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3Truth, Beauty and GoodnessIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 5--295. 2010.
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Some remarks about minimalismIn Annalisa Coliva (ed.), Mind, meaning, and knowledge: themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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Ethics, religion, scienceIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. 2010.
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25Analysis, Description and the A PrioriIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 23. 2008.
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3The absolute conception : Putnam vs WilliamsIn Daniel Callcut (ed.), Reading Bernard Williams, Routledge. 2008.
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16Pascal's WagerIn Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, Oxford University Press Usa. 2000.
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115Losing your mind: Physics, identity, and folk burglar preventionIn John D. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 196. 1991.
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271Supervenience revisitedIn Ian Hacking (ed.), Exercises in Analysis: Essays by Students of Casimir Lewy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 59--74. 1984.
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155Circles, finks, smells and biconditionalsPhilosophical Perspectives 7 (Language and Logic): 259-279. 1993.
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79How to refer to private experienceProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75 201-213. 1975.Simon Blackburn; XIII*—How to Refer to Private Experience, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 201–214, https://doi.
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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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7916 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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98Précis 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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418Ruling 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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79Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist. However, in the course of the meal, some kind of observance was put in train, and it turned out I was expected to play along—put on a hat, or some such. I demurred, saying that I felt uncomfortable doing something that might be the expression o…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