34 Facts About Ted Honderich

Edgar Dawn Ross "Ted" Honderich was a Canadian-born British philosopher, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.

Ted Honderich subsequently lived in England and became a British citizen.

Ted Honderich was visiting professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Yale and the universities of Bath and Calgary.

Ted Honderich was author of many books and articles on such subjects as consciousness, determinism, qualia, functionalism, timings of sensory experiences, psychophysical intimacy, the correspondence theory of truth, Russell's theory of descriptions, time, causation, Mill's On Liberty, John Searle's view of free will and G A Cohen's defence of Marx's theory of history.

Ted Honderich was involved in controversy for his moral defence of Palestinian political violence, despite his justification of the founding and maintaining of Israel in its original 1948 borders.

Ted Honderich appeared on radio and television, was the editor of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, wrote a philosophical autobiography, was chairman of the Royal Institute of Philosophy where he inaugurated the annual lectures subsequently published as Philosophers of Our Times, and he was an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Ted Honderich died on 12 October 2024, at the age of 91.

Ted Honderich considers Compatibilism's argument that our freedom consists in voluntariness, doing what we desire and not being coerced; hence its conclusion that determinism and freedom can go together.

Ted Honderich argues that both views are mistaken, since freedom as voluntariness and freedom as origination are each as fundamental to our lives.

Ted Honderich argues that reflective and affective consciousness are different again.

Ted Honderich argues that this is consistent with contemporary neuroscience, rescues us from the argument from illusion or brain in a vat, and from the dubious conclusions of sense-data theory and phenomenalism.

Ted Honderich argues that the Principle of Humanity is that what is right always consists in what, according to the best available knowledge and judgement, are actually rational steps, effective and not self-defeating ones rather than pretences, to the end of getting and keeping people out of bad lives.

Ted Honderich argues that the principle is fundamental to but not the whole of a morality of humanity.

Ted Honderich takes it that non-consequentialist reasons are not really reasons at all, nor, he says, does the Principle grant any distinction between acts and omissions.

Ted Honderich considers the creation of Israel in 1948 and records what he describes as the bad lives of Palestinians as a result of what is called the neo-Zionist expansion of Israel since the 1967 war.

Ted Honderich asks whether those in the rich societies do wrong in doing nothing about bad lives.

Ted Honderich considers natural morality as well as our worked-out or philosophical moralities.

Such outlooks as political realism and such ideologies as liberalism and libertarianism are considered, as is what Ted Honderich calls 'hierarchic democracy'.

The Principle of Humanity is used to judge our moral responsibility for the many bad lives, which Ted Honderich tells us is great.

Ted Honderich argues that we should supplement our democracies with the transformations of the civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr.

Ted Honderich, finding these means of judgement wanting, again takes up the Principle of Humanity.

Ted Honderich condemns the war as morally barbaric, given the foreseen and thus intentional killing of many innocents.

Ted Honderich argues that Tony Blair and George W Bush are friends rather than enemies of terrorism.

In January 2011, Ted Honderich wrote a letter to the Guardian on terrorism, in response to details released about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:.

Ted Honderich then argues that the strong tradition of punishment must have in it some real content or argument.

This, Ted Honderich concludes, is the reality of retributivism, but it cannot be an effective justification of punishment.

Ted Honderich's conclusion is that the long-running problem of the justification of punishment is dead.

Ted Honderich's answer has to do with the Principle of Humanity.

Ted Honderich argues, on the basis of this, that most punishments are in fact wrong.

Ted Honderich has been involved in controversy since the publication of his book After the Terror in 2002.

Ted Honderich demanded the dismissal of Brumlik from his professorship, for violation of academic principle.

Lesser controversies have included an imputation of anti-semitism by a student newspaper in London, against which Ted Honderich took successful legal action.

Ted Honderich wrote a number of papers in criticism of Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism, and in particular made the objection that on certain assumptions the view is epiphenomenalist.

Ted Honderich's philosophical autobiography, Philosopher: A Kind of Life, is a personal and general picture of English academic life over several decades.