•  235
    The Substance Argument of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
    Journal 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
  •  8
    The Place of Language
    Aristotelian 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.
  •  6
    Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy, ed. J.L. Zalabardo (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 620-623. 2013.
  •  45
    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
  •  31
    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
  •  44
    Galen Strawson, mental reality
    Minds and Machines 7 (3): 442-447. 1997.
  •  181
    How Can There Be Works Of Art?
    Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 5 (3): 1-18. 2008.
    Interested in art, we tend to be interested in works of art. We seem to encounter works of art all the time, and—setting aside certain relatively abstruse problems in ontology—we seem to have little difficulty in recognizing them for what they are. That there are works of art seems obvious and unproblematic. Quite so, I think. But reflection on what has to be the case if there are to be works of art shows that some quite demanding conditions have to be met. Some will find those conditions too de…Read more
  •  99
    Why there are no mental representations
    Minds and Machines 1 (1): 1-30. 1991.
    I argue that there are no mental representations, in the sense of “representation” used in standard computational theories of the mind. I take Cummins' Meaning and Mental Representation as my stalking-horse, and argue that his view, once properly developed, is self-defeating. The argument implicitly undermines Fodor's view of the mind; I draw that conclusion out explicitly. The idea of mental representations can then only be saved by appeal to a Dennett-like instrumentalism; so I argue against t…Read more
  •  1
    A statnet Tutorial
    with S. M. Goodreau, M. S. Handcock, D. R. Hunter, and C. T. Butts
    The statnet suite of R packages contains a wide range of functionality for the statistical analysis of social networks, including the implementation of exponential-family random graph models. In this paper we illustrate some of the functionality of statnet through a tutorial analysis of a friendship network of 1,461 adolescents.
  •  3
    Ergm: A package to fit, simulate and diagnose exponential-family models for networks
    with S. M. Goodreau, C. T. Butts, M. S. Handcock, and D. R. Hunter
  •  3
    Exponential-family random graph models provide a principled way to model and simulate features common in human social networks, such as propensities for homophily and friend-of-a-friend triad closure. We show that, without adjustment, ERGMs preserve density as network size increases. Density invariance is often not appropriate for social networks. We suggest a simple modification based on an offset which instead preserves the mean degree and accommodates changes in network composition asymptotic…Read more
  •  15
    Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of Language
    Proceedings 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.
  •  18
    Five Fictions in Search of Truth
    British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (3): 310-312. 2009.
  •  53
    Beyond interpretation: Reply to Cummins' response (review)
    Minds and Machines 2 (1): 85-95. 1992.
    In his response to my Why There Are No Mental Representations, Robert Cummins accused me of having misinterpreted his views, and attempted to undermine a crucial premise of my argument, which claimed that one could only define a semantic type non-semantically by stipulating which tokens should receive a uniform interpretation. I respond to the charge and defend the premise
  •  90
    The Question of Idealism in McDowell
    Philosophical 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
  •  210
    Mysticism and nonsense in the tractatus
    European Journal of Philosophy 17 (2): 247-276. 2007.
  •  44
    The good and the true
    Oxford 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
  •  87
    Causes of behavior
    Philosophical Quarterly 36 (April): 123-44. 1986.
  •  171
    In 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
  •  183
    The Place of Language
    Proceedings 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.
  •  19
    Mind, World and Value
    Royal 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
  •  189
    An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language
    Cambridge 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