MICHAEL MORRIS
PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH: FURTHER DETAILS
Books
Routledge
Philosophy GuideBook to Wittgenstein and the Tractatus (
This book belongs to the
widely acclaimed Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks series whose brief is to ‘painlessly introduce
the classic works of philosophy’. This
book is meant to be accessible, but it also aims to be a serious introduction
to one of the hardest and most puzzling works in the tradition, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It tackles most of the famous interpretative
problems in the text (such as the argument for substance, the argument for
simple signs, the issue of whether qualities and relations are included among
the objects, the account of quantification, and the treatment of nonsense),
while also attempting to provide a clear sense of the point of the Tractatus as a whole.
An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Language (
This book is a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning.
The Good and the True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
This
book defends a certain metaphysical picture ('conceptualism': the claim that
the nature of the objects, properties, and facts which correspond to our
concepts is not fixed independently of the concepts which correspond to them),
and argues within that for an anti-naturalist conception of the mind.
Specifically it claims that truth is a value, and that their assessability in terms of that value is essential to
beliefs; similarly, it is essential to desires that they are assessable in
terms of the goodness or badness of what is desired. An argument is provided
against the orthodox view that beliefs and desires are causes of the behaviour they explain, and an alternative account is
outlined. The final chapter offers an account of the conditions for intersubstitution of words within belief-contexts.
Articles
‘The Question
of Idealism in McDowell’, Philosophical
Topics (forthcoming 2009)
This
paper addresses the question whether John McDowell is committed to a form of
idealism, in Mind and World and other
related works. Various ways in which the
charge of idealism might be raised are addressed, before attention is focused in
particular on the claim that the world must be ‘conceptually organized’ if it
is to be capable of imposing any rational constraint on judgement. I argue that this is tantamount to the
same-form assumption which lies at the heart of the ‘picture’ theory of language
in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus,
and can only be insisted on on the basis of a kind of
idealism. Ironically, this idealist view
involves denying precisely the possibility which McDowell himself opened up in
the moral case by allowing for ‘external’ reasons.
‘Mysticism
and Nonsense in the Tractatus’, with J. Dodd, European
Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming 2008)
This paper presents a new treatment of the paradox of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: a paradox resulting from the fact that
the work seems to declare itself to be nonsense. Current approaches assume that the Tractatus is concerned to communicate truths, and
thus have to treat the paradox in one of two ways. Either the work is supposed to communicate
ineffable truths, or some part of the work is taken not to be nonsense and
hence capable of communicating truths straightforwardly. According to the view presented in this
article, neither approach is credible and, as a
result, the assumption on which both approaches rest must be abandoned. The paper argues that the function of the
work is not to communicate truths, but to engender in the reader a mystical
experience of the limits of the world
‘Doing Justice to Musical Works’, in K. Stock,
ed., Experience, Meaning, and Work:
Philosophers on Music (
This paper argues against the view in the ontology of musical works (championed recently by Julian Dodd) that the relation between musical works and performances of them is the relation between a type and its tokens. I claim that this cannot do justice to the fact that musical works are essentially meaningful, in the sense of essentially being there to be understood. The type-token view risks treating musical works as found objects, and it cannot accommodate the intentionality of the relation between musical works and performances if musical works are essentially meaningful.
‘Akrasia in the Protagoras and the Republic’, Phronesis 51 (2006), 195-229
Although it is a commonplace that the Protagoras and the Republic present different views of akrasia, the nature of the difference is not well understood. I argue that the logic of the famous argument in the Protagoras turns just on two crucial assumptions: that desiring is having evaluative beliefs (or that valuing is desiring), and that no one can have contradictory preferences at the same time; hedonism is not essential to the logic of the argument. And the logic of the argument for the division of the soul in the Republic requires the rejection of just the second of these assumptions, but not the evaluative conception of desire. I also maintain that Plato was aware, at the time of composition, of these features of the argumentation of his dialogues. Finally, I argue that there is reason to think that, even at the time of the Protagoras, Plato held the conception of the soul expressed in the Republic, and not anything like that expressed in the famous argument of the Protagoras. The Protagoras view, even without hedonism, is a poor expression of the thesis that virtue is knowledge.
‘Realism beyond
Correspondence’, in H. Beebee and J. Dodd, eds., Truthmakers: the Contemporary Debate (
This paper claims
that classical correspondence theories of truth read features of language into
the world as it is in itself, and so seem to be committed to an idealist conception
of the world as it is in itself. It
offers a preliminary defence (against, for example, some points made in
McDowell’s Mind and World) of a non-correspondence realism which still
allows it to be possible to describe the world as it is in itself.
'Metaphor
and Philosophy: an Encounter with Derrida', Philosophy75 (2000), pp.
225-244
This
is an analytical treatment of Derrida's famous paper, 'White Mythology', and is
concerned with the claim of that paper that the concept of metaphor is both
essential to philosophy and disruptive of it, in that it forces philosophy into
contradiction. I find the claim that the concept of metaphor is essential to
philosophy plausible, but argue that the threat of contradiction can be
avoided, though at some cost to familiar philosophical views.
'Mind, World, and Value', in A. O'Hear, ed., Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 303-320.
This
paper outlines an evaluative conception of the nature of the mind as a contrast
to more familiar naturalistic approaches, and develops a non-causal account of
the explanation of behaviour.
'How Simple is the Simple Account? Comment on Peacocke', in A. Clark, and P. Millican,
eds., Connectionism, Concepts, and Folk Psychology: The Legacy of Alan
Turing, vol 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), pp. 139-46.
This paper is a brief commentary on C. Peacocke's
'The Relation between Philosophical and Psychological Theories of Concepts',
and claims that Peacocke demands an excessive correspondence
between theories which are stated in personal and subpersonal
terms.
'The Place of Language', Aristotelian
Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1993), pp. 153-72.
This
paper aims to cast doubt on the familiar idea that language is a means of communication,
a system of marks and sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the
world, by questioning the assumptions on which it seems to depend: in
particular that the identity of the thoughts and facts expressed in language is
determinate independently of language; and that the fundamental elements of
language ('marks and sounds') are not themselves intrinsically meaningful.
'Beyond
Interpretation: Reply to Cummins' Response', Minds and Machines 2 (1992)
'Why There are No Mental Representations', Minds
and Machines 1 (1991)
This paper takes representations to be things
which are individuated non-semantically but have semantic properties, and
argues that nothing which is individuated non-semantically can have semantic
properties intrinsically: such things can only have semantic properties in
virtue of a stipulation, or as a matter of interpretation.
'Empirical
versus Epistemological Considerations: A Comment on Stemmer', Mind and
Language 4 (1989)
'The
Varieties of Sense', Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1988), pp. 385-400.
This
paper proposes a solution to Kripke's puzzle about
belief which insists that there may be no contradiction between saying that
Pierre believes that London is pretty and saying that Pierre does not believe
that London is pretty: there is an indefinite range of degrees of fineness of
grain to which we can be sensitive in attributing propositional attitudes.
'Le Cratyle de Platon et la Base
Sémantique de la Théorie des Formes', Revue de la Philosophie Ancienne 6
(1988), pp. 155-83
This paper finds in Plato's Cratylus a semantic assumption which leads to the theory of Forms.
'Causes
of Behaviour', The
Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1986), pp. 123-44
This
paper argues that beliefs and desires are not causes of behaviour
on a natural understanding of the concept of cause, but accepts that there is a
sense in which they can thought of as causes.
'Socrates'
Last Argument', Phronesis 30 (1985),
pp. 223-48
This is
an examination of the final argument of Plato's Phaedo:
among other things, I claim that Plato is here committed to the
self-predication of forms.
Reviews
Of
M. Wilson, Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science, in The
Classical Review (2002)
Of
J. Haugeland, Having Thought, in Philosophy
74 (1999)
Of
Q. Cassam, Self and World, in Philosophy
73 (1998)
Of
G. Strawson, Mental Reality, in Minds and
Machines 7 (1997)
Of
J. Fodor and
Of
F. J. Pelletier, Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being, in Philosophical
Review 101 (1992)
Of
A. J. Ayer, Freedom and Morality and Other Essays, in Philosophical
Books 29 (1988)
WORK IN PROGRESS
Books
An Essay on the Nature of Language
This is
an attempt to undermine what is in effect the standard assumption that words
are signs. One motivation for the
project can be explained as follows. In
fundamental metaphysics we seem to face a difficult choice. On the one hand, there is what might be
called a ‘conceptualist’ position (the position, effectively, of my first book,
The Good and the True): according to this, the nature of things depends
on which kinds they belong to, and the nature of the kinds is determined by the
concepts which are applied to them. On
the other hand, there is a kind of correspondence realism: this holds that the
nature of the concepts which are applied to the world is determined by the
nature of the world (by the real kinds in nature, as it were). The first view looks unhealthily idealist;
the second looks like an optimistic appeal to a kind of mystery.
I think
there is an unobserved third factor here: language (or languages). We tend to take language as simply
transparent—simply expressing concepts or reflecting real kinds, for example. (This is, in effect, to treat words as
signs.) This assumption of transparency
is what makes the issue in fundamental metaphysics seem to be a question of
priority between concepts and real kinds.
But that assumption of transparency is itself a form of correspondence
theory about the relation between language (or
languages) and what lies outside language (or languages). So we ought to expect the original dilemma to
return here too. But here it seems even
more uncomfortable: to think that reality is in any way determined by language
is absurd (though this did not stop me getting dangerously close to that view
in ‘The Place of Language’), but so is the idea that every feature of language
is a reflection of reality. What we seem
need is to be able to acknowledge that language is a representational medium
which has features which are not reflections of reality, but which can be used
to represent the world as it is in itself (even in virtue of those features
which are not reflections of reality). The
book is an attempt to explain the nature of language in such a way as to make
sense of that.
Articles
‘How
can There be Works of Art?’
This paper is concerned with the implications of two claims: that art is indefinitely re-interpretable, and that works of art are made to be indefinitely re-interpretable. These two claims are elaborated and defended, before the conclusion is drawn that works of art have a meaning which is not a matter of what anyone means by them or takes them to mean. This has a consequence for the way we think of artistic media, which, in turn, is explained.
‘Objects
of Art’
Objects of art are the things seen in sculptures and paintings, or described in works of fiction. This paper does not question that there are such things, but argues for a particular view—the ‘Awkward-Object view’—of the kind of thing they are. On this view, objects of art are not represented by representational works of art: they are themselves the representations, and are constituted by the materials of the medium of representation, as well as having the ordinary properties which objects of art are naturally taken to have.
‘Rembrandt’s
Hat’
It commonly strikes us as puzzling that representations which call attention to the ‘medium’ of representation can be particularly good representations. I trace this puzzlement to what I call a classical view of representation, according to which what is shown by a representation is something which can in principle be seen by someone who does not understand the medium. I try to develop an alternative, relativized, conception of representation which is incompatible with the classical view, but compatible both with realism and with the view that we can represent the world as it is in itself.
‘Wittgenstein on Private Ostensive Definition’
This is an attempt to present a version of the so-called ‘private-language argument’ which is at least not overtly verificationist. It involves a reading of §258 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which is based on a not overtly verificationist conception of criteria. At the root of the argument, on this interpretation, is a form of empiricism; this might be thought to have some affinities with verificationism, even if it is not a traditional form of verificationism, but it certainly survives the obvious objections. On my interpretation, the chief problem with the ‘private-language argument’ is Wittgenstein’s account of first-person authority in the case of sensation terms.