In 385B-C of the Cratylus, Plato appears to be formulating a version of the correspondence theory of truth, in such a way that it applies not only to discourse, but to individual names as well. However commentators who have remarked on this passage, either take exception to the reasoning, or find it necessary to interpret the conclusion with qualifications that Plato never could have intended. Richard Robinson, for example, on p.328 of “A Criticism of Plato’s Cratylus”, sums up the argument thus:

and criticises it for involving a fallacy of division. Lorenz and Mittelstrasse, by contrast, construe the argument as validly proceeding from the true-false distinction of sentences to a corresponding true-false distinction of their parts.

Admettons comme hypothèse de travail pour les besoins de la discussion qui va suivre que les jugements moraux ne sont pas fondés sur des valeurs objectives, sur des propriétés naturelles des choses, des actes ou des hommes, ni sur les volontés d'un Etre supréme quelconque; admettons qu'ils relevènt ultimement de decisions individuelles, que chaque homme est sur le plan logique (mais pas nécessairement au plan des faits) libre de décider des principes en vertu desquels il entend guider sa vie. La question qui se pose est la suivante: ces jugements concernant ma propre vie sont-ils logiquement universalisables? Le sont-ils nécessairement? Le sont-ils parfois et à quelles conditions? En d'autres termes, le fait qu'au plan moral je valorise tel type d'action doit-il m'amener à poser que les autres “devraient” également valoriser le même type d'action? La logique du discours moral me permet-elle de poser des valeurs uniquement pour moi-méme?Ou au contraire le jugement (moral): “je devrais agir de telle façon” entraîne-t-il le locuteur à adhérer à cet autre jugement: “X (ou toute personne), dans des circonstances semblables, devrait (moralement) agir de la même façon”?

Externalism is the thesis that some propositional attitudes depend for their individuation on features of the thinker's (social and/or physical) environment. The doctrine of self-knowledge of thoughts is the thesis that for all thinkers S and occurrent thoughts that p, S has authoritative and non-empirical knowledge of her thought that p. A much-discussed question in the literature is whether these two doctrines are compatible. In this paper I attempt to respond to one argument for an incompatibilist conclusion, Boghossian's 1989 ‘Memory Argument.’

Une question très discutée chez les interprètes de Wittgenstein est celle de savoir comment comprendre le paradoxe au sujet des règles dont il parle dans le paragraphe 201 des Recherches philosophiques. Ilécrit: ‘Notre paradoxe était le suivant: une règle ne pourrait déterminer aucune conduite parce que n'importe quelle conduite pourrait être mise en accord avec la règle’ (PU § 201). Un peu plus haut, il faisait dire à son interlocuteur: ‘“Mais comment une règle peut-elle m'apprendre ce que je dois faire en ce point? Peu importe ce que je fais, cela pourra s’ accorder suivant une interprétation ou une autre avec la règle “’ (PU § 198).

Adolf Grünbaurn’s criticisms of psychoanalytic theory are the most sustained and powerful effort in our time to make the philosophy of science useful, useful in the pursuit of theories and evidence and useful in the relief of suffering. His work shows, I think, that some important claims that psychoanalytic theory has achieved certain scientific goals at best express unjustified hopes. These failures will not discourage those who think that the goals of the human sciences are radically different from those of the natural sciences. But, like Professor Griinbaum (and, as he has shown, in rich detail, like Freud), I don’t think there is a relevant difference, here. Psychoanalytic theory, like any field of science, strives for at least approximately true descriptions of causes, that are justified in light of the data.

Still, I think that there is a core of psychoanalytic theory that is empirically justified. Moreover, most (though not quite all) people whose theoretical commitments are psychoanalytic are now fully committed to no more than this core. In responding to his paper, ‘The Role of the Case Study Method in the Foundations of Psychoanalysis,’ I’ll start by sketching this core, indicating why I take it to embody the same scientific goals as familiar, well-justified natural-scientific theories. My view of the goals of theorizing is so basic to my failure to be converted by Professor Griinbaum that this prelude will be the longest part of my comments. If it turns out that he doesn’t want to convert someone with this kind of theory, i.e., that these claims for psychoanalysis are acceptable to him - that will itself be significant as clarifying the aims of his important work.

In so many of his epistemological writings, Aristotle defends a sensible flavor of gradualism about our cognitive capacities: we Start with the partial grasps afforded by what is better known to us, and if things go well, we end up with understandings of those objects better known by nature. The picture is of a step-wise process, rather than a transforming moment of illumination.

In a difficult passage in Metaphysics IX, however, Aristotle introduces a kind of cognition which admits of no more or less, no better or worse. With respect to simples (ta asuntheta), Aristotle Claims, knowing is like touching — there is contact, or there isn't. Put differently, for simple objects, what is necessary for thinking of them at all is sufficient for grasping them completely. For this reason, Aristotle sees error about simples as impossible: any successful thinking about them will be such as to preclude error. The only possible mistakes are failures even to have them in mind.

One standard objection to familiar utilitarian consequentialism queries its troubling commitment to the maximization of overall value irrespective of distribution, for instance among the well and badly off. Call this ‘the objection from distribution.'

The simplest and most obvious alternative form of consequentialism deploys some sort of maximin principle. Maximin principles maximize the well-being of the worst off. Lexical maximin rules in particular, which are perhaps the simplest and most obvious subtype, maximize first the well-being of the worst-off, and then in case of ties among the worst-off, maximize the well-being of the second worst-off, and so forth. Maximin principles provide an obvious route to the unification of plausible concerns with maximization and with distributional equity.

This paper explores the conceptual dimension in theory acceptance, throws light on the notion of coherence between theories, and emphasizes the role of coherence between theories in theory acceptance. It is important, however, to recognize that the empirical-conceptual distinction, like most other distinctions in philosophy, is only pragmatic because purely empirical or conceptual notions in science are rare. That is, the term ‘conceptual’ is actually used in the sense of ‘mostly conceptual’, and the term ‘empirical’ signifies what is predominantly empirical. Yet it is useful in many contexts to speak of conceptual and empirical merits of theories separately. Among the commonly discussed conceptual merits of a theory are internal consistency, simplicity, comprehensiveness, and coherence with existing theories. Empirical merits include accommodating known evidence and passing experimental tests. The focus of this paper is coherence between theories.

John Searle has charged R.M. Hare's prescriptivist analysis of the meaning of ‘good,’ ‘ought’ and the other evaluative words with committing what he calls the ‘speech act fallacy.’ This is a fallacy which Searle thinks is committed not only by Hare's analysis, but by any analysis which attributes to a word the function of indicating that a particular speech act is being performed, or that an utterance has a particular illocutionary force. ‘There is a condition of adequacy which any analysis of the meaning of a word must meet,’ Searle writes, ‘and which the speech act analysis fails to meet. Any analysis of the meaning of a word must be consistent with the fact that the same word (or morpheme) can mean the same thing in all the different kinds of sentences in which it can occur.' Hare maintains that the word ‘good’ is used to indicate the speech act of prescribing. He maintains that one of the principal functions of this word is to indicate that utterances of sentences containing it have prescriptive illocutionary force, and that an analysis of its meaning must make explicit and ineliminable reference to this force-indicating function. But ‘good’ regularly occurs in sentences utterances of which appear to have no prescriptive illocutionary force.

Gareth Evans’ account of Identification-freedom (IF), which he develops in Chapters 6 and 7 of The Varieties of Reference (henceforth VR) is almost universally misunderstood. Howell is guilty of this same misunderstanding, and as a result claims to have mounted a criticism of Evans, when in fact he has not. I will take the occasion of Howell's otherwise insightful article to clarify Evans’ position. Note that the bulk of Howell's analysis is targeted at the phenomenon known as immunity to error through misidentification (IEM), which is related to but not (necessarily) identical to IF. Therefore, the accuracy of Howell's treatment of Evans in particular is tangential to the main thrust of his article. My exegesis of Evans’ account — like any non-trivial exegesis — goes somewhat beyond anything Evans overtly says. That Evans did not explicitly put the pieces together in the way I suggest they fit no doubt contributes to the widespread misunderstanding of his views.

