Last year Philosophical Explorations inaugurated an annual essay prize for philosophers in the early stages of their career. Papers were invited on all aspects of the philosophy of mind and action. Some 25 papers were submitted, of which 5 papers were selected as finalists for the second round. These five essays were evaluated by a jury consisting of Lynne Rudder Baker (Amherst), John Broome (Oxford) and Harry Frankfurt (Princeton). The jury unanimously chose the following essay as the winner of the Philosophical Explorations Essay Prize 2010:
‘The simplicity of mutual knowledge’
by Michael John Wilby
Anglia Ruskin University,
Cambridge, UK
The jury's verdict on the winning essay was as follows:
This paper is very well-motivated. The author shows command of a vast literature, and states clearly what he or she intends to contribute – a view of mutual knowledge aimed at bolstering the primary-intersubjective-theory approach to social cognition. The author modifies Schiffer's reductive account of mutual knowledge (which appeals to two individuals' separate psychological states) to be a relational account (which appeals to an irreducibly mutual psychological state). Then the author boldly takes mutual knowledge (resting on a shared psychological state) as primitive and characterizes ordinary knowledge as following from mutual knowledge.
This is an important paper. Taking a relational, as opposed to a reductive, approach to mutual knowledge is a wonderful contribution to philosophy.
| • | ‘Can there be basic actions with artefacts?’ by Auke Pols (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) | ||||
| • | ‘Is ambivalence necessarily an agential vice?’ by Jacqui Poltera (University of Western Sydney, Australia) | ||||
| • | ‘Metaskepticism about moral responsibility’ by Tamler Sommers (University of Houston, USA) | ||||
| • | ‘A Moorean paradox of desire’ by David Wall (University of West of England, UK). | ||||
Finally, let me mention that the journal has a new cover as of this volume. We hope readers will find the new design not only less cluttered but also more evocative of the journal's focus on the philosophy of mind and action.