Overview

This volume presents fourteen original essays which explore the philosophy of Simon Blackburn, one of the UK's most influential contemporary philosophers. Blackburn is best known to the general public for his attempts to make philosophy accessible to those with little or no formal training, but in professional circles his reputation is based on a lifetime pursuit of his distinctive version of a projectivist and anti-realist research program. As he sees things, we must always try first to understand and explain what we are doing when we think and talk as we do. This research program reaches into nearly all of the main areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and moral psychology. The books and articles he has written provide us with perhaps the most comprehensive statement and defense of projectivism and anti-realism since Hume. The essays collected here document the range and influence of Blackburn's work. They reveal, among other things, the resourcefulness of his distinctive brand of philosophical pragmatism.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert N. Johnson (University of Missouri) ,  Michael Smith (Princeton University)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.20cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.610kg
ISBN:  

9780198723172

ISBN 10:   0198723172
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   08 January 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Robert Johnson and Michael Smith: Introduction Simon Blackburn: Apologia pro Vita Sua Part One: Metaphysics and Epistemology 1: Louise Antony: Defending Folk Psychology: The Limits of Coalitions 2: Helen Beebee: Causation, Projection, Inference, and Agency 3: Frank Jackson: Singular Belief 4: C. S. I. Jenkins: What Quasi-Realists Can Say About Knowledge 5: Robert Kraut: The Metaphysics of Artistic Expression: A Case Study in Projectivism 6: Rae Langton: The Impossible Necessity of 'Filling in Space' 7: Cynthia Macdonald: What is Colour? A Defense of Colour Primitivism 8: Huw Price: From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism--and Back Again? Part Two: Metaethics and Moral Psychology 9: Jamie Dreier: Another World: The Metaethics and Metametaethics of Reasons Fundamentalism 10: Allan Gibbard: Improving Sensibilities 11: Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons: Modest Quasi-Realism and the Problem of Deep Moral Error 12: Peter Railton: Just How Do Passions Rule? The (More) Compleat Humean 13: Mark Schroeder: Higher-Order Attitudes, Frege's Abyss, and the Truth in Propositions 14: R. Jay Wallace: The Fugitive Thought: Blackburn on Reasons

Reviews

Written by a distinguished bunch of philosophers, this wonderful book collects together fourteen papers on various aspects of Blackburn's work. The papers cover what seems like a fitting selection of topics. They are polished, and many of them are a real joy to read. Teemu Toppinen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online

Author Information

Robert Johnson is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and was a student of Blackburn's at UNC Chapel Hill in the 1990s. Michael Smith is McCosh Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Princeton University; he was a student of Blackburn's at Oxford University in the 1980s.

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