This page contains links to some of my academic papers (excluding the majority which are on History of Philosophy) that are currently available on the Web. In most cases the printed version will differ only slightly from those given here, due to publisher's house style modifications etc. Where they differ significantly, the papers here are to be preferred.
Publications on Hume and Early Modern Philosophy ...
Over forty of my publications and many talks on Hume and the History of Modern Philosophy are collected together on the website www.davidhume.org. But here are a few pieces – two of them from magazines for students – that are relatively "big picture" rather than focusing on narrow scholarly debates:
- (2007), Introduction to Oxford World's Classics Edition of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 54, pp. 1-26, 11,000 words
- (2011), 'Finding Inspiration in Hume', Philosopher's Magazine 54, pp. 69-74, 2,800 words
- (2011), 'Is Hume An Inductive Sceptic?', Vox 15, pp. 9-13, 1,800 words
- (2016), 'Hume's Chief Argument', in Paul Russell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of David Hume (Oxford University Press), pp. 82-108, 12,500 words
Other Epistemology
- (1979), 'The Analysis of Knowledge', (undergraduate) Fairbrother Prize Essay, Lincoln College, Oxford
- (1982), 'Mackie's Defence of Induction', Analysis 42 pp. 19-24
- (1982), 'On the Transitivity of Epistemic Preferability', Analysis 42 pp. 88-90 (a response to Roy Sorenson's 'Is Epistemic Preferability Transitive?')
- (1984), 'Probability: Subjective and Mathematical', Analysis 44 pp. 33-37 (a response to Roy Sorenson's 'Subjective Probability and Indifference')
- (1986), 'Natural Necessity and Induction', Philosophy 61 pp. 395-403 (a response to Ralph W. Clark's 'Induction Justified (But Just Barely)')
- (1996), Hume, Induction, and Probability PhD thesis, University of Leeds, pp. 294 + xv
Language, Mind, Computers, Turing
- (1990), 'Content, Thoughts, and Definite Descriptions', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 64 pp. 167-203, 12,000 words
- (1992), 'Taking Logic for Granted', Inside Out 7 pp. 3-7, 3,500 words
- (1994), 'Statements and Modality: Strawson, Quine and Wolfram', International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 8 pp. 315-326, 4,500 words
- (1996), 'Introduction' to Peter Millican and Andy Clark (eds) The Legacy of Alan Turing, volume 1: Machines and Thought, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-9, 3,000 words
- (2013), The Philosophical Significance of the Turing Machine and the Turing Test, in S. Barry Cooper and Jan van Leeuwen (eds) Alan Turing: His Work and Impact, Elsevier, pp. 587-601, 9,500 words
- (2014), Them and Us: Autonomous Agents In Vivo and In Silico (with Mike Wooldridge), in Alexandru Baltag and Sonja Smits (eds) Johan van Benthem on Logic and Information Dynamics, Springer, pp. 547-567, 10,000 words
- (2020), Alan Turing and Human-Like Intelligence, to appear in Stephen Muggleton and Nick Chater (eds), Human-Like Machine Intelligence (Oxford University Press)
Philosophy of Religion
- (1989), 'The Devil's Advocate', Cogito 3 pp. 193-207, 9,500 words
- (2000), 'Ontological Argument', in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, eds Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper, Oxford University Press, pp. 499-500, 1,300 words
- (2004), 'The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm's Argument', Mind 113 pp. 437-76, 13,000 words
- (2007), 'Ontological Arguments and the Superiority of Existence', Mind 116 pp. 1041-53 (a response to Yujin Nagasawa's 'Millican on the Ontological Argument')
- (2011), 'Twenty Questions about Hume's "Of Miracles"', in Antony O'Hear (ed.), Philosophy and Religion, Cambridge University Press, pp. 151-92, 16,500 words
- (2015), 'The Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: Revisions of Humean Thought, New Empirical Research, and the Limits of Rational Religious Belief' (with Branden Thornhill-Miller), European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7, pp. 1-49, 21,500 words
- (2017), 'Defending the Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: One Author's Reply to Abram, Heim, Lukasiewicz, Moser, Oppy, Salamon, Senor, Taliaferro & Porot', European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, pp. 81-106, 10,000 words
- (2018), 'Anselm', in Graham Oppy (ed.), Ontological Arguments (Cambridge University Press), pp. 19-43, 11,500 words
- (2019), 'Logic and Atheism', in Joseph Koterski and Graham Oppy (eds), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy, Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 81-102, 13,500 words
- (2022), 'Sceptical Thoughts about Immortality', slides from talk to Birmingham conference on 'Death and Immortality', June 2022
- (2023), 'Nagasawa's Maximal God and the Ontological Argument', Religious Studies 37, pp. 143-60, 16,000 words
Moral Philosophy
- (1983), 'Hare on Moral Thinking', Philosophical Quarterly 33 pp. 207-11
- (1992), 'The Complex Problem of Abortion', in D. Bromham, M. Dalton, J. Jackson & P. Millican (eds), Philosophical Ethics in Reproductive Medicine, Springer Verlag, pp. 161-188, 13,500 words
- (2000), 'Abortion', in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, eds Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper, Oxford University Press, pp. 3-4, 1,500 words
- (2012), 'Hume's Theory of Morals', in Tom Angier (ed.), Ethics: The Key Thinkers, Bloomsbury, pp. 105-31, 8,000 words
David Hume
Alan Turing
Saint Anselm