The Value of Knowledge
PI: Professor Alan Millar
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council
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About me
I joined the Department in September 2004, shortly after being awarded my Ph.D.
In 2016, I was awarded a Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and am currently on research leave in Germany until Autumn 2019. I am based at the Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism (FAGI) at Universität Leipzig, Saxony.
Research
My work centres on the ideas of action, perception, and objectivity. I am especially interested in how these ideas relate to themes in the history of analytic philosophy, and in German Idealism.
I am currently working mainly on the idea of self-consciousness, and on how this idea serves to unite my three central concerns. At the heart of my work is the idea of the first personal character of philosophy itself. Perhaps the most famous sentence in Western philosophy is “I think, therefore I am”. This sentence uses the first person. And this is no accident. In the use of “I”, the essence of philosophy is contained. Philosophy seeks self-understanding, or understanding “from within”, as opposed to understanding “from outside”. It asks: “What am I?” as opposed to “What is it?” Or at least, this is what it used to do. For this is an insight that contemporary philosophy has largely lost.
I am currently writing a book that explores and develops this idea. The book falls into three parts. The first part explains what it is for philosophy to seek self-understanding, and argues that much of contemporary Anglophone philosophy does not seek understanding of this form. It shows how many of the prevailing orthodoxies of this branch of philosophy can be traced to this fact, and how, if this branch of philosophy were to seek self-understanding, its landscape would be significantly altered. The second part further articulates the conception of self-understanding introduced in the first part, and describes a troubling consequence of this conception—that self-understanding is in an important sense empty, in that it does not distinguish the one who has it from anyone or anything else. (This is the consequence that Kant spoke of when he said that the "I think" is not “a representation distinguishing a particular object, but rather a form of representation in general”, and Anscombe spoke of when she said that "I" is not a referring expression.) Amongst other things, this consequence seems to put in doubt the very idea of empirical objectivity, for it seems to prevent the subject from understanding himself as perceiving and interacting with (as he would put it) “objects outside of me”. The third part explains the need to resolve this difficulty, and argues that resolving it requires overcoming the appearance of a gulf between self-understanding and understanding from outside. It argues for a conception of these two forms of understanding as two sides or two aspects of a single form, one that is essentially such as to unite different subjects with each other. In so doing, the book draws on ideas from the history of analytic philosophy and from German Idealism, with a view to shedding light on both of these traditions.
Projects
Self-Knowledge and Action.
PI: Dr Adrian Haddock
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council
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Outputs
Book Chapter
Self-Knowledge and Disjunctivism
Haddock A (2019) Self-Knowledge and Disjunctivism. In: Doyle C, Milburn J & Pritchard D (eds.) New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism. Routledge Studies in Epistemology. Abingdon: Routledge.
Article
Discussion of James Pryor's "The merits of incoherence"
Beck O, Gupta A, Haddock A, Pryor J & Smithies D (2018) Discussion of James Pryor's "The merits of incoherence". Analytic Philosophy, 59 (1), pp. 142-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/phib.12117
Book Chapter
Haddock A (2017) Wahrnehmung und Gegebensein [Perception and Givenness]. In: Kern A & Kietzmann C (eds.) Selbstbewusstes Leben - Texte zu einer transformativen Theorie der menschlichen Subjektivität. Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 190-208. http://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/selbstbewusstes_leben-_29797.html
Lecture
Knowledge Aided by Observation
Haddock A (2015) Knowledge Aided by Observation (Presentation) Wittgenstein Workshop 2014-2015, Chicago, IL, USA, 16.04.2015-16.04.2015. https://voices.uchicago.edu/wittgenstein/files/2015/04/Haddock-Knowledge-Aided-by-Observation-2015.pdf
Article
Haddock A (2014) On Address. Philosophical Topics, 42 (1), pp. 345-350. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics201442116
Book Chapter
Haddock A (2011) Davidson and Idealism. In: Smith J & Sullivan P (eds.) Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 26-41. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/
Book Chapter
"The knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions"
Haddock A (2011) "The knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions". In: Ford A, Hornsby J & Stoutland F (eds.) Essays on Anscombe's Intention. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pp. 147-169. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31139
Article
Meaning, Justification, and 'Primitive Normativity'
Haddock A (2011) Meaning, Justification, and 'Primitive Normativity'. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 86 (1), pp. 147-174. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8349.2012.00212.x
Article
The Disjunctive Conception of Perceiving
Haddock A (2011) The Disjunctive Conception of Perceiving. Philosophical Explorations, 14 (1), pp. 23-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2011.544399
Authored Book
The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations
Pritchard D, Millar A & Haddock A (2010) The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199586264.do
Edited Book
Haddock A, Millar A & Pritchard D (eds.) (2010) Social Epistemology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199577477.do
Edited Book
Haddock A, Millar A & Pritchard D (eds.) (2009) Epistemic Value. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199231188.do
Article
McDowell, Transcendental Philosophy, and Naturalism
Haddock A (2009) McDowell, Transcendental Philosophy, and Naturalism. Philosophical Topics, 37 (1), pp. 63-76. http://www.uapress.com/titles/philostopix/philostopix.html
Book Review
Experience and the World's Own Language: A Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism (Book Review)
Haddock A (2009) Experience and the World's Own Language: A Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism (Book Review). Review of: Experience and the World's Own Language: A Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism, Richard Gaskin, Clarendon Press, 2006, 264pp. 978-0199287253. European Journal of Philosophy, 17 (2), pp. 332-336. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2009.00350.x
Article
Haddock A (2008) Danto’s Dialectic. Philosophia, 36 (4), pp. 483-493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9157-1
Book Review
Thought's Footing: a Theme in Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' (Book Review)
Haddock A (2008) Thought's Footing: a Theme in Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' (Book Review). Review of: Thought’s Footing: a Theme in Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’. Charles Travis, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2007,. Philosophical Quarterly, 58 (232), pp. 546-550. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.572_04.x
Article
Haddock A (2008) McDowell and Idealism. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 51 (1), pp. 79-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201740701859009
Book Chapter
Introduction: Varieties of Disjunctivism
Haddock A & Macpherson F (2008) Introduction: Varieties of Disjunctivism. In: Haddock A & Macpherson F (eds.) Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-24. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199231546.do
Article
Extending the Space of Reasons: Comments on Chapter Four of Understanding People
Haddock A (2007) Extending the Space of Reasons: Comments on Chapter Four of Understanding People. SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review, 6 (1), pp. 41-47. http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/mind/index.htm
Teaching
I teach undergraduate courses on Perception, Action, Aesthetics, and Objectivity. I have taught postgraduate courses on Action and Intention, and on Sensation.
I am especially interested in supervising graduate students with interests in the following areas: action, perception, self-consciousness, German Idealism, and the philosophies of Anscombe and Wittgenstein.