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46Doctrine and method in the philosophy of P. F. StrawsonPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 36 (3): 364-383. 1976.
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32Kant’s ‘Critical’ RationalismIdealistic Studies 22 (2): 107-121. 1992.Matter, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, plays a prototypical version of a rôle that recurs, refracted through the domestic preoccupations of each age, in metaphysical analyses of the constitution of the real. After identifying the rôle, I shall trace a developmental arc of philosophical treatment from Aristotle through the Cartesian period to Kant. The mature Kantian view of the rôle—the ‘critical’ view—is, I maintain, a reversion to the Aristotelian position. It is not however a simple reversion. I…Read more
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29Cartesian Substances as Modal TotalitiesDialogue 17 (2): 320-343. 1978.I. Analytic interpretation of Descartes' argument for a substantial distinction between mind and body works within a framework of assumptions – which is broadly Aristotelian – concerning the character of the Cartesian categories of substance, essence, and mode. Relying on a series of texts concerning the mind/body distinction which is usually passed over by interpreters, I will develop and draw out the implications of a different – a Platonic – view of these categories.
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1Intellectual intuition and cognitive assimilabilityJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 10 (3): 153-163. 1979.
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15Cartesian CertaintyIdealistic Studies 15 (3): 219-247. 1985.Whence the Cartesian’s advantage over competing world investigators? Descartes’s answer is that those of his persuasion do not proceed by “resting [their] reasons on any other principle than the infinite perfections of God”. The claim’s considerable opacity does not prevent it from letting this much light filter through: only Cartesian scientists operate on the right metaphysical basis.
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16Cogitations (review)Review of Metaphysics 41 (2): 397-399. 1987.Though, in view of Descartes' challenge to the epistemological credentials of "reason" early in the Meditations, one expects him to resist the claim that the professedly invulnerable cogito argument works through the suppressed premise "Everything that thinks, exists," interpreters have been hard-pressed to convert comprendre here into pardonner. Loath to convict Descartes of confusing a psychological point about inferential process with a logical one about the conditions for validity, many are …Read more
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30Berkeley and CognitionPhilosophy 56 (216). 1981.In ‘Berkeley and God’, Jonathan Bennett diagnoses Berkeley's intermittent advocacy of the proposition that physical things ‘do sometimes exist when not perceived by any human spirit’ by pinning on him the invalid argument, vitiated by the ambiguity of ‘depend’, from all ideas depend on some spirit or other, via some sensible ideas do not depend on these spirits themselves, to some ideas depend on non-finite spirits
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15Abstraction and DeterminacyIdealistic Studies 12 (1): 14-34. 1982.1. The distinction between the functions of sense and intellect in cognition is first given its modern form by Kant. According to one influential commentator, Jonathan Bennett, “Kant’s breakthrough” in fact consists precisely in liberating himself from his predecessors’ misconceptions in this regard. It is true that the categorial duality of receptivity and spontaneity—of intuition and concept—is not to be found in the major classical writings prior to Kant. In its place, one encounters a relati…Read more
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11Descartes: the probable and the certainDistributed in the U.S.A. by Humanities Press. 1986.System of References To keep footnotes to a minimum, references to classical sources are incorporated into the body of the narrative, normally in the ...
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38The Prussian SphinxIdealistic Studies 25 (3): 255-280. 1995.Unhappy with a recent submission of mine, a referee for a journal specialising in the history of philosophy wagged a finger at what he or she called my ‘hermeneutical principles’. Though I am no stranger to the collegial woodshed, my initial reaction was nonetheless one of surprise. For had I then been asked about interpretive methodology I would have scoffed. The construer’s best course, I would have said, is to nose about the texts until some rough shape begins to emerge from the murk, and to …Read more
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10Cartesian UncertaintyGrazer Philosophische Studien 27 (1): 101-124. 1986.For placing the contrast of certainty and uncertainty at the philosophical center, Descartes is charged with Michael Dummett with mistakenly subordinating the study of language and meaning to epistemology. But Dummett's knowledge-theoretic reading of the certainty/uncertainty duality is as erroneous as the tradition it inherits is long. The Cartesian demand for certainty and critique of uncertainty in mature writings like the Meditations has a definite semantic character. Cartesian uncertainty, …Read more
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64Invitation to a beheading: The career of philosophyPhilosophia 28 (1-4): 39-66. 2001.Registrants for the academic study of philosophy, expecting an encounter with special cognitive products, regal truths, are soon enough disabused. Philosophy, its supposedly special access to the structure of things exploded, is relegated to sundry tasks of intellectual hygiene. I track down the source of the unrealistic view, anatomising what has a strong claim to be regarded as the regal enterprise’s inau¬gural reasoning—in Plato. When professionals consider the successor activity that is call…Read more
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11Transcendental Idealism: What Jerusalem Has To Say to KönigsbergDialogue 49 (1): 25-51. 2010.RÉSUMÉ: La Bible éclaire la distinction kantienne entre les apparences et les choses en soi. Les deux récits bibliques de la création, dans Genèse 1 et 2, offrent différentes analyses ontologiques, et seule la deuxième est, comme les apparences de Kant, relative à la condition humaine. Mais, tandis que l’autre région dont Kant parle est sans caractérisation positive, la Bible décrit amplement le monde tel qu’il est avant l’avènement des hommes et des femmes. La Bible traite de ce domaine du poin…Read more
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16Cartesian Probability and Cognitive StructureZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 36 (4). 1982.
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19How Philosophers See 'Red'Grazer Philosophische Studien 4 (1): 43-64. 1977.To what extent is conceptual analysis under strict semantic control? In an effort to show that conceptual structure transcends the linguistic dimension proper, the tensions within, and between, several current treatments of the concept red are revealed and explored. It is argued that certain extra-semantic factors — factors, broadly speaking, which concern the manner in which a concept applier interacts with the world as an extralinguistic agent - provide a backdrop against which conceptual anal…Read more