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28Propositional Attitudes, Intentional Contents and Other Representationalist MythsIn Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Volker Munz & Annalisa Coliva (eds.), Mind, Language and Action: Proceedings of the 36th International Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 523-548. 2015.
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4Wittgenstein on conceptsIn Arif Ahmed (ed.), Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations: a critical guide, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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85Wittgenstein and Quine (edited book)Routledge. 1996.This unique study brings together for the first time two of the most important philosophers of this century. Never before have these two thinkers been compared - and commentators' opinions on their relationship differ greatly. Are the views of Wittgenstein and Quine on method and the nature of philosophy comparable or radically opposed? Does Wittgenstein's concept of language engender that of Quine, or threaten its philosophical foundations? An understanding of the similarities and differences b…Read more
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14Vygotsky and mead on the self, meaning and internalisationStudies in Soviet Thought 31 (2): 131-148. 1986.
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131According to a venerable tradition in philosophy and linguistics, expressions have meaning through being subject to conventions or rules. This claim has become a central topic of contemporary philosophy of language and mind in the wake of Wittgenstein and Kripke, largely because the normativity of meaning is regarded as a serious challenge to naturalism. One reaction to this challenge is to deny that the normativity of meaning is genuine. While there are ‘semantic principles’ specifying conditio…Read more
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48The indispensability of translation in Quine and DavidsonPhilosophical Quarterly 44 (171): 194-209. 1994.
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200Doing Good by Splitting Hairs? Analytic Philosophy and Applied EthicsJournal of Applied Philosophy 28 (3): 225-240. 2011.This article explores the connections between analytic philosophy and applied ethics — both historical and substantive. Historically speaking, applied ethics is a child of analytic philosophy. It arose as the result of two factors in the 1960s: the re-emergence of normative ethics on the one hand, and urgent social and political challenges on the other. But is there a significant substantive link between applied ethics and analytic philosophy? I argue that applied ethics inherited important ‘ana…Read more
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189Can Animals Act For Reasons?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 52 (3): 232-254. 2009.This essay argues that non-linguistic animals qualify not just for externalist notions of rationality (maximizing biological fitness or utility), but also for internal ones. They can act for reasons in several senses: their behaviour is subject to intentional explanations, they can act in the light of reasons - provided that the latter are conceived as objective facts rather than subjective mental states - and they can deliberate. Finally, even if they could not, it would still be misguided to m…Read more
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148Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and RealityCambridge University Press. 2003.Quine and Davidson are among the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. Their influence on contemporary philosophy is second to none, and their impact is also strongly felt in disciplines such as linguistics and psychology. This book is devoted to both of them, but also questions some of their basic assumptions. Hans-Johann Glock critically scrutinizes their ideas on ontology, truth, necessity, meaning and interpretation, thought and language, and shows that their attempts to accommodate mea…Read more
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80Stroud's Defence of Cartesian Scepticism -A 'Linguistic' ResponsePhilosophical Investigations 13 (1): 44-64. 1990.
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102Animal Minds: A Non-Representationalist ApproachAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 50 (3): 213-232. 2013.Do animals have minds? We have known at least since Aristotle that humans constitute one species of animal. And some benighted contemporaries apart, we also know that most humans have minds. To have any bite, therefore, the question must be restricted to non-human animals, to which I shall henceforth refer simply as "animals." I shall further assume that animals are bereft of linguistic faculties. So, do some animals have minds comparable to those of humans? As regards that question, there are t…Read more
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2Necessity, a priority and analyticity: a Wittgensteinian perspectiveIn Daniel Whiting (ed.), The later Wittgenstein on language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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181The linguistic doctrine revisitedGrazer Philosophische Studien 66 (1): 143-170. 2003.At present, there is an almost universal consensus that the linguistic doctrine of logical necessity is grotesque. This paper explores avenues for rehabilitating a limited version of the doctrine, according to which the special status of analytic statements like 'All vixens are female' is to be explained by reference to language. Far from being grotesque, this appeal to language has a respectable philosophical pedigree and chimes with common sense, as Quine came to realize. The problem lies in d…Read more
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61Subjective, intersubjective, objectivePhilosophical Investigations 26 (4). 2003.Books reviewed: Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective.
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308Concepts, conceptual schemes and grammarPhilosophia 37 (4): 653-668. 2009.This paper considers the connection between concepts, conceptual schemes and grammar in Wittgenstein’s last writings. It lists eight claims about concepts that one can garner from these writings. It then focuses on one of them, namely that there is an important difference between conceptual and factual problems and investigations. That claim draws in its wake other claims, all of them revolving around the idea of a conceptual scheme, what Wittgenstein calls a ‘grammar’. I explain why Wittgenstei…Read more
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144Reviews lot 2: The language of thought revisited by Jerry A. Fodor oxford university press, 2008Philosophy 85 (1): 164-167. 2010.
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87'Analytic versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy', by James Chase and Jack ReynoldsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2): 398-402. 2012.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-5, Ahead of Print.
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1Perspectives on Wittgenstein : an intermittently opinionated surveyIn Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian & Oskari Kuusela (eds.), Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.
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44Wie wichtig ist Erkenntnistheorie?Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 56 (1). 2002.In der zeitgenössischen analytischen Philosophe wird oft behauptet, die Erkenntnistheorie sei weniger fundamental als die Ontologie, da sich aus Aussagen über unser Erkenntnisvermögen keine Aussagen über die Wirklichkeit ableiten lassen und die Frage nach der Beschaffenheit der Wirklichkeit der Frage nach ihrer Erkennbarkeit vorausgeht. Dagegen verteidige ich folgende Thesen: eine Form der Erkenntnistheorie—die Auseinandersetzung mit der Skepsis —ist nicht fundamental; eine andere Form—die Ausei…Read more
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20Wittgenstein's `Philosophical Investigations': Text and ContextPhilosophical Quarterly 44 (176): 392-394. 1994.
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2Meaning, rules, and conventionsIn David K. Levy & Edoardo Zamuner (eds.), Wittgenstein’s Enduring Arguments, Routledge. 2008.
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261Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays for P. M. S. Hacker (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2009.Thirteen leading contributors offer new essays in honour of the eminent philosopher and Wittgenstein scholar Peter Hacker. They discuss issues in the interpretation of Wittgenstein, investigate central topics in the history of analytic philosophy, and explore and assess Wittgensteinian ideas about language, mind, action, ethics, and religion.
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1The influence of Wittgenstein on American philosophyIn Cheryl Misak (ed.), The Oxford handbook of American philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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3Does language require conventionsIn Pasquale Frascolla, Diego Marconi & Alberto Voltolini (eds.), Wittgenstein: Mind, Meaning and Metaphilosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 85--112. 2010.
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119Concepts, abilities, and propositionsGrazer Philosophische Studien 81 (1): 115-134. 2010.This article investigates whether the concept of a concept can be given a fairly uniform explanation through a 'cognitivist' account, one that accepts that concepts exist independently of individual subjects, yet nonetheless invokes mental achievements and capacities. I consider various variants of such an account, which identify a concept, respectively, with a certain kind of abilitiy, rule and way of thinking. All of them are confronted with what I call the 'proposition problem', namely that u…Read more
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205Relativism, commensurability and translatabilityRatio 20 (4). 2007.This paper discusses conceptual relativism. The main focus is on the contrasting ideas of Wittgenstein and Davidson, with Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Hacker in supporting roles. I distinguish conceptual from alethic and ontological relativism, defend a distinction between conceptual scheme and empirical content, and reject the Davidsonian argument against the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes: there can be conceptual diversity without failure of translation, and failure of translatio…Read more