Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn [Hardcover]

This volume presents fourteen original essays which explore the philosophy of Simon Blackburn, and his lifetime pursuit of a distinctive projectivist and anti-realist research program. The essays document the range and influence of Blackburn's work and reveal, among other things, the resourcefulness of his brand of philosophical pragmatism.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 explainwhat we are doingwhen 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.Introduction,Robert Johnson and Michael SmithApologia pro Vita Sua,Simon BlackburnPart One: Metaphysics and Epistemology1. Defending Folk Psychology: The Limits of Coalitions,Louise Antony2. Causation, Projection, Inference, and Agency,Helen Beebee3. Singular Belief,Frank Jackson4. What Quasi-Realists Can Say About Knowledge,C. S. I. Jenkins5. The Metaphysics of Artistic Expression: A Case Study in Projectivism,Robert Kraut6. The Impossible Necessity of 'Filling in Space',Rae Langton7. l“ˆ