Welcome to this website, which provides online access to most of my publications and some unpublished papers.
My most recent research, on ethics and markets, explores the ethical character of market institutions and different kinds of capitalism, and the need for judgments about human values in political decisions about these. It follows on from previous work on market boundaries, which examined the proper limits of the market domain, the relevance of ethical considerations in determining these, and the implications of this for the provision of cultural goods. (The term 'ethical', here, refers to matters concerning human goods and well-being
Both of these areas connect loosely with some much earlier work about the relationship between socialism and liberalism, which I continue to regard as, at their best, complementary rather than antagonistic positions. But most of my early research was in the philosophy of science. It included a defence of realism in social science, and an account of how the ideal of value-free social science is best understood and justified. I have also written about the conceptualisation of human bodies in social theory and philosophy, drawing on phenomenological, psychoanalytic and Foucauldian ideas.
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A bit about me
I'm an Emeritus Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, where I held the Chair of Political Theory from 1994 until I retired in 2006.
Before that, I'd worked for about 25 years in the Department of Philosophy at Lancaster University.
Over the years I've written (and taught) about quite a wide range of topics, engaging with and drawing upon several different disciplines, but in broad terms I think of myself as a social philosopher.
I'm also fond of walking, especially in the area around Fionnloch in the north-west highlands of Scotland - hence some of the photos used on this site...
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