Although it may exaggerate to say that Descartes fathered the mechanization of biology, it is true (without qualification) that his Treatise of Man provided the first systematic development of the idea that a complete understanding of all the phenomena of life, including all abilities and behaviour of (non-human) animals, can be achieved by viewing living things as machines. To make this out, Decartes had to learn to think about living things in a new way. My first aim here is to identify the fundamental conceptual innovations at work in Descartes’ attempt to extend the new mechanics to include biology. My second aim is to locate the point at which Descartes’ mechanical imagination runs out. This requires study of Descartes’ scientific work on sense.

A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the functional roles of intentions in intentional action. In this paper we sketch and defend a position on this issue while attacking a provocative alternative. Our position has its roots in a cybernetic theory of purposive behavior and is only part of the larger task of understanding all goal-directed behavior. Indeed, a unified model of goal-directed behavior, with appropriate modifications for different types of systems, is a long-range ambition.

This essay is about a theory of belief and a theory of belief reports formulated within the framework of DR (Discourse Representation) theory. DR theory’s treatment of definite and indefinite noun phrases leads to a superior treatment of belief reports involving singular terms. But it also provides something of even greater potential benefit to a treatment of belief: a (highly idealized) theory of how recipients recover verbally encoded information and of what form such information must take. The use of this account of verbally encoded information causes a distinctive treatment of belief to emerge. I will focus here on an analysis within this framework of how beliefs arise from the acceptance of verbal information and how the process of belief formation interacts with the process of belief report interpretation.

It no longer is true in a metaphorical sense only that a person can have a change of heart. We might grant this much — allow that a person may have one heart at one time and have another (numerically different) heart at still another time — and also resist the idea that a person can have a change of mind in anything other than a qualitative sense. In the discussion that follows, this standard view of the matter is called into question. If the argument presented here is sound, it can happen both that one person has numerically different minds at different times and that different people have the same (one) mind at different times. These possibilities, as I take them to be, call for reassessment of some well entrenched assumptions concerning personal identity and responsibility. In particular, they suggest that it may not be true that person A bears responsibility for making decisions person B previously made only on the condition that A is the same person as B.

In his recently published paper, ‘The Nature of Possibility,’ David Armstrong presents an account of possibility which, he correctly claims, is partly an elaboration of the early Wittgenstein's. Both are combinatorialists. That is to say, both hold that there is a fixed ontology of individuals, properties and relations whose combinations determine the range of all possible states of affairs, and therewith the range of all those totalities of states of affairs which they call possible worlds.

But Armstrong's account, I believe, is fatally flawed in ways that Wittgenstein's isn't. And this, I shall argue, is mainly because Armstrong is both an actualist, whose fixed ontology is one of actual individuals, properties and relations, and a reductionist, who tries to reduce the notion of possibility to that of ߢallߣ their combinations. Armstrong seems to think that Wittgenstein at least shares his actualism, and perhaps even his reductionism.

I wish to discuss in this paper some of the problems involved in determining whether subjects on particular occasions are justified in coming to believe a proposition. I will argue that in attributing actual justification to a particular subject–subjective justification–we have to take into account factual-psychological questions and that these are the source of fundamental difficulties. These factual-psychological questions concern the beliefs someone uses in the process of acquiring another belief and the actual connections she makes among her beliefs.

But why should epistemologists be interested in making attributions of actual justification to particular subjects? After all, if the central goal of epistemology is to guide us in choosing rational strategies for supporting our beliefs, or to assess whether theories are well grounded or acceptable, epistemologists should be concerned with the justification a theory or proposition might have independently of anyone actually coming to believe it. This may be so, but it has to be shown that it is so. Moreover, the consideration of the factual-psychological questions involved in attributions of subjective justification seems to be necessary in some recent hybrid forms of naturalized epistemology. I call them ‘hybrid’ because, unlike Quine’s naturalized epistemology, they include in the epistemological task more than naturalistic explanations of how we acquire our language and beliefs. Besides taking into consideration the actual processes of our coming to believe or accept sentences, they also make use of epistemic notions like justification, warrant, relevant or right connection among beliefs, and so forth.

