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3Review of Anita Ho, Live Like Nobody is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 1-6. forthcoming.
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3Hobbes on Trade, Consumption and International OrderThe Monist 89 (2): 245-258. 2006.This paper considers Hobbes's idea that the international order is a permanent war zone, and relates it to the possibility and necessity of international trade, the dangers of certain kinds of imports, and the risks to states of trading companies.
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3HobbesRoutledge. 1986."The well-known moral and political doctrines of Leviathan have tended to overshadow Hobbes's speculations in other fields. In this book doctrines familiar from the treatises on 'Policy', as well as less familiar empirical and metaphysical theories, are given balanced consideration against the background of his philosophy of science."--Bookjacket.
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3The Insurance Market and Discriminatory PracticesIn Justine Burley & John Harris (eds.), A Companion to Genethics, Blackwell. 2004.Reviews issues in the ethics of access to health insurance based on health problems due to genetic inheritance.
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3Knowledge and Skepticism (review)Philosophical Books 32 (1): 32-33. 1991.Review of a collection edited by Keith Lehrer and Marjorie Clay (Westview Press, 1989).
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2Art, society and moralityIn Oswald Hanfling (ed.), Philosophical aesthetics: an introduction, Open University. pp. 297--347. 1992.This chapter was primarily intended to accompany an Open University course in aesthetics, and reviews a number of well-known views about social dimensions of art, from Plato to the 20th century.
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2The World from its Own Point of ViewIn Alan Malachowski (ed.), Reading Rorty, Blackwell. pp. 1-25. 1990.In this chapter, I begin by taking issue with Rorty over what is involved in the idea of the world's intrinsic nature; then I ask whether it really is advisable to dispense with higher entities and, in Rorty's phrase 'dedivinize culture." I shall suggest that Rorty caricatures the ideas he seeks to discredit and that, in particular, he gives us no very compelling reason to dispense with the idea of the world's intrinsic nature. Turning from the bad onld divinity-worshipping philosophy, science a…Read more
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2Thomas HobbesIn Steven Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Blackwell. 2002.This chapter contains section titled: Three Contributions to Science The New Optics The New Science of Natural Justice All of Science Taught from the Elements.
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2Hobbes - Arg PhilRoutledge. 2008.First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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2DescartesIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.Descartes has an unofficial, as well as an official, philosophy of science. The unofficial philosophy of science can be detected in his letters, in some of the essays that he presented as specimens of his method in 1637, in the closing pages of the Discourse on Method itself, in parts of the Principles of Philosophy, and in his physics treatise, The World. The official philosophy of science is to be found elsewhere: in the Meditations, for example, and in Parts 2 and 4 of the Discourse. There ar…Read more
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2The bankers and the "nameless virtue"In Christopher Cowton & James Dempsey (eds.), Business Ethics After the Global Financial Crisis: Lessons From the Crash, Routledge. 2019.Bankers have been slow to claim responsibility or apologise for the seismic damage of the 2008 financial crisis. How is this shortcoming to be spelled out? One possibility is by saying that the bankers failed to display what Susan Wolff calls "the nameless virtue" --the disposition to take responsibility for untoward events that occur in one's area of influence, even if we did not intend them or directly cause them. I think this diagnosis is unduly generous to leaders of banks at the centre of t…Read more
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2On saying no to history of philosophyIn Tom Sorell & Graham Alan John Rogers (eds.), Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.History of philosophy can be useful and relevant as philosophy even when philosophy is thought to be the solution of ahistorically formulated problems.
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1The science in Hobbes's politicsIn Graham Alan John Rogers & Alan Ryan (eds.), Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, Oxford University Press. 1988.The sense in which Hobbes produced a science of politics is often misunderstood. It was not a science because it was derived somehow from scientific psychology or mechanics. It was not a science in the sense that he broke down states into their component systems and their properties. Instead, it is a normative doctrine. It states precepts for citizens to escape the condition of total war, and it states precepts for sovereigns to legislate well (frame "good laws" in the sense of Leviathan, ch. 30…Read more
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1Spinoza's unstable politics of freedomIn Charles Huenemann (ed.), Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2008.
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Hobbes-Arg PhilosophersRoutledge. 1986.First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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Garber, D. Descartes Embodied (review)Philosophical Books 44 (2): 164-165. 2003.This is a review of a book by Dan Garber
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Microfinance, Rights, and Global Justice (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2015.Contributors examine the ethical issues surrounding microfinance, including questions about exploitation, human rights, and efforts to promote global justice.
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Kant's Good Will and our Good Nature. Second Thoughts about Henson and HermannKant Studien 78 (1): 87. 1987.
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The Burdensome Freedom of SovereignsIn Tom Sorell & Luc Foisneau (eds.), Leviathan After 350 Years, Clarendon Press. 2004.The freedom of A Hobbesian sovereign is limited by the freedom of other sovereigns but is otherwise extremely extensive. The other side of the coin of this wide latitude, however, are the huge responsibilities and practical challenges of seeing to the good of the people. This involves both the compulsion of obedience and the permission of enterprise on the part of the many. It also calls for equity in the application of law. Overall, the burdensomeness of sovereignty probably vastly outweighs th…Read more
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Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with ScienceRoutledge. 1991.First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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Schmitt, Hobbes and the politics of emergencyFilozofski Vestnik 24 (2): 223-241. 2003.This paper discusses the disanalogies between Schmitt and Hobbes on responses to emergencies, such as civil disorder. (The paper engages with literature that claims a greater common ground between the two figures than there actually is.)
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Ethics and Work in Emergencies: the UK Fire Service Strike 2002-3In Ashly Pinnington, Rob Macklin & Tom Campbell (eds.), Human Resource Management: Ethics and Employment, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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Descartes (review)Philosophical Books 28 (4): 209-211. 1987.This is a review of a book by John Cottingham
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The rise of modern philosophy. The tension between the new and traditional philosophies from Machiavelli to LeibnizRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 184 (1): 131-133. 1994.
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Seventeenth-century materialismIn G. H. R. Parkinson (ed.), The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, Routledge. 1993.An article focusing on Hobbes and Gassendi
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Idealism, realism and Rorty's pragmatism without methodIn Paul Coates & Daniel Hutto (eds.), Current Issues in Idealism, Thoemmes. pp. 1-22. 1996.Rorty maintains that idealism and realism are dead ends and that somewhere beyond them is a better philosophy--a special kind of pragmatism--without the pretensions or illusions of what it supersedes. Unfortunately, the view of philosophy that Rorty puts forward is neither independently attractive nor easy to understand as a wholesome middle way between idealism and realism. In some ways it is hard to recognise as a view of philosophy at all. I argue for something closer to Thomas Nagel's view o…Read more
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Descartes ReinventedCambridge University Press. 2005.In this study, Tom Sorell seeks to rehabilitate views that are often instantly dismissed in analytic philosophy. His book serves as a reinterpretation of Cartesianism and responds directly to the dislike of Descartes in contemporary philosophy. To identify what is defensible in Cartesianism, Sorell starts with a picture of unreconstructed Cartesianism, which is characterized as realistic, antisceptical but respectful of scepticism, rationalist, centered on the first person, dualist, and dubious …Read more
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Descartes 'Meditattons': Background Source MaterialsTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 61 (4): 830-831. 1999.
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Values and Secondary QualitiesRatio (Misc.) 27 (2). 1985.Criticises the reduction of rightness and wrongness to the emotional reaction of an impartial observer to actions.
University of Oxford
DPhil, 1978
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Other Academic Areas |