Mark de Bretton Platts (born 1947) is a philosopher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Institute for Philosophical Investigation, National Autonomous University of Mexico). He is well-known for criticizing the Humean theory of motivation, especially in his book Ways of Meaning (1979/1997).
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Platts was born in England in 1947. He studied philosophy at University College, Oxford, where he received his B.Phil. in 1972. He has won several prizes for his academic work, such as the Henry Wilde Prize (in 1969) and the John Locke Prize (in 1971) from Oxford University.[1]
Platts was a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, for a period in the 1970s and 1980s, where he lectured on philosophical logic and the philosophy of language but also, and with great success, on Descartes and Locke. He was a charismatic figure - eloquent, charming, enthusiastic and lucid. He was also irrepressibly funny. In lecturing on Descartes, for instance, he referred to Descartes' correspondence with Queen Christina of Sweden, and added a mischievous aside : 'Professor X's correspondence with Princess Anne has yet to be published'. Professor X was a distinguished senior colleague. On another occasion Platts fielded a difficult question about a topic, x, with : 'If I had a theory of x it would be a good one'. He was one of a lively group of young lecturers at Birkbeck; other members were Roger Scruton, Ian McFetridge, and Samuel Guttenplan.
Platts was a strong believer in the tutorial system at Birkbeck. He was enormously generous with his time and gave advice, praise, encouragement and warning, exactly fitted to students' individual needs.
At least some of Platts's work has been highly influential. He is at least well-known for his criticisms of the Humean theory of motivation and is considered an "Anti-Humean" (along with philosophers like John McDowell).[2] This issue has generated a large body of research in the late 20th century. For example, Michael Smith discusses Platts's Anti-Humeanism at length in his influential book The Moral Problem (1994), which won the Book Prize of the American Philosophical Association in 2000.[3]
Platts's book, Ways of Meaning (1979/1997) has been cited by many prominent philosophers, such as Simon Blackburn, Philip Pettit, William Lycan, Christopher Peacocke, and Ernest Lepore---to name a few.[4] A prominent philosopher, Peter Ludlow, writes of Platts's (1979/1997) book:
This is the book that turned on a generation of philosophers of language—turned them on to the Davidsonian program, that is ... More than that, he surveyed a number of natural language constructions, showing how they could be handled in such a framework, and thereby mapping out the landscape of what has since become a full-blown philosophical research program.[5]
The following is a partial list of publications by Platts.