J. L. Mackie – författare

Classic work by one of the most brilliant figures in post-war analytic philosophy.

Studies causation both as a concept and as it is 'in the objects.' Offers new accounts of the logic of singular causal statements, the form of causal regularities, the detection of causal relationships, the asymmetry of cause and effect, and necessary connection, and it relates causation to functional and statistical laws and to teleology.

This collection of John Mackie's papers on personal identity and topics in moral and political philosophy, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: multiple personality; the transcendental "I"; responsibility and language; aesthetic judgements; Sidgwick's pessimism; act-utiliarianism; right-based moral theories; cooperation, competition, and moral philosophy; universalization; rights, utility, and external costs; norms and dilemmas; Parfit's population paradox; and the combination of partially-ordered preferences.

This collection of John Mackie's papers on topics in epistemology, some of which have not previously been published, deal with such issues as: incorrigible empirical statements; rationalism and empiricism; the philosophy of John Anderson; self-refutation; Plato's theory of idea; ideological explanation; problems of intentionality; Popper's third world;; mind, brain, and causation; Newcomb's Paradox and the direction of causation; induction; causation in concept, knowledge, and reality; absolutism; Locke and representative perception; and anti-realisms.

A Miracle of Theism

J. L. Mackie selects for critical discussion six related topics which are prominent in John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding: the distinction between primary and secondary qualities; representative theories of perception; substance, real essence, and nominal essence; abstract ideas, universals, and the meaning of general terms; identity, especially personal identity; and the conflict between empiricism and the doctrine of innate ideas. He examines Locke's arguments carefully, but his chief interest is in the problems themselves, which are important for our attempt to decide what sort of world we live in and how we can defend our claim to know about it.The book shows that on most of these topics, views close to Locke's are more defensible than has commonly been supposed, but that there is nonetheless a tension in Locke's thought between extreme empiricism and common-sense or scientific realism. Whereas Locke's immediate successors, Berkeley and Hume, and many later thinkers, have stressed the empiricism at the expense of the realism, this book argues against the more extreme empiricist doctrines but supports the more moderate ones, especially the claims that innate ideas cannot be a source of necessary truth and that authoritative, autonomous knowledge of synthetic truths requires empirical support. The position J. L. Mackie advocates thus reconciles realism with moderate empiricism.