Max De Gaynesford

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.

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.

Reflecting a recent flourishing of creative thinking in the field, _Agents and Their Actions_ presents seven newly commissioned essays by leading international philosophers that highlight the most recent debates in the philosophy of action Features seven internationally significant authors, including new work by two of philosophy's ‘super stars’, John McDowell and Joseph Raz Presents the first clear indication of how John McDowell is extending his path-breaking work on intentionality and perceptual experience towards an account of action and agency Covers all the major interconnections between action-agency and central areas of Philosophy: Metaphysics, Epistemology, History of Philosophy, Ethics, Logic, Philosophy of Language Provides a snapshot of current debate on the subject, which is fresh, enlightening, and fruitful

Claudia Bianchi defends what she calls ‘MacKinnon's claim’: that ‘works of pornography can be understood as illocutionary acts of subordinating women, or illocutionary acts of silencing women’ in response to Saul , and by appeal to the formulations of Langton , Hornsby and Hornsby and Langton . I think Bianchi has two different claims in mind , and that it is important to distinguish the two, since the argument offered for either claim frustrates the aim sought by the other.Bianchi expresses the first claim when she says ‘pornography is the subordination of women’, and that it subordinates ‘by conditioning people to regard women as willing sexual objects’ . Call this Subordination. She expresses the second claim when she says pornography ‘silences women’, and that it does so …

The central claim of this book is that I is a deictic term, like the other singular personal pronouns You and He/She. This is true of the logical character, inferential role, referential function, expressive use, and communicative role of all and only expressions used to formulate first-personal reference in any language. The first part of the book shows why the standard account of I as a ‘pure indexical’ (‘purism’) should be rejected. Purism requires three mutually supportive doctrines which turn out to be myths: a) that a simple rule is sufficient to give the meaning of I (‘rule theory’); b) that one can use I to express thoughts without having to identify what is being referred to (‘independence’); and c) that as a matter of the meaning of I, any use of the term is logically guaranteed against failure to refer (‘the guarantee’). The second part of the book shows why the radically new account of I should be endorsed as a deictic term. Substitution instances and the behaviour of I in inference reveal that it has an obligatorily deictic logical character and inferential role. I fulfils its referential function in the deictic way, providing determinacy of reference by making an individual referentially salient in the extra-sentential context. The discriminability of the referent of an I-use depends on recognizing the referentially salient individual. This is true of its discriminability both to the reference-maker and to the audience. So I has the expressive use and communicative role of a deictic term. The conclusion of the book directs research towards the next step, showing how the meaning of I may be used to elucidate the thoughts expressed by the term, and from there questions relating to self-knowledge, practical reasoning, belief-acquisition, and belief-ascription.

How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it . The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …

This paper is about how action and perception are related in self–awareness. The main positive claim is that bodily awareness may consist in perceptual experiences that are sufficient to provide corporeal objects with introspective self–awareness. The short–term goal is to examine the grounds and motivations for strong versions of the claim that the self–awareness of corporeal objects is dependent on the exercise of their agency. As examples of ‘patient perceivers’ show, we should not underestimate the resources that perceptual experience alone offers to corporeal selves.