixth in Blackwell's Great Debates in Philosophy series, Smart and Haldane discuss the case for and against religious belief. The debate is unusual in beginning with the negative side. After a short jointly authored introduction, there is a fairly extended presentation of the atheist position by Smart. Haldane then offers an equally extended defense of theism. The authors respond to one another in the same order, and the book concludes with a brief co-authored treatment of an…Read more
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4Mind-World Identity and the Anti-Realist ChallengeIn John Haldane & Crispin Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection, Oxford University Press. pp. 15--37. 1993.
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30De Consolatione PhilosophiaeRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 32 31-45. 1992.While I was quietly thinking these thoughts [about misfortune] over to myself and giving vent to my sorrow with the help of my pen, I became aware of a woman standing over me. She was of aweinspiring appearance, her eyes burning and keen beyond the usual power of men. She was so full of years that I could hardly think of her as of my own generation, and yet she possessed a vivid colour and undiminished vigour … Her clothes were made of imperishable material, of the finest thread woven with the m…Read more
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14Intuitions and the Value of a PersonJournal of Applied Philosophy 14 (1): 83-86. 1997.In contemporary moral theory and normative ethics there is frequent recourse to ‘intuitions’ of value. One current instance of this is the appeal in reproductive and population ethics to the thought that the existence of a human being is not as such good or bad. Here the status and substance of this assumption are challenged. In addition, doubt is cast on the value of appeals to intuition where these are not related to some philosophical account of the grounds of value.
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67Rational Souls and the Beginning of Life (A Reply to Robert Pasnau)Philosophy 78 (306). 2003.The present essay takes up matters discussed by Robert Pasnau in his response to our previous criticism of his account of Aquinas's view of when a foetus acquires a human soul. We are mainly concerned with metaphysical and biological issues and argue that the kind of organization required for ensoulment is that sufficient for the full development of a human being, and that this is present from conception. We contend that in his criticisms of our account Pasnau fails clearly to distinguish first,…Read more
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14Analytical ThomismThe Monist 80 (4): 485-486. 1997.Thomism, conceived of as the set of broad doctrines and style of thought expressed in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and of those who follow him, first emerged in the thirteenth century. Aquinas himself was born in 1225 into a religious culture in which the dominant tradition of speculative thought was a version of Christian neoplatonism heavily influenced by St. Augustine. Early in his studies as a Dominican, however, Aquinas came under the direction of Albert the Great, who was to exercise an…Read more
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15Words and Life (review)Review of Metaphysics 49 (2): 426-427. 1995.In 1990 Harvard produced Realism with a Human Face, a collection of twenty-two of Putnam's essays and lectures introduced by James Conant. Now, in similar format, Harvard presents a further twenty-nine pieces for which Conant has written a seventy-six-page introduction preceded by an epigraph drawn from Putnam himself: "Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs in one." Conant's contribution to both collections is significant, for he offers perspectives on Putnam's work that serve to …Read more
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114Is the Soul the Form of the Body?American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3): 481-493. 2013.The idea of the soul, though once common in discussions of human nature, is rarely considered in contemporary philosophy. This reflects a general physicalist turn; but besides commitment to various forms of materialism there is the objection that the very idea of the soul is incoherent. The notion of soul considered here is a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic one according to which it is both the form of a living human being and something subsistent on its own account. Having discussed the conceptu…Read more
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11Philosophy, the silencing of religion and the prospects for religious philosophyRevue Internationale de Philosophie 3 349-368. 2003.
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85Architecture, philosophy and the public worldBritish Journal of Aesthetics 30 (3): 203-217. 1990.
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41The state and fate of contemporary philosophy of mindAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 37 (3): 301-21. 2000.A few years ago philosophy of mind in the main English-language tradition was characterized by marked optimism about progress and by broad agreement that a correct theory would be a version of physicalism that admitted the sui generis nature of psychological descriptions and explanations. Now consensus seems to have given way to chaos supervenient physicalism has become so weak as to be virtually contentless and reductionism has become no more plausible than when it was generally rejected. The e…Read more
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15Atheism and Theism (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 1996.In this book two philosophers, each committed to unambiguous versions of belief and disbelief, debate the central issues of atheism and theism. Considers one of the oldest and most widely disputed philosophical questions: is there a God? Presents the atheism/theism issue in the form of philosophical debate between two highly regarded scholars, widely praised for the clarity and verve of their work. This second edition contains new essays by each philosopher, responding to criticisms and building…Read more