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25If ‘Leveson and Women’ were a headline in a tabloid newspaper, a salacious story would probably follow. ‘Leveson and Women’ is my title, but I have nothing salacious to say, although I shall talk about the scandalous behaviour of the British press. I gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. I write here about how I came to do so, about how the inquiry came into being, and about the controversy that the inquiry and its report continue to provoke.
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42Book 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 fo…Read more
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152A disjunctivist conception of acting for reasonsIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: perception, action, knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.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 con…Read more
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439Physicalism, conceptual analysis and acts of faithIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 43. 2009.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 physicali…Read more
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105Ryle's Knowing how and knowing how to actIn John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 80. 2011.
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458Basic ActivityAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 1-18. 2013.I present a view of activity, taking it that an agent is engaged in activity so long as an action of hers is occurring. I suggest that this view (a) helps in understanding what goes wrong in an argument in Thompson (2008) known sometimes as the ‘initial segment argument’, and (b) enables us to see that there could be an intelligible conception of what is basic when agents' knowledge is allowed into an account of that.
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326Personal and sub‐personal; A defence of Dennett's early distinctionPhilosophical Explorations 3 (1): 6-24. 2000.Since 1969, when Dennett introduced a distinction between personal and sub- personal levels of explanation, many philosophers have used 'sub- personal ' very loosely, and Dennett himself has abandoned a view of the personal level as genuinely autonomous. I recommend a position in which Dennett's original distinction is crucial, by arguing that the phenomenon called mental causation is on view only at the properly personal level. If one retains the commit-' ments incurred by Dennett's early disti…Read more
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53Arm Raising and Arm RisingPhilosophy 55 (211). 1980.I. It is a necessary condition of the truth of ‘I raised my arm’ that my arm rose; but it is not a sufficient condition. Is there some further necessary condition which, when conjoined with the condition that my arm rose, does give a sufficient condition of the truth of ‘I raised my arm’?
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276Agency and causal explanationIn Alfred R. Mele (ed.), The philosophy of action, Oxford University Press. 1997.I. There are two points of view: ___ From the personal point of view, an action is a person's doing something for a reason, and her doing it is found intelligible when we know the reason that led her to it. ___ From the impersonal point of view, an action would be a link in a causal chain that could be viewed without paying any attention to people, the links being understood by reference to the world's causal workings
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149Trying to ActIn Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Extent of Trying Trying to Move the Body Trying and Intending References Further reading.
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243The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2000.The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of …Read more
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15II—Jason Stanley: Hornsby on the Phenomenology of SpeechAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 (1): 131-145. 2005.
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67Review of 'Know How', by Jason Stanley.
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3Actions in their circumstancesIn Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby & Frederick Stoutland (eds.), Essays on Anscombe's Intention, Harvard University Press. 2011.
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125On functionalism, and on Jackson, Pargetter, and prior on functionalismPhilosophical Studies 46 (July): 75-96. 1984.
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249Agency and AlienationIn Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism In Question, Harvard University Press. pp. 173-87. 2004.It is argued that the standard story of human action, as it is standardly naturalistically understood, should be rejected. Rather than seeking an agent amidst the workings of the mind (as in Velleman's "What Happens When Someone Acts"), we need to recognize an agent’s place in the world she inhabits. And in order to do so we have to resist the naturalistic assumptions of the standard causal story.
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197Causality and “the mental”Humana Mente 8 (29). 2015.Many analytic philosophers of mind take for granted a certain conception of causality. Assumptions deriving from that conception are in place when they problematize what they call mental causation or argue for physicalism in respect of the mental. I claim that a different conception of causality is needed for understanding many ordinary causal truths about things which act, including truths about human, minded beings — sc. rational beings who lead lives.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |