•  2
    Wittgenstein on Action and the Will
    In Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-blackwell. 2017.
    Wittgenstein's views on action and the will changed throughout his philosophical writings, although there are common themes to be found within this evolution. This chapter concerns his later views on action and the will, as expressed in remarks on these topics mainly in Philosophical Investigations. It explores some core themes in those remarks and examines how some of these were taken up and developed by Wittgenstein's student Elizabeth Anscombe, in her influential monograph Intention. Wittgens…Read more
  •  4
    Reasons for Action and Practical Reasoning
    In Maximilian de Gaynesford (ed.), Agents and their Actions, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The premises of practical reasoning Practical reasoning and goals Practical reasoning.
  •  13
    Guanajuato, «Ciudad Patrimonio de la Humanidad». ¿Oportunidad o desafío para el turismo sostenible?
    with Luz María Oralia Tamayo Pérez, Jorge González Sánchez, and Alma Villaseñor Franco
    Arbor 193 (785): 402. 2017.
  •  91
    P. F. Strawson, Moral Theories and ‘The Problem of Blame’: ‘Freedom and Resentment’ Revisited
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 95 (1): 183-203. 2021.
    After nearly sixty years, the influence of Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ remains strong in discussions of moral responsibility. However, as the paper has become more remote in time and in intellectual climate, some of those influences have turned into amplifications of ideas and claims that are misinterpretations or distortions of the paper, while other notions have been projected onto it. I try to make the case for this charge specifically in relation to what has become accepted as …Read more
  •  41
    Nietzsche on Language
    Philosophical Topics 33 (2): 1-17. 2005.
  •  714
    Letting Happen, Omissions and Causation
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 61 (1): 63-81. 2001.
    In this paper I consider whether it is possible to cause an event by letting it happen
  •  10
    Acting for Aesthetic Reasons
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 54 (1): 65. 2020.
  •  1
    Editorial: paradoxes
    Philosophy 95 (2): 153-154. 2020.
  • Editorial
    Philosophy 95 (3): 237-238. 2020.
  •  5
    Editorial
    Philosophy 96 (3): 333-334. 2021.
  •  1
    Editorial: from the new Editors
    Philosophy 95 (1): 1-2. 2020.
  •  24
    Editorial: Issue Devoted to the Work of David Wiggins
    Philosophy 97 (3): 267-268. 2022.
  •  135
    Hintikka considers that the “Transcendental Deduction” includes finding the role that concepts in the effort is meant by human activities of acquiring knowledge; and it affirms that the principles governing human activities of knowledge can be objective rules that can become transcendental conditions of experience and no conditions contingent product of nature of human agents involved in the know. In his opinion, intuition as it is used by Kant not be understood in the traditional way, ie as pro…Read more
  •  597
    The Concept of Moral Obligation: Anscombe contra Korsgaard
    Philosophy 82 (4): 543-552. 2007.
    A number of recent writers have expressed scepticism about the viability of a specifically moral concept of obligation, and some of the considerations offered have been interesting and persuasive. This is a scepticism that has its roots in Nietzsche, even if he is mentioned only rather rarely in the debate. More proximately, the scepticism in question receives seminal expression in Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, a piece that is often paid lip-service to, but—like Nie…Read more
  •  975
    Agency and Two‐Way Powers
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (1pt1): 101-121. 2013.
    In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.
  •  66
  •  170
    Are Character Traits Dispositions?
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 80 69-86. 2017.
    The last three decades have seen much important work on powers and dispositions: what they are and how they are related to the phenomena that constitute their manifestation. These debates have tended to focus on ‘paradigmatic’ dispositions, i.e. physical dispositions such as conductivity, elasticity, radioactivity, etc. It is often assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that the conclusions of these debates concerning physical dispositions can be extended to psychological dispositions, such as belie…Read more
  •  584
    Reasons and the ambiguity of 'belief'
    Philosophical Explorations 11 (1). 2008.
    Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular…Read more
  •  1317
    Actions, thought-experiments and the 'principle of alternate possibilities'
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (1). 2009.
    In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility' in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' ('a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise'). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, …Read more
  •  147
    Since the publication of Davidson’s influential article ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, semantical considerations are widely thought to support the doctrine that actions are events. I shall argue that the semantics of action sentences do not imply that actions are events. This will involve defending a negative claim and a positive claim, as well as a proposal for how to formalize action sentences. The negative claim is that the semantics of action sentences do not require that we think o…Read more
  •  1387
    When Ignorance is No Excuse
    In Philip Robichaud & Jan Willem Wieland (eds.), Responsibility - The Epistemic Condition, Oxford University Press. pp. 64-81. 2017.
    Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral signifi…Read more
  •  1138
    How many kinds of reasons?
    Philosophical Explorations 12 (2). 2009.
    Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a wide range of phenomena involv…Read more