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405Perspectives, fictions, errors, playIn Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and morality, Oxford University Press. pp. 281--96. 2007.
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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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5TPM EssayThe Philosophers' Magazine 52 34-42. 2011.I think it is a lapse of taste to spend a grown-up life on problems of which people in the office next door, let alone those outside the building, cannot see the point. I rather fear that the so-called semantic or logical problem of vagueness, Professor Williamson’s own showcase example of his compulsory methods, strikes me as like that.
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56Williams, Smith, and the Peculiarity of PiacularityJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2): 217--232. 2015.
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101Comments on Gibbard’s Thinking How to Live (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.University of Cambridge.
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4RepliesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 164-176. 2002.Dreier’s sympathy with expressivism is welcome, and yet he comes upon an ‘uncomfortable surprise’, in a circularity or regress that he detects in my attempt to place ethical commitments in a natural world. The circularity is that the expressivist analysis of what is going on, when we invoke norms, identifies particular states of mind: valuings, or acceptance of norms, or complexes of attitude. But states of mind are themselves normatively tainted. Hence: ‘the kernel of expressivist analysis invo…Read more
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420Errors and the Phenomology of ValueIn Thomas L. Carson & Paul K. Moser (eds.), Morality and the good life, Oxford University Press. pp. 324--337. 1997.
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229Truth (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1999.This volume is designed to set out some of the central issues in the theory of truth. It draws together, for the first time, the debates between philosophers who favor 'robust' or 'substantive' theories of truth, and those other, 'deflationist' or minimalists, who deny that such theories can be given. The editors provide a substantial introduction, in which they look at how the debates relate to further issues, such as the Liar paradox and formal truth theories.
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42. Liriope’s SonIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 35-43. 2014.
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241Critical notice of Frank Jackson, from metaphysics to ethics: A defence of conceptual analysisAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (1). 2000.(2000). Critical notice of Frank Jackson, from metaphysics to ethics: A defence of conceptual analysis. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 78, No. 1, pp. 119-124. doi: 10.1080/00048400012349401
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88Success SemanticsIn Hallvard Lillehammer & D. H. Mellor (eds.), Ramsey's Legacy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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117Interview - Simon BlackburnThe Philosophers' Magazine 40 (40): 38-39. 2008.Cambridge professor Simon Blackburn is best known to the general public as the author of several books of popular philosophy such as ink, Being Good andTruth: a Guide for the Perplexed. Academic philosophers also know him as the author of one of the most important books of contemporary moral philosophy, Ruling Passions, and as a former editor of the leading journal Mind.
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Wittgenstein and MinimalismIn B. Garrett & K. Mulligan (eds.), Themes From Wittgenstein, Anu Working Papers in Philosophy 4. pp. 1--14. 1993.
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99Précis of ruling passions (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1). 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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302Being Good: A Short Introduction to EthicsOxford University Press. 2001.This is a very short introduction to ethics. It divides into three parts: first, introducing and discussing reasons for skepticism about ethics; second introducing themes of birth, death, happiness, desire and freedom to show how deeply our lives are interwoven with ethics; third, introducing attempts to found ethics, due to Aristotle, Kant, and the contractarian tradition.
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91The idea behind expressivism as a philosophy of ethics faces a number of different challenges, and has a number of different choices to make as it tries to meet them. Perhaps the first is to specify what is the primitive of the theory, which will be something that is expressed, and is usually identified as a state of mind. Later in this paper, I shall suggest caution about this, but for the moment we can go along with it. Emotion was one suggestion, prescriptions are another, desires of various …Read more
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8016 How to be an Ethical AntirealistIn Paul K. Moser & J. D. Trout (eds.), Contemporary Materialism: A Reader, Routledge. pp. 357. 1995.
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423Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical ReasoningOxford University Press UK. 1998.Simon Blackburn puts forward a compelling original philosophy of human motivation and morality. He maintains that we cannot get clear about ethics until we get clear about human nature. So these are the sorts of questions he addresses: Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Blackburn seeks the answers in an exploration of guilt, shame, disgust, and other moral emotions; he draws also on game theory and cognitive sc…Read more
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17How can we tell whether a commitment has a truth conditionIn Charles Travis (ed.), Meaning and interpretation, Blackwell. pp. 201--232. 1986.
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107Normativity à la modeThe Journal of Ethics 5 (2): 139-153. 2001.This paper sets out to raise questions about the metaphor of the spaceof reasons. It argues that a proper appreciation of Wittgensteinundermines the metaphysical or dualistic way of taking the metaphor thatis supposed to prevent the naturalization of reason.
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University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDistinguished Research Professor (Part-time)
Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland