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350In defense of folk psychologyPhilosophical Studies 59 (1): 31-54. 1990.It turned out that there was no phlogiston, no caloric fluid, and no luminiferous ether. Might it turn out that there are no beliefs and desires? Patricia and Paul Churchland say yes} We say no. In part one we give our positive argument for the existence of beliefs and desires.
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477Conditionals (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1991.This collection introduces the reader to some of the most interesting current work on conditionals. Particular attention is paid to possible world semantics for conditionals, the role of conditional probability in helping us to understand conditionals, implicature and the material conditional, and subjunctive versus indicative conditionals. Contributors include V.H. Dudman, Dorothy Edgington, Nelson Goodman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker.
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325The Two Envelope 'Paradox'Analysis 54 (1). 1994.This paper discusses the finite version of the two envelope paradox. (That is, we treat the paradox against the background assumption that there is only a finite amount of money in the world.)
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79Mind, morality, and explanation: selected collaborationsOxford University Press. 2004.Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith have been at the forefront of philosophy in Australia for much of the last two decades, and their collaborative work has had widespread influence throughout the world. Mind, Morality, and Explanation collects the best of that work in a single volume, showcasing their seminal contributions to philosophical psychology, the theory of psychological and social explanation, moral theory, and moral psychology.
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149Locke, expressivism, conditionalsAnalysis 63 (1): 86-92. 2003.The sentence ‘x is square’ might have had different truth conditions from those it in fact has. It might have had no truth conditions at all. Its having truth conditions and its having the ones it has rest on empirical facts about our use of ‘x is square’. What empirical facts? Any answer that goes into detail is inevitably highly controversial, but we think that there is a rough answer that is, by philosophers’ standards, relatively uncontroversial. It goes back to Locke 1689 and beyond, and is…Read more
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157Causation and the philosophy of mindPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (n/a): 195-214. 1990.
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860Program explanation: A general perspectiveAnalysis 50 (2): 107-17. 1990.Some properties are causally relevant for a certain effect, others are not. In this paper we describe a problem for our understanding of this notion and then offer a solution in terms of the notion of a program explanation
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228A problem for expressivismAnalysis 58 (4). 1998.Expressivists hold that ethical sentences express attitudes. We argue that it is very hard for expressivists to give an account of the relevant sense of 'express' which has some plausibility and also delivers the kind of noncognitivist account of ethical sentences they affirm. Our argument draws on Locke's point that words are voluntary signs
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131Some content is narrowIn John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation, Oxford University Press. 1993.ONE way t0 defend narrow content is to produce a sentence 0f the form ‘S believes that P’, and show that this sentence is true 0f S if and 0nly if it is true 0f any duplicate from the skin in, any doppclgangcr, of S. N0toriously, this is hard to d0. Twin Earth examples are pervasivc.1 Another way to defend narrow content; is t0 show that Only 2. narrow notion can play thc causal explanatory r01c we require 0f contcnt in 2. properly scicntiicm psychology 0r cognitive science. Notoriously, this is…Read more
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21Causation in the Philosophy of MindIn Andy Clark & Peter Millican (eds.), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Clarendon Press. pp. 195-214. 1996.
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92Review: Posted 10/5/99 (review)JP argue that expressivists must admit that becoming competent with ethical utterances involves learning to make them only when one believes one has the relevant attitude. For expressivists hold that communicating our attitudes is the function of ethical utterances, in which case sincerity demands that we not utter an ethical sentence unless we believe we have the relevant attitude. So (b) is false, as long as we suppose that this commitment, as reflected in well-entrenched and clear-cut (hencef…Read more
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954From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual AnalysisOxford University Press. 1998.Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and widely misunderstood, suggests Jackson. He argues that such analysis is mistakenly clouded in mystery, preventing a whole range of important questions from being productively addressed. He anchors his argument in discussions of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, m…Read more
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1496Structural explanation in social theoryIn K. Lennon & D. Charles (eds.), Reduction, Explanation, and Realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 97--131. 1992.
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239Moral functionalism, supervenience and reductionismPhilosophical Quarterly 46 (182): 82-86. 1996.We respond to Mark van Roojen's discussion of our 'Moral Functionalism and Moral Motivation', "Philosophical Quarterly", 45 (January, 1995): 20-40. There we assumed that ethical language makes claims about how things are and sought to make plausible under this assumption a view of moral language modelled on David Lewis's treatment of theoretical terms. Van Roojen finds the idea of treating ethical terms as theoretical terms attractive but doubts that we 'have succeeded in offering a reduction of…Read more
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