The story of Ted Honderich, philosopher, a story of a perilous philosophical life, marked by critical examination, and a compelling personal life full of human drama. This is the story of Ted Honderich's perilous progress from boyhood in Canada to the Grote Professorship of Mind and Logic at University College London, A. J. Ayer's chair. It is compelling, candid and revealing about the beginning and the goal, and everything in between: early work as a journalist on The Toronto (...) Star, travels with Elvis Presley, arrival in Britain, loves and friendships, academic rivalries and battles, marriages and affairs, self-interest and empathy. It sets out resolutely to explain how and why it all happened. It is as much a narrative of Ted Honderich's philosophy. He makes hard problems real. Philosophy from consciousness and determinism to political violence and democracy comes into sharp focus. Along the way, questions keep coming up. Does the free marriage owe anything to the analytic philosophy? What are the costs of truth? Are the politics of England slowly making it an ever-better place? Is an action's rightness independent of the mixture of motives out of which it came? (shrink)

This paper by Prof. Daniel Statman, moral philosopher at the University of Haifa in Israel and author of the books Moral Dilemmas and Religion and Morality , offers a philosophical defense for such targeted killings or assassinations as those by Israel of Palestinians. The paper argues that if one accepts the moral legitimacy of the large-scale killing of combatants in conventional (what may come to be called 'old-fashioned') wars, one cannot object -- on moral grounds -- to the targeted (...) killing of terrorists in what are called wars against terror. If one rejects this legitimacy, one must object to all killing in war, targeted and non-targeted alike, and thus not support the view, which is criticized here, that targeted killings are particularly disturbing from a moral point of view. (shrink)

When you are making up your mind, deciding what to do, you have the idea that you are free in what you are doing. It is hard to shake. You are going to do the one thing, but you can certainly do the other. That is what you think. Rational deliberators, as they can be called, have an inescapable sense of freedom. Dana Nelkin, in the following clear-headed paper, asks if this sense of freedom establishes that determinism is not true. (...) Read on for her answer. She also has things to say about another understanding of the claim that we know we are free when we are making up our minds. Whether or not you agree, you will learn things. Prof. Nelkin is at the University of California at San Diego. (shrink)

Mind and Brain was originally published as the first two parts of a single-volume hardback edition. In this volume, Ted Honderich sets a new agenda for thinking about determinism. He expounds in detail a distinctive philosophy of mind, then defends it on the basis of contemporary neuroscience. He advances the proposition that philosophy cannot deal effectively with freewill if it stands aside from science.

_Can attitudes like those that have seemed welded to indeterminism and free will_ _actually go with determinism? Is it not a contradiction to suppose so? The little_ _Oxford University Press book_ _How Free Are You?_ _in its first edition, much_ _translated, was a summary of the indigestible or anyway not widely digested_.

What better introduction to the world of philosophy than through the lives of its most prominent citizens. In The Philosophers, we are introduced to twenty-eight of the greatest thinkers in Western civilization, ranging from Aristotle and Plato to Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Sartre. An illustrious team of scholars takes us on a concise and illuminating tour of some of the most brilliant minds and enduring ideas in history. Here is Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Plato's cave of shadows, Schopenhauer's vision of reality as (...) blind, striving Will, Hegel's idea of the World Spirit, Bentham's principle of the Greatest Happiness, Mill's contributions to our understanding of liberty, William James's theory of the stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and much more. Readers will find thoughtful discussions of everything from Kant's categorical imperative, to the Christian philosophies of Augustine, Aquinas, and Kierkegaard, to the materialism of Hobbes or Marx, to the modern--and quite different--philosophical systems of Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Each article is illustrated with a portrait of the philosopher, the contributors provide lists for further reading, and the volume includes a chronological table that gives valuable historical context. Here then is an authoritative and engaging guide to the ideas of the most notable philosophers, ranging from antiquity to the present day. The Philosophers shows how these great thinkers wrestled with the central problems of the human condition--with important questions of free will, morality, and the limits of logic and reason--as it illuminates their legacy for our time. (shrink)

