Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  2485
    Why Do We Believe What We Are Told?
    Ratio (1): 69-88. 1986.
    It is argued that reliance on the testimony of others cannot be viewed as reliance on a kind of evidence. Speech being essentially voluntary, the speaker cannot see his own choice of words as evidence of their truth, and so cannot honestly offer them to others as such. Rather, in taking responsibility for the truth of what he says, the speaker offers a guarantee or assurance of its truth, and in believing him the hearer accepts this assurance. I argue that, contrary to appearances, this account …Read more
  •  535
    Rationality and the Reactive Attitudes
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 4 (1): 45-58. 2008.
    In Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment”, the idea of the reactive attitudes is used to provide a corrective for an over-intellectualised picture of moral responsibility and of the moral life generally. But Strawson also tells us that in reasoning with someone our attitude towards them must be reactive. Taking up that thought, I argue that Strawson has also provided us with a corrective for an over-intellectualised picture of rationality. Drawing on a Wittgensteinian conception of the relation bet…Read more
  •  508
    The status of altruism
    Mind 92 (366): 204-218. 1983.
    It is argued that to possess the concept of distress is to be able to apply the concept to others, and that this implies a qualified form of altruism, in the sense that to perceive another as being in distress is, other things being equal, to see them as in need of help and be moved to help them.
  •  416
    Why content must be a matter of truth conditions
    Philosophical Quarterly 39 (156): 257-275. 1989.
    It is argued that if, with Dummett, we see assertion as an act governed by conditions of correctness which makes a claim to the effect that these conditions are met, then the conditions of correctness that determine its content must have the impersonal character of a requirement of truth, rather than the speaker-relative character of a requirement of justification or assertibility. For otherwise it would be impossible for different speakers to use the same words to make an assertion with the sam…Read more
  •  167
    The Concept of Society
    In Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge. 1998.
    One influential approach seeks to capture the idea of society by characterising social action, or interaction, in terms of the particular kinds of awareness it involves. Another approach focuses on social order, seeing it as a form of order that arises spontaneously when rational and mutually aware individuals succeed in solving co-ordination problems. Yet another approach focuses on the role played by communication in achieving collective agreement on the way the world is to be classified and u…Read more
  •  36
    Davidson on saying and asserting
    Ratio 1 (1): 75-78. 1988.