•  35
    Moore on the sceptical philosopher
    Think 20 (57): 69-87. 2021.
    1. Since I don't know who you are, dear reader, and since I know that some people don't have hands, I don't know whether you have hands. Probably you do, but knowing that something is probable is rarely, if ever, a way of knowing that thing. By contrast, I know that I have hands. Let me check. Yes, here is one of my hands; and here is another. Since I know that here is one of my hands and that here is another, and since I know that it follows from those two claims that I have hands, I can deduce…Read more
  •  32
    Cook Wilson on knowledge and forms of thinking
    Synthese 200 (4): 1-22. 2022.
    John Cook Wilson is an important predecessor of contemporary knowledge first epistemologists: among other parallels, he claimed that knowledge is indefinable. We reconstruct four arguments for this claim discernible in his work, three of which find no clear analogues in contemporary discussions of knowledge first epistemology. We pay special attention to Cook Wilson’s view of the relation between knowledge and forms of thinking (like belief). Claims of Cook Wilson’s that support the indefinabili…Read more
  •  30
    Grice and Marty on Expression
    In Hamid Taieb & Guillaume Fréchette (eds.), Mind and Language – On the Philosophy of Anton Marty, De Gruyter. pp. 263-284. 2017.
  •  21
    The various themes explored in this superb collection of essays are organised around one thinker, John McDowell, and one central idea
  •  21
    Trust in the dark
    Forum for European Philosophy Blog. 2016.
    Guy Longworth asks whether we can gain knowledge from others.
  •  20
    Vindicating Reasons
    The Monist 105 (4): 558-573. 2022.
    What is the philosophical role of an historical account of how someone, or some people, came to believe or value as they do? I consider some proposals, due to Bernard Williams and David Wiggins, according to which such an account might either vindicate or subvert our believing or valuing as we do. I suggest some reasons for scepticism about those proposals, at least when construed as providing a fundamental means of assessing cases of believing or valuing. The main problem raised for the proposa…Read more
  •  17
    Knowing, knowing perspicuously, and knowing how one knows
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 98 (4): 530-543. 2021.
    In Knowing and Seeing, Michael Ayers presents a view of what he calls primary knowledge according to which one who knows in that way both knows perspicuously and knows how they know. Here, I use some general considerations about seeing, knowing, and knowing how one knows in order to raise some questions about this view. More specifically, I consider some putative limits on one’s capacity to know how one knows. The main question I pursue concerns whether perspicuity should be thought of either (i…Read more
  •  13
    M. W. Rowe’s outstanding book is the first full-dress biography of the philosopher J. L. (John Langshaw) Austin, who died in 1960 aged 48. During his comparatively short life, Austin made significa...
  •  9
    Illocution and understanding
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    What are the connections between the successful performance of illocutionary acts and audience understanding or uptake of their performance? According to one class of proposals, audience understanding suffices for successful performance. I explain how those proposals emerge from earlier work and seek to clarify some of their interrelations.
  •  4
    Prospects for a Truth-conditional Account of Standing Meaning
    In Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 195-222. 2012.
  •  3
    Semantics and Pragmatics
    In Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.
    Contemporary recognition of the importance of divisions amongst pragmatic and semantic phenomena has its roots in earlier recognition of the importance of pragmatic phenomena. This chapter begins with the idea that semantics concerns the stable meanings of words and expressions while pragmatics concerns language use, or things done with words. It provides some grounds for rejecting, a defense of orthodoxy that sought to treat the variations that Charles Travis highlights as occurring only with r…Read more
  • A plea for understanding
    In Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New waves in philosophy of language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.