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17The Philosophy of Appearances (review)Review of Metaphysics 44 (3): 613-614. 1991.This book is a translation of the original Hungarian edition published in 1971. It belongs in the tradition of Hegel, Marx, and Lukacs, and would be of interest to those appreciative of that tradition. The book begins with a discussion of the general distinction between appearance and reality. According to the author, the distinction has at most a rudimentary application to nature below the social level, but is crucial for understanding society. So the book is primarily concerned with social app…Read more
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52The Demand for Justification in EthicsJournal of Philosophical Research 15 1-14. 1990.The common belief that the epistemic credentials of ethics are quite questionable, and therefore in need of special justification, is an illusion made possible by the logical gap between reason and belief. This gap manifests itself sometimes even outside ethics. In ethics its manifestations are common, because of the practical nature of ethics. The attempt to cover it up takes the form of exorbitant demands for justification and often leads to espousing noncognitivism.
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30The Examined Life (review)Review of Metaphysics 43 (2): 406-408. 1989.This is a welcome addition to the growing literature in an ethics that is unself-consciously and unabashedly normative. It is concerned with what good lives are and how they can be achieved. At least in civilized contexts, good lives depend on self-direction, which itself depends on possessing the virtues of self-control, self-knowledge, moral sensitivity, and wisdom. These are discussed in detail and with insight. The other-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence are also acknowledged but …Read more
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24The Metaphysics of G.E. Moore (review)Review of Metaphysics 37 (4): 868-870. 1984.This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the classics of analytic philosophy. O'Connor's discussion of Moore's philosophy is intelligent, useful, and generally accurate and informed. The title of the book is somewhat misleading. For O'Connor discusses all major parts of Moore's philosophy except his ethics. Hence much of the book is concerned with Moore's defense of common sense, his philosophy of perception, and his conception of analysis, topics that have received much atte…Read more
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29The Categorial Structure of the World (review)International Studies in Philosophy 19 (3): 81-82. 1987.
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Stephan Körner, Metaphysics: Its Structure and Function (review)Philosophy in Review 6 288-289. 1986.
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115The concept of knowledgeNorthwestern University Press. 1970.not analytic. This seems to be the point of Kant's claim that the concept of the sum of seven and five does not include its equality to the number twelve ...
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4Stephan Körner, Metaphysics: Its Structure and Function Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 6 (6): 288-289. 1986.
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183Skepticism About the External WorldOxford University Press. 1998.One of the most important and perennially debated philosophical questions is whether we can have knowledge of the external world. Butchvarov here considers whether and how skepticism with regard to such knowledge can be refuted or at least answered. He argues that only a direct realist view of perception has any hope of providing a compelling response to the skeptic and introduces the radical innovation that the direct object of perceptual, and even dreaming and hallucinatory, experience is alwa…Read more
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18Saying and Showing the GoodIn Heather Dyke (ed.), Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 137--158. 2003.
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44Review of Albert Casullo, A Priori Justification (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (8). 2003.
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Resemblance and Identity: An Examination of the Problem of UniversalsFoundations of Language 5 (4): 565-566. 1969.
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12Reality (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 497-500. 2003.This is not a textbook or an introduction. It is an important original contribution to metaphysics. Professor Loptson sees metaphysics as “the most general science,” and correctly points out that this is how, though under different names, it was understood by Democritus, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and of course many others.
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9Our Robust Sense of ReaUtyGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 403-421. 1985.Anti-Meinongian philosophers, such as Russell, do not explain what they mean by existence when they deny that there are nonexistent objects — they just sense robustly. I argue that any plausible explanation of what they mean tends to undermine their view and to support the Meinongian view. But why are they so strongly convinced that they are right? I argue that the reason is to be found in the special character of the concept of existence, which has been insufficiently examined by anti-Meinongia…Read more
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71Ontological categories: Their nature and significance – Jan WesterhoffPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (227). 2007.
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23Our Robust Sense of ReaUtyGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 403-421. 1985.Anti-Meinongian philosophers, such as Russell, do not explain what they mean by existence when they deny that there are nonexistent objects — they just sense robustly. I argue that any plausible explanation of what they mean tends to undermine their view and to support the Meinongian view. But why are they so strongly convinced that they are right? I argue that the reason is to be found in the special character of the concept of existence, which has been insufficiently examined by anti-Meinongia…Read more
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24Metaphysics and Its Task (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 728-730. 2002.Much of Jorge Gracia’s book is devoted to the definition of metaphysics. But he follows the traditional, though today ignored, distinction between nominal and real definitions. If we think of a definition of x as an answer to the question “What is x?”, an example of the former would be the entry under “bachelor” in a dictionary. An example of the latter would be the account in a chemistry textbook of the chemical structure of water. It is seldom clear that either sort of definition falls within …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |