-
555The underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction and the analytic/synthetic distinctionErkenntnis 46 (1): 5-32. 1997.Two of Quine's most familiar doctrines are: that there is a distinction between underdetermination and indeterminacy; and that there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. An argument is given that these two doctrines are incompatible. In terms wholly acceptable to Quine and based on the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, an exhaustive and exclusive distinction is drawn between two kinds of true sentences, which, it is argued, corresponds to the traditional analytic/…Read more
-
440What are these Familiar Words Doing Here?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51 147-171. 2002.This essay is concerned with six linguistic moves that we commonly make, each of which is considered in turn. These are: stating rules of representation; representing things categorically; mentioning expressions; saying truly or falsely how things are; saying vaguely how things are; and stating rules of rules of representation. A common-sense view is defended of what is involved in our doing each of these six things against a much more sceptical view emanating from the idea that linguistic behav…Read more
-
435Bird on Kant's Mathematical AntinomiesKantian Review 16 (2): 235-243. 2011.This essay is concerned with Graham Bird’s treatment, in The Revolutionary Kant, of Kant’s mathematical antinomies. On Bird’s interpretation, our error in these antinomies is to think that we can settle certain issues about the limits of physical reality by pure reason whereas in fact we cannot settle them at all. On the rival interpretation advocated in this essay, it is not true that we cannot settle these issues. Our error is to presuppose that the concept of the unconditioned has application…Read more
-
425Ineffability and religionEuropean Journal of Philosophy 11 (2). 2003.It is argued that, although there are no ineffable truths, the concept of ineffability nevertheless does have application—to certain states of knowledge. Towards the end of the essay this idea is related to religion: it is argued that the language that results from attempting (unsuccessfully) to put ineffable knowledge into words is very often of a religious kind. An example of this is given at the very end of the essay. This example concerns the Euthyphro question: whether what is right is righ…Read more
-
376The metaphysics of perspective: Tense and colour (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2). 2004.This essay is a contribution to a symposium on Barry Stroud’s book The Quest for Reality. It exploits various analogies between tense and colour to defend the idea, about which Stroud is deeply sceptical, that we can successfully undertake what Stroud calls ‘the philosophical quest for reality’—more specifically, to defend the idea that we can do this by arguing that any fact can be represented from no point of view.
-
351Review: One or Two Dogmas of Objectivism (review)Mind 108 (430). 1999.This essay is a critical notice of Thomas Nagel’s The Last Word. Though the essay evidences broad sympathy with the spirit of Nagel’s book, its main burden is to query the letter of the book. Nagel’s defence of the view that there are certain beliefs and ways of thinking that are not from any point of view, or that are ‘objective’ in his own terms, is criticized on the grounds that it is too facile. It is also criticized for not being pitted against a critique of beliefs and ways of thinking tha…Read more
-
290Apperception and the Unreality of TenseIn Christoph Hoerl & Teresa McCormack (eds.), Time and memory: issues in philosophy and psychology, Oxford University Press. pp. 375-391. 2001.The aim of this essay is to characterize the issue whether tense is real. Roughly, this is the issue whether, given any tensed representation, its tense corresponds in some suitably direct way to some feature of reality. The task is to make this less rough. Eight characterizations of the issue are considered and rejected, before one is endorsed. On this characterization, the unreality of tense is equivalent to the unity of temporal reality. The issue whether tense is real, so characterized, is t…Read more
-
191Quasi‐realism and Relativism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1). 2002.1. If it is true that ‘an ethic is the propositional reflection of the dispositions and attitudes, policies and stances, of people,’ as Simon Blackburn says in summary of the quasi-realism that he champions in this excellent and wonderfully provocative book, then it seems to follow that different dispositions, attitudes, policies and stances—different conative states, for short—will issue in different ethics, each with an equal claim to truth; and this in turn seems to be one thing that could be…Read more
-
188Kantian humility: Our ignorance of things in themselvesPhilosophical Review 110 (1): 117-120. 2001.Kant once wrote, “Many historians of philosophy... let the philosophers speak mere nonsense.... They cannot see beyond what the philosophers actually said to what they really meant to say.’ Rae Langton begins her book with this quotation. She concludes it, after a final pithy summary of the position that she attributes to Kant, with the comment, “That, it seems to me, is what Kant said, and meant to say”. In between are some two hundred pages of admirably clear, tightly argued exegesis, suppleme…Read more
-
164Reason, freedom and Kant: An exchangeKantian Review 12 (1): 113-133. 2007.According to Kant, being purely rational or purely reasonable and being autonomously free are one and the same thing. But how can this be so? How can my innate capacity for pure reason ever motivate me to do anything, whether the right thing or the wrong thing? What I will suggest is that the fundamental connection between reason and freedom, both for Kant and in reality, is precisely our human biological life and spontaneity of the will, a conjunctive intrinsic structural property of our animal…Read more
-
133Not to be taken at face valueAnalysis 69 (1): 116-125. 2009.It is a long time since I have admired a book as much as I admire this one. It is a long time since I have disagreed with a book as profoundly as I disagree with this one. I hope this combination of reactions on my part has more than whatever limited biographical interest it has. I hope it helps to signal the combination of excellence and provocation that mark Timothy Williamson's book, which is at once beautifully clear, forcefully argued, continually insightful, and, in my view, deeply wrong.O…Read more
-
126Maxims and thick ethical conceptsRatio 19 (2). 2006.I begin with Kant's notion of a maxim and consider the role which this notion plays in Kant's formulations of the fundamental categorical imperative. This raises the question of what a maxim is, and why there is not the same requirement for resolutions of other kinds to be universalizable. Drawing on Bernard Williams' notion of a thick ethical concept, I proffer an answer to this question which is intended neither in a spirit of simple exegesis nor as a straightforward exercise in moral philosop…Read more
-
111Taming the infiniteFoundations of Science 2 (1): 53-56. 1997.For over two thousand years thought about the infinite was dominated by Aristotelian hostility to the idea that the infinite could be a legitimate object of mathematical study. Then Cantor's work late in the nineteenth century seemed to overturn this orthodoxy. However, by highlighting ways in which infinitude still could not be brought under the control of mathematicians, Cantor's work may in fact have reinforced the orthodoxy.
-
104More on 'The Philosophical Significance of Gödel's Theorem'Grazer Philosophische Studien 55 (1): 103-126. 1998.In Michael Dummett's celebrated essay on Gödel's theorem he considers the threat posed by the theorem to the idea that meaning is use and argues that this threat can be annulled. In my essay I try to show that the threat is even less serious than Dummett makes it out to be. Dummett argues, in effect, that Gödel's theorem does not prevent us from "capturing" the truths of arithmetic; I argue that the idea that meaning is use does not require that we be able to "capture" these truths anyway. Towar…Read more
-
102The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of ThingsCambridge University Press. 2011.This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide …Read more
-
96Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as ScienceTopoi 33 (1): 277-283. 2014.It is only two years since Immanuel Kant published his monumental Critique of Pure Reason.As part of entering into the spirit of this ‘untimely review’, I shall pretend that only the first edition of the Critique exists. This has a bearing on some claims that I shall make about differences between the content of the Prolegomena and that of the Critique. Despite its formidable difficulty, that book has already generated intense interest in the philosophical community. Those who are still struggli…Read more
-
80Points of ViewClarendon Press. 1997.A. W. Moore argues in this bold and unusual book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude. 'imaginative, original, and ambitious' Robert Brandom, Times Literary Supplement.
-
76Towards a New Philosophical ImaginaryAngelaki 25 (1-2): 8-22. 2020.The paper builds on the postulate of “myths we live by,” which shape our imaginative life (and hence our social expectations), but which are also open to reflective study and reinvention. It applies this principle, in particular, to the concepts of love and vulnerability. We are accustomed to think of the condition of vulnerability in an objectifying and distancing way, as something that affects the bearers of specific (disadvantaged) social identities. Against this picture, which can serve as a…Read more
-
68Was the author of the Tractatus a transcendental idealist?In Peter Sullivan & Michael Potter (eds.), Wittgenstein's Tractatus: history and interpretation, Oxford University Press. pp. 239. 2013.
-
65Kant and the historical turn: Philosophy as critical interpretation - by Karl AmeriksPhilosophical Books 49 (2): 149-150. 2008.
-
62Wittgenstein and transcendental idealismIn Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian & Oskari Kuusela (eds.), Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 174--199. 2007.
-
56The Human A Priori: Essays on How We Make Sense in Philosophy, Ethics, and MathematicsOxford University Press. 2023.The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A. W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised. These essays are all concerned, more or less directly, with something ineliminably anthropocentric in our systematic pursuit of a priori sense-making. Part I deals with the nature, scope, and limits of a priori sense-making in general. Parts II, III, and IV deal with what are often thought to be the three great exemplars of the systematic pursuit of such sense-making: philoso…Read more
-
54Privacy, Interests, and Inalienable RightsMoral Philosophy and Politics 5 (2): 327-355. 2018.Some rights are so important for human autonomy and well-being that many scholars insist they should not be waived, traded, or abandoned. Privacy is a recent addition to this list. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that privacy is a mere unimportant interest or preference. This paper defends a middle path between viewing privacy as an inalienable, non-waivable, non-transferrable right and the view of privacy as a mere subjective interest. First, an account of privacy is offered that…Read more
-
50Review of P. Mancosu, ed., From Brouwer to Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s (review)Philosophia Mathematica 7 (1): 126-128. 1999.
-
49In this bold and innovative new work, A.W. Moore poses the question of whether it is possible for ethical thinking to be grounded in pure reason. In order to understand and answer this question, he takes a refreshing and challenging look at Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. Identifying three Kantian Themes – morality, freedom and religion – and presenting variations on each of these themes in turn, Moore concedes that there are difficulties with the Kantian view that morality can be governe…Read more
-
47Privacy in the FamilyIn Beate Roessler & Dorota Mokrosinska (eds.), The Social Dimensions of Privacy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 104-121. 2015.While the balance between individual privacy and government monitoring or corporate surveillance has been a frequent topic across numerous disciplines, the issue of privacy within the family has been largely ignored in recent privacy debates. Yet privacy intrusions between parents and children or between adult partners or spouses can be just as profound as those found in the more “public spheres” of life. Popular access to increasingly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance technologies …Read more
Seattle, Washington, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
3 more
Applied Ethics |
Business Ethics |
Technology Ethics |
Social Ethics |
Political Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Value Theory, Miscellaneous |