•  526
    In this paper, I propose a new way of understanding the space of possibilities in the field of mental content. The resulting map assigns separate locations to theories of content that have generally been lumped together on the more traditional map. Conversely, it clusters together some theories of content that have typically been regarded as occupying opposite poles. I make my points concrete by developing a taxonomy of theories of mental content, but the main points of the paper concern not mer…Read more
  •  181
    Tyler Burge’s influential arguments have convinced most philosophers that a thinker can have a thought involving a particular concept without fully grasping or having mastery of that concept. In Burge’s (1979) famous example, a thinker who lacks mastery of the concept of arthritis nonetheless has thoughts involving that concept. It is generally supposed, however, that this phenomenon – incomplete understanding, for short – does not require us to reconsider in a fundamental way what it is for a t…Read more
  •  127
    How facts make law
    In Scott Hershovitz (ed.), Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, Oxford University Press. pp. 157-198. 2004.
    I offer a new argument against the legal positivist view that non-normative social facts can themselves determine the content of the law. I argue that the nature of the determination relation in law is rational determination: the contribution of law-determining practices to the content of the law must be based on reasons. That is why it must be possible in principle to explain what makes the law have the content that it does. It follows, I argue, that non-normative facts about statutes, judicial…Read more
  •  117
    Moral concepts and motivation
    Philosophical Perspectives 23 (1): 137-164. 2009.
  •  82
    Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law
    Law and Philosophy 30 (4): 419-451. 2011.
    In this paper, I challenge an influential understanding of naturalization according to which work on traditional problems in the philosophy of law should be replaced with sociological or psychological explanations of how judges decide cases. W.V. Quine famously proposed the ‘naturalization of epistemology’. In a prominent series of papers and a book, Brian Leiter has raised the intriguing idea that Quine’s naturalization of epistemology is a useful model for philosophy of law. I examine Quine’s …Read more
  •  78
    The standard picture and its discontents
    In Leslie Green & Brian Leiter (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, Oxford University Press. 2011.
    In this paper, I argue that there is a picture of how law works that most legal theorists are implicitly committed to and take to be common ground. This Standard Picture (SP, for short) is generally unacknowledged and unargued for. SP leads to a characteristic set of concerns and problems and yields a distinctive way of thinking about how law is supposed to operate. I suggest that the issue of whether SP is correct is a fundamental one for the philosophy of law, more basic, for example, than the…Read more
  •  70
    In this paper, I criticize an influential understanding of naturalization according to which work on traditional problems in the philosophy of law should be replaced with sociological or psychological explanations of how judges decide cases. W.V. Quine famously proposed the “naturalization of epistemology.” Quine argued that we should replace certain traditional philosophical inquiries into the justification of our beliefs with empirical psychological inquiry into how we actually form beliefs. I…Read more
  •  66
    In a circulated but heretofore unpublished 2001 paper, I argued that Leiter’s analogy to Quine’s “naturalization of epistemology” does not do the philosophical work Leiter suggests. I revisit the issues in this new essay. I first show that Leiter’s replies to my arguments fail. Most significantly, if – contrary to the genuinely naturalistic reading of Quine that I advanced – Quine is understood as claiming that we have no vantage point from which to address whether belief in scientific theories …Read more
  •  55
    Goals versus memes: Explanation in the theory of cultural evolution
    In Susan L. Hurley & Nick Chater (eds.), Perspectives on Imitation, Mit Press. 2004.
    Darwinian theories of culture need to show that they improve upon the commonsense view that cultural change is explained by humans? skillful pursuit of their conscious goals. In order for meme theory to pull its weight, it is not enough to show that the development and spread of an idea is, broadly speaking, Darwinian, in the sense that it proceeds by the accumulation of change through the differential survival and transmission of varying elements. It could still be the case that the best explan…Read more
  •  51
    Apocalypse Not Just Now
    London Review of Books 21 (13): 19-22. 1999.
    John Leslie comes to tell us that the end of the world is closer than we think. His book is no ordinary millennial manifesto, however. Leslie is a sophisticated philosopher of science, and the source of his message is not divine revelation, apocalyptic fantasy or anxiety about the year-2000 computer problem, but ‘the Doomsday Argument’ – an a priori argument that seeks support in probability..
