In this paper I want to do the following things. First I want to show that in the part of the Theaetetus where the relationship between knowledge and perception is examined, the concept of knowledge that is in question is very clearly characterized. We are left in no doubt as to what is to count as knowing. Secondly I want to unravel in some detail the case that Socrates puts on Protagoras’ behalf where he draws on what Protagoras actually wrote (151 E-152C); as opposed to what he may have taught secretly to his pupils (152C-160D). Thirdly I wish to argue that if we let the dialogue speak for itself, it is manifest that this case put up on Protagoras’ behalf at 151 E-152C is not overthrown; it is not even shaken.

In that part of the dialogue (151 D-186E) where the question is under examination whether or not knowledge and perception are the same, Socrates uses an idealized concept of knowledge. That is, he restricts the use of the word by setting down what he will consider to be the essential characteristics of knowledge, the sufficient and necessary conditions of its being instantiated. An excellent piece of philosophical procedure.

As W. V. Quine sees it we must, in the interests of science, resist “the old tendency to associate observation sentences with a subjective sensory subject matter,” because such sentences are “meant to be the intersubjective tribunal of scientific hypotheses“; observation sentences are meant to be the independent and objective control of scientific theory. Accordingly, Quine has developed a behaviouristic operational definition of an observation sentence for the purpose of dispelling the air of subjectivity which surrounds the notion of observation (WB 19).

In this paper I argue that his observation-sentence definition, or criterion, fails to fulfil this purpose. In the first half of the paper (sections 1 and 2), I describe in particular the kind of subjectivism which most worries Quine-what he calls the epistemological nihilism of Hanson, Kuhn and Polanyi-and I then turn to Quine's remedy, his observation criterion.

The overriding concern of the Republic is the relation between morally (or socially or politically) right (or just) action and happiness (or prudence). To settle the matter Plato says he must first discover the formula for politically just action for individuals, and that it will be easier to do this if we first take justice to be a virtue of a city as a whole. He develops a model of an ideal city, hardly mentioning justice and the other cardinal virtues, and then looks to that model to individuate them.

Here I shall first discuss the defense of his portrait of an ideal city. Second, the logic of virtue (arete) is considered, in two steps. It is argued that judgments of virtue are to be split into those of function (ergon) and power (dynamis). Then there is a brief consideration of each half. Third, the implications of this for understanding and threefold classification of goods are drawn. Finally, there is a discussion of the formula for each of the cardinal virtues of a city.

What distinguishes actions of persons from other events? Too big a question; we make a customary substitution: what distinguishes a person's raising his arm from a person's arm rising? In each case, the arm rises. But in the former, we have something in addition. Let us say that in the former case, the person causes the arm's rising. Our problem then is to interpret this notion of causation by an agent.

It can be done, I believe, in terms of the notion of causation of events by other events-events which may not be “mental,” contrary to one common view. My account of agent causation is presented in the concluding section of this paper. I set the stage (or clear it) for this account by first examining rivals of three types: one asserting that agent causation is or involves a causal concept which cannot be interpreted further, but which we all understand well enough; one which invokes causation by mental events of certain kinds; and one which avoids all reference to causation.

In this paper I shall put forward a version of the so-called logical connection argument to try to show that desires cannot be causes of actions. Now for anyone who wishes to use that kind of argument to show this, the ideal way of proceeding would be to first set out a complete analysis of the causal relation, and then to go on to argue that the relation between desires, certain other conditions, and actions fails to match some essential feature revealed by that analysis. But I cannot proceed in this way; for I do not possess any full-blooded analysis of the causal relation. Nonetheless, I do not think that this places me in a position of real weakness. For the argument I shall present requires the truth of only one claim with respect to the nature of the causal relation. This is the claim that the causal relation is a contingent relation. I think that this claim is a relatively uncontroversial one; I am going to assume that it is true; and the argument which follows will exploit that claim.

Occasionalism is often taken by historians of philosophy to have been an ad hoc hypothesis to establish the mind-body causal connections which on Cartesian principles are thought otherwise impossible. My aim in this paper is to show that this view is utterly without historical foundation, that, on the contrary, the view that only God can be a real cause of mind-body interaction was but a special case of a claim argued on grounds transcending the mind-body problem, and, what will be part of this, that the logical character of occasionalism anyhow precluded it from the role into which it was later miscast. More specifically, I shall show that occasionalism was but a consequence of the metaphysics adopted by the Cartesians in their general account of change. Though the same case could be made for the views of Clauberg and Geulincx, my concern will be with the occasionalism of Malebranche. My case here will be that his view is the historical and logical dénouement of principles more or less explicit both in Descartes and in two of his lesser known disciples, LaForge and Cordemoy.

It is only because the solution is possible that the problem exists. So with all transcendental arguments (p. 30).

Although P. F. Strawson mentions transcendental arguments only once in Individuals, there is no doubt as to his commitment to transcendental method. This paper will offer a critique of such a method, as it functions in a single context. Strawson gives a transcendental argument to refute scepticism with regard to other minds. We are all familiar with the gist of this argument. The sceptic holds that one can ascribe states of consciousness only to oneself. This assertion obviously implies that one can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself. But, Strawson argues, “One can ascribe states of consciousness to oneself only if one can ascribe them to others” (p. 96). In other words, the second assertion implies a third, that one can ascribe states of consciousness to others. The third assertion, though implied by the sceptic's initial assertion, contradicts it. Thus scepticism is shown by transcendental argument to imply its own denial. According to Strawson, the very statement of a sceptical position always presupposes concepts sufficient for its solution. “It is only because the solution is possible that the problem exists.”