'Review from previous edition 'the arguments for free will and determinism are lucidly laid out... A primer that is serviceable, enjoyable and rather mischievous.'' - The Observer 1993 ''refreshing, provocative and original work'' - Times Literary Supplement 1994 ''a readable and engaging introduction to the determinism controversy... Honderich's book is well worth reading... the view he presents is provocative and he has written a very challenging and enlightening introduction to 'the determinism problem' that should be widely read.'' - Times (...) Educational Supplement 1994 ''If you feel strong enough read this book; if not be glad that it has been written; this is main stream philosophy and its conclusions are encouraging.'' -New Directions July 2002This second edition of the best-known and most translated introduction to the great philosophical problem of determinism and freedom has been fully revised and enlarged to take account of debates emerging since the first edition was published. In the first edition Ted Honderich went beyond two traditions of philosophical thought, whilst in this edition he indicates that the nature of the debate must change. (shrink)

Violence for Equality, first published in 1989, questions the morality of political violence and challenges the presuppositions, inconsistencies and prejudices of liberal-democratic thinking. This book should be of interest to teachers and students of philosophy and politics.

the difference, within the field of physically undetermined events, between the random and the non-random is the presence or absence of a prior mental event ...

One of the most significant studies of Descartes in recent times. It concentrates on the _Meditations_ to show Descartes' philosophy in the context of his overall scientific objectives, not all of them fully explicit in the texts.

How do our thoughts, feelings, choices and actions come about? In what follows here, the two kinds of traditional and still orthodox explanations are considered. The fundamental proposition of a defined and developed theory of determinism is laid out and compared with various ideas of free will or origination. This is Ch. 3 of Ted Honderich's large work A Theory of Determinism: The Mind, Neuroscience and Life-Hopes -- which is also Ch. 3 of the paperback Mind and Brain . (...) In a nutshell, the determinist line of thought is that events of consciousness go together with brain events to make up psychoneural pairs, which pairs are effects of certain causal sequences. This is different from supposed explanations of mental events considered earlier, including the common view that there is something called interaction between mind and brain. The determinist line of thought is fundamentally different from those explanations of our existence considered after it -- indeterminism, free will, origination. The determinist explanation derives from and depends on a preceding partial account of the relation of mind and brain, Mind Brain Connection. Also an earlier account of causal and lawlike connection in general, Causality or Causation, the Fundamental Fact Plainly Explained. For details of the books and other writings referred to, go to References. The sections of the inquiry below are as follows. (shrink)

The late J. L. Mackie and his work were a focus for much of the best philosophical thinking in the Oxford tradition. His moral thought centres on that most fundamental issue in moral philosophy – the issue of whether our moral judgements are in some way objective. The contributors to this volume, first published in 1985, are among the most distinguished figures in moral philosophy, and their essays in tribute to John Mackie present views at the forefront of the subject. (...) Five of the essays give a new understanding of the objectivity of moral judgements. These are by Simon Blackburn, R.M. Hare, John McDowell, Susan Hurley and Bernard Williams. The remaining contributors – Philippa Foot, Steven Lukes, Amartya Sen, David Wiggins – give their attention to problems which are equally compelling, such as the defence of a moral outlook based on a conception of a need and of what follows from it. The volume also includes the addresses given by Simon Blackburn and George Cawkwell at the memorial service for John Mackie, and a list of his publications, compiled by Joan Mackie. (shrink)

_Essays on Freedom of Action_, first published in 1973, brings together original papers by contemporary British and American philosophers on questions which have long concerned philosophers and others: the question of whether persons are wholly a part of the natural world and their actions the necessary effects of causal processes, and the question of whether our actions are free, and such that we can be held responsible for them, even if they are the necessary effects of casual processes. This volume (...) will be of interest not only to those who are primarily concerned with philosophy but also to students in those many other disciplines in which freedom and determinism arise as problems. (shrink)

Democracy has been justified as the political system whose citizens are sovereign, which is to say most free or most equal in their political experience, participation or consent, and most likely to be benefited by economic freedoms. Most importantly, democracy is recommended as that form of government which gets things more right than any other form of government. But this traditional view, and also more recent qualifications of this view, is simply inadequate, refuted and rendered nonsensical by very real electoral, (...) wealth, income and power inequalities in democratic societies. Nevertheless, it is this kind of hierarchic democracy, like those of the United States and the United Kingdom, whose systems of government are exactly not true to the idea that two heads are better than one and more heads better than two, which reaches to judgements about Palestine, 9/11, Iraq, 7/7 and about all that is to come after those things. (shrink)

The Philosophers introduces some of the most brilliant minds in history and shows the enduring fascination of their ideas, which shaped our civilization. An illustrious team of authors offer concise and illuminating tours through the lives and thought of the twenty-eight greatest Western philosophers, from Socrates to Sartre. Each chapter is illustrated with a portrait of its subject, guidance is given to further reading, and a chronological table fills in the historical context. This is the ideal way for any reader (...) to learn about these famous thinkers. (shrink)

This is not just another book about consciousness: it takes the subject of consciousness forward, out of the impasse into which it has come.

