Table Of ContentPhilosophers of Our Times
Philosophers of
Our Times
Edited by
Ted Honderich
1
1
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Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Thomas Nagel, ‘Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem’.
This was the first Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture. It was given in
London on 18 February 1998.
Chapter 2: P. F. Strawson, ‘Perception and its Objects’. A car accident prevented the
author from giving an arranged Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture. The
editor and the publisher of the present volume have decided to include the present
paper.
Chapter 3: Tyler Burge, ‘Perception: Where Mind Begins’. The Royal Institute of
Philosophy Annual Lecture 2013.
Chapter 4: Jerry Fodor, ‘The Revenge of the Given: Mental Representation Without
Conceptualization’. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 2006.
Chapter 5: Ned Block, ‘Attention and Mental Paint’. Originally published in
Philosophical Issues 20, 2010, pp. 23–63. The author is grateful to the following audi-
ences for responses to earlier versions of this paper, starting in October 2008: the
University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the
University of Warwick, the Australian National University, the NYU Consciousness
Project discussion group, the Rutgers cognitive science group, the UCLA Philosophy
Department, the University of Victoria Philosophy Department, the Searle con-
ference at Santa Clara University, the NYU Mind & Language Seminar, Brown
University, and the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He thanks Tyler Burge, Imogen
Dickie, Geoffrey Lee, Farid Masrour, Chris Peacocke, Jesse Prinz, Frédérique de
Vignemont, and Sebastian Watzl for comments on earlier drafts.
Chapter 6: John McDowell, ‘Some Remarks on Intention in Action’. Originally pub-
lished in The Amherst Lecture in Philosophy 6 (2011): 1–18. Earlier versions of some of
this material were given as a Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture in London; as a
Howison Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley; and as part of the author’s
Hägerström Lectures at Uppsala University.
Chapter 7: Christine M. Korsgaard, ‘On Having a Good’. This paper was delivered as
the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture in March 2012, Suarez Lecture at
Fordham in April 2013, and as one of the Agnes Cumin Lectures at University College
Dublin in March. The author is indebted to the audiences for helpful discussion on all
of these occasions and at colloquia at Stanford, the CUNY Graduate Center, SUNY-
Binghamton, Brandeis, and the Georg-August University in Göttengen.
vi Acknowledgements
Chapter 8: T. M. Scanlon, ‘Reasons Fundamentalism’. This is a revised version
of the author’s 2008 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture ‘Reasons and
Rationality’. A slightly different version appears as Lecture 1 of his Being Realistic
about Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Chapter 9: Simon Blackburn, ‘The Majesty of Reason’. The Royal Institute of
Philosophy Annual Lecture 2009.
Chapter 10: Mary Warnock, ‘What Is Natural? And Should We Care?’ The Royal
Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 2002.
Chapter 11: John R. Searle, ‘Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology’. This article
is an extension of some of the ideas presented in the author’s lecture to the Royal
Institute of Philosophy, in February 2001. That lecture was based on an earlier article
in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, ‘Consciousness, Free Action and the Brain’,
volume 10, number 10, October 2000. Some of the arguments in the early part of this
article are developed in more detail in the author’s book Rationality in Action (MIT
Press, 2001).
Chapter 12: Derek Parfit, ‘We Are Not Human Beings’. This lecture is taken from
material written with the support of a Foundational Research Grant from the
Ammonius Foundation, for whose generosity the author is very grateful. He has been
much helped by comments from Eric Olson, Sydney Shoemaker, and Ingmar Persson.
Chapter 13: Anthony Kenny, ‘Knowledge, Belief, and Faith’. The Royal Institute of
Philosophy Annual Lecture 2007.
Chapter 14: Noam Chomsky, ‘Simple Truths, Hard Problems: Some Thoughts
on Terror, Justice, and Self-Defence’. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual
Lecture 2004.
Chapter 15: Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Social Structures and their Threats to Moral
Agency’. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 1999.
Chapter 16: Jürgen Habermas, ‘Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural
Rights’. The Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 2003.
Chapter 17: Bernard Williams, ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’. The Royal
Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 2000.
Chapter 18: David J. Chalmers, ‘Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?’ The
Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture 2014.
Contents
Introduction 1
Ted Honderich
Introduction to Thomas Nagel’s Lecture 5
Ted Honderich
1. Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem 7
Thomas Nagel
Introduction to P. F. Strawson’s Lecture 21
Ted Honderich
2. Perception and its Objects 23
P. F. Strawson
Introduction to Tyler Burge’s Lecture 41
Ted Honderich
3. Perception: Where Mind Begins 43
Tyler Burge
Introduction to Jerry Fodor’s Lecture 59
Ted Honderich
4. The Revenge of the Given: Mental Representation
Without Conceptualization 61
Jerry Fodor
Introduction to Ned Block’s Lecture 75
Ted Honderich
5. Attention and Mental Paint 77
Ned Block
Introduction to John McDowell’s Lecture 117
Ted Honderich
6. Some Remarks on Intention in Action 119
John McDowell
Introduction to Christine Korsgaard’s Lecture 133
Ted Honderich
viii Contents
7. On Having a Good 135
Christine M. Korsgaard
Introduction to T. M. Scanlon’s Lecture 155
Ted Honderich
8. Reasons Fundamentalism 157
T. M. Scanlon
Introduction to Simon Blackburn’s Lecture 171
Ted Honderich
9. The Majesty of Reason 173
Simon Blackburn
Introduction to Mary Warnock’s Lecture 193
Ted Honderich
10. What Is Natural? And Should We Care? 195
Mary Warnock
Introduction to John Searle’s Lecture 209
Ted Honderich
11. Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology 212
John R. Searle
Introduction to Derek Parfit’s Lecture 233
Ted Honderich
12. We Are Not Human Beings 235
Derek Parfit
Introduction to Anthony Kenny’s Lecture 255
Ted Honderich
13. Knowledge, Belief, and Faith 257
Anthony Kenny
Introduction to Noam Chomsky’s Lecture 271
Ted Honderich
14. Simple Truths, Hard Problems: Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice,
and Self-Defence 273
Noam Chomsky
Introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Lecture 293
Ted Honderich
Contents ix
15. Social Structures and their Threats to Moral Agency 295
Alasdair MacIntyre
Introduction to Jürgen Habermas’ Lecture 311
Ted Honderich
16. Religious Tolerance—The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights 313
Jürgen Habermas
Introduction to Bernard Williams’ Lecture 325
Ted Honderich
17. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline 327
Bernard Williams
Introduction to David J. Chalmers’ Lecture 345
Ted Honderich
18. Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy? 347
David J. Chalmers
Subject Index 371
