Constantine Sandis


Constantine Sandis, FRSA is a Greek and British philosopher working on philosophy of action, moral psychology, David Hume, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Biography

Sandis read Literae Humaniores at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, where he was taught by Gabriele Taylor, Roger Crisp, Alison Denham, and A.C. Grayling, as well as Peter Hacker at St Johns College, Oxford, Katherine Morris at Mansfield College, Oxford, and Hugh Rice at Christ Church, Oxford. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Reading, under the supervision of Jonathan Dancy. Having worked at Oxford Brookes University from 2005 to 2015, he has since been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and Secretary of the British Wittgenstein Society.He is also the editor of Why Philosophy Matters , Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein and "Philosophers in Depth" .Sandis writes a quarterly opinion column for The Philosophers' Magazine and contributes to Times Higher Education and The Times Literary Supplement, and frequently appears as a guest on radio programmes such as The Moral Maze, Analysis, and Free Thinking. He is a Research Associate at the Waterloo Institute for Hellenic Studies and CRÉ - University of Montreal .

Research

Sandis' research has primarily focused on the philosophy of action but he has also written about reasons, moral psychology, and understanding, as well as exegetical accounts of related works by Hume, Hegel, Anscombe, and Wittgenstein. His 2012 book The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues for a pluralist account of actions and their explanations, and includes the controversial view that the reasons for which we act cannot in themselves explain why any action occurs. Since then he has published numerous articles defending the view that understanding others is not reducible to obtaining information about their 'mental contents' and that, consequently, no theory about the nature of such access can account for understanding others, which requires the sharing of behaviour. He has also collaborated with Microsoft Research on designing intelligible AI and co-written papers on the ethics of risk-taking with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Publications

Books
Selected Articles