According to cultural nationalism, members of groups sharing a common history and societal culture have a fundamental, morally significant interest in adhering to their culture and in sustaining it for generations. Moreover, this interest should be protected by states. I shall examine three theses included in this statement. The first, the adherence thesis, relates to the basic interest people have in adhering to their national culture. The second thesis is historical. It concerns the basic interest people have in recognizing and protecting the multigenerational dimension of their culture. The third thesis, a political one, holds that the interests people have in living their lives within their culture and in sustaining this culture for generations should be protected politically. Some contemporary writers who support a liberal version of cultural nationalism do so by arguing that people have an interest in culture mainly because it is a prerequisite for their freedom and also because it is a component of their identity.

When a debate seems intractable, with little agreement as to how one might proceed towards a resolution, it is understandable that philosophers should consider whether something might be amiss with the debate itself. Famously in the last Century, philosophers of various stripes explored in various ways the possibility that at least certain philosophical debates are in some manner deficient in sense. Such moves are no longer so much in vogue. For one thing, the particular ways they have been made have themselves undergone much critical scrutiny, so that many philosophers now feel that there is, for example, a Quinean response to Carnap, a Gricean reply to Austin, and a diluting proliferation of Wittgenstein interpretations.

My discussion of duress falls into three parts. In part I of the paper, I argue chiefly that Xings done under duress remain clear cases of action, and that they are special cases of acting for a reason. In part II, I propose a five-point analysis of acting under duress. In part III, I examine how duress operates as a defence. I maintain that duress is sometimes an excuse and sometimes a justification for conduct, although I further argue that nevertheless it would not be unreasonable to classify duress as an excuse.

There is a widely held view that the expressions ‘necessary truth’, ‘a priori truth’ and ‘analytic truth’ either express the same concept or, at least, refer to all and only the same items. Philosophers who hold this view, and who are sometimes described as ‘empiricists’, often draw the conclusion that the truths of logic and mathematics, if necessary, are also a priori and are, in some important sense, empty or not about the world. The subject matter of these disciplines, then, is said to differ in a philosophically important way from that of the empirical sciences, such as physics or chemistry. Rationalists, in contrast, have traditionally held that some a priori truths, either of logic or mathematics (or of some other area), are synthetic and, hence, non-analytic: i.e., there are synthetic a priori truths.

One of the purposes of this paper is to explore a number of questions which-to judge from what he assumes–Aristotle might well have asked, but which he apparently did not ask. It is often informative in the history of philosophy to point out the (apparently obvious) questions which are not raised; it sets those which are raised in a more precise frame.

It can be argued that Aristotle implies that it is possible to look like a human being–and indeed be called a human being–without “really” or “fully” being one. Leaving aside the status of females (who for Aristotle are males manques, analogous to the blind or deaf, and of children, we cannot be certain that all adult males of the class whose members look like men “really” are men.

Gareth Evans's two articles on the syntax and semantics of pronouns unfortunately seem to have been written far more with the desire of showing Peter Geach to have been wrong all along the line than in an endeavour to formulate, clearly and coherently, a comprehensive theory of his own. Some scattered passages of constructive theorizing there are, and in the latter part of this note I shall have something to say about them; but the controversial motive prevails.

It would be wearisome for me, and unrewarding for readers, if I were to work through Evans's arguments against me in detail: his misrepresentations of me are frequent and gross, and exposure of them in detail, together with restatement of the arguments misrepresented, would take up many more pages than the articles themselves. I here document just two of the more flagrant examples; with this warning before their eyes, readers may be disposed not to believe Evans's account of my works without checking for themselves.

James Collins writes that some modern philosophers have not been given revisionary treatment by their critics.

Fortunately, Bentham's day has now come, and we have in David Lyons’ In the Interest of the Governed, a major new interpretation. Lyons permits us to continue to call Bentham a “utilitarian,” but we have to revise what we understand by the term in this context.