Books in the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy series

This is a book about the concept of a physical thing and about how the names of things relate to the things they name. It questions the prevalent view that names 'refer to' or 'denote' the things they name.

First published in 1985, D. M. Armstrong's original work on what laws of nature are has continued to be influential in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Presenting a definitive attack on the sceptical Humean view, that laws are no more than a regularity of coincidence between stances of properties, Armstrong establishes his own theory and defends it concisely and systematically against objections. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Marc Lange, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is available for a new generation of readers.

This book, first published in 2000, is about the nature of skeptical arguments and their role in philosophical inquiry. John Greco argues that a number of historically prominent skeptical arguments make no obvious mistake, and therefore cannot be easily dismissed.

The principal aim of this book is to develop and defend an analysis of the concept of moral obligation. What it seeks to do is to generate solutions to a range of philosophical problems concerning obligation and its application. This study will be of particular interest to all philosophers concerned with normative ethical theory.

This is the first of a three-volume collection of David Lewis's most recent papers in all the areas to which he has made significant contributions. The purpose of this collection (and the two volumes to follow) is to disseminate even more widely the work of a preeminent and influential late twentieth-century philosopher. The papers are now offered in a readily accessible format. This first volume is devoted to Lewis's work on philosophical logic from the last twenty-five years. The topics covered include: deploying the methods of formal semantics from artificial formalised languages to natural languages, model-theoretic investigations of intensional logic, contradiction, relevance, the differences between analog and digital representation, and questions arising from the construction of ambitious formalised philosophical systems. The volume will serve as an important reference tool for all philosophers and their students.

This work proposes a way to a naturalistic synthesis, one that accords the mental a place in the physical world alongside the non-mental.

This book gathers together thirteen of Peter van Inwagen's essays on metaphysics, several of which have acquired the status of modern classics in their field. A specially-written introduction completes the collection, which will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in metaphysics.

In this innovative study E. J. Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, non-reductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings as subjects of experience, thought and action.

H. P. Grice's theory of implicature provides the leading paradigm for research in pragmatics. Wayne Davis argues controversially that Gricean theory does not work. This challenging book offers a searching and systematic critique of one of the most established doctrines in the philosophy of language.

What is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies.

To what degree should we rely on our own resources and methods to form opinions about important matters? To what degree should we depend on various authorities, such as a recognized expert or a social tradition? In this provocative account of intellectual trust and authority, Richard Foley argues that it can be reasonable to have intellectual trust in oneself even though it is not possible to provide a defence of the reliability of one's faculties, methods and opinions that does not beg the question. Moreover, he shows how this account of intellectual self-trust can be used to understand the degree to which it is reasonable to rely on alternative authorities. This book will be of interest to advanced students and professionals working in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences as well as anyone looking for a unified account of the issues at the centre of intellectual trust.

What Minds Can Do, first published in 1997, has two goals: to find a naturalistic or non-semantic basis for the representational powers of a person's mind, and to show that these semantic properties are involved in the causal explanation of the person's behaviour. It addresses issues that are central to contemporary philosophical debate.

Written by one of today's most creative and innovative philosophers, Ruth Garrett Millikan, this book examines basic empirical concepts; how they are acquired, how they function, and how they have been misrepresented in the traditional philosophical literature.

This book deals with foundational issues in the theory of the nature of action, the intentionality of action, the compatibility of freedom of action with determinism, and the explantion of action. Ginet's is a volitional view: that every action has as its core a 'simple' mental action.

This book is a systematic and constructive treatment of a number of traditional issues at the foundation of ethics, the possibility and nature of moral knowledge, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalistic world view, the nature of moral value and obligation, and the role of morality in a person's rational life plan.

Feldman has made a substantial contribution to utilitarian moral philosophy. This collection of eleven essays reveals the striking originality and unity of his views, by evaluating behaviour and justice affecting utilitarianism. The collection is suited for courses on contemporary utilitarian theory.

Explaining Attitudes develops an account of propositional attitudes - practical realism. Practical realism is an antidote to the now-dominant 'Standard View', according to which beliefs, if there are any, are identical to or are constituted by brain states. Practical realism takes beliefs to be states of whole persons, rather like states of health.

This book makes a stimulating contribution to the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. It begins with a spirited defence of the view that propositions are structured and that propositional structure is 'psychologically real'. The author then develops a subtle view of propositions and attitude ascription.

David Armstrong's book is a contribution to the philosophical discussion about possible worlds. Taking Wittgenstein's Tractatus as his point of departure, Professor Armstrong argues that nonactual possibilities and possible worlds are recombinations of actually existing elements, and as such are useful fictions.

Paul Moser's book defends what has been an unfashionable view in recent epistemology: the foundationalist account of knowledge and justification. In challenging prominent sceptical claims that we have no justified beliefs about the external world, the book outlines a theory of rational belief.

In this volume the distinguished philosopher Ernest Sosa collects essays, written over the last 25 years, on 'what is the scope and nature of human knowledge?' All the major topics of contemporary epistemology are covered - the nature of propositional knowledge; externalism versus internalism; foundationalism versus coherentism; and the problem of the criterion.

In this provocative book, Michael Tye presents his unique account of the metaphysical foundations of psychological discourse. In place of token identity theory or eliminative materialism, he advocates a generalisation of the adverbial approach to sensory experience, the 'operator theory'.

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed.

The Structure of Emotions argues that emotion concepts should have a much more important role in the social and behavioural sciences than they now enjoy, and shows that certain influential psychological theories of emotions overlook the explanatory power of our emotion concepts. Professor Gordon also outlines a new account of the nature of commonsense (or 'folk') psychology in general.

This book presents an original theory of the nature of pictorial representation. The most influential recent theory of depiction holds that the relation between depictions and what they represent is entirely conventional. Flint Schier argues to the contrary that depiction involves resemblance to the things depicted.

How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? The conclusion is pessimistic: punishment cannot be justified within our legal system; and this gap between the ideal and the actual presents us with serious moral dilemmas.

This book develops in detail the simple idea that assertion is the expression of belief. In it the author puts forward a version of 'probabilistic semantics' which acknowledges that we are not perfectly rational, and which offers a significant advance in generality on theories of meaning couched in terms of truth conditions.

This book examines the philosophical foundations of the realist view of the progress of science as cumulative. It is a view that has recently been faced with a number of powerful attacks in which successive scientific theories are seen, not as extending their scope and honing their explanations, but as incommensurable.

In this influential study of central issues in the philosophy of science, Paul Horwich elaborates on an important conception of probability, diagnosing the failure of previous attempts to resolve these issues as stemming from a too-rigid conception of belief. Adopting a Bayesian strategy, he argues for a probabilistic approach, yielding a more complete understanding of the characteristics of scientific reasoning and methodology. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Colin Howson, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this engaging work has been revived for a new generation of readers.

Is linguistic meaning to be accounted for independently of the states of mind of language users, or can it only be explained in terms of them? In this book Brian Loar offers a subtle and comprehensive theory that both preserves the natural priority of the mind in explanations of meaning.