Philosophy, and especially metaphysics, today enjoys less respect and influence than at any time in the last 800 years, since Aristotle was rediscovered by the Medievals. Philosophy once was the realm of the controversies and upheavals that determine man's perspectives and attitudes; today that realm is the sciences and arts. Once “the queen of the sciences”, philosophy is rapidly becoming their handmaiden or stepchild. The very relevance of philosophy for life is seriously being questioned in many quarters. Today's “empiricists” are decreasingly concerned with philosophy in the traditional sense, and increasingly concerned rather with the methodology of certain disciplines, such as science, logic, grammar, etc.—if not with the outright destruction of philosophy itself. And even the speculative metaphysicians of today seem to find literature more conducive than philosophy to the quest and expression of their ideas. Sartre expresses himself philosophically in plays and novels and Heidegger's works become increasingly poetic; he has expressly called philosophy the “bad danger” to thought, as opposed to poetry, the “good danger”.

Musical works are both multiple — they have a plurality of instances — and audible — they can be heard by listening to their instances. Two prominent approaches to musical ontology designed to explain these features of musical works are the type-token model and the continuant-stage model. Julian Dodd has argued that the type-token model has an advantage over the continuant-stage model because it can offer a direct explanation of the audibility of musical works in terms of their ontological category. In this paper, I defend the continuant-stage model against Dodd's argument by invoking a work-unifying continuity relation.

Wittgenstein écrit dans les Recherches philosophiques: «Pour une large part des cas d'emploi du mot “signification” — bien que ce ne soit pas pour tous les cas — on peut l'expliquer ainsi: la signification d'un mot est son usage dans le langage» (PU, §43). Le slogan «La signification, c'est l'usage» a servi de signe de ralliement à toute une génération de philosophes (les praticiens de l'«analyse linguistique» ou de la «philosophie du langage ordinaire»), mais la question de savoir quel sens lui donne Wittgenstein — mise à part celle de savoir quel sens il avait pour ces philosophes — pose encore un problème aujourd'hui.

ABSTRACT : This paper contributes to explor the historical background of contemporary conceptualism. It suggests that a step forward toward a more promising understanding of this historical background can be made if we focus, not on the much-discussed, controversial position of Kant, but rather on the straightforward position of some main representatives of classical neo-Kantianism. My main hypothesis is that criticisms of Kant’s transcendantal aesthetics coming from Paul Natorp (1854–1924) and Bruno Bauch (1877–1942) may be regarded as a significant historical source for the so-called “content” conceptualism (especially in McDowell’s version), insofar as they imply that the contents of perception are conceptual contents.

Dr. Desmond Paul Henry has recently published a systematic survey of his research on Anselm's logic which makes use of some of his previously published studies but includes much new material as well. Readers who know his earlier work will not be disappointed in this book. It evidences his usual combination of serious medieval scholarship, acumen in modern logic, and insight into the subtleties of logical problems new and old. It also demonstrates beyond doubt the remarkable skill exercised by St. Anselm in his discussions of a very wide range of logical problems involving such things as paronymy, modal arguments, moral reasoning, numerically definite reasoning, identity, forms of inference, and a variety of puzzles involving contrasts between real and apparent logical form. There is much here of very great interest to both the medievalist and the logician. Henry is also very careful and self-conscious about Anselm's methodology, and he attempts to locate Anselm's work within the general development of medieval logic. I hope that no one will feel excused from reading this book and will miss the rich results of Dr. Henry's studies from the fact that I intend here to argue that his view of the development of medieval logic is highly misleading and seems to involve the use of a distinction which, although it has twentieth-century analogues, is not applicable to medieval logic. First, I shall outline Henry's view; then I shall suggest some counter-evidence; finally I shall suggest that Henry's tools for bringing out and expounding Anselm's method have some problems of their own.

In the standard English-language reference work, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards (New York and London, 1967), we find the following blunt statement on the subject of “orthodox Marxism's” theory of knowledge:

Its epistemology is naive representationism.

The use of the word “naive” will alert the reader to the unsurprising fact that the reference here is a definitely unfriendly one. More interesting is the way in which this characterization, based on an interpretation of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, has become generally accepted in English-speaking philosophical circles over the past forty years. The purpose of the present article is to explain the representationalist interpretation, challenge it in favour of an alternative reading of Lenin's text, and make some substantive comments on issues arising from the philosophical debate between the representationalist and anti-representationalist positions outlined.

In treating of our subject three notions stand out prominently: the noumenon, the thing-in-itself and the transcendental object = X. In his commentary on The Transcendental Analytic, Robert P. Wolff has studied very carefully the question of the relationship between the notion of a transcendental object and that of the thing-in-itself. He noted and explained the passages of The Critique in which Kant means by the transcendental object simply the thing-in-itself and the passages in which he means by it something different such as “the concept of the ground of the unity of a manifold of representations in one consciousness.” There is little to be added, at this time, to Wolff's thorough investigations of this aspect of the problem.

