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19Philosophy and fiction: essays in literary aesthetics (edited book)Aberdeen University Press. 1983.
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"Notes on Literary Structure": Daniel Burke (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 23 (2): 186. 1983.
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8The philosophy of literature : Pleasure restoredIn Peter Kivy (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, Blackwell. 2004.This chapter contains sections titled: Background The Way Forward.
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"Literature and the Question of Philosophy": Edited by Anthony J. Cascardi (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 29 (1): 82. 1989.
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6Truth, Fiction and Literature: a Philosophical PerspectivePhilosophical Quarterly 47 (187): 241-243. 1997.
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11Esquisse d'une théorie nominaliste de la proposition (review)Philosophical Books 14 (1): 16-18. 1973.
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106Wittgenstein, Literature, and the Idea of a PracticeBritish Journal of Aesthetics 50 (4): 375-388. 2010.The familiar idea that literature is embedded in social practices that help explain both its existence and its value took a distinctive form in analytic philosophy, drawing on speech act theory and a conception of ‘rules’. A major influence was John Rawls's seminal paper ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ (1955) in which he introduced the ‘practice conception of rules’ according to which certain practices are defined by rules that in turn make possible certain kinds of action. The idea underlies the notion…Read more
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83Précis of the philosophy of literatureBritish Journal of Aesthetics 50 (1): 77-80. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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143On the Distance between Literary Narratives and Real-Life NarrativesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 60 117-132. 2007.It is a truth universally acknowledged that great works of literature have an impact on people's lives. Well known literary characters—Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Don Quixote—acquire iconic or mythic status and their stories, in more or less detail, are revered and recalled often in contexts far beyond the strictly literary. At the level of national literatures, familiar characters and plots are assimilated into a wider cultural consciousness and help define national stereotypes and norms of behav…Read more
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"T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism": Richard Shusterman (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 29 (4): 384. 1989.
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246Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2003.This anthology provides comprehensive coverage of the major contributions of analytic philosophy to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, from the earliest beginnings in the 1950’s to the present time. Traces the contributions of the analytic tradition to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, from the 1950’s to the present time. Designed as a comprehensive guide to the field, it presents the most often-cited papers that students and researchers encounter. Addresses a wide range of topics, includ…Read more
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11Two Introductions: Invitation to Philosophy.What Philosophy Is: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (review)Philosophical Quarterly 36 (145): 540. 1986.
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272The death of the author: An analytical autopsyBritish Journal of Aesthetics 30 (4): 319-331. 1990.
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18Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (review)Philosophy and Literature 9 (2): 212-225. 1985.
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103Reasoning to what is true in fictionArgumentation 4 (3): 333-346. 1990.The paper discusses the principle by which we reason to what is ‘true in fiction’. The focus is David Lewis's article ‘Truth in Fiction’ (1978) which proposes an analysis in terms of counterfactuals and possible worlds. It is argued thatLewis's account is inadequate in detail and also in principle in that it conflicts radically with basic and familiar tenets of literary criticism. Literary critical reasoning about fiction concerns not the discovery of facts in possible worlds but the recovery of…Read more
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120Work and objectProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (2). 2002.The paper considers what kinds of things are musical, literary, pictorial and sculptural works, how they relate to physical objects or abstract types, and what their identity and survival conditions are. Works are shown to be cultural objects with essential intentional and relational properties. These essential properties are connected to conditions of production and conditions of reception, of both a generic and work-specific kind. It is argued that work-identity is value-laden, whereby essenti…Read more
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15Presupposition and the Delimitation of Semantics.Presuppositions and Non-Truth-Conditional Semantics (review)Philosophical Quarterly 26 (105): 379. 1976.
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274On not expecting too much from narrativeMind and Language 19 (4). 2004.The paper offers a mildly deflationary account of narrative, drawing attention to the minimal, thus easily satisfied, conditions of narrativity and showing that many of the more striking claims about narrative are either poorly supported or refer to distinct classes of narrative—usually literary or fictional—which provide a misleading paradigm for narration in general. An enquiry into structural, referential, pragmatic, and valuebased features of narrative helps circumscribe the limits of narrat…Read more