Michael MorrisEmeritus Professor of Philosophy
Research
My current research interests are in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art, and metaphysics. I’m particularly interested in the relation between the real world and our representations of it. I’m interested in defending a thoroughgoing realism, according to which the nature of the world as it is in itself is altogether independent of any relation to any representation of it or thought about it. I’ve also worked on Plato and Wittgenstein (particularly the Tractatus).
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I’ve written four books:
The Good and the True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
An Introduction to Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Wittgenstein and the Tractatus (London: Routledge, 2008)
Real Likenesses: Representation in Paintings, Photographs, and Novels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
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I’ve also written a number of articles, of which I think the most interesting are these:
'Mind, World, and Value', in A. O'Hear, ed., Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 303-320
‘Realism beyond Correspondence’, in H. Beebee and J. Dodd, eds., Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 49-66
‘Akrasia in the Protagoras and the Republic’, Phronesis (2006), 195-229
‘The Question of Idealism in McDowell’, Philosophical Topics 37 (2009), 95-114
‘Realism and Representation: The Case of Rembrandt’s Hat’, European Journal of Philosophy, 23 (2015), 909-932
‘Isomorphism and Idealism’, in R. Gaskin, ed., The Question of Linguistic Idealism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
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I’ve been a Rembrandt nut since I was about eight, and have done an online interview on his great painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which you can read here:
https://gildedbirds.com/2013/08/15/michael-morris/
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I’ve had Long Covid since 2020, so my current research is moving slowly, but I have a number of projects I’d like to complete: more on the philosophy of art (on architecture, in particular); a monograph on the philosophy of language; a paper on Plato and mimesis. I’m currently working on a collection of short pieces on a wide range of philosophical topics.