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10145Explaining ExplanationRoutledge. 1990.This book introduces readers to the topic of explanation. The insights of Plato, Aristotle, J.S. Mill and Carl Hempel are examined, and are used to argue against the view that explanation is merely a problem for the philosophy of science. Having established its importance for understanding knowledge in general, the book concludes with a bold and original explanation of explanation.
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3163Positive and Natural Law RevisitedModern Schoolman 49 (4): 295-317. 1972.The article argues that the famous debate on natural and positive law between Lon Fuller and HLA Hart rests on a dispute about whether or not that something is a law provides on its own a prima facie reason for doing something.
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1743The metaphysics of the social worldRoutledge & Kegan Paul. 1985.A careful elaboration and defence of holism in the philosophy of the social sciences, with regard both to particulars and properties. The last chapter addresses the issue of the irreducibility of holistic explanation in the social sciences.
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1385W.B. Gallie and Essentially Contested ConceptsPhilosophical Papers 39 (2): 257-270. 2010.In virtue of what are later and an earlier group members of one and the numerically same tradition? Gallie was one of the few philosophers to have engaged with issues surrounding this question. My article is not a faithful exegesis of Gallie but develops a terminology in which to discuss issues surrounding the numerical identity of a tradition over time, based on some of his insights.
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1170Disjunctive theories of perception and actionIn Adrian Haddock & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 227--243. 2008.A comparison of disjunctive theories of action and perception. The development of a theory of action that warrants the name, a disjunctive theory. On this theory, there is an exclusive disjunction: either an action or an event (in one sense). It follows that in that sense basic actions do not have events intrinsic to them.
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1078The Physical Action Theory of TryingMethode 4 (6). 2015.Metaphysically speaking, just what is trying? There appear to be two options: to place it on the side of the mind or on the side of the world. Volitionists, who think that to try is to engage in a mental act, perhaps identical to willing and perhaps not, take the mind-side option. The second, or world-side option identifies trying to do something with one of the more basic actions by which one tries to do that thing. The trying is then said to be identical with the physical action. -/- After car…Read more
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993Searle on Institutional ObligationThe Monist 56 (4): 600-611. 1972.John Searle sets out five statements, the relation of each to its successor being one of entailment.
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863Marxism and materialism: a study in Marxist theory of knowledgeHumanities Press. 1977.Argument that Marx has a realist ontology and a correspondence theory of truth. His views are compared to both Hegel's and Kant's. This interpretation departs from more Hegelian, 'idealist' interpretations that often rely on misunderstanding some of the work of the early Marx. There is also a discussion and partial defence of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
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802Traditions and True SuccessorsSocial Epistemology 27 (1). 2013.What constitutes numerically one and the same tradition diachronically, at different times? This question is the focus of often violent dispute in societies. Is it capable of a rational resolution? Many accounts attempt that resolution with a diagnosis of ambiguity of the disputed concept-Islam, Marxism, or democracy for example. The diagnosis offered is in terms of vagueness, namely the vague criteria for sameness or similarity of central beliefs and practices.
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565The Metaphysics of the Social WorldRoutledge & Kegan Paul. 1985.An analysis of the theses of social holism and individualism, and arguments for the metaphysical integrity and irreducibility of both social properties and social entities. The last chapter discusses explanation in social science.
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550Beyond Supervenience and ConstructionJournal of Social Ontology 1 (1): 121-141. 2014.If reduction of the social to the physical fail, what options remain for understanding their relationship? Two such options are supervenience and constructivism. Both are vitiated by a similar fault. So the choices are limited: reduction after all, or emergence.
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533Con-reasons as causesIn Constantine Sandis (ed.), New Essays on the Explanation of Action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 62--74. 2009.Book synopsis: This collection of previously unpublished essays presents the newest developments in the thought of international scholars working on the explanation of action. The contributions focus on a wide range of interlocking issues relating to agency, deliberation, motivation, mental causation, teleology, interprative explanation and the ontology of actions and their reasons. Challenging numerous current orthodoxies, and offering positive suggestions from a variety of different perspectiv…Read more
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516The Causal and Deliberative Strength of Reasons for ActionIn J. Aguilar & A. Buckareff (eds.), Causing Human Actions: New Perspectives on the Causal Theory of Action, Bradford. 2010.Is the thought that having a reason for action can also be the cause of the action for which it is the reason coherent? This is an attempt to say exactly what is involved in such a thought, with special reference to the case of con-reasons, reasons that count against the action the agent eventually choses.
