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35Vindicating ReasonsThe Monist 105 (4): 558-573. 2022.What is the philosophical role of an historical account of how someone, or some people, came to believe or value as they do? I consider some proposals, due to Bernard Williams and David Wiggins, according to which such an account might either vindicate or subvert our believing or valuing as we do. I suggest some reasons for scepticism about those proposals, at least when construed as providing a fundamental means of assessing cases of believing or valuing. The main problem raised for the proposa…Read more
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20Illocution and understandingInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.What are the connections between the successful performance of illocutionary acts and audience understanding or uptake of their performance? According to one class of proposals, audience understanding suffices for successful performance. I explain how those proposals emerge from earlier work and seek to clarify some of their interrelations.
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7Semantics and PragmaticsIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.Contemporary recognition of the importance of divisions amongst pragmatic and semantic phenomena has its roots in earlier recognition of the importance of pragmatic phenomena. This chapter begins with the idea that semantics concerns the stable meanings of words and expressions while pragmatics concerns language use, or things done with words. It provides some grounds for rejecting, a defense of orthodoxy that sought to treat the variations that Charles Travis highlights as occurring only with r…Read more
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36The various themes explored in this superb collection of essays are organised around one thinker, John McDowell, and one central idea
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39Knowing, knowing perspicuously, and knowing how one knowsGrazer Philosophische Studien 98 (4): 530-543. 2021.In Knowing and Seeing, Michael Ayers presents a view of what he calls primary knowledge according to which one who knows in that way both knows perspicuously and knows how they know. Here, I use some general considerations about seeing, knowing, and knowing how one knows in order to raise some questions about this view. More specifically, I consider some putative limits on one’s capacity to know how one knows. The main question I pursue concerns whether perspicuity should be thought of either (i…Read more
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21J. L. Austin: philosopher and D-Day intelligence officer J. L. Austin: philosopher and D-Day intelligence officer, by M. W. Rowe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023, 688 pp., £30.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9780198707585 (review)History of European Ideas 50 (3): 569-571. 2024.M. W. Rowe’s outstanding book is the first full-dress biography of the philosopher J. L. (John Langshaw) Austin, who died in 1960 aged 48. During his comparatively short life, Austin made significa...
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116John Cook Wilson on the indefinability of knowledgeEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 1547-1564. 2022.Can knowledge be defined? We expound an argument of John Cook Wilson's that it cannot. Cook Wilson's argument connects knowing with having the power to inquire. We suggest that if he is right about that connection, then knowledge is, indeed, indefinable.
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8Prospects for a Truth-conditional Account of Standing MeaningIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 195-222. 2012.
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A plea for understandingIn Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New waves in philosophy of language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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25Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality by David Wiggins (Harvard University Press, 2006)Philosophy 97 (3): 402-407. 2022.
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56Moore on the sceptical philosopherThink 20 (57): 69-87. 2021.1. Since I don't know who you are, dear reader, and since I know that some people don't have hands, I don't know whether you have hands. Probably you do, but knowing that something is probable is rarely, if ever, a way of knowing that thing. By contrast, I know that I have hands. Let me check. Yes, here is one of my hands; and here is another. Since I know that here is one of my hands and that here is another, and since I know that it follows from those two claims that I have hands, I can deduce…Read more
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41Corresponding reasons: on Richard Moran’s The Exchange of WordsPhilosophical Explorations 23 (3): 271-280. 2020.Volume 23, Issue 3, September 2020, Page 271-280.
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76Illocution and understandingInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.What are the connections between the successful performance of illocutionary acts and audience understanding or uptake of their performance? According to one class of proposals, audience understanding suffices for successful performance. I explain how those proposals emerge from earlier work and seek to clarify some of their interrelations.
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87Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method, by Mark KaplanMind 129 (513): 323-331. 2020._ Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method _, by KaplanMark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 192.
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349Enough is Enough: Austin on KnowingIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Interpreting J. L. Austin: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2017.
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78Demystifying MeaningPhilosophical Papers 30 (2): 145-167. 2001.Abstract Some philosophers find linguistic meaning mysterious. Two approaches suggest themselves for removing the felt mystery, or demystifying meaning. One involves providing a substantive account of meaning in meaning-free terms. Although this approach has come under serious attack in recent years, Paul Horwich has recently presented a version of the approach that might be thought impervious. A preliminary attempt is made to argue that Horwich's version is vulnerable to the considerations felt…Read more
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115The ordinary and the experimental: Cook Wilson and Austin on method in philosophyBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (5): 939-960. 2018.To what extent was ordinary language philosophy a precursor to experimental philosophy? Since the conditions on pursuit of either project are at best unclear, and at worst protean, the general question is hard to address. I focus instead on particular cases, seeking to uncover some central aspects of J. L. Austin’s and John Cook Wilson’s ordinary language based approach to philosophical method. I make a start at addressing three questions. First, what distinguishes their approach from other more…Read more
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36Grice and Marty on ExpressionIn Hamid Taieb & Guillaume Fréchette (eds.), Mind and Language – On the Philosophy of Anton Marty, De Gruyter. pp. 263-284. 2017.
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27Trust in the darkForum for European Philosophy Blog. 2016.Guy Longworth asks whether we can gain knowledge from others.
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150IV—Sharing Thoughts About OneselfProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (1pt1): 57-81. 2013.This paper is about first‐person thoughts—thoughts about oneself that are expressible through uses of first‐person pronouns. It is widely held that first‐person thoughts cannot be shared. My aim is to postpone rejection of the more natural view that such thoughts about oneself can be shared. I sketch an account on which such thoughts can be shared and indicate some ways in which deciding the fate of the account will depend upon further work.
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173Some Models of Linguistic UnderstandingThe Baltic International Yearbook 5 (1): 7. 2009.I discuss the conjecture that understanding what is said in an utterance is to be modelled as knowing what is said in that utterance. My main aim is to present a number of alter- native models, as a prophylactic against premature acceptance of the conjecture as the only game in town. I also offer preliminary assessments of each of the models, including the propositional knowledge model, in part by considering their respective capacities to sub-serve the transmission of knowledge through testimon…Read more
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78Faith in KantIn Paul Faulkner & Thomas W. Simpson (eds.), The Philosophy of Trust, Oup. 2017.Cooperation threatens to become rationally problematic insofar as the following conditions hold: reliance has a worst outcome—we rely and the other proves unreliable; the interaction is one-off; and we are ignorant of the other’s particular motivations but recognize a general motivation to be unreliable. The problem is that the satisfaction of these conditions is commonplace. Thus cooperation should be much less common than it in fact is. So what explains it? This chapter considers and rejects v…Read more
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58Timothy Williamson. Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 340 (review)SATS 3 (1): 135-139. 2002.
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134Comprehending speechPhilosophical Perspectives 22 (1): 339-373. 2008.What is the epistemological role of speech perception in comprehension? More precisely, what is its role in episodes or states of comprehension able to mediate the communication of knowledge? One answer, developed in recent work by Tyler Burge, has it that its role may be limited to triggering mobilizations of the understanding. I argue that, while there is much to be said for such a view, it should not be accepted. I present an alternative account, on which episodes of comprehension are better …Read more
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642Surveying the factsIn John Collins & Tamara Dobler (eds.), The Philosophy of Charles Travis: Language, Thought, and Perception, Oup. 2018.
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