•  22
    The Empiricists: Critical Essays on Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
    with Phillip D. Cummins, Robert Fogelin, Don Garrett, Edwin McCann, Charles J. McCracken, George Pappas, G. A. J. Rogers, Barry Stroud, Ian Tipton, Margaret D. Wilson, and Kenneth Winkler
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1998.
    This collection of essays on themes in the work of John Locke , George Berkeley , and David Hume , provides a deepened understanding of major issues raised in the Empiricist tradition. In exploring their shared belief in the experiential nature of mental constructs, The Empiricists illuminates the different methodologies of these great Enlightenment philosophers and introduces students to important metaphysical and epistemological issues including the theory of ideas, personal identity, and skep…Read more
  •  6
    Responsibility
    Philosophical Quarterly 22 (87): 181-183. 1972.
  •  30
    Minds, Ideas and Objects: Essays on the Theory of Representation in Modern Philosophy
    with Phillip D. Cummins and Gunter Zoller
    Philosophical Review 106 (2): 288. 1997.
    Minds, Ideas and Objects is a collection of conference papers on the topic of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theories of ideas or “sensory experience, thought, knowledge and their objects.” At least half the twenty-three papers are by well-known historians of philosophy who seldom disappoint, and there is some equally thought-provoking work among the rest. Some papers say little that is surprising, and some, including good ones, fail to convince, but few are weak. It is perhaps to be expect…Read more
  •  8
    The Problem of Contrary-to-fact Conditionals
    with John Watling, Alan R. White, Sidney Gendin, and Robert Hoffman
    Journal of Symbolic Logic 33 (2): 310-311. 1968.
  •  1
    Knowledge and Belief from Plato to Locke
    In Knowing and Seeing, Oxford University Press. 2019.
    This essential historical introduction to the main themes of the book starts with a close, sympathetic, and significantly novel analysis of a famous argument in Plato’s Republic in which Plato draws a distinction of kind between knowledge and belief, and between their objects. It is then demonstrated that the distinction, broadly so understood, remained a dominant force, in one form or another, in all non-sceptical branches of the European philosophical tradition, including empiricism, until the…Read more
  •  21
    Response to Comments and Criticisms
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 98 (4): 600-627. 2021.
    These responses are replies to the contributions to a book symposium devoted to my book Knowing and Seeing. Groundwork for a New Empiricism (2019), held at the University of Vienna in February 2020.
  •  404
    Tradução para o português do verbete "George Berkeley, de Michael Ayers, retirado de "A Companion to Epistemology", ed. Jonathan Dancy e Ernest Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 261–264. Criticanarede. ISSN 1749-8457
  • The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
    Studia Leibnitiana 30 (1): 124-132. 1998.
  • Bryan Magee Talks to Michael Ayers About Locke and Berkeley
    with Bryan Magee, Inc Bbc Education & Training, B. B. C. Worldwide Americas, and Films for the Humanities
    Films for the Humanities & Sciences. 1987.
  •  166
    Substance: Prolegomena to a Realist Theory of Identity
    Journal of Philosophy 88 (2): 69-90. 1991.
  •  12
  •  3
    No Title available: PHILOSOPHY
    Philosophy 47 (181): 276-278. 1972.
  •  29
    Perception and Action
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 3 91-106. 1969.
    There is an ancient and ambiguous philosophical doctrine that perception is passive. This can mean that the mind contributes nothing to the content of our sensory experience: its power of perception is a mere receptivity. In this sense the principle has often been questioned, and is indeed doubtful on empirical grounds, given one reasonable interpretation of what it would be for the mind to make such a contribution.
  •  18
    The Nature of Things
    Philosophy 49 (190): 401-413. 1974.
    Anthony Quinton's The Nature of Things covers competently a good deal of philosophical ground in hopeful pursuit of a coherent ontology de-scribable as ‘a version of materialism’. He seems to discern two major difficulties for the enterprise: first, that of giving an acceptable account of ontology, and, secondly, that of reconciling his naturalism with his empiricist principles. ‘Naturalism’ is the view that man and his doings constitute a part of nature on the same ontological level as other na…Read more
  •  8
    Early modern writing and the new philosophy
    with J. W. Binns, Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park, Daniel Garber, Glyn P. Norton, and Charles B. Schmitt
    Journal of the History of Ideas 53 541-51. 1992.
  • Mehmet on Substances: A Reply
    Facta Philosophica: Internazionale Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsphilosophie: International Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 4 121-141. 2002.
  •  4
    Ideas and objective being
    In Daniel Garber & Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 2--1063. 1998.
  •  44
    Perception and Action
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 3 91-106. 1969.
    There is an ancient and ambiguous philosophical doctrine that perception is passive. This can mean that the mind contributes nothing to the content of our sensory experience: its power of perception is a mere receptivity. In this sense the principle has often been questioned, and is indeed doubtful on empirical grounds, given one reasonable interpretation of what it would be for the mind to make such a contribution.
  •  24
    Berkeley (review)
    Philosophical Books 16 (2): 8-13. 1975.
  •  1
    The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: Volume 2 (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2008.
    This book offers a uniquely authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy, written by an international team of specialists.
  • The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: Volume 1 (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2008.
    The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy offers a uniquely comprehensive and authoritative overview of early-modern philosophy written by an international team of specialists. As with previous Cambridge Histories of Philosophy the subject is treated by topic and theme, and since history does not come packaged in neat bundles, the subject is also treated with great temporal flexibility, incorporating frequent reference to medieval and Renaissance ideas. The basic structure of the v…Read more
  •  11
    The Nature of Things
    Philosophy 49 (190). 1974.
  •  71
    Perhaps everyone who can think has the concept of possibility, but no one understands it. The metaphysical theory of Determinism is a symptom of this lack of understanding, and the inconclusiveness of its opponents’ arguments indicates that the lack is universal. In this book, first published in 1968, the author shows that there are a number of different kinds on non-logical possibility, subtly interrelated, each requiring separate explanation. An original contribution to the subject, it is esse…Read more