The concept of need plays a significant but still relatively unexplored role in philosophy. In September 2003 The Royal Institute of Philosophy funded a conference held at Hatfield College, Durham, England, where philosophers from around the world devoted an enjoyable weekend to further exploration. In everyday political life, scepticism about the importance of needs seems to be abating, perhaps reflecting an increased confidence among needs-theorists, grounded in years of painstaking analysis and argument on the margins of mainstream philosophy. This increased confidence freed participants at the conference to work less defensively and more constructively, and to extend their depth and range of their work. One happy result is that new aspects of the philosophy of need are identified and explored in this volume.

In this introduction I highlight three topics that struck me as central concerns at the conference. I don't claim that my topics exhaust important concerns in the philosophy of need, or that the developments I identify are by any means the only or most important ones to have occurred in recent years. My aim is simply to highlight topics discussed at the conference which may be of wider interest.

Several speakers would tackle aspects of a topic in their papers, and questions and discussion would return to each of these topics again and again. The first topic is the mistakes that are involved in neglecting need. What are those mistakes, exactly?