Round-table discussion on the topic of the title. Difficult to abstract more accurately.

Descartes believed not only that I think therefore I am but also that consciousness is not physical, unlike the brain. That makes consciousness different, which evidently it is, but also incapable of causing arm movements, which is unbelievable.functionalism is in the same boat. Disagreement between these and more ideas and theories surely has much to do with not talking about the same thing, no adequate initial clarification of the subject matter. We can get such a thing from a database. Consciousness (...) is therefore something's being actual. What that comes to on further reflection is that it has characteristics that add up to its being subjectively physical – and partly outside a brain and partly inside. This theory of consciousness, Actualism, also passes other tests, including individuality and freedom. (shrink)

‘The door's being shut made the room warmer.’ What does it mean and what are our reasons for saying it? There is much agreement that singular statements of cause and effect are conditional statements, and also that they are more than that, but at this early moment of inquiry the agreement ends. Can it not be carried further?

The philosophy-of-mind and the science-of-mind industries surveyed, judged and then radically redirected into a new theory of consciousness by an independent-minded philosopher.

Here are some kinds of reasons for taking an action to have been morally right. It was done out of a good intention or a pure good will on the part of the agent, or was owed to a virtue of hers. It issued from the agent's moral perception or intuition with respect to a situation, not from the application of a general principle or from calculation of the consequences of possible actions. Although it would give rise to distress or (...) worse, the action was one of integrity, autonomy, or self-concern, perhaps in accord with the agent's aversion to killing by her own hand, or true to her life-hope to achieve a success on her own. (shrink)

The door's being shut caused the room to be wanner. As we can also say, a set of conditions or events which included the door's being shut caused the room to be warmer. The set of conditions or events. whatever is to be said more carefully of their ontological category, and their closer specification, can be called a causal chrwnslance. The question of causal priority, as it is named, is the question of analysing or elucidating the difference or asymmetry between (...) cause and causal circumstance on the one hand, and, on the other hand, their effect. David Sanford does not like my answer1 and sticks to his own more original one2. I should like to say briefly why. (shrink)

In a natural conception an action is a bodily event or event?sequence represented and caused by an active intention. The conception must be in accord with the conviction of psychophysical intimacy, concerning mental and simultaneous neural events. The obvious means of satisfying the conviction issues is overdetermination of certain neural events, and hence of actions. The correct conception of an action, in which an action is a bodily event or event?sequence caused by the lawlike neural correlate of an active intention, (...) which neural correlate is not an effect of the intention, has the strengths of the natural conception without its weakness. (shrink)

Offering clear and reliable guidance to the ideas of philosophers from antiquity to the present day and to the major philosophical systems around the globe, he Oxford Companion to Philosophy is the definitive philosophical reference work for readers at all levels. For ten years the original volume has served as a stimulating introduction for general readers and as an indispensable guide for students and scholars. A distinguished international assembly of 249 philosophers contributed almost 2,000 entries, and many of these have (...) now been considerably revised and updated in this major new edition; to these are added over 300 brand-new pieces on a fascinating range of current topics such as animal consciousness, cloning, corporate responsibility, the family, globalization, terrorism . Here is, indeed, a world of thought, with entries on idealism and empiricism, epicureanism and stoicism, passion and emotion, deism and pantheism. The contributors represent a veritable who's who of modern philosophy, including such eminent figures as Isaiah Berlin, Sissela Bok, Ronald Dworkin, John Searle, Michael Walzer, and W. V. Quine. We meet the great thinkers--from Aristotle and Plato, to Augustine and Aquinas, to Descartes and Kant, to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, right up to contemporary thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Luce Iragaray, and Noam Chomsky. There are short entries on key concepts such as personal identity and the mind-body problem, major doctrines from utilitarianism to Marxism, schools of thought such as the Heidelberg School or the Vienna Circle, and contentious public issues such as abortion, capital punishment, and welfare. In addition, the book offers short explanations of philosophical terms (qualia, supervenience, iff), puzzles (the Achilles paradox, the prisoner's dilemma), and curiosities (the philosopher's stone, slime). Almost every entry is accompanied by suggestions for further reading, and the book includes both a chronological chart of the history of philosophy and a gallery of portraits of eighty eminent philosophers. An indispensable guide and a constant source of stimulation and enlightenment, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy will appeal to everyone interested in abstract thought, the eternal questions, and the foundations of human understanding. (shrink)

This book develops a new theory of determinism that offers fresh insights into questions of how intentions and other mental events relate to neural events, how both come about, and how both result in actions. Honderich tests his theory against neuroscience, quantum theory, and possible philosophical refutations, and discusses the consequences of determinism and near-determinism for life-hopes, knowledge, and personal feelings.

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

What is it for you to be conscious? There is no consensus in philosophy or science: it has remained a mystery. Ted Honderich develops a brand new theory of consciousness, according to which perceptual consciousness is external to the perceiver. It exists in a subjective physical world dependent on both you and the objective physical world.

Punishment is a persvasive feature of social life. Individuals who break laws in our societies may be imprisoned or, in some contexts, put to death. But why should individuals be punished? Are there good reasons for punishment? Or does the practice of punishment merely gratify feelings of revenge? If we regard punishment as a deterrent, are we committed to victimizing the innocent in order to deter? In this classic and recently enlarged book, Ted Honderich offers a wide-ranging analysis of (...) the nature of punishment and scrutinizes the arguments for and against it. Already established as the principal introductory text to the philosophy of punishment, the republication of this book in paperback will be welcomed by students and scholars in moral and political philosophy, jurisprudence and criminology. (shrink)

In this fully revised and up-to-date edition of Ted Honderich's modern classic, he offers a concise and lively introduction to free will and the problem of determinism, advancing the debate on this key area of moral philosophy. Honderich sets out a determinist philosophy of mind, in response to the question, "Is there a really clear, consistent and complete version of determinism?" and asks instead if there is such a clear version of free will. He goes on to address (...) the question of whether determinism is true and finally asks, "What can we conclude about our lives if determinism is true?". (shrink)

There are great goods desired by all of us, and the lack of them makes for bad lives. One sample of bad African lives involves a loss of 20 million years of living time. The questions raised by these and other facts are to be answered by the Principle of Humanity, about bad lives and rationality. It is superior to morality of relationship and all else, and in a way is undeniable. The principle together with other things issues in six (...) propositions. One gives us a moral responsibility, our politicians at our head, for the terrorism of September 11. To be ordinary is not to be innocent. Another proposition is that the Palestinians have a moral right to their terrorism. The latter proposition can be given still more support than in the book from which this paper derives. (shrink)

If you want a philosophically diligent exposition of a theory, something that has got through review by conventional peers, go elsewhere (Honderich, 2004). If you want an understanding made more immediate by brevity and informality, read on. The theory is a Radical Externalism about the nature of consciousness. If it is not a complete departure from the cranialism of most of the philosophy and science of consciousness, it is a fundamental departure.

The late J. L. Mackie and his work were a focus for much of the best philosophical thinking in the Oxford tradition. His moral thought centres on that most fundamental issue in moral philosophy – the issue of whether our moral judgements are in some way objective. The contributors to this volume, first published in 1985, are among the most distinguished figures in moral philosophy, and their essays in tribute to John Mackie present views at the forefront of the subject. (...) Five of the essays give a new understanding of the objectivity of moral judgements. These are by Simon Blackburn, R.M. Hare, John McDowell, Susan Hurley and Bernard Williams. The remaining contributors – Philippa Foot, Steven Lukes, Amartya Sen, David Wiggins – give their attention to problems which are equally compelling, such as the defence of a moral outlook based on a conception of a need and of what follows from it. The volume also includes the addresses given by Simon Blackburn and George Cawkwell at the memorial service for John Mackie, and a list of his publications, compiled by Joan Mackie. (shrink)