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57The Oxford Dictionary of PhilosophyPhilosophical Review 105 (2): 250. 1996.Within a year of each other, three one-volume general dictionaries of philosophy have recently appeared; when our future colleagues in philosophy look back on the 1990s they may well think of it as the decade of reference works. But however productive these years may prove to be in this genre, clearly visible somewhere around the top of the heap will be this handy, useful, entertaining, and instructive contribution from Simon Blackburn. Its two immediate competitors are the Cambridge Dictionary …Read more
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101Reason and PredictionCambridge University Press. 1973.An original study of the philosophical problems associated with inductive reasoning. Like most of the main questions in epistemology, the classical problem of induction arises from doubts about a mode of inference used to justify some of our most familiar and pervasive beliefs. The experience of each individual is limited and fragmentary, yet the scope of our beliefs is much wider; and it is the relation between belief and experience, in particular the belief that the future will in some respect…Read more
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448Essays in quasi-realismOxford University Press. 1993.This volume collects some influential essays in which Simon Blackburn, one of our leading philosophers, explores one of the most profound and fertile of philosophical problems: the way in which our judgments relate to the world. This debate has centered on realism, or the view that what we say is validated by the way things stand in the world, and a variety of oppositions to it. Prominent among the latter are expressive and projective theories, but also a relaxed pluralism that discourages the v…Read more
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39Interview - Simon BlackburnThe Philosophers' Magazine 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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157Justification, Scepticism, and NihilismUtilitas 7 (2): 237. 1995.Sinnott-Armstrong's paper principally defends our inability to justify, philosophically, normal moral claims. In particular, we cannot justify them against other claims, especially the claim of moral nihilism. Moral nihilism is the doctrine that there are no moral obligations. This thesis ‘does not lie in meta-ethics. It is a universally quantified substantive moral claim’. Sinnott-Annstrong makes it clear that he does not actually believe this doctrine, but he believes that it is coherent, and …Read more
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726Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of LanguageClarendon Press. 1984.Provides a comprehensive introduction to the major philosophical theories attempting to explain the workings of language.
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IndexIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 203-210. 2014.
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128The steps from doing to sayingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (1pt1): 1-13. 2010.In this paper I consider recent developments in neo-pragmatism, and in particular the degree of convergence between such approaches and those placing greater emphasis on truth and truth-makers. I urge that although a global pragmatism has its merits, it by no means closes the space for a more Wittgensteinian, finer-grained, approach to the diversity of functions served by modal, causal, moral, or other modes of thought
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70Book Review:Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy. Paul Johnston (review)Ethics 103 (3): 588-. 1993.
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335The majesty of reasonPhilosophy 85 (1): 5-27. 2010.In this paper I contemplate two phenomena that have impressed theorists concerned with the domain of reasons and of what is now called ‘normativity’. One is the much-discussed ‘externality’ of reasons. According to this, reasons are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of contingent desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we take no not…Read more
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1Opinions and chancesIn D. H. Mellor (ed.), Prospects for Pragmatism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 175--96. 1980.
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464Antirealist expressivism and quasi-realismIn David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory, Oxford University Press. pp. 146--162. 2006.Expressivism is the view that the function of normative sentences is not to represent a kind of fact, but to avow attitudes, prescribe behavior, or the like. The idea can be found in David Hume. In the 20th century, G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument provided important support for the view. Elizabeth Anscombe introduced the notion of “direction of fit,” which helped distinguish expressivism from a kind of naive subjectivism. The central advantage of expressivism is that it easily explains the m…Read more
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85Relatively speakingThink 1 (2): 83-88. 2002.Is what's true ultimately relative to your point of view? So that what's true as viewed from over here might be false if viewed from over there? In this article, Simon Blackburn grapples with the suggestion that what's true is ultimately just a matter of perspective
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223TPM EssayThe Philosophers' Magazine 52 (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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35Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-LovePrinceton University Press. 2014.Drawing on philosophy, psychology, literature, history, and popular culture, this book looks at the good and bad aspects of vanity and self-love, from the myth of Narcissus and the Christian story of the Fall to today's self-esteem industry.
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45From Empiricism to Expressivism, by Robert Brandom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015, 289pp. ISBN 978‐0‐67‐418728‐3 hb £25.95 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 25 (1): 195-199. 2017.
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18This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 2004, given by Simon Blackburn, a British philosopher.
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19. EnvoiIn Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love, Princeton University Press. pp. 187-190. 2014.
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Spreading the Word. Groundings in the Philosophy of LanguagePhilosophical Quarterly 36 (142): 65-84. 1986.
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University of North Carolina, Chapel HillDistinguished Research Professor (Part-time)
Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland