ELECTRONIC PHILOSOPHER

"Some of the most precious documents we possess about the Modern philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz are the letters they wrote. To all and sundry. People who were asking them about their philosophy. Students they took on... And... I had this idea that if at some future date someone was going to collect my works, I wouldn't be embarrassed to see the letter, amongst those works..." Pathways to Philosophy: Seven Years On

Letters to my students: Index

Anaximander versus Anaximenes
Frege's distinction between sense and reference
Why be moral?
Must God be a realist?
Protagoras: man is the measure of all things
How do you know that the author of these words has a mind?
Heraclitus: you never step into the same river twice
Metaphysics - its methods and subject matter
My values are objective because they are mine
Milesian philosophers on the primary substance
Xenophanes on the limits of human knowledge
Why must others count in my deliberations?
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
Anti-realism and Holocaust denial
The significance of scepticism
Kant's refutation of idealism
Kant's refutation of idealism (2)
'All things have a portion of everything' - Anaxagoras
Philosophical development of the Milesian school
Are we always the best authority on our own mental states?
Freedom of the will
Parmenides' vision of the nature of reality
The truth of 'snow is white'
Is it rational to fear death?
Why the earth stays where it is etc.
Progression in Milesian thought
Subjectivist vs objectivist accounts of moral judgement
Counterfactualism in history
Milesian philosophers on the primary substance
Abstract and concrete objects
Does 'moral' imply 'disinterested'?
Why be moral?
Why is the objective reality of the world in doubt?


Essays on Berkeley and on the fear of death
Thought about objects and the nature of concepts
Criteria for the identity of a person over time
Problems for materialism and the nature of space
Russell's theory of descriptions
Zombies and philosophy
Pythagoras: numbers and reality
On necessity, happiness and freedom
Xenophanes' reflections on the limits of human knowledge
Essay on 'I'
Our moral obligations to animals
Essays on scepticism and morals
The transcendental deduction
Can the solipsist be refuted?
Why be moral?
Harm principle in the 21st century
Significance of scepticism
Milesian philosophers on the primary substance
Philosophical dialogue on egocentric subjectivism
Mind-body problem and the nature of philosophy
Protagoras: man is the measure of all things
Identity and the mind-body problem
Does thought entail possession of language?
Significance of philosophical scepticism
Identity and the mind-body problem
Free will and determinism
Determinism and free will
Wittgenstein's sign 'S'
Determinism, indeterminism and free will
Realism, anti-realism and the reality principle
Must justice result in war and violence?
Anaxagoras and Hegel: the universal mind
On solipsism
Fear of death and the nature of the self
Defending metaphysics against Hume
Dialogue between scientist, priest and philosopher (2)
Dialogue between scientist, priest and philosopher (1)
Truth conditional semantics of vague predicates
Analysing talk of 'the will'
'No-one really perceives a tree'
Significance of philosophical scepticism


Empedocles' contribution to philosophy
Dummett's argument for an anti-realist theory of meaning
Our moral obligations to non-human animals
Frege's distinction between sense and reference
Can a zombie be an epiphenomenalist?
Private language and why language matters to philosophy
Philosophical significance of the paradox of the heap
My unique place as a self-conscious subject in the world
Is morality subjective or objective?
In defence of men
Narrative and and storytelling in identity constructing
Definition of identity and the mind-body problem
Counting others unequally in one's deliberations
'The world is my world' and solipsism
The case against science
Hume on the self
The mind-body difficulty
On the existence of qualia
Knowledge and scepticism - and war
All elephants are small elephants
On atoms and the void
Xenophanes on the limits of human knowledge
Parmenides' argument for 'It is'
Free will, determinism and indeterminism
Is it rational to fear death?
Are possible worlds really real?
Values and the idea of a 'unique valuational perspective'
Dummett's argument for a global anti-realist theory of meaning
Analyzing talk of 'the will'
Milesian philosophers on the nature of the primary substance
Anti-realism and inventing our own reality
On the notion of qualia
Parmenides' argument for 'It is'
Descartes' argument for dualism in the 6th Meditation


Wittgenstein's Tractatus: proposition 4.04
Qualia and the private language argument
Criteria for personal identity over time
Xenophanes' concept of God
'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white
John Searle and the mind-body problem
Can the solipsist be refuted?
Does thought entail possession of language?
Pythagorean theory of reincarnation
Exploring the pre-philosophical idea of the soul
Fichte and human agency
Anti-realism and the idea that 'reality' is our own invention
Kant's metaphysics: the end of the road?
Is the fear of death irrational?
Berkeley's Dialogues: the problem of mind
'A computer can think and act but it cannot WILL'
Moral judgement and the marks of truth
Sources of metaphysics in Presocratic philosophy
Catherine Macaulay and feminism
Wittgenstein on sensation 'S'
Where do values come from?
Wittgenstein: the world is MY world
Speculations about the soul, brain and consciousness
Does 'moral' imply 'disinterested'?
Is it reasonable to fear death?
Free will, determinism and indeterminism
The best is the enemy of the good
R.M. Hare's preference utilitarianism
Irrationality, John Locke and the twin towers
The meaning of 'I am David G.'
The description theory of proper names
Are animals members of the moral community?
Anaximander versus Anaximenes
Anti-realism and the truth about the Holocaust
Implications of the private language argument


'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white
Two essays on truth
Socrates: 'no-one ever does wrong knowingly'
'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white
What is truth?
Hume on tragedy
Rejecting egocentric subjectivism
Descartes' argument for mind-body dualism
Wittgenstein: 'The world is MY world'
Essay on space
Implications of the private language argument
Indispensability of proper names
What is metaphysics?
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes on the primary substance
Realism, anti-realism and immaterialism
Descartes' case for doubt
What's in a name?
Berkeley's arguments against the existence of material objects
Zeno's paradox of the arrow
Truth, realism and anti-realism
Personal identity and body duplication
Rawls on the foundations of the liberal state
Free will and the justification of punishment
Anti-realism and Orwell's 1984
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
Catherine Macaulay's philosophy of education
Proper names and reference failure
Dummett's idea of an anti-realist theory of meaning
Pythagorean reincarnation theory and personal identity
What is it like to be a dog?
Foundationalism in Descartes
Progression in the thought of the Milesian philosophers
Unamuno's 'Tragic Sense of Life'
Kant's First Antinomy


Merleau-Ponty vs. Husserl on other minds
Subjectivist vs. objectivist accounts of moral judgement
Berkeley's arguments against material objects
Can non-human animals or machines be conscious?
Moral dialogue takes place between an 'I' and a 'thou'
Existence of 'I' and the question of solipsism
Pythagoras on reincarnation
Significance of philosophical scepticism
Is it rational to fear death?
Anti-realism and historical truth
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
Descartes' argument for scepticism in the 1st Meditation
Philosophical significance of zombies
Why others must count in my deliberations
Russell's theory of descriptions
Essay on 'snow is white'
Rationality of the fear of death
Possible worlds and counterfactuals
Immaterialism, anti-realism and the existence of matter
Dialogue between scientist, priest and philosopher
Merleau-Ponty's critique of Hume
Descartes' argument from the idea of God
Descartes' dreaming hypothesis in 1st Meditation
Essay on Hume's Fork
Philosophy of space
Return of the solipsist
Dr Johnson and the stone
Mind and body in Descartes' 2nd Meditation
The 'world' of the solipsist
Realism vs. anti-realism and the Holocaust
Must God be a realist?
Zombies in philosophy
Plato and Sartre on moral dilemmas
Private language argument and Zeno's paradox
Anti-realism and the Holocaust
Kant's refutation of idealism
Dreaming scenario vs. the evil demon
Does an objective reality exist?


Analysing the concept of 'concept'
Heraclitus: according to the Logos 'all things are one'
'No-one ever does wrong knowingly'
Why be moral?
Bradley's dialectic of self-assertion and self-sacrifice
What do Zeno's paradoxes tell us about motion?
Are we the best authority on our own mental states?
UK govt proposal to ban the use of the verb 'to know'
My subjective world can never die...
Catherine Macaulay on sympathy, reason and virtue
Significance of Quine's ontological relativity
Plato on love
Why must others count in my deliberations?
Determinism, indeterminism and free will
Does 'moral' imply 'disinterested'? (2)
Does 'moral' imply 'disinterested'? (1)
Sense datum theory and the reality principle
Heidegger contra Descartes
Plato on knowledge and false belief
Parmenides on the nature of 'what is'
Plato on poetry and art
Hume on the self and personal identity
Mill's 'On Liberty' and the ethics of dialogue
Our moral obligations towards non-human animals
Implications of Kreisel's dictum for moral 'objects'
Plato on knowledge and perception in Theaetetus
Wittgenstein on nominalism
Looking for loopholes in the argument against free will
Neurobiological perspective on weakness of will
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
Why be moral?
Criteria for personal identity over time
Socratic paradox and weakness of the will
The case for an ethics of dialogue
Anaxagoras: all things have a portion of everything
Plato and the form of Beauty
What did Dr Johnson prove by kicking the stone?
Mind-body problem and the definition of identity


Merleau-Ponty's critique of Descartes' cogito
Defining the problem of solipsism
Making sense of time
Is knowledge justified true belief?
Metaphysics: its methods and subject matter
Nietzsche and Bergson compared
Mind-body problem and the concept of identity
Are possible worlds really real?
Marcus Aurelius and melancholy
How do you know the author of these words has a mind?
Leucippus and Democritus on atoms and the void
Descartes' argument in the 6th Meditation
Does thought precede language?
Descartes and the problem of mind-body interaction
Hume on personal identity
Review of Naive Metaphysics
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
What is the mind-body problem?
Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise
Xenophanes on the limits of human knowledge
Thomas Nagel and point of view
Difference between a solipsist and a psychopath
Is it rational to fear death?
Can solipsism be refuted?
Metaphysical atomism of Leucippus and Democritus
Meaning of 'I am GK'
Aristotle's concept of mimesis
Our moral obligations to brute animals
Scepticism, possible worlds and brains in vats
Concrete, abstract, possible and actual objects
Plato on divine madness
Against the argument from design
Presocratic philosophers on why the earth stands still
Perception and the limits of human knowledge
'No-one ever really perceives a tree'
Wittgenstein on family resemblances


Theory of subjective and objective worlds
Visual experience and the argument from illusion
Locke's argument against innate speculative principles
Essay on Plato's theory of forms
Hempel's paradox of the ravens
Hume and Feagin on tragedy
Objection to the coherentist account of knowledge
Heraclitus on the unity of opposites
Plato on the soul, and Hume on tragedy
Scepticism: self-refuting or a contribution to knowledge?
Ethics of dialogue: consciousness vs linguistic ability
Kant's refutation of idealism
Nozick vs Williams: the Wilt Chamberlain example
Moral dilemmas and utilitarianism
Qualia and Wittgenstein's private language argument
Refutation of solipsism, and the nature of concepts
'Is knowledge justified true belief?' and brains in vats
Parmenides: following the path of 'It is not'
Plato's answer to Meno's paradox
Essays on Descartes and Heraclitus
Scientist, priest and philosopher discuss the 'soul'
Proposed UK legislation banning the verb 'to know'
Essay on Popper: must good science be falsifiable?
Problem cases for personal identity
Strawson vs Descartes: 'no entity without identity'
Analysis of 'Sherlock Holmes does not exist'
Heidegger on Befindlichkeit
The disjunctivist view of perception
Moral disagreement and moral knowledge
Implications of the private language argument
Essays on Heraclitus, Descartes and Parmenides
Third man argument in Plato's Parmenides
Descartes argument for scepticism in the 1st Meditation
Argument for foundationalism in epistemology
Moral deliberation and the slippery slope
Sense data and metaphysics of the reality principle


What did Berkeley prove by kicking the stone?
Descartes on the incorrigibility of mental events
Essay on scepticism and intuition
Free will and the justification for punishment
Is it rational to fear death?
Hume's challenge to moral statements
G.E.M. Anscombe on singular causation
Truth conditions and metaphysics
Materialism vs immaterialism and the role of physics
Essays on concepts and truth conditions
Williams' body-swap thought experiment
Objects, objectivity and ethics
Wittgenstein on sensation 'S'
Gorgias 'On What Is Not'
Anti-realism and the idea of truth as a 'target'
The nature of concepts and conceptual schemes
Michael Dummett on anti-realist theory of meaning
Determinism, indeterminism and free will
Quine's ontological relativity and the nature of concepts
Is it rational to fear death?
'No-one ever REALLY perceives a tree'
Anatomy of the egocentric subjectivist
Why be moral?
Spinoza and Einstein: in search of god
'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white
Can emotivism make sense of moral judgements?
Descartes' proof of God, and Hume's bundle theory
Locke on personal identity
Notes on vagueness, and essay on private language
Defending the idea of sense data
Locke on primary and secondary qualities
Hume on ideas and impressions, and brains in vats
Why be moral?
Searching for the soul - the inner life?
Hempel's deductive-nomological model of explanation
Kant's argument for the necessary unity of space


Philosophical problem of weakness of the will
Justifying the law of excluded middle
Philosophy of language: words and world
Parallels between theories of space and theories of time
Parmenides' argument for the proposition 'It is'
Strawson on freedom and resentment
Berkeley's argument against material objects
Gettier on knowledge as justified true belief
Descartes' proof of God in the 3rd Meditation
Parmenides: why we cannot follow the path of 'it is not'
Is knowledge justified true belief?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus proposition 4.04
Descartes' argument for scepticism in First Meditation
How does space pose a problem for philosophy?
Paradox that no-one ever does wrong knowingly
Kant's 2nd refutation of idealism
Are possible worlds really real?
Locke on personal identity
Regress problem and foundationalism vs coherentism
Descartes: being deceived about 2+3=5
Free will and the justification for blame and punishment
What do Zeno's paradoxes show about motion?
Xenophanes: God in religion and in philosophy
Why be moral?
Do oysters experience qualia?
Does 'A knows that P' entail that P is true?
Frege's puzzle about identity
Why must others count in my deliberations?
Can truth be defined?
On a proposed new definition of knowledge
Heraclitus and the unity of opposites
Defining truth by a majority vote
Significance of philosophical scepticism
Possible worlds and the problem of other minds


Epistemology and the closure principle
Substituting 'Cicero' for 'Tully' in statements of belief
Free will problem and the justification for punishment
Hilary Putnam and brains in vats
Musical perception and the nature of consciousness
Metaphor and knowledge in literature
Objections to knowledge as justified true belief
Primary and secondary qualities and Descartes' case for doubt
Fatalism and determinism compared
Descartes' argument that mind and body are distinct substaces
'The solipsist's world has no more substance than a dream'
Aristotle on akrasia and Moore's 'open question' argument
On a criticism of the coherentist theory of knowledge
What kind of freedom is worth fighting for?
Aristotle on the mean and the pursuit of happiness
How do you know the author of these words has a mind?
P.F. Strawson's criticisms of Cartesian dualism
Brain in a vat argument for scepticism
Difference between perception and introspection
Why Descartes needs to prove God's Existence
Implications of the private language argument
Personal identity and replacement by a superior copy
Scepticism and Nozick's truth tracking definition of knowledge
Anti-realism and altering the historical 'facts'
What holds the world up?
Speculating whether what you see as red I see as green
Leibniz's theory of monads
The challenge for physicalism of J.S. Bach's Vollbracht aria
Descartes 'I am a thinking thing'
Knowledge and having good reasons for one's beliefs
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
Morality of pre-emptive attacks and preventive war
The Logos of Heraclitus


Essays on free will, qualia and spectrum inversion
Free will incompatible with determinism and indeterminism
Difficulties in the way of a materialist view of the mind
Philosophical significance of the paradox of the Heap
Science versus myth: the relevance of Thales
Materialism vs immaterialism and the role of physics
Why must others count in my deliberations?
Analysing talk of 'the will' from a philosophical standpoint
Aristotle's case for the priority of substance
Essay on Aristotle's four 'causes'
Role of Aristotle's God - the unmoved mover
Interactionist dualism versus epiphenomenal dualism
Do possible worlds account for our notion of possibility
Locke on primary and secondary qualities
Reasons for Leibniz's theory of monads
The Shoah and the problem of evil
Should we get rid of the concept of personal identity?
Heraclitus: we never step into the same river twice
Essays on Heraclitus, testimony and tomatoes
Locke on the identity of 'person' and 'human being'
Can truth be defined?
Berkeley's and Descartes' arguments for God's existence
What would it take to justify the law of excluded middle?
Ethics based on the idea that everyone lives every life
Kant's categorical imperative and the golden rule
Spinoza's proof of the existence of God as the sole substance
Essays on seeing a red tomato, Parmenides, and the Phaedo
What it means to say that an expression is a logical constant
Tracing a path from the mental to the physical
Empedocles' response to Parmenides
Strawson on why Cartesian soul violates the concept of identity
Existential inquiry into the possibility of knowledge


Heraclitus: we cannot step into the same river twice
Criticism of the sense datum theory of perception (2)
Criticism of the sense datum theory of perception
Is it rational to fear death?
Defining truth in terms of human agreement
Perception and the nature and limits of knowledge
Zeno's paradox of infinite divisibility
Idealism and the nature of metaphysics
Theology and the idea of an impotent God
Does Descartes succeed in proving that God exists?
Can truth be defined?
Kripke on Wittgenstein on rules and private language
Free will, determinism and cognitive impairment
Accounting for my unique place as self-conscious subject
Heraclitus on the logos and change and Zeno on motion
Mind-body problem and the definition of identity
Mind as extended: Descartes' response to Arnaud
Free will and the justification for punishment
Iris Murdoch and the inner life
Determinism, free will and moral responsibility
Berkeley: to exist is to perceive or to be perceived
Difference between a solipsist and a psychopath
Heraclitus on the logos and the unity of opposites
Descartes Meditation 1: the case for universal doubt


The redundancy theory of truth
Why be moral?
Where does goodness come from?
Descartes and the malicious demon
Is a rational belief the same as a reliable belief?
David Hume's two definitions of 'cause'
Bernard Williams on the idea of equality
Coherentism, reliabilism, internalism, externalism
Why be moral?
Berkeley: to exist is to perceive or to be perceived
Truth of moral judgements and the limits of ethics
Could a computer be capable of an act of will?
Argument for universal doubt in Descartes 1st Meditation
Kant's second 'Refutation of Idealism'
Berkeley on abstract ideas and unperceived objects
Thought experiment of human body replacement
Is it rational to fear death?
Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities
Nietzsche: on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense
Why should I be moral?
Susan Feagin on why we enjoy tragedy
Functionalist view of the mind and Arnaud's objection
How do you know that the author of these words has a mind?
Hedonism as a theory of values
Locke's attack on innate ideas and innate knowledge


Determinism as a defence
Free will incompatible with determinism and indeterminism
Perception and the nature and limits of knowledge
Plato's analogy in the Republic between health and justice
Semantics of indicative and counterfactual conditionals
Aesthetic judgements and the emotions
Defining the logical constants
Spinoza's account of the relation between mind and body
Could you exchange bodies with someone else?
Descartes and the malicious demon
Coherentist theory of epistemic justification
Hume on why we enjoy tragedy
Strawson's argument in 'Freedom and Resentment'
Making morality work
Hume on the continued and distinct existence of objects
Milesian progression in the idea of primary substance
Spinoza on human freedom
The cluster of descriptions theory of proper names
Why be moral?
Strawson's critique of Cartesian mind-body dualism
'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white
Does 'S knows that P' entail the truth of P?
Dialogue on moral relativity
Descartes' argument for doubt in the First Meditation


Causal explanation in ethics and nature of moral education
Space, time and gravitation after Einstein
Other minds and the challenge of solipsism
Is justified true belief the same as knowledge?
Scientific method: indisputable truth or real hoax?
Frege's puzzle about identity
The challenge of moral dilemmas
Locke's account of persons and their identity
Why be moral?
Consequences of rejecting qualia
Zombies in philosophy and Wittgenstein's Blue Book
Does pragmatism subvert the fight against corruption?
Accounting for the truth of 'Santa Claus does not exist
Leibniz's account of the relation between soul and body
The disjunctivist account of perception
Criticism of the coherentist theory of knowledge
The road to analytic philosophy
Essay on carers and society
Attempting to justify the law of excluded middle
Dialectic of self-assertion and self-sacrifice
Deflationist account of the predicate 'true'
Free will incompatible with determinism and indeterminism
Making the distinction between science and non-science
Can a belief be justified but false?


Defence of Locke's view on real and nominal essences
Abstract and concrete, time and motion
Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation
Moral dilemmas and Mill's principle of utility
The 'hard' problem of consciousness revisited
Franz Rosenzweig on death and redemption
Hume's argument against a substantial self or soul
Schopenhauer on human freedom
Can you know you are not a brain in a vat?
Reasons for not opting for the best consequences
Are zombies conceivable?
Counterexample to Russell's theory of descriptionss?
Nature of metaphysics and the problem of evil
Prospects for an infinitist theory of knowledge
Can you know you are not a brain in a vat?
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind
The 'hard' problem of consciousness
The importance of individuality in Mill's On Liberty
Problems for Plato's theory of Forms in the Parmenides
Right action and the ideally virtuous agent
On an alleged paradox in liberalism
Understanding the notion of necessity
Truth tracking and the closure principle
The significance of philosophical scepticism


Free will incompatible with determinism and indeterminism
Perception and the limits of human knowledge
Determinism vs fatalism, and truths about the past
Interactionist dualism versus epiphenomenalism
How Descartes puts the case for doubt in 1st Meditation
How satisfactory is Spinoza's concept of human freedom?
Spinoza's claim that the one substance is infinite
Is personal identity dispensable? / ethics and sociobiology
The soul and our knowledge of non-human animals
Fatalism and determinism; theories of perception
Can two objects be in the same place at the same time?
Descartes' case for doubt in the first Meditation
McTaggart's proof of the unreality of time
Nature of philosophy and the theories of the Milesians
David Hume on the idea of causation
Donnellan on referential and attributive descriptions
'Inside' and 'outside' the mind - Descartes' case for dualism
Role of causes and effects in scientific explanatione
Arguing against the amoralist
Deflationist view of the predicate 'true'
Untangling the concept of truth
Constructive empiricism vs realism in philosophy of physics
Is moral relativism a coherent view?
Is it rational to fear death?


Does Plato's ideal of love downgrade persons?
Michael Dummett on anti-realist theories of meaning
Socrates' claim that virtue is knowledge
Deflationist view of the role of the truth predicate
Is knowledge a form of justified true belief?
Strawson's claim that Cartesian souls cannot be individuated
Marx's claim that profit equals exploitation of the proletariat
Deflationism and the role of the truth predicate
Anaxagoras: all things have a portion of everything
Heraclitus' principle of the unity of opposites
Zeno's paradoxes of motion
Are possible worlds really real?
Divine hiddenness and revelation
Descartes' case for doubt in the First Meditation
Essays on Santa Claus, proper names, and truth
Parmenides' argument for the proposition, 'It is'
Hume on the nature of miracles
Hume and Feagin on why we enjoy tragedy
Mind-body problem and the refutation of solipsism
What is the best account of proper names?
Role of God in Berkeley's idealism
Xenophanes on the limits of human knowledge
Challenge of egocentric subjectivism
Descartes: 'I am a thing that thinks'


Is Platonic love essentially self-centered?
Plato's slave boy experiment in the Meno
Russell, Strawson and Donnellan on reference
Essays on Descartes and Locke
Possible worlds and the definition of necessity
Can you know that you are not a brain in a vat?
Epistemology and Descartes' methodological doubt
Parmenides' case against plurality
Feagin vs. Hume on why we are moved by tragedy
Plato's Republic and the tripartite theory of the soul
Descartes' argument for doubt in the First Meditatio
Descartes' proof of God in the Third Meditation
Is Heraclitus inconsistent in claiming opposites are one?
Reference: between subjectivity and objectivity
What does Descartes' Cogito establish exactly?
Refutation of solipsism as a basis for ethics
Locke's derivation of the idea of private property
Rosenzweig: from the fear of death to redemption
Mind-body problem: the missing ingredient
Proto-scientific thought in ancient Miletus
Gorgias 'On What Is Not'
In what sense was Parmenides a monist?
The significance of philosophical scepticism
Difficulties for a materialist view of the mind


The validity of philosophy as a science
Hume on the notion of cause, and essays on logic
Truth as a property of a statement
Kant's categorical imperative as a test for maxims
What is Plato's concept of knowledge?
Milesians as philosophers and Xenophanes on knowledge
Descartes on perceiving beeswax and the case for doubt
Hume and Feagin on the tragic response
Personal identity and body duplication
Locke's attack on the theory of innate ideas
Parmenides as monist, nature of logical constants
Parmenides: why we cannot follow the path of 'It is not'
Locke on abstraction and the nature of ideas
Do Rawls' two principles of justice contradict one another?
Kant on treating persons as ends in themselves
Heraclitus on the unity of opposites
Proper names and 'Sherlock Holmes does not exist'
The concept of duty in Kant's moral philosophy
Heraclitus' principle of the unity of opposites
Descriptions and modality, justification of deduction
Strawson's critique of Descartes view of the self
Role of the 'good will' in Kant's moral theory
Plato's argument from opposites for existence of the soul
Space and time: substantivalism vs relationism


Anaxagoras' response to Parmenides
The importance of Heraclitus' theory of flux
Why be moral?
Essays on Russell's theory of descriptions
Can God commit suicide?
Solipsism as a logical cul-de-sac
Does knowledge require existence of self-justifying beliefs?
Problem of evil: logical and evidential versions
Hume and Kant on causality - an undue scepticism?
Should possibility be analysed in terms of possible worlds?
Hume's claim that justice is an artificial virtue
Is Heraclitus inconsistent in claiming that opposites are true
On what modes of existence there are
Mill's view that arithmetical knowledge is empirical
Hume on the problem of personal identity
Case for doubt in Descartes First Meditation
Deciding how much others count: slippery slope argument
Hume's claim that reason is the slave of the passions
Assessing Descartes' arguments for God's existence
Parmenides: what is not cannot be thought
Xenophanes and the nature of the one God
Paley and the fine tuning argument for God's existence
Carl Hempel's paradox of the ravens
How space poses a problem for philosophy


Do some persons have more free will than others?
What leads Descartes to posit an evil demon?
Leibniz's claim that this is the best possible world
Kant on belief in God, Rousseau on the General Will
Aristotle on slavery, Plato on individual and state
Necessity, possibility and possible worlds
Is any justification of deduction circular?
Justified true belief without knowledge
Porphyry against the sacrifice and eating of animals
Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities
Stoics on eternal recurrence, Epicurus on sensations
Russell on 'The baby has been sick all day'
Parmenides on the nature of reality
'Liberalism is beset by a paradox at its core'
Counterexamples to knowledge as justified true belief
On the methods and subject matter of metaphysics
Are moral assertions merely expressions of emotions?
Distinction between laws and accidental generalizations
Berkeley on primary qualities and the existence of God
Vague statements and the law of excluded middle
Locke's theory of ideas
Problem of free will and God's omniscience
Kant on the relation between freedom and morality
Significance of Russell's Paradox for the philosophy of mathematics


Why Aristotle distinguishes four causes
Does anti-realism violate the reality principle?
Aristotle on primary and secondary substances
Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities
Kant's explanation of why it is wrong to tell a lie
Is Descartes guilty of circular reasoning?
Direct realism as a theory of perception
David Hume's account of causation
Locke's attack on innate ideas and knowledge
Are moral assertions merely expressions of emotion?
Does epistemological justification come to an end?
Husserl's account of intentional experience
Significance of the paradox of the heap
Locke's arguments against innate ideas
What is Plato's concept of knowledge?
Private language argument and the objective standpoint
Naive Metaphysics and point of view
The third man argument in Plato's 'Parmenides'
Can you know you are not a brain in a vat?
Hallucination and disjunctive theories of perceptione
Self-predication in Plato's theory of forms
Can one meaningfully say that Zeus does not exist?
On the veil of perception problem
Atoms and voids 2500 years ago


Hallucination and the disjunctive analysis of perception
Counterfactual analysis of causal connection
Explaining possibility by means of possible worlds
Locke's argument against innate knowledge and principles
Free will, determinism and the justification for punishment
Knowledge, belief, rationality and truth
G.E. Moore's argument against hedonism
Ontological status of events
Rationality and mechanisms of belief formation
Disjunctive analysis of perception
Varieties of social and political opposition
Metaphysics of identity and constitution
Mind-body problem and the definition of identity
Hume's argument against the self/ soul
Does Anaxagoras have a good response to Parmenides?
David Hume's account of causation
Is a belief formed by a reliable mechanism justified?
The case for self-justifying beliefs in epistemology
Does J.S. Mill have a coherent conception of happiness?
Must epistemic justification come to an end?
In what sense is it true to say that Pegasus is a winged horse?
Is there an experiential difference between seeing and hallucinating
Proper names and the nature of self-reference
Kant's refutation of idealism in Critique of Pure Reason 2nd edition


Logic and the principle of excluded middle
Knowing what one believes as inner perception
Socrates' slave boy experiment in Plato's Meno
Coherence theory of knowledge
Why be moral?
Analysing ordinary talk of the will
Laws of nature vs. accidental generalizations
Meaning of 'Zeus was a Greek god'
Reducing truths about the past to present tense facts
Objections to Berkeley's theory of immaterial substance
Role of Plato's Form of the Good
Death anxiety and existentialism
Anaximander's theory of the 'Apeiron'
J.S. Mill on pleasure and happiness
Parmenides' case for the proposition 'It is'
Philosophical considerations on the practice of dissent
What it means to state that Zeus does not exist
McTaggart's proof of the unreality of time
Proper names as rigid designators
Bayes theorem and the nature of confirmation
Possibility of simultaneous and retro causation
Kierkegaard's concept of faith in Fear and Trembling
Plato's tripartite analysis of the soul
Descartes' case for the existence of God


Hume on the 'fiction' of personal identity
Plato's form of the Good in the Sun, Line and Cave
Dialogue between Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes
Knowledge, justified true belief and self-justifying beliefs
The justification of deductive reasoning
Science and the claim that observation is theory is theory laden
Hume's two definitions of causation
Hobbes' concept of the laws of nature
Hume's theory of belief and the role of rationality
Berkeley's attack on abstract ideas
Idealism and our common sense view of the world
Plato on recollection and Parmenides on plurality
Heraclitus on the unity of opposites
In what sense is Hume a sceptic about causation?
Plato on happiness and justice
Paradox of the heap for non-philosophers
Goodman's new riddle of induction
Does 'is true' specify a genuine property?
Milesian primary substance and the river of Heraclitus
Fairy tales and the coherence theory of knowledge
J.S. Mill's utilitarian theory of justice
Science and inference to the best explanation
Philosophical considerations on qualia
Knowing that I have hands


Bad faith: Sartre vs Freud
Why be moral?
An alternative to conceptual platonism and psychologism
Aristotle on virtue and four types of moral character
Kierkegaard on suffering and guilt
Existentialism and the human condition revisited
Why does language matter to philosophy?
A metaphysical basis for Aristotle's ethics
Essays on Nozick and the free market
Essay on John Rawls
Existentialism and the human condition
Xenophanes on human knowledge and its limits
Berkeley's immaterialism and the reality principle
Descartes' case for doubt in Meditation 1
Belief that I have hands and Locke on simple ideas
Aristotle's account of substance in Metaphysics Z
Aristotle on man as a political animal
Plato's arguments for immortality
Knowledge, reliability and justification
Socrates' claim that virtue is knowledge
Does Heraclitus deny the law of non-contradiction?
Aristotle on the unmoved mover
Strawson: impossibility of individuating Cartesian soul
Kant on the relationship between freedom and morality


How idealist is Kant's transcendental idealism?
How satisfactory is Spinoza's account of freedom?
Does Heraclitus deny the principle of non-contradiction?
Kant on synthetic a priori principles
What would be a genuine moral dilemma?
Hume and Anscombe on causation
Scientist, priest and philosopher discuss the soul
Spinoza on human freedom
Spinoza on the relation between mind and body
Bernard Williams on political equality
Abstract vs concrete, possible vs actual objects
Dialogue on the nature of the soul
Spinoza on the relation between mind and body
Plato on the relation between objects and forms
Portraying the negative and painful
Why should others count in my deliberations?
Descartes' proof of the existence of material objects
Putting the case for idealism
Protagoras: Man is the measure of all things
Descartes' case for doubt in Meditation 1
Essays on Aristotle's mean and on universals
Kant on the arguments for God's existence
Aristotle on the connection between virtue and happiness
The first philosophers and the nature of philosophy


What is to participate in a Platonic form?
Accounting for the truth of 'Santa Claus does not exist'
The justification of inductive reasoning
Refutation of egocentric subjectivism
Could a computer that thinks also will?
Berkeley's immaterialism and the attack on abstract ideas
Leibniz on necessary and contingent truths
Philosophical significance of the paradox of the heap
Zeno's paradoxes and the nature of motion
Locke on primary and secondary qualities
Examining our naive ideas about the soul
Leibniz's Law and opaque contexts
Fairy tales and the coherence theory of knowledge
Hempel on the symmetry of explanation and prediction
Kant's refutation of idealism
Personal identity and exchanging bodies
How thorough is Descartes' case for doubt?
Parmenides on the unthinkability of 'what is not'
Descartes' arguments for the existence of God
Role of laws in scientific explanations
What did Dr Johnson prove when he kicked the stone?
Five essays on the philosophy of language
Hume on reason and morality
A-series and B-series accounts of time


Qualia and Wittgenstein's private language argument
Hobbes on laws of nature and the state of nature
Do universals genuinely exist?
Berkeley's case against abstract ideas
Aristotle on virtue and happiness
Are events universals, particulars, or neither?
Locke on personal identity
The refutation of solipsism
What is a law of nature?
Criteria of identity for persons and for human beings
Plato's arguments for the immortality of the soul
Hobbes' idea of a state of nature
J.S. Mill on utilitarianism and justice
Hume's account of the self vs Cartesian dualism
Kant on our knowledge of arithmetic and geometry
Fairy tales and the coherentist account of knowledge
Hume and scepticism about causation
Truth value of 'Santa Claus does not exist'
Philosophy of science and the demarcation problem
Foundations of ethics and the limits of philosophy
Leibniz: this is the best of all possible worlds
Problems for a materialist view of the mind
Ethical truth and ethical dialogue
Metaphysics of vague objects


Personal identity and survival
Kuhn and the demarcation problem
Mill on justice and the principle of utility
Plato on justice and the nature of the soul
The justification of induction
Rawls on justice and the veil of ignorance
Descartes' case for doubt in the First Meditation
Kant on freedom and morality
Locke's case against innate ideas and principles
Perceptual realism and the argument from hallucination
Ontology and the necessity for universals
Ethics, liberalism and tolerance
Hume on passions as source of morality
Berkeley's immaterialism and human action
Kant on freedom and lying
Mind-body problem: interactionism vs epiphenomenalism
Plato's theory of recollection and innate knowledge
Theory of descriptions: Strawson vs Russell
Why be moral?
Essays on identity and events


Moral dilemmas and Mill's greatest happiness principle
Descartes' arguments for the existence of God
Why should others count in my deliberations?
Berkeley, Leibniz and common sense materialism
Stages of doubt in Descartes' 1st Meditation
Nozick on redistributive taxation and forced labour
Can we give a non-circular justification of deduction?
Egoism and Aristotle's view of happiness
Inference to the best explanation
Hume's account of our belief in external objects
In what sense was Parmenides a monist?
Mill's proof of the utility principle
What is a law of nature?
In what sense if any is ethics objective?
Why are philosophers interested in qualia?
Can you know that you're not dreaming?
Are possible worlds really 'real'?
Locke's account of simple ideas
Rawls' distinction between political and comprehensive liberalism
Personal identity and the body duplication hypothesis


Can intentionality be naturalized?
Moral facts and moral properties as secondary qualities
Spinoza's view of mind as the idea of the human body
Nietzsche and existentialism
The philosophical significance of zombies
Socrates on doing wrong knowingly (revisited)
The essential mark of the mental
Temporal becoming and the B-series view of time
Socrates on doing wrong knowingly
Heidegger on Dasein and authenticity
What is an intentional object?
Truth vs empirical adequacy in a scientific theory
The idealism of Bishop Berkeley
Why be moral?
On possibility and possible worlds
Hume and Feagin on the puzzle of tragedy
Personal identity and body-duplication
Jean-Paul Sartre: 'Hell is other people'
Holocaust denial and anti-realism about truth
Dreaming and scepticism and knowledge as justified true belief


Karl Popper's response to Hume
Are possible worlds really 'real'?
Can truth be defined?
Functionalism vs behaviourism as theories of the mental
Hempel's paradox of the ravens
Why Aristotle needs his four causes
Mind-body problem and the nature of philosophy
Wittgenstein on solipsism
Grice on conversational implicature
What is a law of nature?
Determinism and the justification of punishment
Causation and the explanation of human action
Heraclitus, Aristotle and the problem of change
Solving Goodman's new riddle of induction
Aristotle's account of substantial change
Scepticism, consciousness and moral theory
Are there moral facts? (revisited)
Intentionality: Frege and twin-earth cases
Zeno's paradoxes of motion
Evaluating Descartes' method of doubt


Descartes' argument for the mind-body distinction
Truth and knowledge, personal identity
Can you know that you are not dreaming?
Kuhn on the structure of scientific revolutions
Milesian theories of the primary substance
Justification of induction and Leibniz on free will
Milesian philosophy of physical explanation
Donald Davidson on radical interpretation
Plato's proofs of the existence of a soul in the Phaedo
Aristotle's case for a prime mover
Knowledge and belief in Plato's Republic
David Lewis, equivalent worlds and knowledge