Jennifer Hornsby

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

This chapter replies to arguments, advanced by Gonzalo Rodriguez–Pereyra, for thinking that the intuitions that have inspired theories of truthmaking cannot be accommodated without commitment to truth-making entities. It contains a suggestion about why, even if there are no entities that make propositions true, we should nonetheless be apt to think of truth as grounded. The advocates of truthmakers engage sometimes in a specifically ontological enquiry of a wide-ranging sort, sometimes in the project of understanding truth. Inasmuch as Rodriguez–Pereyra's manner of defending a truthmaker principle makes connections with both of these projects, the objections to his account made in the chapter rebound on them both.

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.

Intellectualists tell us that a person who knows how to do something therein knows a proposition. Along with others, they may say that a person who intends to do something intends a proposition. I argue against them. I do so by way of considering ‘know how ——’ and ‘intend ——’ together. When the two are considered together, a realistic conception of human agency can inform the understanding of some infinitives: the argument need not turn on what semanticists have had to say about ‘the subjects of infinitival clauses’

Book synopsis: The causal theory of action is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency—the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action ; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action -oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues.

We know what one dualist account of human action looks like, because Descartes gave us one. I want to explore the extent ot which presnet-day accounts of physical action are vulnerable to the charges that may be made against Descartes's dualist account. I once put forward an account of human action, and I have always maintained that my view about the basic shape of a correct ‘theory of aciton’ can be combined with a thoroughgoing opposition to dualism. But the possibility of the combination has been doubted and it will remain doubtful until we have a better understanding of what makes an account objectionably dualistic. In this paper, I hope to deflect some of the criticims aimed what I shall call my account, and to show that when they are turned onto their proper path their actual target is some physicalist accounts

Book synopsis: The latest volume of the critically acclaimed Library of Living Philosophers series is devoted to the work of analytic philosopher Donald Davidson. Following the standard LLP format, Davidson discusses his life and philosophical development in an intellectual autobiography. This is followed by 31 critical essays by distinguished scholars; Davidson replies to each of these essays. Although Donald Davidson is considered an analytic philosopher, his thought straddles many areas of philosophy. One of his greatest contributions is the development of a philosophical system based on his theory of mind and language, but he has also worked on theory of action, philosophy of language, decision theory, psychology, epistemology, ethics, the concept of truth, and the concept of objectivity. Davidson is a former Carus Lecturer who has held more than twenty distinguished lectureships and research fellowships at universities in this country and abroad, including Queens College, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Peru. He is currently professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley.