Constantine Sandis


Constantine Sandis is a Greek and British philosopher and entrepreneur. He works primarily on the philosophy of action, moral psychology, David Hume, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Sandis is currently Research Associate at the Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, and Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the
Patrick J. Waide Center for Applied Ethics, Charles F. Dolan School of Business, Fairfield University. He is also the Chief Operations Officer and co-founding Director of the academic consulting and author services firm Lex Academic. Sandis has previously held prestigious visiting Fellowships at Microsoft Research Cambridge and the Murphy Institute at Tulane University, and Centre de recherche en éthique, Montréal.

Biography

Sandis read Philosophy and Theology at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, where he was taught by Gabriele Taylor, Roger Crisp, Alison Denham, and A.C. Grayling, as well as Peter Hacker at St John's College, Oxford, Katherine Morris at Mansfield College, Oxford, Robin Griffith-Jones at Lincoln College, Oxford, Hugh Rice and Michael Jackson (bishop) at Christ Church, Oxford, and Graham Ward at Exeter College, Oxford, among others. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Reading, under the supervision of Jonathan Dancy. Having previously taught at the University of Bath, NYU in London, and the Open University, in 2005 he joined Oxford Brookes University becoming a full Professor of Philosophy in 2013, aged 37. Sandis subsequently became Professor of Philosophy at the University Hertfordshire, where he remains a Visiting Professor. He is the editor of Why Philosophy Matters, Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein and Philosophers in Depth.
Sandis writes a quarterly opinion column for The Philosophers' Magazine, contributes to Times Higher Education and The Times Literary Supplement, and frequently appears as a guest on radio programmes such as In Our Time (radio series), The Moral Maze, Analysis, and Free Thinking. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Trustee of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Secretary of the British Wittgenstein Society, and a Research Associate at CRÉ - University of Montreal.

Research

Sandis' research has primarily focused on the philosophy of action but he has also written about reasons, moral psychology, and understanding, as well as exegetical accounts of related works by Hume, Hegel, Anscombe, and Wittgenstein. His 2012 book The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues for a pluralist account of actions and their explanations, and includes the controversial view that the reasons for which we act cannot in themselves explain why any action occurs. Since then he has published numerous articles defending the view that understanding others is not reducible to obtaining information about their 'mental contents' and that, consequently, no theory about the nature of such access can account for understanding others, which requires the sharing of behaviour. He has also collaborated with Microsoft Research on designing intelligible AI and co-written papers on the ethics of risk-taking with Nassim Nicholas Taleb. More recently, he has been writing on music and especially that of Bob Dylan.

Publications

Books
  • New Essays on the Explanation of Action, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
  • A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, with Timothy O'Connor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
  • Hegel on Action, with Arto Laitinen, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  • The Things We Do and Why We Do Them, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
  • Human Nature, with Mark Cain, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Anti-Causalim in the Philosophy of Action, with Giuseppina D'Oro, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
  • Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice, Open Book Publishers, 2014.
  • Philosophy of Action: An Anthology, with Jonathan Dancy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
  • Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe, Routledge, 2018.
  • Character and Causation: Hume's Philosophy of Action, Routledge, 2019.
  • Raisons et responsabilité: Essais de philosophie de l’action, Ithaque, 2021 .
  • Dylan at 80, with Gary Browning, Imprint Academic, 2021.
  • Extending Hinge Epistemology, with Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Anthem Press, 2022.
  • Πρόθεση, with Evgenia Mylonaki, Crete University Press, 2024.
  • Real Gender, with Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Polity, 2024.
  • From Action To Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Reasons and Responsibility, Bloomsbury, 2024.
  • Wittgenstein on Other Minds: Strangers in a Strange Land, Anthem, 2025.
Articles
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  • ‘Who Are 'We' for Wittgenstein?’ in,Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language, Ch.8.
  • ‘Are Reasons Like Shampoo?’ in,Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography, Ch.8.
  • ‘‘Can Action Explanations Ever be Non-Factive?’’ in, Thinking about Reasons, pp.29-49.
  • ‘The Experimental Turn and Ordinary Language’, Essays in Philosophy, Vol 11. No 2., 181-96.
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