[D. H. Mellor] Kant's claim that our knowledge of time is transcendental in his sense, while false of time itself, is true of tenses, i.e. of the locations of events and other temporal entities in McTaggart's A series. This fact can easily, and I think only, be explained by taking time itself to be real but tenseless. /// [J. R. Lucas] Mellor's argument from Kant fails. The difficulties in his first Antinomy are due to topological confusions, not the tensed nature (...) of time. Nor are McTaggart' s difficulties due to the tensed nature of time. The ego-centricity of tensed discourse is an essential feature of communication between selves, each of whom refers himself as 'I', and is required for talking about time as well as experience and agency. Arguments based on the Special Theory are misconceived. Some rest on a confused notion of 'topological simultaneity'. In the General Theory a cosmic time is defined, as also in quantum mechanics, where a natural present is defined by a unique hyperplane of collapse into eigen-ness. (shrink)

This article is the text of an interview with D. H. Mellor conducted by Andrew Pyle and first published in the Spring 1993 issue of the philosophical journal Cogito.

This selection of D. H. Mellor's work demonstrates the wide ranging originality of his work. It gathers together sixteen major papers on related topics. Together they form a complete modern metaphysics. The first five papers are on aspects of the mind: on our 'selves', their supposed subjectivity and how we refer to them, on the nature of conscious belief and on computational and physicalist theories of the mind. The next five papers deal with dispositions, natural kinds, laws of nature and (...) how they involve natural necessity, universals and objective chances, and the relation between properties and predicates. Then follow three papers about the relations between time, change and causation, the nature of individual causes and effects and of the causal relation between them, and how causation depends on chance. The last three papers discuss the relation between chance and degrees of belief, give a solution to the problem of induction, and argue for an objective interpretation of decision theory. (shrink)

Everything we do relies on causation. We eat and drink because this causes us to stay alive. Courts tell us who causes crimes, criminology tell us what causes people to commit them. D.H. Mellor shows us that to understand the world and our lives we must understand causation. _The Facts of Causation_, now available in paperback, is essential reading for students and for anyone interested in reading one of the ground-breaking theories in metaphysics. We cannot understand the world and our (...) place in it without understanding causation. Yet a complete account of the nature and implications of causation does not exist. D.H Mellor's new book is that account. (shrink)

Professor Monro presents an original view of ethics based on empiricism, which leads him to a subjectivist position about moral values. He starts by examining the central problem in moral philosophy: are moral statements objectively true, or are they expressions of preference? The first view conflicts with the empiricist beliefs current in modern thought; the opposing naturalistic theory seems to lead to moral scepticism. After discussing both views, the author presents a detailed defence of the subjectivist position. In the course (...) of his argument he gives a detailed analysis and criticism of the 'universalisability thesis', the theory that moral aspirations differ from others in being applicable to all men, and that it is this that makes them moral. He then offers an alternative account of the nature of moral attitudes. The author illustrates his explanations with straightforward analogies and examples. His clear exposition of the fundamental concepts arising in his argument makes this a book for students as well as for professional moral philosophers. (shrink)

D. H. Mellor; I *—The Presidential Address: Nothing Like Experience, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 1–16, https.

[D. H. Mellor] Kant's claim that our knowledge of time is transcendental in his sense, while false of time itself, is true of tenses, i.e. of the locations of events and other temporal entities in McTaggart's A series. This fact can easily, and I think only, be explained by taking time itself to be real but tenseless. /// [J. R. Lucas] Mellor's argument from Kant fails. The difficulties in his first Antinomy are due to topological confusions, not the tensed nature (...) of time. Nor are McTaggart' s difficulties due to the tensed nature of time. The ego-centricity of tensed discourse is an essential feature of communication between selves, each of whom refers himself as 'I', and is required for talking about time as well as experience and agency. Arguments based on the Special Theory are misconceived. Some rest on a confused notion of 'topological simultaneity'. In the General Theory a cosmic time is defined, as also in quantum mechanics, where a natural present is defined by a unique hyperplane of collapse into eigen-ness. (shrink)