  •  45
    On practices and the law
    Legal Theory 12 (2): 113-136. 2006.
    In a recent paper, I launch an attack on a fundamental doctrine of legal positivism. I argue that nonnormative facts cannot themselves constitutively determine the content of the law. In a response published in this journal, Ram Neta defends the view that nonnormative social facts are sufficient to determine normative facts, including both moral and legal facts. Neta's paper provides a useful opportunity to address a spelled-out version of this view, which in various forms is widely held in phil…Read more
  •  43
    This paper was presented at the American Philosophical Association's 2007 Berger Prize session. It is a reply to Ken Himma's comment on my paper, "How Facts Make Law," which was awarded the 2007 Berger Prize for the outstanding paper in philosophy of law published during 2004 and 2005. In his thoughtful and thought-provoking paper, Himma claims that the argument of "How Facts Make Law" must go wrong somewhere because, if successful, the argument shows too much with too little. In particular, he …Read more
  •  38
    In this paper, I deploy an argument that I have developed in a number of recent papers in the service of three projects. First, I show that the most influential version of legal positivism – that associated with H.L.A. Hart – fails. The argument’s engine is a requirement that a constitutive account of legal facts must meet. According to this rational-relation requirement, it is not enough for a constitutive account of legal facts to specify non-legal facts that modally determine the legal facts.…Read more
  •  37
    The view (most prominently advocated by Justice Scalia) that original meaning entails the constitutionality of original practices has strong intuitive appeal and has been broadly assumed by originalists and nonoriginalists alike. But the position is mistaken. We suggest that a failure to distinguish between two different notions of meaning accounts for the position's wide currency. According to the first notion, the meaning of a term is roughly what a dictionary definition attempts to convey--th…Read more
  •  33
    Most legal theorists, including almost all positivists and many others, take for granted or are implicitly committed to an assumption that is not an official part of positivism. The assumption is that the content of the law is determined by the contents of legally authoritative pronouncements. I call it the Pronouncement View (PV, for short). The kind of determination at issue here is constitutive, not epistemic. That is, PV concerns what makes the content of the law what it is, not how we ascer…Read more
  •  33
    In a circulated but heretofore unpublished 2001 paper, I argued that Leiter's analogy to Quine's 'naturalization of epistemology' does not do the philosophical work Leiter suggests. I revisit the issues in this new essay. I first show that Leiter's replies to my arguments fail. Most significantly, if — contrary to the genuinely naturalistic reading of Quine that I advanced — Quine is understood as claiming that we have no vantage point from which to address whether belief in scientific theories …Read more
  •  33
    Fodor’s asymmetric-dependence theory of content is probably the best known and most developed causal or informational theory of mental content. Many writers have attempted to provide counterexamples to Fodor’s theory. In this paper, I offer a more fundamental critique. I begin by attacking Fodor’s view of the dialectical situation. Fodor’s theory is cast in terms of laws covering the occurrence of an individual thinker’s mental symbols. I show that, contrary to Fodor’s view, we cannot restrict c…Read more
  •  24
    How law affects behaviour
    Jurisprudence 9 (2): 374-384. 2018.
  •  20
    In “How Facts Make Law” (Greenberg 2004), I argue that non-normative contingent facts are not sufficient to determine the content of the law. In the present paper, I take up a challenge raised by Enrique Villanueva (2005). He suggests that, to put it very briefly, descriptive facts can be reasons of the relevant kind. Therefore, even if the content of the law depends on reasons, it does not follow that law practices cannot themselves determine the content of the law. Villanueva proposes a value-…Read more
  •  16
    How facts make law
    Legal Theory 10 (3). 2004.
  •  12
    Mark Greenberg
    Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoria Del Derecho 1 (11). 2017.
  •  10
    Social Emotional Learning Program Boosts Early Social and Behavioral Skills in Low-Income Urban Children
    with Brian Calhoun, Jason Williams, Celene Domitrovich, Michael A. Russell, and Diana H. Fishbein
    Frontiers in Psychology 11. 2020.
  • How facts make law
    In Scott Hershovitz (ed.), Exploring law's empire: the jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, Oxford University Press. 2006.
  • Integrating emotions and thinking in the classroom
    with Carol A. Kusche
    Think (misc) 9 32-34. 1998.