•  57
    More 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
  •  128
    Quasi‐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
  •  3
    Review of S. Lavine, Understanding the Infinite (review)
    Philosophia Mathematica 3 (3). 1995.
  • Shaughan Lavine, Understanding the Infinite
    Philosophia Mathematica 3 (3): 294-294. 1995.
  • I Kant ’s Opus Postumum (review)
    Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 27 21-25. 1993.
  •  117
    Not to be taken at face value
    Analysis 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
  •  36
    The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A. W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised.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
  •  5
    Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Mathematics
    In Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-blackwell. 2017.
    The philosophy of mathematics was of colossal importance to Wittgenstein. Its problems had a peculiarly strong hold on him; and he seems to have thought that it was in addressing these problems that he produced his greatest work. However robust the distinction between the calculus and the surrounding prose, the prose may infect the calculus; or the prose may infect how we couch the calculus. Yet Wittgenstein's writings in the philosophy of mathematics stand in a curious relation to this self‐ass…Read more
  •  18
    Wittgenstein and Transcendental Idealism
    In Guy Kahane, Edward Kanterian & Oskari Kuusela (eds.), Wittgenstein and His Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.
    This chapter contains section titled: Introduction1 Was the Early Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist? Was the Later Wittgenstein a Transcendental Idealist?
  • Book Reviews (review)
    Philosophia Mathematica 3 (3): 294-298. 1995.
  •  1
    Book Reviews (review)
    Philosophia Mathematica 4 (3): 292-293. 1996.
  •  35
    Frege's permutation argument
    with Andrew Rein
    Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 28 (1): 51-54. 1987.
  •  4
    Quine
    In Christopher Belshaw & Gary Kemp (eds.), 12 Modern Philosophers, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Carnap's Logical Positivism Quine's Naturalism The External/Internal Distinction and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction The Indeterminacy of Translation Quine's Conception of Philosophy I: Metaphysics Quine's Conception of Philosophy II: Ontology Quine's Influence References.
  •  443
    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
  •  101
    Taming the infinite
    Foundations 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.
  •  18
    The Philosophy of W. V. Quine (review)
    Idealistic Studies 22 (3): 271-273. 1992.
    This is volume XVIII in the Library of Living Philosophers. It contains Quine’s intellectual autobiography, “approximately one fifth [of which] recurs sporadically” in the much more inclusive The Time of My Life ; there follow twenty-four critical essays covering all aspects of his work by some of the most eminent living philosophers, with a reply by Quine to each; and finally there is a bibliography of his publications, running, remarkably, to eighteen pages and including seventeen books. The v…Read more
  •  117
    Maxims and thick ethical concepts
    Ratio 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
  •  40
    The Infinite
    Philosophical Quarterly 41 (164): 348. 1991.
    Anyone who has pondered the limitlessness of space and time, or the endlessness of numbers, or the perfection of God will recognize the special fascination of this question. Adrian Moore's historical study of the infinite covers all its aspects, from the mathematical to the mystical
  •  226
    On Saying and Showing: A. W. Moore
    Philosophy 62 (242). 1987.
    This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that a saying/showing distinction arises there to…Read more