D. H. Mellor; VI*—Conscious Belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 87–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

_Probability: A Philosophical Introduction_ introduces and explains the principal concepts and applications of probability. It is intended for philosophers and others who want to understand probability as we all apply it in our working and everyday lives. The book is not a course in mathematical probability, of which it uses only the simplest results, and avoids all needless technicality. The role of probability in modern theories of knowledge, inference, induction, causation, laws of nature, action and decision-making makes an understanding of (...) it especially important to philosophers and students of philosophy, to whom this book will be invaluable both as a textbook and a work of reference. In this book D. H. Mellor discusses the three basic kinds of probability – physical, epistemic, and subjective – and introduces and assesses the main theories and interpretations of them. The topics and concepts covered include: * chance * frequency * possibility * propensity * credence * confirmation * Bayesianism. _Probability: A Philosophical Introduction_ is essential reading for all philosophy students and others who encounter or need to apply ideas of probability. (shrink)

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

If Bertrand Russell had lived in an earlier century, no one would have hesitated to call him a moral philosopher. In our more finicking age, some academics may want to say that, great as his achievements have been in other branches of philosophy, he is less a moral philosopher than a moralist. That is to say, he has consistently advocated ideals and expressed beliefs which have made him, along with Shaw and Wells, if not quite with Marx and Freud, one (...) of the formative influences on the modern mind; but he has usually addressed these writings to the general public, and, although writing always with great force, clarity and skill, he has not always troubled his readers with the minutiae of philosophical argument. But this point should not be exaggerated. Even in his most popular works, Russell never loses sight of the philosophical problems in his concern for the political or psychological ones, and he certainly has views on meta-morals and meta-politics as well as on morals and politics. Indeed, his attempts to reconcile the two are highly illuminating; for they show one of the clearest minds of our time faced with one of the central problems of our time: how to justify passionately-held moral convictions when all the evidence seems to lead to moral scepticism. (shrink)

The article is derived from the accompanying radio portrait. It was published in 1995 in Philosophy 70, 243-262, and is reproduced here by permission of the Editor. Page numbers after quotations from Ramsey refer to F. P. Ramsey: Philosophical Papers, edited by D. H. Mellor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

First published in 1969, The Elusive Mind argues that the mental processes are of a quite different nature from physical ones and belong to an entity which is elusive in the sense that it can only be known, in the first instance, by each person in his own case in the course of having any kind of experience. This 'elusive' self is much involved with the body in any conditions we know, but it could also survive the dissolution of the (...) body. The views of thinkers like Ryle, Hampshire, Malcolm, Feigl, and Ayer are subjected to an exceptionally close and critical scrutiny. In presenting these views, the author offers us the substance of the first series of Gifford Lectures he delivered in the University of Edinburgh; and, in what he says on such topics as dreaming; mysticism; and the 'I-Thou' relation and on Christian Theology. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy, philosophy of mind, ethics, and religion. (shrink)

I show that the connotations of causation - temporal, explanatory, predictive and means-end - are preserved in indeterministic causation only to the extent that effects have a greater chance of occurring in the circumstances if their causes do than if they don’t.

The paper develops a unified account of both deterministic and indeterministic laws of nature which inherits the merits but not the defects of the best existing accounts. As in Armstrong's account, laws are embodied in facts about universals; but not in higher‐order relations between them, and the necessity of laws is not primitive but results from their containing chances of 0 or 1. As in the Ramsey‐Lewis account, law statements would be the general axioms and theorems of the simplest deductive (...) theory of everything; but because laws are not so defined, simplicity of statement is not a criterion of law‐hood. (shrink)

This lecture will last less than twenty four hours. I know that, and so do you. And you knew it before I said so. How? Because you knew that lectures don't last twenty four hours. How do you know that? You haven't heard this one, and 'for all you know' (as the saying is) I could go on all night. But you know I won't. And the 'all you know' which tells you that, without entailing it, is the fact that (...) none, or almost none, of the many lectures, on all subjects, which you've heard or heard of, have lasted that long. If many of them had, you wouldn't have known that this one won't; but as it is, you do know that. (shrink)