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260The Substance Argument of Wittgenstein’s TractatusJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (7). 2016.In Morris I presented in outline a new interpretation of the famous ‘substance argument’ in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. The account I presented there gave a distinctive view of Wittgenstein’s main concerns in the argument, but did not explain in detail how the argument works: how its steps are to be found in the text, and how it concludes. I remain convinced that the interpretation I proposed correctly identifies the main concerns which lie behind the argument. I return to the argument here in ord…Read more
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16The Place of LanguageAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1): 153-174. 1993.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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11The Place of LanguageAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1): 153-174. 1993.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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6Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy, ed. J.L. Zalabardo (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 620-623. 2013.
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180In this chapter, the author offers a selective critical history in which he traces the difference between the tendency which Michael Dummett represents and the philosophers among whom Timothy Williamson is naturally placed to a difference in metaphysics which has much longer roots. He suggests that the ultimate source of the kind of role Dummett gives to thought is Hume's skeptical view of necessity, with its famous consequences for metaphysics. The philosophy of language is the key to the most …Read more
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17Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy, edited by Zalabardo, José L.: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. viii + 274, £40Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3). 2013.No abstract
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49Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the TractatusRoutledge. 2005.Written by a leading expert, this is the ideal guide to the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime, the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_. Michael Morris makes sense of Wittgenstein’s brief but often cryptic text, highlighting its key themes. He introduces and analyzes: Wittgenstein’s life and the background to the _Tractatus_ the ideas and text of the _Tractatus_ the continuing importance of Wittgenstein's work to philosophy today, Wittgenstein is the most important twentieth-centu…Read more
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37Real Likenesses: Representation in Paintings, Photographs, and NovelsOxford University Press, Usa. 2020.Real Likenesses presents a radical new approach to artistic representation. At its heart is a serious reconsideration of the relationship between medium and content in representational art, which counters current dominant theories that make attention to the former inevitably a distraction from attending to the latter. Through close analysis of paintings, photographs, and novels, Michael Morris proposes a new understanding of the real likenesses we encounter in representational art; what they are…Read more
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9Empirical versus Epistemological Considerations: A Comment on StemmerMind and Language 4 (3): 222-228. 1989.
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12Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being (review)Philosophical Review 101 (4): 835. 1992.
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9Minimizing Harm in Possum Control Operations and Experiments in New ZealandJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (4): 367-385. 2003.Pest control operations andexperimentation on sentient animals such as thebrushtail possum can cause unnecessary andavoidable suffering in the animal subjects.Minimizing animal suffering is an animalwelfare goal and can be used as a guide in thedesign and execution of animal experimentationand pest control operations.The public has little sympathy for the possum,which can cause widespread environmentaldamage, but does believe that control should beas painless as possible. Trapping and poisoningp…Read more
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28The Social Folk Theorist: Insights from Social and Cultural Psychology on theIn Bertram Malle, L. J. Moses & Dare Baldwin (eds.), Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, Mit Press. 2001.
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23Mind, World and ValueRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 303-320. 1998.Naturalism is the dominant philosophy of the age. It might be characterized as the view that the only real facts are facts of natural science, or that only statements of natural science are really true. But perhaps this scientistic formulation underestimates the depth and everydayness of the dominance of naturalism. More informally, we might say that naturalism is the view that the world is a world of natural objects and natural phenomena, that the only properties of these objects are natural pr…Read more
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97The Question of Idealism in McDowellPhilosophical Topics 37 (1): 95-114. 2009.John McDowell has attempted to defend himself against the charge that the view presented in his influential book Mind and World is idealist. This paper argues that in spite of that defence, there is a clear way in which the view does depend on a form of idealism. McDowell is committed to the thought that the world is ‘conceptually organized’. I consider what this means, and argue that, although it does not formally imply idealism, it is only defensible from a broadly idealist view—one which is i…Read more
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15"A 'wormhole' is a theoretical object permitted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, where distant regions of space are connected by a shortcut," says Landis, a scientist at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, OH. "Such wormholes could have been created in the distant past, in the time just following the 'big bang' that created the universe. What we discovered at the workshop was that if such wormholes did exist, they could be detected by the bending of light due to gravity, an eff…Read more
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28Reviews works of music: An essay in ontology . By Julian Dodd. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2007, pp. XI+286, £55Philosophy 85 (3): 419-424. 2010.
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84Metaphor and philosophy: An encounter with DerridaPhilosophy 75 (2): 225-244. 2000.This paper presents a critical analysis of the central argument of Derrida's paper 'White Mythology'. The crucial claims are that the concept of metaphor presupposes philosophy, that philosophy presupposes the concept of metaphor, and that philosophy cannot accommodate the concept of metaphor. I offer support for the first two claims, explaining the general kind of view of philosophy and of metaphor which they require, but I argue that even if we grant the first two claims, the concept of metaph…Read more
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22Self and world by Quassim Cassam. Clarendon press: Oxford, 1997, pp. VIII + 208Philosophy 73 (3): 495-523. 1998.
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25Book review: Being true to the world: Moral realism and practical wisdom, by Jonathan A. Jacobs (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 31 (2): 285-288. 1997.
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101Risks associated with genetic modification: – An annotated bibliography of Peer reviewed natural science publications (review)Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 18 (2): 157-189. 2005.We present an annotated bibliography of peer reviewed scientific research highlighting the human health, animal welfare, and environmental risks associated with genetic modification. Risks associated with the expression of the transgenic material include concerns over resistance and non-target effects of crops expressing Bt toxins, consequences of herbicide use associated with genetically modified herbicide-tolerant plants, and transfer of gene expression from genetically modified crops through …Read more
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21Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of LanguageProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 (1): 215-228. 1994.Michael Morris, Stephen Neale; Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of Language, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 19.
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193An Introduction to the Philosophy of LanguageCambridge University Press. 2006.In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is fully explained …Read more
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190The Place of LanguageProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94. 19934.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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48The good and the trueOxford University Press. 1992.This book provides a radical alternative to naturalistic theories of content, and offers a new conception of the place of mind in the world. Confronting the scientific conception of the nature of reality that has dominated the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, Morris presents a detailed analysis of content and propositional attitudes based on the idea that truth is a value. He rejects the causal theory of the explanation of behavior and replaces it with an alternative that depends upon a r…Read more
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1Doing justice to musical worksIn Kathleen Stock (ed.), Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work, Oxford University Press. 2007.