The influence of St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises on Descartes’ work, including the Meditations, has been recognized and discussed by many historians. I just mention a few fairly recent and easily accessible instances. In The Metaphysics of Descartes (Oxford: Clarendon 1965), J. L. Beck suggests that the literary form of the Meditations is most likely due to the Ignatian meditations to which Descartes had been exposed during his training at the Jesuit college of LaFlèche (31). Arthur Thomson in ‘Ignace de Loyola et Descartes’ traces some elements in Descartes’ method and psychology to Ignatian sources, mainly focusing on the Discourse.

It is well known that informational theories of representation have trouble accounting for error. Informational semantics is a family of theories attempting a naturalistic, unashamedly reductive explanation of the semantic and intentional properties of thought and language. Most simply, the informational approach explains truth-conditional content in terms of causal, nomic, or simply regular correlation between a representation and a state of affairs. The central work is Dretske (1981), and the theory was largely developed at the University of Wisconsin by Fred Dretske, Dennis Stampe, and Berent Enc. Recently, informational semantics has roamed far beyond its Wisconsin home, and built a sizeable collection of followers. Converts include Jerry Fodor (1987), Robert Stalnaker (1984) and, less faithfully, Paul and Patricia Churchland (1983) and Hartry Field (1986). But for some years informational semantics has been hounded by a problem with error – the classic presentation is Fodor (1984) – and no other problem has hounded the theory so persistently.

John Stuart Mill wrote in the opening chapter of Utilitarianism, ‘A test of right and wrong must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong,’ thus explaining why he thought the work to follow was practically important. In Chapter 3, ‘On the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility,’ he answers the question, ‘What are the motives to obey the principle of utility?’ This principle is presented as a morality to be adopted. Yet before the nineteenth century was over Henry Sidgwick was proposing that it may well be best, from a utilitarian view, that the utilitarian doctrine is not too widely adopted. Perhaps it should be an esoteric morality.

Moreover, Sidgwick argues, it seems contrary to self interest to adhere to an impartially benevolent morality. Devotion to utilitarian duty seems to require that the agent sacrifice his or her own happiness in a devotion to the relief of others that can only ‘partially mitigate’ their distress (502-3). Such a morality seems impossibly demanding. Sidgwick’s argument challenges Mill's claim that there is an adequate sanction for adoption of utilitarian morality.

La philosophie, en tant que métaphysique, cherche à expliquer l’expérience humaine. A cette fin, illui faut construire des raisonnements qui fondent cette expérience et lui servent d’éclaircissement, c’est-à-dire transformer l’obscur en clair, le vague en évidence même. Le philosophe pense. Sa pensée, discursive, progresse de concepts en concepts, de jugements en jugements, de syllogismes en syllogismes, et constitue par là-même un ensemble explicateur qui se propose de dévoiler l’essence de la réalité. Dans son activité explicative, le philosophe produit ainsi des chaînes de raisonnement qui se fondent les unes les autres, découlent les unes des autres. Aussi d’emblée se pose le problème suivant: dans cette production d’arguments successifs, comment commencer?

In a well-known series of articles, Norman Daniels has drawn a contrast between wide reflective equilibrium and a more traditional method of theory acceptance in ethics that would be employed by a sophisticated moral intuitionist. The more traditional method is geared towards achieving a narrow equilibrium, or ‘an ordered pair of (a) a set of considered moral judgments acceptable to a given person P at a given time, and (b) a set of moral principles that economically systematizes (a).’ Although we might achieve narrow reflective equilibrium by deducing particular moral judgments from self-evident moral principles, the more plausible approach is to start from our particular moral judgments. Here we begin by screening our intial moral judgments to eliminate those in which we have little confidence and those made under circumstances conducive to error. We then search for general moral principles that best account for the remaining ‘considered’ moral judgments.

