In this paper I examine a much discussed passage of the Timaeus. This passage contains one of the most important descriptions of Plato's ontology to be found in all the dialogues. The ontological scheme there described differs from that presented in the middle Platonic dialogues in that a third sort of entity, the Receptacle or space, is added to the two classes of things familiar to readers of the Phaedo and Republic: Being (i.e. the Forms) and Becoming (the phenomenal world). The introduction of the Receptacle into Plato's ontology enables Plato to clarify the relation between the orders of Being and Becoming in a way not otherwise possible. When the relation between the Forms and their phenomenal counterparts has been clarified, I shall argue, it becomes clear that the Theory of Forms as presented in the Timaeus is in fact a coherent metaphysical theory, one which is not susceptible to the Third Man Argument. This fact in turn bears (although somewhat indirectly) on the vexed question of the place of the Timaeus in the chronology of Plato's works.

In this paper I shall examine Aristotle's treatment of a certain puzzle concerning change. In section I, I shall show that within a certain standard framework for the semantics of subject-predicate sentences a number of things that Aristotle wants to maintain do not make sense. Then, I shall outline a somewhat non-standard account of the semantics for such sentences — arguably Aristotle's — and show how the proposals concerning change fit quite naturally into this framework. The results of this exercise will enable us to say something quite precise about applications of some obscure but characteristically Aristotelian doctrines: that ‘is’ is ‘said in many ways,’ that his predecessors got the Law of Opposites wrong. They also shed some light upon Aristotle's ontology of predicables.

Philebus 5Sc-62a has traditionally been viewed as one of the more likely passages in the late Platonic dialogues where the theory of Ideas may be construed to be present in the same manner as in the Republic with its sharply dualistic epistemology and ontology. There is certainly a similarity of language between the passage and the Republic: in the Philebus the pure, clear, certain/stable, true, unalloyed, eternally existing, always changlessly the same, really real objects of the philosopher's reason and knowledge sound like Platonic Ideas. Roger A. Shiner, following in the steps of G.E.L. Owen, has offered four new arguments which attempt to show that in this passage Plato in fact is not committed to the theory of Ideas in the form in which it appears in the Republic, that in this passage there is no Republic-style gulf between knowledge and opinion, reality and becoming. I wish to argue that none of these arguments succeed.

John Rawls, the twentieth century political liberal and arch-foe of utilitarianism, has resurrected the moral methodology of contractualism on the battleground of normative ethics. Rawls’ theory illuminates both the power and the weaknesses of all theories of contractualism in normative ethics.

In this paper, I examine what Rawls believes contractualism can accomplish in ethics. Then I examine one crucial aspect of Rawls’ contractualism — the notion of fairness. Next, I argue that Rawls begs the question of the choice of principles against utilitarianism. One way in which question-begging occurs is by forsaking any real conception of bargaining agents, substituting instead many abstract instantiations of one non-envious, mildly self-interested, impartial agent. Rawls claims that it is of “great importance” (141-142) that agents in the social contract achieve unanimity. In reality, the contract stipulates unamimity among its agents, instead of the opposite, where unanimity follows from consensus over fair principles. The veil of ignorance does not guarantee impartiality, but instead, it precludes choosing utilitarian principles. Finally, I test the adequacy of Rawlsian contractualism by applying it to an important problem in modern medicine involving justice, viz., the just allocation of scarce medical resources.

The Nation as Philosophical Problem

The problem of the nation is well articulated in a speech given in 1985 by then president of the Federal Republic of Germany, R. Von Weiszäcker:

This is not a psychological comment. It is not about the deep-seated need of people to express feelings of collective identity. The question of the nation here is asked from a normative perspective. That will also be the starting point of this study.

I have never been shy about admitting to fellow philosophers that I am a Bayesian, but I confess that I have rarely made the admission without discomfort. It is because I know what people usually think. They think I am an orthodox Bayesian. They think I am convinced that everyone (unbeknownst to herself) harbors a real-valued degree of confidence assignment that satisfies the axioms of the probability calculus.

Much recent discussion in moral philosophy has focused on the contrast between those moral theories which are consequentialist in structure and those moral theories which admit independent side constraints on the means which can be used to achieve various ends. In this essay I shall attempt to show that this contrast provides an illuminating framework against which to understand two conflicting strategies for justifying paternalistic interference. The first, consequentialist strategy takes paternalistic interference to be justified when it will protect or perhaps enhance some valued goal or end state, such as an agent's welfare or future ability to choose. Gerald Dworkin's essay “Paternalism” contains what is perhaps the most compelling recent development of this sort of rationale for paternalistic interference and accordingly much of my subsequent discussion will focus on this essay.

Professor Foot's Hart Lecture, now published (1995), is largely devoted to an attack on people she calls ‘subjectivists’ and ‘noncognitivists', among whom she includes myself, although she is so good as to allow me, in a footnote, to reject the names. She seems to imply thereby that this is a mere matter of nomenclature or terminology. But in truth her use of these terms makes one suspect that she has not fully understood either the issues or what I have said about them.

It may therefore be useful to explain yet again why I reject these descriptions. I have done so already in a paper to a conference in Moscow which she heard, and to which she kindly refers (Hare 1993a). These explanations would not be important if she were the only person to be confused about this matter; but the confusions are so widespread, even among professional philosophers who should know better, and are so often taught to succeeding generations of students, that it is worth while to make yet another attempt to clear them up - though the confusions are so insidious that I have not much hope that they will ever be eradicated.

