Simon Blackburn

Major English philosopher Simon Blackburn’s latest book, Practical Tortoise Raising and Other Philosophical Essays, presents a selection of his essays from the last fifteen years. They offer engaging and illuminating discussions of various problems which arise when such familiar notions as representation, truth, reason, and assertion are applied in the sphere of practical thought. Blackburn explores how we can try to understand what we say in terms of what we are doing when we say it.

These essays also broaden his investigation from semantic questions to wider issues of pluralism, pragmatism, philosophy of mind, and the nature of practical reasoning.