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114“If Some People Looked Like Elephants and Others Like Cats”: Wittgenstein on Understanding Others and Forms of LifeNordic Wittgenstein Review 4 131-153. 2015.This essay introduces a tension between the public Wittgenstein’s optimism about knowledge of other minds and the private Wittgenstein’s pessimism about understanding others. There are three related reasons which render the tension unproblematic. First, the barriers he sought to destroy were metaphysical ones, whereas those he struggled to overcome were psychological. Second, Wittgenstein’s official view is chiefly about knowledge while the unofficial one is about understanding. Last, Wittgenste…Read more
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112One Fell SwoopJournal of the Philosophy of History 9 (3): 372-392. 2015._ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 3, pp 372 - 392 In this essay I revisit some anti-causalist arguments relating to reason-giving explanations of action put forth by numerous philosophers writing in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s in what Donald Davidson dismissively described as a ‘neo-Wittgensteinian current of small red books’. While chiefly remembered for subscribing to what has come to be called the ‘logical connection’ argument, the positions defended across these volumes are in fact as diverse as t…Read more
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110Contextualist vs. Analytic History of PhilosophyThink 8 (22): 1-5. 2009.This paper uses analogies between Socratic and Wittgenseinian dialogues to argue that analytic philosophy of history should not be abandoned. In their responses to my paper ‘In Defence of Four Socratic Doctrines’ James Warren and John Shand raised a number of important methodological objections, relating to the study of the history of philosophy. I here respond by questioning the supremacy of contextualist history of philosophy over the so-called ‘analytic’ approach. I conclude that the history…Read more
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110The things we do and why we do themPalgrave-Macmillan. 2012.The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called "action" which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any such explanation must take fail from the outset, and shows how various debates on the nature of so-called motivating reasons only arise because the participants all share a number of mistaken views which follow from the basic assumption under attac…Read more
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107Gilbert Ryle , Collected Papers Volume II: Collected Essays 1929-1968 . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 31 (6): 455-457. 2011.
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106Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action (edited book)Blackwell. 2010.A Companion to the Philosophy of Action offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems central to the philosophy of action. * The first volume to survey the entire field of philosophy of action (the central issues and processes relating to human actions) * Brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts * Discusses a range of ideas and doctrines, including rationality, free will and determinism, virtuous action, criminal responsibility, Attribut…Read more
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95Review of Adam Morton, The Importance of Being Understood: Folk Psychology As Ethics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (9). 2003.
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88Gilbert Ryle , The Concept of Mind - 60th Anniversary Edition . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 31 (6): 455-457. 2011.
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85Gilbert Ryle , Collected Papers Volume I: Critical Essays . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 31 (6): 455-457. 2011.
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83"Review of" Philosophy of History: A Guide for Students" (review)Essays in Philosophy 8 (2): 10. 2007.
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66Animal EthicsIn Richard Corrigan (ed.), Ethics: A University Guide, Progressive Frontiers Pubs.. pp. 21. 2010.
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61The Doing and the Deed: Action in Normative EthicsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 80 105-126. 2017.This essay is motivated by the thought that the things we do are to be distinguished from our acts of doing them. I defend a particular way of drawing this distinction before proceeding to demonstrate its relevance for normative ethics. Central to my argument is the conviction that certain ongoing debates in ethical theory begin to dissolve once we disambiguate the two concepts of action in question. If this is right, then the study of action should be accorded a far more prominent place within …Read more
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60Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Non-causalism in the Philosophy of Action (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2013.
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59Virtue Ethics and ParticularismAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 95 (1): 205-232. 2021.Moral particularism is often conceived as the view that there are no moral principles. However, its most fêted accounts focus almost exclusively on rules regarding actions and their features. Such action-centred particularism is, I argue, compatible with generalism at the level of character traits. The resulting view is a form of particularist virtue ethics. This endorses directives of the form ‘Be X’ but rejects any implication that the relevant X-ness must therefore always count in favour of a…Read more
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59The Meaning of Hume's Necessary ConnexionsIn Keith Allen & Tom Stoneham (eds.), Causation and Modern Philosophy, . forthcoming.
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58He buttered the toast while baking a fresh loafPhilosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche. forthcoming.Download.
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55Kant and Hegel on purposive actionPhilosophical Explorations 21 (1): 90-107. 2018.This essay discusses Kant and Hegel’s philosophies of action and the place of action within the general structure of their practical philosophy. We begin by briefly noting a few things that both unite and distinguish the two philosophers. In the sections that follow, we consider these and their corollaries in more detail. In so doing, we map their differences against those suggested by more standard readings that treat their accounts of action as less central to their practical philosophy. Secti…Read more
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44Making Ourselves Understood: Wittgenstein and Moral EpistemologyWittgenstein-Studien 10 (1): 241-259. 2019.Wittgenstein teaches us that, contrary to current philosophical and scientific trends, the understanding of others is not to be achieved through some kind of emotional tool providing an access-pass to otherwise hidden ‘mental contents’. This insight goes against the popular grain of empathy as a form of informational ‘mindreading’, founded upon John Locke’s assumption that understanding another is a matter of obtaining and decoding the stored in their mind. We would do best to replace this radic…Read more
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44Extending Hinge Epistemology (edited book)Anthem Press. 2022.Hinge Epistemology is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting areas of epistemology and Wittgenstein studies. In connecting these two fields it brings a revived energy to both, opening them up to fresh developments. The essays in this volume extend the subject in terms of both depth and breadth. They present new voices and challenges within hinge epistemology. They explore new applications and directions of hinge epistemology, particularly as it relates to the philosophy of mind, society, ethi…Read more