John Locke sometimes claims in An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding that secondary qualities are qualities of bodies and not simply ideas. Few commentators, however, have taken that claim seriously. This is at least partly because Locke also claims that ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the secondary qualities of bodies and the commentators have taken these two doctrines to be irreconcilable. In this paper I shall briefly present the traditional reasons for thinking the two doctrines incompatible, and then present Locke's neglected attempt to reconcile these two claims.

Thomas Reid in his Philosophical Works tries to explain the traditional interpretation of Locke's claims about the nature of secondary qualities. In doing so he cites an “ancient hypothesis“:

The proper study of Mankind is animal evolution. If one looks back on the evolutionary time-scale one finds all kinds of animals surviving in our midst which have very simple nervous systems and whose behaviour amounts to little more than a stereotyped running off of genetically stored behavioural routines. On the other end of this scale, and including man, are animals with large nerve ganglia, or brains, who are far less dependent upon what is already in the genotype, far more capable of selective attention to incoming stimuli and able to lay down new neural connections in accordance with their experience: in a word, largely self-adaptive creatures. Such animals—the more highly evolved birds and all mammals—give much the same kind of evidence of being conscious as one's fellow men do. One is naturally tempted to suppose that consciousness, correlated as it seems to be with possession of a complex nervous system and self-adaptive behaviour, has some selective advantage for evolution of higher animals: if it does not, then how is it we are conscious?

Introduction

The identity thesis (IT hereafter) asserts that for every psychological state P there is a neural state N such that P=N. In the hope of rendering IT clear and plausible many identity theorists have compared psycho-neural identity claims to such theoretical identities as temperature is identical with molecular mean kinetic energy. However such a comparison admits a weak and a strong interpretation. According to the weak interpretation, psycho-neural identities are said to be like theoretical identities in the sense that the former are contingent claims just as the latter are presumed to be. Identity theorists have appealed to the contingent status of IT in order to meet prima facie objections of the following sort. We can imagine ourselves undergoing a pain, although we are not undergoing the neural process which the identity theorist claims is identical with the pain. Indeed we can imagine ourselves being in pain and yet not having a brain at all. Hence IT is false. Identity theorists have replied by arguing that this objection merely shows that IT is not a necessary truth, or that psychological and neurological terms do not have the same meaning.

In this paper I examine Hume's theory of the emotions, as presented in his Treatise of Human Nature, paying particular attention to what he has to say about the relationships between emotion and thought. I begin by presenting, in some detail, Hume's views about the nature of the emotions, their causes, and their objects. I then consider the bearing of the private language argument on Hume's theory, and try to show that it is not sufficient to reveal the weaknesses in Hume's account of the connections between emotion and thought. Lastly, and most extensively, I attempt to show that Hume's account of these connections is in fact unacceptable, and I argue that his basic mistake is that of construing emotions as sensations. Along the way I sketch in the outlines of what I take to be a more adequate theory of emotion and thought.

Since the publication of his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein's work has acquired a dubious patina of commentary which makes it appear that he was, without question, a verificationist. A. J. Ayer concludes his criticism of Wittgenstein by holding that descriptive statements need not be “directly verifiable by me.” In his reply to Ayer, R. Rhees only reinforces this view of Wittgenstein as a verificationist by holding that he thought it essential to the significant use of a word that it could be used both rightly and wrongly. If there is no distinction between correct and incorrect in what I say, then “of course … I say nothing” according to Rhees, who thinks he is speaking for Wittgenstein. Norman Malcolm also subscribes to this reading of the Philosophical Investigations. Without the idea of a verifiably correct use, he insists, there can be no idea of a language.

A great deal has been written about Kant's Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. But in those writings little attention has been devoted to analyzing the structure and argument of Chapter I of that work. The discussions of Chapter I that one finds in most of the commentaries on the Grundlegung do little to uncover and set forth any overall structure or argument in the chapter.

But in fact Chapter I contains a sustained argument beginning with the first sentence and continuing through to the point where the principle of morality is stated toward the end of the chapter. When this argument is made apparent, it is also apparent that Chapter I has a definite role to play in the economy of the whole work. Chapter I establishes what the “supreme principle of morality” is by an analysis of the concept of moral goodness. Chapter II continues with an exposition, using technical philosophical terminology, of that same principle; and Chapter III, of course, aims to justify that principle.

John Stuart Mill is generally considered to be a utilitarian; indeed, he himself supposed that he was one. On one principle of division, there are sometimes said to be two kinds of utilitarian, hedonistic utilitarians and agathistic utilitarians. Both of these agree that what makes an act right is whether or not the consequences of performing it are good, or are supposed by the agent to be good, but the hedonistic utilitarian thinks that only pleasure is good, whereas the agathistic utilitarian thinks that other things ate good as well. Commentators frequently complain that john Stuart Mill regarded himself as a hedonistic utilitarian, whereas in fact he was an agathistic one.

On another principle of division, there are also two kinds of utilitarian, act utilitarians and rule utilitarians. An act utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an action depends upon the goodness of its consequences; a rule utilitarian thinks that the rightness of an act depends upon the consequence of the rule to which it conforms or fails to conform.

In § 243 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein characterizes a private language as follows: “The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language.” A private language is what each of us would need to talk of his own sensations if two philosophical theses were true: namely, (1) that only the person who has a sensation can know that he has it and what kind of sensation it is and (2) that since (1) is true, the names he applies to his own sensations can only be understood by him. If (1) and (2) were true, could a person classify and talk about his own sensations?