The Commons of the Mind

by Annette C. Baier

Professor Baier defends the view that both our reasoning and our intention-formation require a commons of mind, that is, the background existence of shared reasonings, intentions and actions. However she concludes that moral reflection, still in its infancy, is not assured with regard to morality.

110 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Annette C. Baier, a well-known moral philosopher and Hume scholar, focused in particular on Hume's moral psychology. She is well known also for her contributions to feminist philosophy and to the philosophy of mind, where she was strongly influenced by her former colleague, Wilfrid Sellars. Her husband was the philosopher Kurt Baier. For most of her career she taught in the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh, having moved there from Carnegie Mellon University. She retired to her native Dunedin, New Zealand, where she graduated from the University of Otago.

She is a former President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, an office reserved for the elite of her profession. Baier received an honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of Otago in 1999.