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4Spreading the Word Groundings in the Philosophy of Language /by Simon Blackburn. --. --Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, C1984. 1984.
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95Paradise regainedSupplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79 (1): 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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139Swinburne on religion and ethicsThink 7 (20): 17-21. 2008.Simon Blackburn responds to the preceding article by Richard Swinburne
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406Perspectives, fictions, errors, playIn Brian Leiter & Neil Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and morality, Oxford University Press. pp. 281--96. 2007.
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Reasons have recently occupied the centre of the theory of value. Some writers, such as Tim Scanlonthink that they are not only central, but exhaust the topic, since everything important that we want to say about the good or the valuable, or the obligatory and the required, can be phrased in terms of reason. An action is good to perform if the reasons in favour of performing it are stronger than those in favour of doing anything else or doing nothing. An action is the right thing to do, or ought…Read more
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36Reply to Geach's Russell on DenotingAnalysis 38. 1978.Professor geach's article criticized our earlier "analysis" paper on pages 48-50 of "on denoting." he took us to have offered an account of russell's earlier use of the expression "denoting phrase" which he regarded as inadequate. But we had not done so: we were interested solely in the denoting phrases which are perplexing russell on those pages, And we repeat our view that the problem which russell had found arises as much for frege's theory of reference as for russell's own earlier theory. Th…Read more
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8Has Kant Refuted Parfit?In Jonathan Dancy (ed.), Reading Parfit, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 180--201. 1997.
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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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42. Liriope’s SonIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 35-43. 2014.
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59Williams, Smith, and the Peculiarity of PiacularityJournal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (2): 217--232. 2015.
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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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422Errors and the Phenomenology of ValueIn Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and objectivity: a tribute to J.L. Mackie, Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 324--337. 1985.
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234Truth (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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118Interview - 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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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 & David Hugh Mellor (eds.), Ramsey's Legacy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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100Précis 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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University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDistinguished Research Professor (Part-time)
Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland