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3Why do we interpret the past as we do, rather than in some other way or not at all? What is the significance of the fact that we interpret the past? What are historical interpretations? Raymond Martin's approach to these questions transcends both the positivist and humanistic perspectives that have polarized Anglo-American philosophy of history. Martin goes to the source of this polarization by diagnosing a deep-seated flaw in the dominant analytic approach during the period from 1935 to 1975, n…Read more
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18God Matters: Readings in the Philosophy of ReligionLongman Publications. 2003.God Matters is a state-of-the-art, accessible anthology of the major issues in philosophy of religion. Its accessibility is due to its mix of classic readings and brand new readings about contemporary issues, commissioned specifically with an undergraduate student in mind. These commissioned readings make the difficult concepts of contemporary philosophy of religion easy to understand, and are complemented by key excerpts from more technical philosophers' writing on the same subjects. The result…Read more
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14Hintikka’s Intentions and Possible WorldsReview of Metaphysics 33 (1). 1979.THIS BOOK is, in effect, a sequel to the author’s Models for Modalities and purports to carry forward the case for the feasibility of a "possible-worlds" semantics. The main contention of the book is that such a semantics has its chief application in the study of propositional attitudes. But a good deal more than this is claimed, namely, applicability to the study of epistemic notions in general, to the study of causality and the language of the sciences, to the exact study of phenomenology, to …Read more
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35Narration, Objectivity, and Methodological TruthThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 8 133-144. 2000.In this essay, I argue that scientists and historians employ different strategies to overcome a common problem: subjectivity. The difference in their strategies is symptomatic of a fundamental difference between science and the humanities. It is that whereas physical scientists, in trying to be objective, aspire to the view from nowhere, humanistic historians, in trying to be objective, aspire to the views from everywhere.
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8The effects of social interaction upon persistence of self-punitive behaviorBulletin of the Psychonomic Society 4 (4): 423-425. 1974.
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11Real values: Why the Wilkes-Donagan prohibition is mistakenMetaphilosophy 24 (4): 400-406. 1993.
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61The essential difference between history and scienceHistory and Theory 36 (1): 1-14. 1997.My thesis is that there is a deep, intractable difference, not between history and science per se, but between paradigmatically central kinds of historical interpretations-call them humanistic historical interpretations-and theories of any sort that are characteristic of the physical sciences. The difference is that unlike theories in the physical sciences, good humanistic historical interpretations reveal subjectivity, agency, and meaning. I use the controversy provoked by Gordon Wood's recent …Read more
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38Progress in historical studiesHistory and Theory 37 (1). 1998.Everyone with their feet on the ground admits that in the physical sciences there has been progress. One can debate the niceties. The hard rock is that our ability to predict and control natural events and processes is greater now than it has ever been. And there has been astonishing technological fallout
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17Objectivity and Meaning in Historical Studies: Toward a Post-analytic ViewHistory and Theory 32 (1): 25-50. 1993.Many contemporary historians and philosophers are dissatisfied both with the accounts traditional analytic philosophers have given of the epistemological dimensions of historical studies and also with the ways many continental philosophers more recently have brushed aside the need for any such accounts. Yet no one has yet proposed a unified research program that could serve as the central focus for a better epistemologically-oriented approach. Such a research program would not only address epist…Read more
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25Let many flowers BloomHistory and Theory 49 (3): 426-434. 2010.In this rich and sensible assessment of historians' practice and prospects, Allan Megill focuses on the obligation that historians have to support their accounts with evidence. He does this, first, by illustrating the difference between real and merely claimed evidence and, then, by giving an analysis of the underlying nature of evidence in historical accounts. Turning later to the question of how historians and their public should feel about diminishing unity in historiography and the practices…Read more
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34Having the experience: The next best thing to being there (review)Philosophical Studies 70 (3). 1993.
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9Forum" on Joyce Appleby, Lynn hunt, and Margaret Jacob, "telling the truth about history (review)History and Theory 34 (4): 320. 1995.
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19Explaining John Freind's "History of Physick"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 19 (4): 399. 1988.
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7Do historians need philosophy?History and Theory 45 (2): 252-260. 2006.The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective. By C. Behan McCullagh.
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140Do historians need philosophy?History and Theory 45 (2). 2006.The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective. By C. Behan McCullagh
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33Causes, Conditions, and Causal ImportanceHistory and Theory 21 (1): 53-74. 1982.Judgments which assign relative importance to the causes of particular results can be objective. Historians usually do and can use a factual principle of selection to distinguish between causes and conditions and between more and less important causes. The judgments which distinguish between causes and conditions and the judgments which distinguish between more and less important causes require radically different analyses. In A. M. Jones's work on the decline and fall of Rome, he argued that in…Read more
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108Beyond positivism: A research program for philosophy of historyPhilosophy of Science 48 (1): 112-121. 1981.It is argued that the debate over the positivist theory of historical explanation has made only a limited contribution to our understanding of how historians should defend the explanations they propose importantly because both positivists and their critics tacitly accepted two assumptions. The first assumption is that if the positivist analysis of historical explanation is correct, then historians ought to attempt to defend covering laws for each of the explanations they propose. The second is t…Read more
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20Of servants, lovers, and benefactors: Peirce's algebra of relatives of 1870 (review)Journal of Philosophical Logic 7 (1). 1978.
Areas of Specialization
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |
Areas of Interest
History of Western Philosophy |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |