Max De Gaynesford

The aim of this paper is to show that John McDowell’s approach to perception in terms of “openness”remains problematically vulnerable to the threat of scepticism. The leading thought of the openness view is that objects, events and others in the world, and no substitute, just are what is disclosed in perceptual experience. An account which aims to defend this thought must show, therefore, that the content of perceptual experience does not “all short” of its objects. We shall describe how McDowell defends the openness view with reference to the disjunctive analysis of appearances (sections II and III); argue that his defence includes features which are both inconsistent with and unnecessary for the openness view (section IV); and show how those features call into question the success of McDowell’s route of response to sceptical arguments (section V). Finally, we sketch an alternative approach to openness and conclude that the explosive effect of letting loose the conception of experience advanced by the openness view has yet to be felt in the English‐speaking world (section VI).

This paper draws attention to the fact that works of philosophy are often judged by aesthetic criteria. This raises the question of whether philosophical writings may properly be regarded as suitable objects of aesthetic judgement in a strong sense; namely, that judging their worth qua works of philosophy is an aesthetic endeavour. The paper argues in the affirmative with the aid of a Kantian account of aesthetic judgement. Judging a work of philosophy by the means chosen may be regarded as subjecting it to criticism by criteria established within a philosophical aesthetic.

Putnam is one of the most influential philosophers of recent times, and his authority stretches far beyond the confines of the discipline. However, there is a considerable challenge in presenting his work both accurately and accessibly. This is due to the width and diversity of his published writings and to his frequent spells of radical re-thinking. But if we are to understand how and why philosophy is developing as it is, we need to attend to Putnam's whole career. He has had a dramatic influence on theories of meaning, semantic content, and the nature of mental phenomena, on interpretations of quantum mechanics, theory-change, logic and mathematics, and on what shape we should desire for future philosophy. By presenting the whole of his career within its historical context, de Gaynesford discovers a basic unity in his work, achieved through repeated engagements with a small set of hard problems. By foregrounding this integrity, the book offers an account of his philosophy that is both true to Putnam and helpful to readers of his work.

Radical self-silencing is a particular variety of speech act disablement where the subject silences themselves, whether knowingly or not, because of their own faults or deficiencies. The paper starts with some concrete cases and preparatory comments to help orient and motivate the investigation. It then offers a summary analysis, drawing on a small number of basic concepts to identify its five individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions and discriminating their two basic forms, ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’. The paper then explicates and defends what has been proposed, where the most salient and pressing objections concern the use of two basic concepts: ‘uptake’ and ‘silencing’. Finally, the paper gives a longer-term motivation for deepening our understanding of radical self-silencing, what it is and what it implies.

Consensus identifies an underlying continuity to Wittgenstein's treatment of the self and 'I', despite certain obvious surface variations and revisions. Almost all Wittgenstein's arguments and observations concerning 'I' and the self in the Tractatus are arranged as attempts to explicate. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world, not a part of it. The picture that forms around the consensus view is certainly enlightening about Wittgenstein on 'I' and the self, but this is so because rather than in spite of the difficulties we face in making it match. Contrary to the consensus view, there is little or no 'denigrating' of the first person in his thought, whether of the reductionist or eliminativist kind, and where it may be manifest limited uses only, and by contrast with the general case.

This paper argues that Henry James’ treatment of balancing in The Golden Bowl—to which Putnam insightfully draws attention—calls for the attunement of philosophy and literary criticism. The process may undermine Putnam’s own reading of the novel, but it also finds new reasons to endorse what his reading was meant to deliver: the confidence that philosophy and thoughtful appreciation of literature have much to contribute to each other, and the conviction that morality can incorporate (Kantian) seriousness about rules alongside (Aristotelian) sensitivity to character and situation.

We need not accommodate facts about meaning if Quine is right about the indeterminacy of subsentential expressions; there can be no such facts to accommodate. Evans argued that Quine’s approach overlooks the ways speakers use predication to endow their use of subsentential expressions with the necessary determinacy. This paper offers a critical assessment of the debate in relation to current arguments about naturalism and shows how Evans’s response depends on a basic claim that turns out to be false

What is it for poetry to be serious and to be taken seriously? What is it to be open to poetry, exposed to its force, attuned to what it says and alive to what it does? These are important questions that call equally on poetry and philosophy. But poetry and philosophy, notoriously, have an ancient quarrel. Maximilian de Gaynesford sets out to understand and convert their mutual antipathy into something mutually enhancing, so that we can begin to answer these and other questions. The key to attuning poetry and philosophy lies in the fact that poetic utterances are best appreciated as doing things. For it is as doing things that the speech act approach in analytic philosophy of language tries to understand all utterances. Taking such an approach, this book offers ways to enhance our appreciation of poetry and to develop our understanding of philosophy. It explores work by a range of poets from Chaucer to Geoffrey Hill and J. H. Prynne, and culminates in an extended study of Shakespeare's Sonnets. What work does poetry set itself, and how does this determine the way it is to be judged? What do poets commit themselves to, and what they may be held responsible for? What role does a poet have, or their audience, or their context, in determining the meaning of a poem, what work it is able to achieve? These are the questions that an attuned approach is able to ask and answer.

The aim of this paper is to show that John McDowell’s approach to perception in terms of “openness”remains problematically vulnerable to the threat of scepticism. The leading thought of the openness view is that objects, events and others in the world, and no substitute, just are what is disclosed in perceptual experience. An account which aims to defend this thought must show, therefore, that the content of perceptual experience does not “all short” of its objects. We shall describe how McDowell defends the openness view with reference to the disjunctive analysis of appearances (sections II and III); argue that his defence includes features which are both inconsistent with and unnecessary for the openness view (section IV); and show how those features call into question the success of McDowell’s route of response to sceptical arguments (section V). Finally, we sketch an alternative approach to openness and conclude that the explosive effect of letting loose the conception of experience advanced by the openness view has yet to be felt in the English‐speaking world (section VI).

‘Rule theory’, or the claim that a simple rule is sufficient to give the meaning of I, is a myth. Theorists have not shown that it is even possible to say what this rule is, what it means, what it determines, or what functions as its context. No such rule could be sufficient to give the meaning of I because there are areas which it does not cover, there are areas in which it applies but is insufficient, there are occasions on which it should not be applied, and there are occasions on which it cannot be applied.