Suppose that in the Meditations Descartes thinks he needs to prove that his clear and distinct perceptions are true. There can be little doubt that if he does think he needs to do this, he thinks that the way to do it is to prove that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ is true. Now suppose that Descartes does come up with such a proof. Presumably he clearly and distinctly perceives both the premisses and that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ follows from them. But that will not suffice to prove that ‘a non-deceiving God exists’ is true. For, if there is a problem about whether clear and distinct perceptions are true, then in advance of settling it, there is a problem about whether what is proved merely on the basis of clear and distinct perceptions is true.

In their important book On Democracy Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers represent a person’s claim to individual autonomy as proceeding from his or her claim to free and equal participation in the democratic order exercising sovereignty. I argue in what follows for the reverse position: that the claim to autonomy is the more primary claim, from which derives the claim to equal membership in the democratic order.

Self-deception is commonly viewed as a condition that bespeaks irrationality. This paper challenges that view. I focus specifically on the connection between self-deception and practical reasoning, an area which, despite its importance for understanding self-deception, has not been systematically explored. I examine both how self-deception influences practical reasoning and how this influence affects the rationality of actions produced by practical reasoning. But what is self-deception? There are many accounts, yet there is probably none sufficiently well known and compelling to serve as an adequate background given my purposes. Hence, I shall briefly present my own account of self-deception and, on that basis, explore its connections with practical reasoning and rational action.

Descartes’ version of the Cosmological Argument in the Third Meditation is usually considered a failure, not because its conclusion doesn't follow from its premises, but because the truth of two of its premises is doubtful. One of these premises is that the objective reality of an idea is derived from a cause in which there is at least as much formal reality; the other, that only a being that possesses the qualities normally attributed to God could be responsible for the idea of God. Typically there are two objections made in response to the first of these premises. First, we don't understand the concepts of formal and objective reality well enough to know whether or not the premise commands our assent.

Among moralists and social critics of several stripes, it is not enough that the right thing be done: they also insist that it be done, and be seen to be done, for the right reasons. They are anxious to know whether we are sending food to starving Africans out of genuinely altruistic concern, or merely to clear domestic commodity markets, for one particularly topical example. Or, for another example, critics of the Brandt Commission’s plea for increased foreign aid more generally say, in stinging rebuke: ‘Many of those who support the proposal... do so out of genuine humanitarian concern about... poverty. But it is doubtful whether this is the main concern of its authors, and it certainly is not their only concern. ... They are, instead, primarily concerned with the preservation of the existing world economic order.’

What is common to all such cases is an attempt at motive differentiation. Any particular piece of behavior might have sprung from any of a number of different underlying motives; commentators (moralists, social critics) want to know which was the real motive. Here I shall show that this characteristic quest for motive differentiation is misguided. In most of the standard social situations, it makes no material difference to agents’ actions whether they act from one sort of motive or another. And in such circumstances, pressing the motivational issue will usually lead only to mischief, of both a pragmatic and a moral sort.

There has been a dramatic increase over the past decade in the volume of Anglo-American philosophical writing on Marxism, with the 1978 publication of G.A. Cohen’s trail-blazing Karl Marx’s Theory of History being a convenient landmark. What has come to be called ‘analytical Marxism’ is now well-established, and valuable clarificatory work has been done on such traditionally murky subjects as the theory of historical materialism, the nature of ideology, Marx’s views on ethics, the character of Marx’s epistemology, the ‘scientific’ status of Marxism, and the problematic interface between Marxism and normative liberal political theory.

In a recent article in this journal, Barbara Lariviere offers a very useful distinction between two ways of understanding the claims that Leibniz, or relational theorists in general, might wish to make about the nature of motion and the structure of space and time; viz.,

and

Citing the authority of Weyl, the author argues that L1 is untenable; indeed, the argument purports to show that if L1 were true, then there would be no coherent basis for a theory of motion, not even a relational theory. My main goal in this note is to point out why this argument is mistaken while at the same time sketching the real reason why the relational conception of motion is untenable. In addition I will offer a few remarks about the relevance of L2 to the absolute-relational controvery.