Simon Blackburn

Spreading the word : groundings in the philosophy of language

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the major philosophical theories attempting to explain the workings of language.

Naturalism without representationalism

1. The relevance of science to philosophy What is philosophical naturalism? Most fundamentally, presumably, it is the view that natural science constrains philosophy, in the following sense. The concerns of the two disciplines are not simply disjoint, and science takes the lead where the two overlap. At the very least, then, to be a philosophical naturalist is to believe that philosophy is not simply a different enterprise from science, and that philosophy properly defers to science, where the concerns of the two disciplines coincide. Naturalism as spare as this is by no means platitudinous. However, most opposition to naturalism in contemporary philosophy is not opposition to naturalism in this basic sense, but to a more specific view of the relevance of science to philosophy. Similarly on the pro-naturalistic side. What most self-styled naturalists have in mind is the more specific view. As a result, I think, both sides of the contemporary debate pay insufficient attention to a different kind of philosophical naturalism — a different view of the impact of science on philosophy. This different view is certainly not new — it has been with us at least since Hume — but nor is it prominent in many contemporary debates. In this paper I try to do something to remedy this deficit. I begin by making good the claim that the position commonly called naturalism is not a necessary corollary of naturalism in the basic sense outlined above. There are two very different ways of taking science to be relevant to philosophy. And contrary, perhaps, to first appearances, the major implications of these two views for philosophy arise from a common starting point. There is a single kind of core problem, to which the two kinds of naturalism recommend very different sorts of answer.

Truth and A Priori Possibility: Egan's Charge Against Quasi-Realism

In this journal Andy Egan argued that, contrary to what I have claimed, quasi-realism is committed to a damaging asymmetry between the way a subject regards himself and the way he regards others. In particular, a subject must believe it to be a priori that if something is one of his stable or fundamental beliefs, then it is true. Whereas he will not hold that this is a priori true of other people. In this paper I rebut Egans argument, and give further consideration to the correct way to think about our own fallibility.

Normativity à la Mode

This paper sets out to raise questions about the metaphor of the spaceof reasons. It argues that a proper appreciation of Wittgensteinundermines the metaphysical or dualistic way of taking the metaphor thatis supposed to prevent the naturalization of reason.

Invited Introduction: Finding Psychology

The philosophy of mind is largely a chase after fugitive facts; facts about meaning, thought, agency, consciousness, whose nature escapes our understanding. They escape it for two reasons. Firstly, what we would allow as success in understanding them is constrained by various principles, and the constraints are very tight. Misinterpreted even a little, they become impossible to satisfy. They include:

Fiction and Conviction

Abstract In this piece I take issue with Bernard Williamss interpretation of Herodotus as lacking something of our conception of time. I claim that there is nothing so unusual in the interleaving of myth or fiction and history that Williams finds in Herodotus. I also reflect on the difficulty of separating acceptance of truth from acceptance of myth, metaphor, and model, not only in history but also in science.

Humanity's natural face

Abstract In my article I summarize a ‘Humean’ view of deliberation, and in particular deliberation with an ethical aspect. I regard Hume as having paved the way for a ‘naturalistic’ account of these things, avoiding Kantian fantasies of agency that dominate much current work. Contrary to what is often supposed, the Humean story gives a satisfactory account of dutiful or principled motivations, and a rich account of the ways in which different aspects of character are selected as ‘useful or agreeable to ourselves or others’.

Human nature and science: A cautionary essay

In this paper I draw upon the philosophical tradition in order to question whether scientific advances can show us as much about human nature as some may expect, and to further question whether we should welcome the idea that scientific interventions might improve that nature.

Reflections of my imagination

Are you the same person you were last week? Who is the author of your thoughts? Simon Blackburn looks at the changing ways we have viewed the self through the ages

Reason and Prediction.

Introduction 1. A statement of the problem 2. The analysis of reason 3. The logic of increasing confidence 4. Goodmans paradox 5. Probability and reasons 6. The principle of indifference 7. Successful policies 8. Objectivity and prediction Bibliographical index.