Jennifer Hornsby

Book synopsis: The only anthology devoted exclusively to the topic of pornography and censorship that is designed as a textbook. Its aim is threefold: To make students aware of the vast scope of arguments concerning both the nature of pornography and what ought to be done about it; the fact that there is more than one feminist position on pornography; and the complexity of arguments about free speech. Balanced and up-to-date, the book is sensitive to the variety of feminist positions on pornography without being a feminist book and is also sensitive to the complexity of free speech issues.

Book synopsis: This volume contains nine previously unpublished papers which were originally given at the conference «Thought and Ontology» held in the Centro di Studi sulla Filosofia Contemporanea in Genova.The general theme is the relation between thought and the world.Must we regard thought and world as distinct categories? Might there be quite different conceptual schemes? Can either the content of thought or the way thought is justified be independent of the world? Is truth some kind of match between thought and world, or could the relevant relation be identity? Does the distinction between veridical and illusory perception lie wholly outside the subject? Is language, the main vehicle of thought, just a natural phenomenon, or does its special involvement with normativity place it in a special category? What lesson can be drawn from our use of language to refer?

Book synopsis: Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists—whether human or nonhuman. The new faith says science, not man, is the measure of all things. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism. The many prominent Anglo-American philosophers appearing in this book—Akeel Bilgrami, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, John Dupré, Jennifer Hornsby, Erin Kelly, John McDowell, Huw Price, Hilary Putnam, Carol Rovane, Barry Stroud, and Stephen White—do not march in lockstep, yet their contributions demonstrate mutual affinities and various unifying themes. Instead of attempting to force human nature into a restricted scientific image of the world, these papers represent an attempt to place human nature at the center of renewed—but still scientifically respectful—conceptions of philosophy and nature.

Book synopsis: The book illustrates the concept of action in three different contexts - the justification of actions, people's life history, and pragmatism. The special feature of this book is that a comprehensive view of this kind marks a departure from the atomistic approach of action theory, which in itself raises a number of questions. If actions are not justified by mental states, how can persons then act for reasons? How can persons' actions over time be described, and what is the connection with the question of personal identity? If there is to be a unified understanding of the person, does the practical have to take precedence over the theoretical, and what does this mean for epistemology, for example? The ten contributors to this volume engage in an instructive manner with these and similar questions in the three sections of the book.

I maintain that an account of knowledge how to do something – an account which might be supposed to uncover ‘the nature’ of such knowledge – can't be got by considering what linguists tell us is expressed in ascriptions of knowing how. Attention must be paid to the knowledge that is actually being exercised when someone is doing something. I criticize some claims about ascriptions of knowledge-how which derive from contemporary syntactic and semantic theory. I argue that these claims can no more provide an understanding of what it is to intend to do something than of what it is to know how to do something. Philosophy, not linguistics, must be the source of such understanding.

I speak to some of Frederick Stoutland’s thinking over the years. In his last published paper, Stoutland brought together Davidson’s accounts of action and of perception, taking both to belong in a picture “of how we are related to the world” which “has its roots in the Cartesian revolution.” I suggest that Stoutland’s early criticisms of Davidson’s account of action expose the faults in such a picture. And I try to point up the attractions of a different picture in which Davidson’s account of perception fits no better than his account of action.

Book synopsis: Background In 1998 Routledge published the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy to critical acclaim. The first multi-volume Encyclopedia to be published in the discipline in over thirty years, REP is now regarded as the definitive resource in the field. Featuring 2,000 original entries from a team of over 1,300 of the world's most respected scholars and philosophers, REP swiftly accumulated rave reviews and awards, including selection by Library Journal as one of its 50 Sources for the Millenium, and recognition as an Outstanding Reference Source by the American Library Association. Not content with resting on their laurels, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy editorial team, led by Professor Edward Craig, then began work on a fully searchable and extensively cross-referenced dynamic Web version, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online. REP Online expands this acclaimed Encyclopedia well beyond print reference boundaries. The full content of the classic 10-volume set remains at its core, but REP Online is also a living, growing resource designed to grow along with the discipline itself. Taking full advantage of the flexibility of the Web format, each year the REP editorial team brings a diverse range of new material, including newly commissioned entries by leading scholars, making REP Online the essential philosophy reference for faculty and students in a wide range of disciplines. As well as regular additions of new articles, REP Online also provides editorially reviewed links to other sites and resources on the web, revisions and updates of key entries, and periodic upgrades of the user environment. In keeping with the 1998 print set's tradition of first class editorial work and unparalleled breadth of subject matter, all new and revised entries are carefully integrated into the REP style and format and are connected to earlier material by the same kind and level of cross-referencing. Key Features · Covers an unparalleled breadth of subject matter, including Anglo-American, ethical and political, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, continental and contemporary philosophy · Over 25,000 hot-linked cross-references between articles and new links to other editorially reviewed websites · An invaluable resource for all levels of users - students and general readers gain a rapid orientation with accessible summaries at the beginning of every in-depth article. There are 30 overview (signpost) articles which map their subject areas · Regularly upgraded with new material, revisions, and bibliographic updates, REP provides access to the latest scholarship and major developments in philosphical inquiry worldwide

A disjunctivist conception of acting for reasons is introduced by way of showing that a view of acting for reasons must give a place to knowledge. Two principal claims are made. 1. This conception has a rôle analogous to that of the disjunctive conception that John McDowell recommends in thinking about perception; and when the two disjunctivist conceptions are treated as counterparts, they can be shown to have work to do in combination. 2. This conception of acting for reasons safeguards the connection between considerations that move us to act in particular ways and considerations that favour our acting in particular ways.

Frank Jackson and the author each take the other to hold a position in philosophy of mind that it is extremely difficult to sustain. This chapter tries to say something about how that can be. It seeks to demonstrate the sanity of Jackson's opponents and the fragility of his own position than to hold out for the truth of any particular doctrine. It wants to bring to the surface an assumption in ontology, which is seen as a crucial part of the grounding of Jackson's particular version of physicalism. Once it is appreciated that this assumption is contestable, Jackson's opponents may be seen in a different light from the one in which they appear in his writings. More generally, a connection will appear between the vast literature on physicalism as a topic in philosophy of mind and the equally vast literature on material constitution as a topic in metaphysics

Among philosophical questions about human agency, one can distinguish in a rough and ready way between those that arise in philosophy of mind and those that arise in ethics. In philosophy of mind, one central aim has been to account for the place of agents in a world whose operations are supposedly ‘physical’. In ethics, one central aim has been to account for the connexion between ethical species of normativity and the distinctive deliberative and practical capacities of human beings. Ethics then is involved with questions of moral psychology whose answers admit a kind of richness in the life of human beings from which the philosophy of mind may ordinarily prescind. Philosophy of mind, insofar as it treats the phenomenon of agency as one facet of the phenomenon of mentality, has been more concerned with how there can be ‘mental causation’ than with any details of a story of human motivation or of the place of evaluative commitments within such a story.