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146The Awful English LanguagePhilosophical Papers 47 (1): 123-154. 2018.The ever-increasing dominance of English within analytic philosophy is an aspect of linguistic globalisation. To assess it, I first address fundamental issues in the philosophy of language. Steering a middle course between linguistic universalism and linguistic relativism, I deny that some languages might be philosophically superior to others, notably by capturing the essential categories of reality. On this background I next consider both the pros and cons of the Anglicisation of philosophy. I …Read more
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208Can Animals Judge?Dialectica 64 (1): 11-33. 2010.This article discusses the problems which concepts pose for the attribution of thoughts to animals. It locates these problems within a range of other issues concerning animal minds (section 1), and presents a ‘lingualist master argument’ according to which one cannot entertain a thought without possessing its constituent concepts and cannot possess concepts without possessing language (section 2). The first premise is compelling if one accepts the building-block model of concepts as parts of who…Read more
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35Concepts: Where Subjectivism Goes WrongPhilosophy 84 (1): 5-29. 2009.The debate about concepts has always been shaped by a contrast between subjectivism, which treats them as phenomena in the mind or head of individuals, and objectivism, which insists that they exist independently of individual minds. The most prominent contemporary version of subjectivism is Fodor's RTM. The Fregean charge against subjectivism is that it cannot do justice to the fact that different individuals cansharethe same concepts. Proponents of RTM have accepted shareability as a ‘non-nego…Read more
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39Vorprung durch Logik: The German Analytic TraditionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 44 137-166. 1999.Although at present analytic philosophy is practiced mainly in the English-speaking world, it is to a considerable part the invention of German speakers. Its emergence owes much to Russell, Moore, and American Pragmatism, but even more to Frege, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. No one would think of analytic philosophy as a specifically Anglophone phenomenon, if the Nazis had not driven many of its pioneers out of central Europe.
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38Animals, Thoughts And ConceptsSynthese 123 (1): 35-64. 2000.There are three main positions on animalthought: lingualism denies that non-linguistic animalshave any thoughts; mentalism maintains that theirthoughts differ from ours only in degree, due totheir different perceptual inputs; an intermediateposition, occupied by common sense and Wittgenstein,maintains that animals can have thoughts of a simplekind. This paper argues in favor of an intermediateposition. It considers the most important arguments infavor of lingualism, namely those inspired byDavid…Read more
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30The object of philosophy: Tugendhat’s semantical transformation of ontologyCogito 8 (3): 234-241. 1994.
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18Externalism and First-Person AuthorityThe Monist 78 (4): 515-533. 1995.If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
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11Wittgenstein and reasonIn Hans Johann Glock & J. Klagge (eds.), Glock, Hans Johann (2001). Wittgenstein and reason. In: Klagge, J. Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 195-220, . pp. 195-220. 2001.
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61All kinds of nonsenseIn E. Ammereller & E. Fischer (eds.), Glock, Hans Johann (2004). All kinds of nonsense. In: Amareller, E; Fischer, E. Wittgenstein at work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations. London: Routledge, 221-245, . pp. 221-245. 2004.
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15Wittgenstein and historyIn A. Pichler & S. Saatela (eds.), Wittgenstein: The Philosopher and His Works, . pp. 177-204. 2005.
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65Wittgenstein on truthIn W. Loffler & P. Weingartner (eds.), Knowledge and Belief: Wissen Und Glauben, . pp. 13-31. 2004.
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22This paper considers the question of whether there is a human-animal or ‘anthropological difference’. It starts with a historical introduction to the project of philosophical anthropology. Section 2 explains the philosophical quest for an anthropological difference. Sections 3–4 are methodological and explain how philosophical anthropology should be pursued in my view, namely as impure conceptual analysis. The following two sections discuss two fundamental objections to the very idea of such a d…Read more