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418Prime Cuts and the Method of RecombinationEpisteme 19 (1): 21-30. 2022.Whether some condition is equivalent to a conjunction of some conditions has been a major issue in analytic philosophy. Examples include: knowledge, acting freely, causation, and justice. Philosophers have striven to offer analyses of these, and other concepts, by showing them equivalent to such a conjunction. Timothy Williamson offers a number of arguments for the idea that knowledge is ‘prime’, hence not equivalent to or composed by some such conjunction. I focus on one of his arguments: the r…Read more
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392The Metaphysics of Action: Trying, Doing, CausingPalgrave Macmillan. 2018.A discussion of three central ideas in action theory; trying to act, doing or acting, one's action causing further consequences.
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371Going in circlesIn Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, Cambridge University Press. pp. 312. 2009.What might it mean to say that there is such a thing as a hermeneutic circle in the social sciences? A consideration of some remarks by Charles Taylor and others and an interpretive reconstruction, and assessment, of the idea of such a circle.
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331Review: H ow We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions (review)Mind 114 (455): 734-737. 2005.A review of Berent Enc's How We Act: Causes, Reasons, and Intentions.
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278Review of Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2019. 2019.A collection of 18 contemporary essays engaged in original, not historical, philosophical research on philosophical themes arising from Judaism.
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248On SearlePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (2): 443-447. 1997.Some problems in John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality. I express some doubts about his constitutive v. regulative rule distinction, and press some objections against his unanalysed idea of acceptance or agreement.
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241Warnock on rulesPhilosophical Quarterly 22 (89): 349-354. 1972.A discussion of Geoffrey Warnock's views on the analysis of rules.
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230Reply to ‘attempts’: a non-davidsonian account of trying sentencesPhilosophical Studies 179 (12): 3817-3830. 2022.In various of my writings, both in Philosophical Studies and elsewhere, I have argued that an account of trying sentences is available that does not require quantification over alleged attempts or tryings. In particular, adverbial modification in such sentences can be dealt with, without quantification over any such particulars. In ‘Attempts’, Jonathan D. Payton (Payton, 2021) has sought to dispute my claim. In this paper, I consider his claims and reply to them. I believe that my account withst…Read more
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223Multifunctional Artefacts and CollocationMetaphysics 5 (1): 66-77. 2022.There appear to be multifunctional artefacts of a type such that none of their functions can be attributed only to some proper part of the artefact. I use two examples of allegedly multifunctional artefacts of this kind in what follows, one due to Lynne Rudder Baker (aspirin) and another of my own (a spork). The two examples are meant to make the same point. I discuss her aspirin example, since its discussion has entered the literature, but without its being dealt with satisfactorily. My example…Read more
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188Causal Scepticism or Invisible CementRatio (Misc.) 24 (2): 161. 1982.I defend the view, hardly original with me, that there is no evidence, deductive or non-deductive, for any of our causal beliefs, that does not already assume that there are some causal connections, and hence that there is no way in which experience on its own, or with causalität-free principles, can support the structure of out causal knowledge. The deductive case is perhaps obvious. In the case of non-deductive arguments, I consider how experience of constant conjunctions, together with the em…Read more
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164A conditional theory of tryingPhilosophical Studies 173 (1): 271-287. 2016.What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence and be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of tr…Read more
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135Lewis and the Problem of Causal SufficiencyAnalysis 41 (1): 38-41. 1980.Lewis' counterfactual account of deterministic causation has no way in which to represent causal sufficiency. In the case in which the cause and effect actually occur, the conditional, c box-arrow e is trivially true, equivalent to the material conditional. Yet in deterministic causation, one needs a notion of causal sufficiency that is stronger than that.
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124Karl MarxIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Cambridge University Press. pp. 65-79. 1999.Although it was, until recently, unfashionable in certain circles to say this, Marx was not a philosopher in any interesting sense. He was a social theorist. As social theory, I am thinking primarily of two areas : the methodology of social inquiry, and its metaphysical presuppositions, and normative philosophy
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Birkbeck, University of LondonDepartment of PhilosophyEmeritus Professor, Honorary Research Fellow
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Social Science |