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John M Preston

University of Reading, Philosophy Department, Faculty Member

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Professor of Philosophy,
Department of Philosophy,
The University of Reading, Reading, UK
Phone: 01183787327
Address: Department of Philosophy,
The University of Reading,
Reading RG6 6UD,
United Kingdom

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Papers by John M Preston

Roles and Representations of Women in Early Chinese Philosophy: A Survey

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2020

An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is her... more An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is here derived from central texts such as the Analects, the Lienu Zhuan, and the I Ching. We argue that the roles of women during the classical period of Chinese philosophy tended to be as part of the “inner,” working domestically as a housewife and mother. This will be shown from three passages from the Analects. Women were represented as submissive and passive, as with the qualities ascribed to yin energy, and therefore as rightfully subordinate to men. However, despite representations of women in philosophy being thus at this time, there were exceptions, specific women who could take a male “outer” political role. The story of Ling Liang from the Lienu Zhuan suggests that although women being involved in “outer” affairs was looked down on, there were still women who would be and who would occasionally get praised for doing so. This shows that it was realised, explicitly or otherwise, that ...

Review of Alfred Nordmann Wittgenstein S Tractatus an Introduction

Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2006

Review of Alfred Nordmann Wittgenstein S Tractatus an Introduction

Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2006

Janik on Hertz and the Early Wittgenstein

Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2006

Various claims have been made about the influence of Heinrich Hertz's on Wittgenstein's w... more Various claims have been made about the influence of Heinrich Hertz's on Wittgenstein's work. I consider some such recent claims, made by Allan Janik, to the effect that Hertz exercised a very strong influence on Wittgenstein, early and late. I suggest they are ill-founded, in virtue of misinterpretations either of Hertz, or of Wittgenstein, or of both. I try to set the record straight on issues such as the three criteria Hertz suggests for evaluating scientific 'representations' [] or 'images' [], his conception of philosophy, the nature of Hertz's project and its relation to philosophy, the extent to which he agrees and disagrees with Ernst Mach, and his influence on the .

Review: Duncan Richter, Historical dictionary of Wittgenstein's philosophy

The European Legacy, Jul 1, 2006

Review: A W Carus, Carnap and twentieth century thought: explication as enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, 2007

The European Legacy, Oct 1, 2009

Review of 'Thomas Kuhn: a philosophical history for our times' by S. Fuller

Review: Alfred Nordmann, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: an introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2005

The European Legacy, Oct 1, 2006

graphical data displays the qualities necessary to conquer an audience interested in learning abo... more graphical data displays the qualities necessary to conquer an audience interested in learning about an important facet of the history of economics and social science in the twentieth century. The book will also attract the attention of the general reader who wants to learn more about the old type of economist: one who works well with words; one who is ready to incorporate interesting ideas coming from other human sciences; and one in whose intellectual perspective a disposition to conduct field research, a concern with theoretical construction, and a desire to contribute to public policies are inseparable. For its many qualities, Wordly Philosopher obtained the Joseph J. Spengler 2014 award for best book in the history of economics, and won the 2013 Enlightened Economist prize.

Methodology, Epistemology and Conventions: Popper's Bad Start

PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1994

Popper's philosophy is founded on his early conceptions of the problem of demarcation, of its... more Popper's philosophy is founded on his early conceptions of the problem of demarcation, of its solution, and of the roles of epistemology and methodology. I shall give an account of these, and of his idea of the alternative, ‘naturalistic’ conceptions. I then hope to show that Popper's conceptions are confused. At the beginning of The Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper tells us that “the task of the logic of scientific discovery, or the logic of knowledge, [is]… to analyse the method of the empirical sciences” (Popper 1959, 27), and that its first job is “to put forward a concept of empirical science, in order to make linguistic usage, now somewhat uncertain, as definite as possible, and in order to draw a clear line of demarcation between science and metaphysical ideas” (1959, 38-39).

Review: Christine Sypnowich (ed.), The egalitarian conscience: essays in honour of G. A. Cohen

The European Legacy, 2007

Philosophical papers. 3. Knowledge, science and relativism

Wittgenstein and reason

1. Wittgenstein's Critique of Frazer (Jacques Bouveresse, College de France). 2. Relativism, ... more 1. Wittgenstein's Critique of Frazer (Jacques Bouveresse, College de France). 2. Relativism, Commensurability and Translatability (Hans-Johann Glock, Universitat Zurich). 3. 'Back to the Rough Ground!' Wittgensteinian Reflections on Rationality and Reason (Jane Heal, St John's College, Cambridge). 4. Worlds or Words Apart? Wittgenstein on Understanding Religious Language (Genia Schonbaumsfeld, University of Southampton). 5. The Tightrope Walker (Severin Schroeder, The University of Reading). 6. Rules and Reason (Joachim Schulte, Universitat Zurich). 7. Rule-Following without Reasons: Wittgenstein's Quietism and the Constitutive Question (Crispin Wright, Univerrsity of St Andrews). Index.

Paul feyerabend

Kuhn's' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions': A Reader's Guide

1. Context 2. Overview of Themes 3. Reading the Text 4. Reception and Influence 5. Notes for Furt... more

Positivist and Post-Positivist Philosophy of Science

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of i... more Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of ideas from logical empiricism, the subsequent loss of confidence in such ideas, the falsificationist alternative, the rise of ‘scientific realism’, and the influence of the ‘new’ philosophies of science of the 1960s on post-processual archaeology. Some recent ideas from philosophy of science are introduced, and that discipline’s recent trajectory, featuring debate between realists and anti-realists, as well as a return to ‘classic’ concerns about explanation, causation, and laws of nature, is described. Many interactions between philosophy of science and archaeology have been based on a misplaced quest for a single ‘off-the-peg’ methodology or other philosophical framework for archaeology. Historical conditions have fostered the damaging idea that archaeologists have to choose between ‘positivism’ and subjectivism. I conclude by suggesting what kinds of contemporary philosophical work mig...

Wittgenstein and Reason

... ISBN 978-1-4051-5960-9 Metaphysics in Science, edited by Alice Drewery. Contributions by Bria... more

Bird, Kuhn, and positivism

Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2004

I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philo... more I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philosophy of science is a matter of Kuhn having taken a wrong turn. Bird is right to remind us of Kuhn’s naturalistic tendencies, but these are not clearly an asset, rather than a liability. Kuhn was right to steer clear of extreme referential conceptions of meaning, since

Kuhn, instrumentalism, and the progress of science

Social Epistemology, 2003

... The early works of Hilary Putnam, one of the realist victors, did far more to set the agenda ... more

Harré on Hertz and the Tractatus

Philosophy, 2006

Hertz, Wittgenstein and Philosophical Method1

Philosophical Investigations, 2007

Philosophers concerned with Wittgenstein have sometimes been exercised by the influence that Hein... more Philosophers concerned with Wittgenstein have sometimes been exercised by the influence that Heinrich Hertz exerted over him, and have made various suggestions about the nature and extent of that influence. Claims that Hertz influenced the Tractatus are long-standing and familiar. 2 A different and notable recent claim is that Wittgenstein's conception of philosophical method, especially that contained in his later works, was influenced by Hertz. If this meant only that Wittgenstein got ideas about method from reading Hertz there could be no complaint. But the claims of influence are stronger than this, since they amount to the idea that that Wittgenstein took over a conception of philosophical method which Hertz was already using in his book The Principles of Mechanics. 3 I want critically to evaluate this idea. My general worry is that we tend to read Hertz too much in the light of what followed his work, especially that analytic philosophers read the Introduction to his book too much in the light of Wittgenstein. I shall show that to say, in particular, as many commentators do, that Hertz is concerned with clarifying the concept of force, is to run the risk of assimilating his project too closely to modern philosophical analyses. I will argue that while Hertz and Wittgenstein are certainly concerned with similar problems, and thus share a certain conception of philosophy's goal, we should not think of them as having used the same philosophical methods. The truth is, I shall suggest, that there is a certain sort of mismatch between Hertz's actual project in The Principles of Mechanics and what he has been taken to be advertising in 1. I am very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Board, an award from whose Research Leave Scheme enabled me to complete work on this article during the Spring term of 2005, and to my colleagues at the University of Reading for helpful feedback in a presentation of this material. 2. I address some recent such claims in Preston (2006). 3. References to Hertz, unless otherwise noted, are to the English translation of Hertz (1894) (Hertz 1956). Because the pages of Hertz's Preface are unnumbered in the English edition, references to the Preface do not have page numbers here.

Roles and Representations of Women in Early Chinese Philosophy: A Survey

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2020

An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is her... more An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is here derived from central texts such as the Analects, the Lienu Zhuan, and the I Ching. We argue that the roles of women during the classical period of Chinese philosophy tended to be as part of the “inner,” working domestically as a housewife and mother. This will be shown from three passages from the Analects. Women were represented as submissive and passive, as with the qualities ascribed to yin energy, and therefore as rightfully subordinate to men. However, despite representations of women in philosophy being thus at this time, there were exceptions, specific women who could take a male “outer” political role. The story of Ling Liang from the Lienu Zhuan suggests that although women being involved in “outer” affairs was looked down on, there were still women who would be and who would occasionally get praised for doing so. This shows that it was realised, explicitly or otherwise, that ...

Review of Alfred Nordmann Wittgenstein S Tractatus an Introduction

Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2006

Review of Alfred Nordmann Wittgenstein S Tractatus an Introduction

Notre Dame philosophical reviews, 2006

Janik on Hertz and the Early Wittgenstein

Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2006

Various claims have been made about the influence of Heinrich Hertz's on Wittgenstein's w... more Various claims have been made about the influence of Heinrich Hertz's on Wittgenstein's work. I consider some such recent claims, made by Allan Janik, to the effect that Hertz exercised a very strong influence on Wittgenstein, early and late. I suggest they are ill-founded, in virtue of misinterpretations either of Hertz, or of Wittgenstein, or of both. I try to set the record straight on issues such as the three criteria Hertz suggests for evaluating scientific 'representations' [] or 'images' [], his conception of philosophy, the nature of Hertz's project and its relation to philosophy, the extent to which he agrees and disagrees with Ernst Mach, and his influence on the .

Review: Duncan Richter, Historical dictionary of Wittgenstein's philosophy

The European Legacy, Jul 1, 2006

Review: A W Carus, Carnap and twentieth century thought: explication as enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, 2007

The European Legacy, Oct 1, 2009

Review of 'Thomas Kuhn: a philosophical history for our times' by S. Fuller

Review: Alfred Nordmann, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: an introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2005

The European Legacy, Oct 1, 2006

graphical data displays the qualities necessary to conquer an audience interested in learning abo... more graphical data displays the qualities necessary to conquer an audience interested in learning about an important facet of the history of economics and social science in the twentieth century. The book will also attract the attention of the general reader who wants to learn more about the old type of economist: one who works well with words; one who is ready to incorporate interesting ideas coming from other human sciences; and one in whose intellectual perspective a disposition to conduct field research, a concern with theoretical construction, and a desire to contribute to public policies are inseparable. For its many qualities, Wordly Philosopher obtained the Joseph J. Spengler 2014 award for best book in the history of economics, and won the 2013 Enlightened Economist prize.

Methodology, Epistemology and Conventions: Popper's Bad Start

PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1994

Popper's philosophy is founded on his early conceptions of the problem of demarcation, of its... more Popper's philosophy is founded on his early conceptions of the problem of demarcation, of its solution, and of the roles of epistemology and methodology. I shall give an account of these, and of his idea of the alternative, ‘naturalistic’ conceptions. I then hope to show that Popper's conceptions are confused. At the beginning of The Logic of Scientific Discovery Popper tells us that “the task of the logic of scientific discovery, or the logic of knowledge, [is]… to analyse the method of the empirical sciences” (Popper 1959, 27), and that its first job is “to put forward a concept of empirical science, in order to make linguistic usage, now somewhat uncertain, as definite as possible, and in order to draw a clear line of demarcation between science and metaphysical ideas” (1959, 38-39).

Review: Christine Sypnowich (ed.), The egalitarian conscience: essays in honour of G. A. Cohen

The European Legacy, 2007

Philosophical papers. 3. Knowledge, science and relativism

Wittgenstein and reason

1. Wittgenstein's Critique of Frazer (Jacques Bouveresse, College de France). 2. Relativism, ... more 1. Wittgenstein's Critique of Frazer (Jacques Bouveresse, College de France). 2. Relativism, Commensurability and Translatability (Hans-Johann Glock, Universitat Zurich). 3. 'Back to the Rough Ground!' Wittgensteinian Reflections on Rationality and Reason (Jane Heal, St John's College, Cambridge). 4. Worlds or Words Apart? Wittgenstein on Understanding Religious Language (Genia Schonbaumsfeld, University of Southampton). 5. The Tightrope Walker (Severin Schroeder, The University of Reading). 6. Rules and Reason (Joachim Schulte, Universitat Zurich). 7. Rule-Following without Reasons: Wittgenstein's Quietism and the Constitutive Question (Crispin Wright, Univerrsity of St Andrews). Index.

Paul feyerabend

Kuhn's' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions': A Reader's Guide

1. Context 2. Overview of Themes 3. Reading the Text 4. Reception and Influence 5. Notes for Furt... more

Positivist and Post-Positivist Philosophy of Science

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of i... more Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of ideas from logical empiricism, the subsequent loss of confidence in such ideas, the falsificationist alternative, the rise of ‘scientific realism’, and the influence of the ‘new’ philosophies of science of the 1960s on post-processual archaeology. Some recent ideas from philosophy of science are introduced, and that discipline’s recent trajectory, featuring debate between realists and anti-realists, as well as a return to ‘classic’ concerns about explanation, causation, and laws of nature, is described. Many interactions between philosophy of science and archaeology have been based on a misplaced quest for a single ‘off-the-peg’ methodology or other philosophical framework for archaeology. Historical conditions have fostered the damaging idea that archaeologists have to choose between ‘positivism’ and subjectivism. I conclude by suggesting what kinds of contemporary philosophical work mig...

Wittgenstein and Reason

... ISBN 978-1-4051-5960-9 Metaphysics in Science, edited by Alice Drewery. Contributions by Bria... more

Bird, Kuhn, and positivism

Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 2004

I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philo... more I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philosophy of science is a matter of Kuhn having taken a wrong turn. Bird is right to remind us of Kuhn’s naturalistic tendencies, but these are not clearly an asset, rather than a liability. Kuhn was right to steer clear of extreme referential conceptions of meaning, since

Kuhn, instrumentalism, and the progress of science

Social Epistemology, 2003

... The early works of Hilary Putnam, one of the realist victors, did far more to set the agenda ... more

Harré on Hertz and the Tractatus

Philosophy, 2006

Hertz, Wittgenstein and Philosophical Method1

Philosophical Investigations, 2007

Philosophers concerned with Wittgenstein have sometimes been exercised by the influence that Hein... more Philosophers concerned with Wittgenstein have sometimes been exercised by the influence that Heinrich Hertz exerted over him, and have made various suggestions about the nature and extent of that influence. Claims that Hertz influenced the Tractatus are long-standing and familiar. 2 A different and notable recent claim is that Wittgenstein's conception of philosophical method, especially that contained in his later works, was influenced by Hertz. If this meant only that Wittgenstein got ideas about method from reading Hertz there could be no complaint. But the claims of influence are stronger than this, since they amount to the idea that that Wittgenstein took over a conception of philosophical method which Hertz was already using in his book The Principles of Mechanics. 3 I want critically to evaluate this idea. My general worry is that we tend to read Hertz too much in the light of what followed his work, especially that analytic philosophers read the Introduction to his book too much in the light of Wittgenstein. I shall show that to say, in particular, as many commentators do, that Hertz is concerned with clarifying the concept of force, is to run the risk of assimilating his project too closely to modern philosophical analyses. I will argue that while Hertz and Wittgenstein are certainly concerned with similar problems, and thus share a certain conception of philosophy's goal, we should not think of them as having used the same philosophical methods. The truth is, I shall suggest, that there is a certain sort of mismatch between Hertz's actual project in The Principles of Mechanics and what he has been taken to be advertising in 1. I am very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Board, an award from whose Research Leave Scheme enabled me to complete work on this article during the Spring term of 2005, and to my colleagues at the University of Reading for helpful feedback in a presentation of this material. 2. I address some recent such claims in Preston (2006). 3. References to Hertz, unless otherwise noted, are to the English translation of Hertz (1894) (Hertz 1956). Because the pages of Hertz's Preface are unnumbered in the English edition, references to the Preface do not have page numbers here.

Feyerabend - Philosophy, Science & Society.pdf

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. Al... more Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. Although he attained infamy by embracing cultural relativism and by providing a searing critique of the claims of science, there has been, to date, no comprehensive critical study of the major themes in Feyerabend’s philosophy. This book rectifies that situation.
The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend’s thought, beginning with his attempt to graft insights from Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning onto Popper’s falsificationist philosophy. The component parts of Feyerabend’s ‘model for the acquisition of knowledge’, the normative aspect of his project, and its roots in a Popperian conception of epistemology, are identified and critically evaluated. Feyerabend’s early work emerges as thoroughly post-Popperian, rather than as a contribution to the historical approach to philosophy of science with which he is usually associated.
In his more notorious later work, notably the 1975 book Against Method, Feyerabend claimed that there was, and should be, no such thing as the scientific method. This ‘epistemological anarchism’ and Feyerabend’s attendant relativism are examined here in the light of his recognition that Against Method was a collage constructed out of his earlier thoughts. The roots of epistemological anarchism are exposed, and the weaknesses of Feyerabend’s later thesis of incommensurability are brought out.
Throughout the book, the influence of Feyerabend’s thought on contemporary philosophers is tracked. The author draws attention to Feyerabend’s exciting but divided legacy. On the one hand, contemporary scientistic philosophers have used his earlier views in a vigorous defence of an uncompromising ‘eliminative’ materialist view of the mind. On the other hand, thinkers influenced by Feyerabend’s later work have begun a humanistic critique of science, scientific myth-making, and scientific claims to knowledge.
The book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of philosophy, methodology, and the social sciences.

Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions': A Reader's Guide

Wittgenstein and Reason

Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence

The Worst Enemy of Science? Essays in Memory of Paul Feyerabend

by John M Preston and Gonzalo Munevar

Paul Feyerabend: Knowledge, Science and Relativism: Philosophical Papers, volume 3

Thought and Language

Review of Paul Feyerabend, Conquest of Abundance

Review of Kevin Cahill, The Fate of Wonder: Wittgenstein's Critique of Metaphysics and Modernity

Review of Imre Lakatos & Paul Feyerabend, For and Against Method

Review of Peter Carruthers & Jill Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes

Review of Luciano Floridi, Philosophy and Computing

Review of Rupert Read & Wes Sharrock, Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolution

From Dada to Dewey: Review of Robert Farrell, Feyerabend and Scientific Values

Review of Severin Schroeder (ed.), Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind

Lützen on Hertz's Mechanics (Review of Jesper Lützen, Mechanistic Images in Geometric Form)

Review of Christine Sypnowich (ed.), The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Honour of G.A.Cohen

Review of James A.Marcum, Thomas Kuhn's Revolution

Review of Marie McGinn, Elucidating the Tractatus

Review of Brook & Akins, Cognition and the Brain

Review of Robert Rupert, Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind

Review of Duncan Richter, Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy

Review of Alfred Nordmann, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: An Introduction

Review of W.G.Runciman, Great Books, Bad Arguments

Review of Bradley Monton (ed.), Images of Empiricism

Review of A.W.Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought

Review of Glock & Hyman (eds.), Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays for P. M. S. Hacker

The editors of this collection, both former students of Peter Hacker's, are quite right to begin ... more The editors of this collection, both former students of Peter Hacker's, are quite right to begin their Preface by pointing out that he is 'the pre-eminent interpreter of Wittgenstein's philosophy' (p.vii). Their volume includes thirteen essays and a bibliography of Hacker's writings to date. It is very much a Festschrift, rather than Hacker and his Critics, for although some of the essays take issues with points Hacker has made, all of them are by people who have substantial sympathy with his kind of philosophizing. Eight contributors (

Following (and Unfollowing) Wittgenstein

Cuaderno Gris, 2022

Paul Feyerabend's Ernst Mach1

This paper is not a full comparison of the philosophies of Mach and Feyerabend, nor a defence of ... more This paper is not a full comparison of the philosophies of Mach and Feyerabend, nor a defence of modern readings of Mach, such as Feyerabend’s, against the received view of Mach as a pre-logical positivist. What is attempted here is an account and critical evaluation of the most significant things Feyerabend said about Mach. I first trace the ways in which Mach appears in Feyerabend’s works, from the mid-1950s right up until the mid-1990s, before moving on to a critical evaluation of the themes which are either most prominent (being repeated most often) or most important in some other way, e.g., in assessing the extent to which we should consider Feyerabend to have been a follower of Mach.