Christmas spirit

In the hinterland between Christmas and New Year, I went, today, for a walk in the Howgills (the Lake District itself is as busy now as it i...

The skull beneath the skin

The bad news is that the Christmas number one in the UK is a cover version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah by the winner of the X Factor (a fa...

Mere habit?

I am used to thinking about habit as the underpinnings of normatively or conceptually structured action and thought. As an ex-Wittgensteinia...

Jack Bauer against the Principlists!

This week, quite uncharacteristically, I let Gloria drag me both to a trendy bar (well, as close as Preston comes) rather than my usual old...

Knowing how

Last night I read Stanley and Williamson’s (pictured) ‘ Knowing how ’ (Stanley, J. and Williamson, T. (2001) ‘Knowing how’ Journal of Philos...

Tacit knowledge

In a taxi ride across Cairo in 2005 with Bill Fulford, I rashly announced that I was writing a book on tacit knowledge. The sense of ‘writin...

Off the beat?

Whilst running yesterday I played the podcast of a recent In Our Time programme on neuroscience which included on the panel the Kings Coll...

Do animals need a ‘theory of mind’?

At this fortnight’s Uclan Philosophy research seminar Ian Ground (pictured), from the University of Sunderland, gave a paper called ‘Do anim...

McDowell on Intention in Action

In case anyone hasn’t seen this lecture, here’s a link to McDowell on Intention in Action on Youtube. The gently unforgiving style of delive...

Trying to understand the endogenous Given

Last week, I gave two papers at the University of Hertfordshire. The system is that one first presents a research paper during a two hour se...

Postscript to: Cover versions and Wittgenstein on playing trains

Further to my previous thought about cover versions of popular songs Wittgenstein’s discussion of children playing trains, in Saturday’s Gu...

Faith and Aristotle

I popped along to a seminar on conceptions of mental wellbeing and eudaimonia, this morning, put together by Karen Newbiggin (Institute for ...

Philosophy, social science and reasons

Yesterday I went to a paper given by my colleague Phil Thomas at an inter departmental group for Mental Health and Society. Taking as his po...

Putnam on magical theories of reference

Last week, I was invited by my colleague Peter Lucas to reply to a paper he was giving defending phenomenology from the charge, made against...

For him, painting should be abandoned

In Paris last weekend I wondered round both the Pompidou and the City of Paris Modern Art Museum which had a fine Dufy exhibition. Later I s...

Too many (foot)notes!

Catching up with Laurie Taylor’s sociology programme on BBC Radio 4, I was struck by a very uncharacteristic interview. In the main, Taylor...

Psychiatry and Freedom, INPP conference

I’ve just been to the International Network for Philosophy of Psychiatry conference organised this year by John Sadler (pictured) in Dallas,...

800 words on Thomas Szasz

Brendan Kelly is putting together a short composite article on Thomas Szasz from 5 or so short separate pieces. I know that I ought to be ab...

Projectivism and causation

In trying to fill out the apparently Wittgensteinian idea that the conceptual order depends on some underlying contingencies – the ‘whirl of...

Clinical judgement and individual cases

Advances in Psychiatric Treatment sent me a manuscript by Robin Downie (pictured) and Jane Macnaughton to review a few weeks ago. Although ...