Passions and Projections

Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn

Edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith

New essays on a leading philosopher of our times
Illuminates the work of Simon Blackburn, and engages critically with key themes
Covers a range of subjects in central areas of philosophy

Passions and Projections

Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn

Edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith

Description

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.

Passions and Projections

Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn

Edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith

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

Passions and Projections

Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn

Edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith

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.

Contributors:

Louise Antony, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Helen Beebee, University of Manchester
Jamie Dreier, Brown University
Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Terry Horgan, University of Arizona
Frank Jackson, Princeton University and the Australian National University
C. S. I. Jenkins, University of British Columbia and the Northern Institute of Philosophy
Robert Johnson, University of Missouri
Robert Kraut, Ohio State University
Rae Langton, University of Cambridge
Cynthia Macdonald, University of Manchester
Huw Price, University of Cambridge
Peter Railton, University of Michigan
Mark Schroeder, University of Southern California
Michael Smith, Princeton University
Mark Timmons, University of Arizona
R. Jay Wallace, University of California, Berkeley

Passions and Projections

Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn

Edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith

Reviews and Awards

"The range and influence of Simon Blackburn's work is reflected in the thematic variety of the contributions to this excellent volume edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith. The quality of the essays is consistently high, and together they provide a comprehensive, in-depth treatment of Blackburn's many original and controversial ideas" -- Camil Golub, Journal of Moral Philosophy

"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." -- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online

"This is a rather good anthology overall, and there is much here for those interested, not simply in the specifics of Blackburn's arguments, but in realism and projectivism as such, largely of course as such things apply to ethics, but to no small extent as these positions apply elsewhere as well." -- Philosophical Forum

"Anyone who has any interest in Blackburn's work--or more generally in any version of expressivism, projectivism, prescriptivism, pragmatism, or anti-realism--should get their hands on this volume. The collection certainly provides a fitting, and very personal, tribute to the philosophical themes developed in Blackburn's pioneering work-in the sense that many of the contributors, as indicated in the essays, have been profitably engaged with Blackburn's work for decades." -- The Philosophical Quarterly