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23How is meaning possible?— II reply to professor TennantPhilosophical Books 26 (3): 129-132. 1985.
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113The Last WordPhilosophical Review 107 (4): 653. 1998.Like all of Nagel's work, this is a book with a message: an apparently clear, simple message, forcefully presented and repeated. The message is that there is a limit to the extent to which we can "get outside" fundamental forms of thought, including logical, mathematical, scientific, and ethical thought. "Getting outside" means taking up a biological or psychological or sociological or economic or political view of ourselves as thinkers. It also inclines many people to talk of the contingency or…Read more
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141Truth: a guideOxford University Press. 2005.The author of the highly popular book Think, which Time magazine hailed as "the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy," Simon Blackburn is that rara avis--an eminent thinker who is able to explain philosophy to the general reader. Now Blackburn offers a tour de force exploration of what he calls "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy"--the age-old war over truth. The front lines of this war are well define…Read more
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85Relativism and the abolition of the otherInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (3). 2004.In this paper I consider the 'disappearing we' account of Wittgenstein's attitude to other ways of thought or other 'conceptual schemes'. I argue that there is no evidence that Wittgenstein expected the 'we' to disappear, in the manner of Davidson, and that his affinities with relativistic trains of thought in fact go much deeper.
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80Deflationism, Pluralism, Expressivism, PragmatismIn Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press. pp. 263. 2012.
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26. RespectIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 109-131. 2014.
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66Some remarks about value as a work of literatureBritish Journal of Aesthetics 50 (1): 85-88. 2010.Peter Lamarque's splendid and informative book, The Philosphy of Literature , deserves a much fuller response than I can give in this brief note. It is brimful with insights into the nature of literature, and into the debates between philosophers interested in literature, and I cannot imagine anyone failing to learn from it. The question I propose to take up is by no means the most important that Lamarque raises, nor am I even certain that I can add anything useful to his own discussion of it. Y…Read more
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458Practical tortoise raisingMind 104 (416): 695-711. 1995.In this paper I am not so much concerned with movements of the mind, as movements of the will. But my question bears a similarity to that of the tortoise. I want to ask whether the will is under the control of fact and reason, combined. I shall try to show that there is always something else, something that is not under the control of fact and reason, which has to be given as a brute extra, if deliberation is ever to end by determining the will. This is, of course, a Humean conclusion, and the o…Read more
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5Reason, virtue, and knowledgeIn Abrol Fairweather & Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (eds.), Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 15--29. 2001.
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293The Power of Russell's Criticism of Frege: 'On Denoting' pp. 48-50Analysis 38 (2). 1978.The paper analyzes the famous passage in "on denoting" where russell appears to be attacking frege's theory of the sense and reference of proper names. We argue that russell's attack has been misinterpreted and unjustly condemned. The strategy is to show what difficulties do genuinely face a two-Part theory, And then to show that it is quite easy to interpret russell as having perceived them
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3Postawy i sądyEtyka 22 105-131. 1986.The paper is an attempt to show how a theory of morality which sees moral judgements as essentially expressions of personal attitude, can nevertheless explain and justify the way in which morality seems objective, and authoritative. It explores the genesis of notions of improvement, and correctness, and truth, in moral matters, thus trying to explain our right to these concepts, which other theories, such as realism, take too much for granted.
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132Blessed are the peacemakersPhilosophical Studies 172 (4): 843-853. 2015.In this paper I explore the points of similarity and difference that distinguish expressivists such as myself from the position known as Cornell realism. I argue that there are considerable overlaps of doctrine, although these doctrines are arrived at in very different ways. I urge that Cornell realism can only benefit by taking on some of the commitments of expressivism.
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54. Hubris and the Fragile SelfIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 61-78. 2014.
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4The Inaugural Address: Paradise RegainedAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 1-14. 2005.In this paper I consider some of the vicissitudes that the epistemology of the empirical world has suffered in the last half-century. I cast doubt on some of the ruling metaphors of the area, and on the flight from empiricism and foundationalism that they have assisted. But I also reject attempts to secure a better epistemology that themselves collaborate with the same fundamental mistakes, and in particular that of a spatial conception of the mind.
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17Meaning, Reference and Necessity: New Studies in Semantics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1975.A volume of studies in philosophical logic by a group of younger philosophers in the UK. There is a core of problems in the theory of meaning which have been accorded a central importance by philosophers, logicians and theoretical linguists, and which have stimulated some of the most powerful and original work in these subjects. The contributors to the volume have a common interest in these topics, insist on their continuing and fundamental importance, and offer here a distinctive and original c…Read more
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40The Emergence of Probability By Ian Hacking Cambridge University Press, 1975, 209 pp., £5.50 (review)Philosophy 51 (198): 476-. 1976.
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52Précis of Ruling PassionsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 122-135. 2002.Ruling Passions is about human nature. It is an invitation to see human nature a certain way. It defends this way of looking at ourselves against competitors, including rational choice theory, modern Kantianism, various applications of evolutionary psychology, views that enchant our natures, and those that disenchant them in the direction of relativism or nihilism. It is a story centred upon a view of human ethical nature, which it places amongst other facets of human nature, as just one of the …Read more
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University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDistinguished Research Professor (Part-time)
Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland