Unknown
Department Of Philosophy
Alumnus
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  44
    Do we have free will? In this interview, Helen Steward explains part of her very distinctive approach to the philosophical puzzle concerning free will vs determinism. Steward rejects determinism, but not because she denies that we are not material beings (because, for example, we have Cartesian, immaterial souls that have physical effects). Her reasons for rejecting determinism are very different.
  •  31
    Inner and Outer: Essays on A Philosophical Myth
    Philosophical Books 33 (4): 234-235. 1992.
    This is a review of Godfrey Vesey's book 'Inner and Outer: Essays on a Philosophical Myth'.
  •  59
    Do animals have free will?
    The Philosophers' Magazine 68 43-48. 2015.
    This piece for the Philosophers' Magazine explains in an easily accessible way the author's view that in considering the free will problem, it is essential to think about the capacities of animals
  •  155
    Agency, properties and causation
    Frontiers of Philosophy in China 6 (3): 390-401. 2011.
    The paper argues against the very commonly held view that whenever a substance may be said to be the cause of something, a fuller and metaphysically more accurate understanding of the situation can always be obtained by looking to the properties in virtue of which that substance was able to bring about the effect in question. Paul Humphreys’ argument that when a substance is said to have produced an effect, it always turns out to be an aspect or property of that substance which brought about the…Read more
  •  27
    Substances, Agents and Processes
    Philosophy 95 (1): 41-61. 2020.
    This paper defends a substance-based metaphysics for organisms against three arguments for thinking that we should replace a substantial understanding of living things with a processual one, which are offered by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré in their edited collection, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Dupré and Nicholson consider three main empirical motivations for the adoption of a process ontology in biology. These motivations are alleged to stem from facts concern…Read more
  •  13
    Libertarianism in disguise
    Human Affairs 32 (4): 420-426. 2022.
    This paper argues that the position on free will which is defended in ‘Freedom: An Impossible Reality’ is not, as Tallis claims, a compatibilist view, but actually a version of libertarianism. While endorsing many aspects of that libertarian view itself, the paper raises questions about how one of the central arguments for Tallis’s view is supposed to work, and queries whether it really follows from the fact that we need to stand apart from nature in a certain sense, in order to develop the kind…Read more
  •  46
    Frankfurt cases, alternative possibilities and agency as a two-way power
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (9): 1167-1184. 2022.
    ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that having ‘leeway’ is part and parcel of what it is to be the agential source of an action, so that embracing source incompatibilism does not, by itself, absolve the incompatibilist of the need to find Frankfurtian agents to be possessors of alternate possibilities. I offer a response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, based on the idea that Frankfurt's Jones exercises the two-way power of agency when he acts – a powe…Read more
  •  65
    What does causality have to do with necessity?
    Synthese 200 (2): 1-25. 2022.
    In her ‘Causality and Determination’, Anscombe argues for the strong thesis that despite centuries of philosophical assumption to the contrary, the supposition that causality and necessity have something essential to do with one another is baseless. In this paper, I assess Anscombe’s arguments and endorse her conclusion. I then attempt to argue that her arguments remain highly relevant today, despite the fact that most popular general views of causation today are firmly probabilistic in orientat…Read more
  •  38
    What Is Determinism? Why We Should Ditch the Entailment Definition
    In Marco Hausmann & Jörg Noller (eds.), Free Will: Historical and Analytic Perspectives, Springer Verlag. pp. 17-43. 2021.
    What is the thesis of determinism? Though it is obvious that in principle there is more than one possible thesis that might be given this name, it seems to be the case that philosophers working on the free will problem have gradually gravitated towards a more-or-less standard definition, minor variations on which can now be found widely scattered through the free will literature. I call it the ‘entailment definition’ and it states, roughly, that determinism is the thesis that for any given time,…Read more
  •  52
    Causation in Psychology, by John Campbell (review)
    Mind 132 (527): 898-908. 2021.
    The contents of Causation in Psychology may not be quite what you’re expecting. It’s neither about the empirical treatment which the topics of causal perception.
  •  43
    In this article, I argue that we need to reconsider some of the stylistic principles that govern writing in analytic philosophy. I suggest that the rules are much more difficult to justify than might be thought at first sight; and may possibly be gendered, given what we know about the reading preferences and writing styles of men and women.
  •  329
    Agency Incompatibilism and Divine Agency
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (3): 67--78. 2015.
    In this paper, I consider whether an argument for compatibilism about free will and determinism might be developed from the thought that God’s agency seems consistent with the rational determination of at least some divine actions by the True and the Good. I attempt to develop such an argument and then consider how to respond to it from the point of view of my own position, which I call Agency Incompatibilism. I argue that a crucial premise in the argument is ambiguous and offer responses to the…Read more
  •  432
    Agency as a Two-Way Power: A Defence
    The Monist 103 (3): 342-355. 2020.
    This paper presents a dilemma which it has been alleged by Kim Frost must be faced by any defender of the notion of a two-way power and offers a solution to the dilemma which is distinct from Frost’s own. The dilemma is as follows: assuming that powers are to be individuated by what they are powers to do or undergo, then either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type which individuates the power, or there is not. If there is, then two-way powers are revealed really to be one-way…Read more
  •  313
    Free Will and External Reality: Two Scepticisms Compared
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 120 (1): 1-20. 2020.
    This paper considers the analogies and disanalogies between a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about free will and a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about the external world. In the case of free will, I offer the ancient Lazy Argument and an argument of my own, which I call the Agency Argument, as examples of the relevant genre; and in the case of the external world, I consider Moore’s alleged proof of an external world. I draw attention to analogies …Read more
  •  159
    The Emergent Self
    Mind 111 (441): 114-119. 2002.
    This is a review of William Hasker's 'The Emergent Self' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
  •  130
    Identity statements and the necessary a posteriori
    Journal of Philosophy 87 (8): 385-398. 1990.
    There is a form of argument for a certain kind of essentialist conclusion which appears not to depend upon any appeal to intuition. Identity statements involving natural kind terms are often adverted to in the literature as examples of the necessary a posteriori, and it can appear as though the essentialist is on very strong ground with respect to these claims. It is not merely that they are apt to strike one as plausible in the light of philosophical arguments or modal intuitions; rather, they …Read more
  •  142
    Action as Downward Causation
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 80 195-215. 2017.
    In this paper, I try to argue that the recognition that non-human animals are relevant to the free will problem delivers interesting new ways of thinking about the central metaphysical issues at the heart of that problem. Some such dividends, I suggest, are the following: that the problem of free will can be considered to be just a more specific version of a general question concerning how agency is to be fitted into the natural world; that action can be usefully regarded as an especially intere…Read more
  •  77
    Minds and Objects
    The Philosophers' Magazine 76 96-101. 2017.
    This short article is intended to be comprehensible to an interested general audience, and considers some different ways in which philosophers have attempted to answer the question ‘What is it to have a mind?’ Some problems with what is now a popular strategy, making use of the notion of representational content, are raised, focusing particularly on Tyler Burge’s attempt to utilise facts gleaned from perceptual (and in particular visual) psychology in order to make tractable the question which a…Read more
  •  96
    This paper considers and criticises what appears to be a suggestion by Hart and Honore in 'Causation in the Law' that there is a category of basic doings, which ought not themselves to be regarded as causings. It argues instead that all actions are causings by the agent.
  •  107
    Replies to Randolph Clarke, John Bishop, and Helen Beebee
    Res Philosophica 91 (3): 547-557. 2014.
    Contains the author's responses to comments by the three named authors on her book, 'A Metaphysics for Freedom'
  •  49
    Perception and the Ontology of Causation
    In Johannes Roessler, Hemdat Lerman & Naomi Eilan (eds.), Perception, Causation, and Objectivity, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 139. 2011.
    The paper argues that the reconciliation of the Causal Theory of Perception with Disjunctivism requires the rejection of causal particularism – the idea that the ontology of causation is always and everywhere an ontology of particulars (e.g., events). The so-called ‘Humean Principle’ that causes must be distinct from their effects is argued to be a genuine barrier to any purported reconciliation, provided causal particularism is retained; but extensive arguments are provided for the rejection of…Read more
  •  45
    Moral responsibility and the concept of agency
    In Richard Swinburne (ed.), Free Will and Modern Science, Oup/british Academy. 2011.
    This chapter argues for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. The real reason why determinism and moral responsibility are inconsistent is not moral, but metaphysical. The real reason is that determinism is inconsistent with agency, which is a necessary condition of moral responsibility.
  •  268
    Perception and the ontology of causation
    In Johannes Roessler, Hemdat Lerman & Naomi Eilan (eds.), Perception, Causation, and Objectivity, Oxford University Press. 2011.
    The paper argues that the reconciliation of the Causal Theory of Perception with Disjunctivism requires the rejection of causal particularism – the idea that the ontology of causation is always and everywhere an ontology of particulars (e.g., events). The so-called ‘Humean Principle’ that causes must be distinct from their effects is argued to be a genuine barrier to any purported reconciliation, provided causal particularism is retained; but extensive arguments are provided for the rejection of…Read more
  •  134
    Agency, properties and causation
    Frontiers of Philosophy in China 6 (3): 390-401. 2011.
    The paper argues against the very commonly held view that whenever a substance may be said to be the cause of something, a fuller and metaphysically more accurate understanding of the situation can always be obtained by looking to the properties in virtue of which that substance was able to bring about the effect in question. Paul Humphreys’ argument that when a substance is said to have produced an effect, it always turns out to be an aspect or property of that substance which brought about the…Read more
  •  230
    Do actions occur inside the body?
    Mind and Society 1 (2): 107-125. 2000.
    The paper offers a critical examination of Jennifer Hornsby's view that actions are internal to the body. It focuses on three of Hornsby's central claims: (P) many actions are bodily movements (in a special sense of the word “movement”) (Q) all actions are tryings; and (R) all actions occur inside the body. It is argued, contra Hornsby, that we may accept (P) and (Q) without accepting also the implausible (R). Two arguments are first offered in favour of the thesis (Contrary-R): that no actions …Read more
  •  31
    Free will
    In John Shand (ed.), Central Issues of Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.
    This article offers an introductory overview of some key issues in the free will debate. it is suitable for non-specialists.
  •  324
    This paper argues, by attention to the category of sub-intentional agency, that many conceptions of the nature of agency are 'over-mentalised', in that they insist that an action proper must be produced by something like an intention or a reason or a desire. Sub-intentional actions provide counterexamples to such conceptions. Instead, it is argued, we should turn to the concept of a two-way power in order to home in on the essential characteristics of actions.