Feminist theory, whether specifically philosophical or not, has been integrative in a number of ways. In epistemology and metaphysics it has attacked dualisms and dichotomies and tried to show that mind and body, reason and emotion, civilization and nature are neither separate nor separable; in ethics, we have agreed that rules, principles and justice must be tempered with a sense of caring and community; and, more generally, we have been at pains not to draw too sharp lines between philosophy and psychology, history and anthropology, literary theory and sociology.

Introduction

The various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to be plausible has to be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern.

The political and scientific debate surrounding the concepts of nation, ethnicity, and nationalism is so deeply loaded with values and passions that it should be the sociologist's highest priority to define those terms as precisely as possible in order to distinguish a new debate from the common discourse and to subject the definitions to scrutiny. It is often acknowledged that a clarification of the terms used in the debates of ethnicity, the State, the nation and nationalism is necessary, but such work is rarely done. It is important to make a distinction between the term ‘nation’ and other terms with which it is often confused — and differently in the different nations — and to clear up the ambiguities that affect the political, ideological, and scientific discourse. In the common discourse and even in the scientific literature, such terms as ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ are often used indifferently, and the ‘nation’ is subject to contradictory criticisms as it is sometimes understood as referring to the ‘nation’ and sometimes to the ‘ethnic group.’ There is always a connection between the concepts used by a given author and that author's theoretical frame of reference.

Biologists, more precisely evolutionary biologists, and not only psychologists and philosophers also speak of modularity. However the way in which this theoretical construct functions in their discipline is relatively different from the role it obtains in evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. Rather than postulating modules to explain particular traits of organisms, such as the specificity of input systems or limitations of human reasoning abilities, biologists originally simply assume that some form of modularity constitutes a precondition of evolution. They argue that, in order for natural selection to fine tune organisms to their environment, different traits must be able to evolve independently from one another. This implies modularity in one form or another. Organisms will only be able to adapt if they do not come all in one piece, so to speak. It must therefore be possible for changes to occur in one characteristic of an animal without those changes having repercussions throughout the whole organism.

—Clarence Jenson Network, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, 1976

—J. M. Keynes

Marx wrote in The German Ideology that the communist movement ‘shatters the basis of all morality’ and that ‘the communists preach no morality at all’; in The Communist Manifesto that morality and religion are correctly seen by the class-conscious proletarian as ‘so many bourgeois prejudices behind which there lurk in ambush Just as many bourgeois interests.’ In an article ‘Marxism and Morality’ and in a book Ruling Illusions; Philosophy and the Social Order, I urged that Marx's well advertised but untheorised scorn for ‘morality’ not be interpreted in terms of rejection of the prevailing (bourgeois) content of moral norms, which would be consistent with espousing an alternative set of ‘precepts’ or ‘principles.’ Rather, Marx's position should be seen as a theoretical and practical opposition to the very form of ‘morality’ as he understood it: the form of universal, absolute laws binding on individuals as beings with a capacity to rise above and conquer their selfish, capricious ‘inclinations.’

Introduction

“What reason is there to suppose that those who did know Parmenides’ poem necessarily thought that he had raised a real problem which they must try to deal with? Empedocles, perhaps also Anaxagoras, knew the poem, but they pursue a very different kind of philosophy from Zeno and Melissus: why, then, must we suppose that they are seeking an alternative answer to the problem posed by Parmenides, and that their ultimate material elements are to be seen as modifications of the Eleatic ἓν έόν?“

These rhetorical questions, taken from M. L. West's recent book, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, make a useful starting point for this inquiry. They are, of course, what the grammar books call “repudiating questions“: the answer hoped for is “no reason“. The argument with which Mr. West goes on to support his negative implication is not likely to convince many students of the Presocratics. He determinedly makes light of Parmenides’ chains of argument, apparently on the ground that “these were not the actual stages of Parmenides’ thinking” — as if Parmenides ought to have been writing his intellectual autobiography instead of a philosophical argument.

A fair question to ask of any philosopher is: What problems is he trying to solve or to circumvent? The relevance of his work to his readers depends upon how live those problems are for them; the merit of his work depends upon his success in dealing with them. The problems which concerned Berkeley were problems inherited from Cartesianism—problems arising from the dualism of mental and material substance, the Cartesian conception of causality, and the representative theory of ideas. How can mind and matter interact if they are two substances totally different in nature and like can only act upon like? How can matter be a cause at all if it is inert and a cause is by nature active? How can ideas represent material substance and its modes if representation is a matter of resemblance and ideas, being modes of mind, are unlike anything material? All such problems are circumvented if one denies the reality of material substance, if one claims that there are only minds and their ideas and that ideas are neither caused by nor representative of independently existing material objects. This, of course, is Berkeley's position.

Among analytic philosophers in the past few years there has been a growing commitment to taking Marx seriously. Since the publication in 1971 of John Rawls’ book A Theory of Justice there has been a growing commitment to taking problems of Justice and rights seriously. These two developments intersect in mutual criticism: Marx's radical critique challenges the resources of recent theories of rights and Justice, while the sophistication of recent theories raises the possibility that they escape Marx's most basic criticism.