•  18
    Reprint of an article first appearing in the South African Journal of Philosophy (2015).
  •  27
    Ethics at the cinema (edited book)
    with Samantha Vice
    Oxford University Press. 2011.
    This volume of contributed, previously unpublished essays focuses on general theoretical, meta-ethical and aesthetic issues in philosophy and the ways in which ...
  •  28
    Post-Trust, Not Post-Truth
    Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 35 (1): 63-93. 2023.
    The neologism post-truth is commonly used to characterize a polity in which false and biased beliefs have corrupted public opinion and policymaking. Simplifying and broadening our use of the adjective beyond its current narrow meaning could make post-truth a useful addition to the lexicons of history, politics, and philosophy. Its current use, however, is unhelpful and distracting (at best), and experienced as demeaning and humiliating (at worst). Contemporary polities are better characterized a…Read more
  •  2
    Philosophy, Progress, and Identity
    In Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick (eds.), Philosophy's Future, Wiley. 2017.
    Philosophy, as I use it here, is a conversation, one stretching back through various canonical European and Ancient Greek texts at least to Thales. Has this conversation progressed? The main objection to philosophy's having a linear progression is dissensus – the fact that philosophers all disagree but still accept each other as peers. In this chapter, I argue that we should conceive of philosophy as being capable of a branching kind of progression: philosophy progresses when it gives us more wa…Read more
  •  67
    Being moved by a way the world is not
    Synthese 178 (1): 131-141. 2011.
    At the end of Lecture 3 of The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen suggests that we see the change of view involved in scientific revolutions as being, at least in part, emotional. In this paper, I explore one plausible way of cashing out this suggestion. Someone’s emotional approval of a description of the world, I argue, thereby shows that she takes herself to have reason to take that description seriously. This is true even if she is convinced—as a scientific community is when it considers alt…Read more
  •  19
    Pragmatic Believing and its Explanation
    Critica 36 (108): 3-36. 2004.
    Most explanations of beliefs are epistemically or pragmatically rationalizing. The distinction between these two types involves the explainer's differing expectations of how the believer will behave in the face of counter-evidence. This feature suggests that rationalizing explanations portray beliefs as either a consequence of the believer's following a norm, or part of a sub-intentional goal-oriented system. Which properly characterizes pragmatic believing? If there were pragmatic norms for bel…Read more
  • A Selective Bibliography of the Philosophy of Science
    with Samir Okasha and W. Newton-Smith
    Oxford University Press. 1988.
  •  53
    Associated with Bayesianism is the claim that insofar as thereis anything like scientific theory-commitment, it is not a doxastic commitment to the truth of the theory or any proposition involving the theory, but is rather an essentiallypractical commitment to behaving in accordance with a theory. While there are a number of a priori reasons to think that this should be true, there is stronga posteriori reason to think that it is not in fact true of current scientific practice.After outlining a …Read more
  •  37
    Belonging to the Ultra-Faithful: A Response to Eze
    Philosophical Papers 30 (3): 215-222. 2001.
  •  14
    The• Goods and the Motivation of Believing
    In Pritchard, Haddock & MIllar (eds.), Epistemic Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 139--62. 2009.
  •  10
    Review of Steven Luper (ed.), The Skeptics (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (11). 2004.
  •  13
    Elizabeth Costello and the Biography of the Moral Philosopher
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69 (2): 209-220. 2011.
  •  48
    Venerating Death
    Philosophical Papers 44 (1): 61-81. 2015.
    In this paper, I am concerned with elucidating and expanding our attitudes toward our own death. As it is, our common attitudes toward our death are the following: we fear our premature death, and we dread our inevitable death. These attitudes are rational, but I want to argue that our attitudes toward death should be more complicated than this. A condition upon our value, our preciousness, as creatures is that we are vulnerable, and our vulnerability is, at bottom, a vulnerability to death. A c…Read more
  •  96
    A Lover’s Shame
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (5): 615-630. 2012.
    Shame is one of the more painful consequences of loving someone; my beloved’s doing something immoral can cause me to be ashamed of her. The guiding thought behind this paper is that explaining this phenomenon can tell us something about what it means to love. The phenomenon of beloved-induced shame has been largely neglected by philosophers working on shame, most of whom conceive of shame as being a reflexive attitude. Bennett Helm has recently suggested that in order to account for beloved-ind…Read more
  •  33
    Philosophers, their context, and their responsibilities
    Metaphilosophy 37 (5): 623-645. 2006.
    It has at various times been said, both before and since the fall of apartheid, that philosophers in South Africa are neglecting to do certain sorts of work. Behind this accusation lies a general claim that philosophers have responsibilities to their contexts. This essay is dedicated to (i) defending this claim against objections, and (ii) offering a positive argument for there being moral pressure on philosophers to increase understanding. My aim is not to accuse any philosopher or community of…Read more
  •  77
    It has often been claimed that our believing some proposition is dependent upon our not being committed to a non-epistemic explanation of why we believe that proposition. Very roughly, I cannot believe that p and also accept a non-epistemic explanation of my believing that p. Those who have asserted such a claim have drawn from it a range of implications: doxastic involuntarism, the unacceptability of Humean naturalism, doxastic freedom, restrictions upon the effectiveness of practical (Pascalia…Read more
  •  34
    Wisdom as an Aim of Higher Education
    Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (1-2): 1-15. 2015.
    IntroductionA central concern of theoretical speculation about education is the kind of epistemic states that education can and should aim to achieve. One such epistemic state, long neglected in both education theory and philosophy, is wisdom. Might wisdom be something that educators should aim for? And might it be something that their students can achieve? My answer will be a qualified yes.One qualification derives from the fact that in the present paper I will only be concerned with the potent…Read more
  •  34
    The Art of Dying
    Philosophical Papers 41 (3): 435-454. 2012.
    Abstract In this paper, I explore what Jean Améry calls the ?aesthetic view of death?. I address the following three questions. To what extent, and how, do we take an aesthetic view of death? Why do we take an aesthetic view of death? Third, for those whose deaths are impending and have some choice over how they die?most prominently the elderly and the terminally ill?what would it mean for them to take an aesthetic view of their own impending deaths, and, in particular, what would it mean for th…Read more
  •  22
    Philosophers and the Poor
    Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 57 (125): 99-123. 2010.
    This is a programmatic paper, calling for the renewal and modernisation of the therapeutic approach to philosophy found in Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics; and, in particular, for an application of the therapeutic approach to the life of poverty. The general assumption behind a therapeutic approach to philosophy is that it is possible for someone to be exposed to philosophical work which leads her to an improved understanding of herself and her situation, and for her life to be improved by this…Read more
  •  25
    Can we infer naturalism from scepticism?
    Philosophical Quarterly 50 (201): 433-451. 2000.
  •  124
    The Politics of Doing Philosophy in Africa: A Conversation
    South African Journal of Philosophy 34 (4): 538-550. 2015.
    The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of hi…Read more
  •  28
    South Africa
    with Alexis Tabensky
    The Philosophers' Magazine 45 40-44. 2009.
  •  3
    Introduction
    South African Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 405-407. 2011.
  •  107
    Why Do We Value Knowledge?
    American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (4). 1997.