First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

On the assumption that we may learn from our elders and betters, this paper approaches some fundamental questions in perceptual epistemology through a dispute between McDowell and Wright about external world scepticism.

This introduction provides a highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth-century and contemporary metaethics. It traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth century and contemporary metaethics. Asks: Are there moral facts? Is there such a thing as moral truth? (...) Is moral knowledge possible? Traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent debates between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and noncognitivism. Provides for the first time a critical survey of famous figures in twentieth century metaethics such as Moore, Ayer and Mackie together with in-depth discussions of contemporary philosophers such as Blackburn, Gibbard, Wright, Harman, Railton, Sturgeon, McDowell and Wiggins. (shrink)

The theme of the paper is that what is true cannot be false and conversely. This position was anticipated by Aristotle in De Interpretatione and by G. H. von Wright. The latter calls it “a truth of the logic of relative modalities.”Aristotle has been taken to task by Susan Haack and others for arguing fallaciously from the Principle of Bivalence, that every statement is either true or false, to fatalism. The implication holds, but we show that it is unreasonable (...) to assume that Aristotle grounded his argument on this implication rather than on what we call the force of truth. (shrink)

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); further evidence was then found in two studies by Wright (Cognition 115(3):491–503, 2010) and Weinberg et al. (Monist (...) 95(2):200–222, 2012). These empirical results have been quite influential in the recent metaphilosophical debate about the method of cases. However, none of Swain et al.’s ( 2008 ) predictions concerning order effects with Truetemp cases could be consistently and robustly replicated in our three experiments, and it is thus at best unclear whether Truetemp intuitions are in fact unstable. So, if proponents of the negative program in experimental philosophy still want to use order effects to challenge the reliability of philosophical case judgments, they would be well advised to look elsewhere instead. In any case, given the more robust empirical evidence that we present in this paper, the metaphilosophical flurry created by Swain et al. ( 2008 ) and Wright’s ( 2010 ) influential studies looks like mere alarmism in hindsight. (shrink)

A popular interpretation of linguistic theories has it that they should describe the brain at a high level of abstraction. One way this has been understood is as the requirement that the theory’s derivational structure reflect (by being isomorphic to) relevant structural properties of the language user’s brain. An important criticisrn of this idea, made originally by Crispin Wright against Gareth Evans in the 1980s, still has purchase, notwithstanding attempts to reply to it, notably by Martin Davies and, indirectly, (...) Christopher Peacocke. Wright’s objection seems to have been forgotten rather than seen off. (shrink)

This paper argues that the consensus physicalist antireductionism in the philosophy of biology cannot accommodate the research strategy or indeed the recent findings of molecular developmental biology. After describing Wolperts programmatic claims on its behalf, and recent work by Gehring and others to identify the molecular determinants of development, the paper attempts to identify the relationship between evolutionary and developmental biology by reconciling two apparently conflicting accounts of bio-function – Wrights and Nagels (as elaborated by Cummins). Finally, the paper seeks (...) a way of defending the two central theses of physicalist antireductionism in the light of the research program of molecular developmental biology, by sharply reducing their metaphysical force. (shrink)

Alex Rosenberg (2020). Reductionism and Mechanism. Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 75, £15 (paperback).

ABSTRACT A Third-Person-Based or Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account of mental content implies that, as an a priori matter, facts about a subject’s mental content are precisely captured by the judgments of a second-person or an interpreter. Alex Byrne, Bill Child, and others have discussed attributing such a view to Donald Davidson. This account significantly departs from a First-Person-Based or First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account, such as Crispin Wright’s, according to which, as an a priori matter, facts about intentional content are constituted (...) by the judgments of the subject herself, formed under certain optimal or cognitively ideal conditions. I will argue for two claims: (1) Attributing a Third-Personal Judgment-Dependent account to Davidson is unjustified; Davidson’s view is much closer to a non-reductionist First-Personal Judgment-Dependent account. (2) Third-Personal accounts rest on a misconstrual of the role of an interpreter in the First-Personal accounts; the notion of an interpreter still plays an essential role in the latter ones. (shrink)

Alex Oliver has offered a variety of counterexamples to Crispin Wright's Reference Principle. I suggest that these counterexamples rely on too simple a notion of substitution to be compelling. However, this is not a satisfactory place to leave the discussion: we need some alternative account of substitution in English. In his recent paper, Dolby has attempted to give just such an account. I argue that Dolby's account is viciously circular. I then draw some morals from the discussion.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Why Agamben? -- Key ideas -- Language and the negativity of being -- Infancy and archaeological method -- Potentiality and the task of the coming philosophy -- Politics : bare life and sovereign power -- The homeland of gesture : art and cinema -- The laboratory of literature -- Bearing witness and messianic time -- After Agamben.

Classic texts that define the disjunctivist theory of perception.

Dispositional theories of colour have been attacked by McGinn and others on the ground that ‘Colours do not look like dispositions’. Langsam has argued that on the contrary they do, in ‘Why Colours Do Look Like Dispositions’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50 , pp. 68–75. I make three claims. First, neither side has made its case. Secondly, it is true, at least on one interpretation, that colours do not look like dispositions. Thirdly, this does not show that dispositionalism about colours is (...) false. (shrink)

The new field of experimental philosophy has emerged as the methods of psychological science have been brought to bear on traditional philosophical issues. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy will be the place to go to see outstanding new work in the field. It will feature papers by philosophers, papers by psychologists, and papers co-authored by people in both disciplines. The series heralds the emergence of a truly interdisciplinary field in which people from different disciplines are working together to address a (...) shared set of questions. The inaugural volume is roughly structured into four sections. The first three papers focus on recent developments in moral psychology, a topic that has seen lively debate and a great deal of progress over the last decade. The second section highlights three contributions that bring new methods to moral psychology: formal modeling and special populations. The third section brings together four papers that adopt an experimental philosophy approach to novel topics, including intuitive dualism, generics, joint action, and happiness. And the last two papers provide critical and historical context to the development of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Epidemiology is one of the fastest growing and increasingly important sciences. This thorough analysis lays out the conceptual foundations of epidemiology, identifying traps and setting out the benefits of properly understanding this fascinating and important discipline, as well as providing the means to do so.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 88-90.

A feature of the spiritual physiognomy of the twentieth century has been belief in "progress" and in the beneficial influence on human wellbeing of science and technology. Wittgenstein never shares these optimistic sentiments. Towards the end of his life he wrote that there is nothing absurd in the belief that the age of science and technology is "the beginning of the end of humanity" and that mankind steering its course towards the future relying on scientific rationality "is falling into a (...) trap. His life and also his philosophy was a protest against these trends and a search for "a changed mode of thought and life". (shrink)

The administrators of the human genome project were eager to stimulate public discussion, academic debate, legal and legislative deliberation of how individuals and institutions should respond to the revolution in genomics. Paramount among the issues whose discussion they encouraged are three obvious matters: The threat which access to our genetic information poses for heath insurance, employment, and social discrimination the nefarious consequences for scientific advance of turning basic scientific discoveries about genomes into private property The permissibility of prenatal genetic screening, (...) germline therapy, cloning and other in- vitro reproductive processes. It should not be surprising that there is a great deal of uniformity of views about most of the problems that come under these three headings. For they do not raise issues different in kind from those we faced in bioethics before the genomic revolution. Even starting from divergent moral theories, by and large people have come to broadly similar conclusions about which newly available choices are morally permissible and which are not. Our moral intuitions and articulated moral theory have stood us in good stead, providing substantial grounds for disapproving new genomically inspired examples of old practices–like eugenics, the paternalism of health-care experts, and the sacrifice of individual rights to.. (shrink)