Jennifer Hornsby


Jennifer Hornsby, FBA is a British philosopher with interests in the philosophies of mind, action, language, as well as feminist philosophy. She is currently a professor at the School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London. She is well known for her opposition to orthodoxy in current analytic philosophy of mind, and for her use of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory to look at the effects of pornography.

Education and career

Hornsby earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge under the direction of Bernard Williams. She also earned a BA and MPhil from Oxford and London, respectively. She taught at the University of Oxford for 17 years before moving to Birkbeck College, London. She was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1996 to 1997.

Philosophical work

Hornsby's work focuses primarily on the philosophies of mind, action, language, and feminist philosophy.

Actions

Hornsby's action theory is significantly influenced by the philosophy of Donald Davidson. In her book Actions, she argues that actions are events occurring beneath the surface of the skin. The argument for this turns on an ambiguity in the slogan "all actions are bodily movements". The ambiguity stems from the fact that 'move' is one of a class of verbs that can occur either transitively or intransitively. Nominal expressions containing such verbs are therefore ambiguous: for example, 'the movement of the flag' can refer either to the action of someone's moving the flag or to the resultant movement of the flag. As we only ever answer a question about what someone did by using transitive verbs --- e.g. 'Jack moved his arm', not 'Jack's arm moved' --- the slogan "all actions are bodily movements" is only true if 'movement' is read transitively. This ambiguity noted, Hornsby then points out that if A VT-s B, then A caused B to VI. If Jack raisedT the flag, Jack caused the flag to riseI. As causes and effects must be distinct, we must therefore also distinguish between Jack's raisingT his arm from Jack's arm's risingI, the former causing the latter. So actions are bodily movementsT, which cause bodily movementsI. The final move is to claim that we know from physiology that the causes of bodily movementsI are events that occur beneath the surface of the skin. Therefore, actions occur beneath the surface of the skin.
This claim is combined with another: that the most basic description, in the causal sense of 'basic', of an action is as a trying. This arises from accepting a coarse-grained account of the individuation of events, according to which events are particulars that can be described in many different ways. The descriptions are distinguished by the effects of the described event in terms of which they are picked out. For example, the event of my slamming the door may be identical to the event of my waking the cat. The first description picks out the event by reference to the event of the door's being slammed. The second description picks out the event by reference to the event of the cat's waking. The question then is, Is there a description of the events which are actions that picks them out without reference to any effects? Hornsby's answer is that we can describe actions as tryings. I can try to raise my arm and, if successful, my arm will rise.

Honours

Hornsby is a member of the Norwegian [Academy of Science and Letters]. In July 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. She was elected international honorary member of the American [Academy of Arts and Sciences|American Academy of Arts & Sciences] in April 2018.

Selected publications

Books

Actions, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Simple Mindedness: A Defence of Naïve Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Edited collections

Ethics: A Feminist Reader The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy Reading Philosophy: Selected Texts with a Method for Beginners,
  • ''Reading Philosophy of Language: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary''

Articles

Mind and action

  • "Anomalousness in Action," in The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. Lewis E. Hahn, 623–36.
  • "Personal and Sub-Personal: A Defence of Dennett's Original Distinction," in New Essays on Psychological Explanation, eds. M. Elton & J. Bermudez, 2000, 6–24.
  • "Agency and Actions," in Agency and Action, eds. H. Steward and J. Hyman, 1–23.
  • "Alienated Agents," in Naturalism in Question, eds. M. De Caro and D. Macarthur, 173–87.

Language and feminism

  • "Speech Acts and Pornography," Women's Philosophy Review, 1993. Reprinted in The Problem of Pornography, ed. Susan Dwyer 220–32.
  • "Illocution and its Significance," in Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, ed. S.L.Tsohatzidis 1994, 187–207.
  • "Disempowered Speech," in Feminist Perspectives on Language, Knowledge and Reality ed. S. Haslanger 127–47.
  • "Free Speech and Illocution," Legal Theory 4 : 21–37.
  • "Feminism in Philosophy of Language: Communicative Speech Acts," in The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, eds. M. Fricker and J. Hornsby 87–106.
  • "How to Think About Derogatory Words," in Figurative Language, eds. P. French & H. Wettstein 128–41.
  • "Free Speech and Hate Speech: Language and Rights," in Normativity, Facts, and Values, eds. R. Egidi, M. Dell'Utri, and M. De Caro 297–310.

Truth and metaphysics

  • "Truth: The Identity Theory," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 97 1–24. Reprinted in Truth, ed. Michael Lynch 663–81.
  • "Dealing with Facts," in a Symposium on Stephen Neale's Facing Facts, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
  • "Physicalism, Conceptual Analysis, and Acts of Faith," in Minds, Worlds & Conditionals: Essays in Honour of Frank Jackson, ed. I. Ravenscroft.
  • "Truth without Truthmaking Entities," in Truthmakers, eds. H. Beebee and J. Dodd (Oxford University Press,