In Ecological Thinking, Lorraine Code argues that advocacy “often makes knowledge possible” and without it “certain kinds of knowing are impossible.” By acknowledging the value of subjectivity and testimony in knowledge creation, I argue that ecological thinking serves as an appropriate framework for engagement with individuals who are living with mental illnesses. Contrasted with the dominant Anglo-American epistemologies that involve excessive degrees of mastery and control (with the tendency to silence the voices of Others), I argue that ecological thinking facilitates healthy advocacy practices precisely because of its inclusivity and receptivity towards different perspectives in knowledge creation.

Using Jaegwon Kim’s framework of explanatory realism versus explanatory irrealism, in addition to some observations about the metaphysics and epistemology of explanation, I re-examine the disagreement between Robert Kane and Richard Double over the principle of rational explanation. I defend Kane’s account of dual rationality and argue that Double’s principle has a narrower range of application than he claims. I also show that, contrary to what Double assumes, Kane’s approach to action explanation does not lapse into a form of explanatory irrealism.

People have inferred that our lives are absurd from the supposed fact that nothing we do will matter in a million years. In this article, I critically discuss this argument for absurdity. After explaining how two refutations in the literature fail to undermine the best version of the argument, I produce several considerations that together do take much of the force out of the argument. I conclude by suggesting that these considerations not only refute this argument for absurdity, but also constitute a motivation to be moral.

Les motivations des usagers du système de santé et des acteurs traditionnels à s'engager dans des pratiques participatives diffèrent. Les usagers entendent améliorer l'expérience patient en réduisant les injustices épistémiques et en augmentant les libertés de bien-être, le tout dans une perspective de justice sociale. Six logiques guidant les participations coexistent (utilitariste, méthodologique, démocratique, consumériste, épistémique et émancipatoire), logiques dont la compatibilité n'est pas évidente. Par ailleurs, la démocratie en santé est devenue protéiforme et des tensions apparaissent entre la démocratie représentative et une démocratie participative, de type indirect. Cumuler les profils épistémiques d'usagers et les différentes envies et raisons d'agir, puis les envisager sous le prisme de la complémentarité, pourrait atténuer ces tensions.

Many neo-Aristotelians argue that practical identities are normative, that is, they provide us with reasons for action and create binding obligations. Kantian constructivists agree with this insight but argue that contemporary Aristotelians fail to fully justify it. Practical identities are normative, Kantian constructivists contend, but their normativity necessarily derives from the normativity of humanity. In this paper, I shed light on this underexplored similarity between neo-Aristotelian and Kantian constructivist accounts of the normativity of practical identities, and argue that both ultimately fail. I end by suggesting an alternative justification of the claim that practical identities are normative.

It maybe thought that it is no longer important to understand what Rousseau meant by the General Will. It might be argued that since the term is not used by contemporary political writers it can be assumed that the concept has nothing 10 contribute to the understanding of present-day problems. Or, it might be urged that the meaning given to the General Will by such a disciple as Bosanquet is richer and more useful than what Rousseau himself meant by it. Even if both of these claims can be justified, there is still a need, as long as Rousseau remains prominent in political thought, to try to understand what he meant by his chief concept. Thus, my aim in almost all of this paper is to expound and interpret.

Even though Émile Meyerson is rightly seen as an opponent of Comte's positivism, analyzing passages of his works with the help of his correspondence shows the ambiguity of his relation to Comte's philosophy. Drawing on Meyerson's remarks about his relation to Comte's philosophy, this article offers a new perspective on the notion of influence, which is too often perceived as passive or unassimilated reception of a stream of ideas. I argue that Meyerson treated Comte's ideas as a sort of raw matter he transformed into a finished product.

As van Fraassen pointed out in his opening remarks, Henry Kyburg's lottery paradox has long been known to raise difficulties in attempts to represent full belief as a probability greater than or equal to p, where p is some number less than 1. Recently, Patrick Maher has pointed out that to identify full belief with probability equal to 1 presents similar difficulties. In his paper, van Fraassen investigates ways of representing full belief by personal probability which avoid the difficulties raised by Maher's measure-theoretic version of the lottery paradox. Van Fraassen's more subtle representation dissolves the simple identification of full belief with maximal personal probability. His investigation exploits the richer resources for representing opinion provided by taking conditional, rather than unconditional, personal probability as fundamental. It has interesting implications for equivalent alternative approaches based on non-Archimedean probability, as well as for equivalent approaches in which assumption contexts representing full belief relative to suppositions are taken as fundamental.

Do our customary notions of shame, blame and guilt require us to adopt a particular view of the self's singularity and invariance through time? Consider the intriguing case of John Demjanjuk, tried in Israel during 1987 and 1988 for the crimes of “Ivan the Terrible,” a concentration camp guard at Treblinka in Poland, during 1942–43. John Demjanjuk, a retired factory worker living in Cleveland, Ohio, appeared banal at his trial—old, quiet, ordinary and helpless; descriptions from survivors of Treblinka cast Ivan as monstrous in his vigorous brutality. Should John be found guilty and punished for Ivan's crimes? This question takes us beyond any answers sought at the trial. Even if the spatio-temporal identity of the later John and earlier Ivan had been established conclusively, still the justice of punishing the later man for the earlier one's crimes may be questioned. For a philosophical puzzle of personal identity lingers: is the later John the same person as the earlier Ivan? In cases such as this the passage of time and radical changes of character and personality seem to invite the notion that one self or person has succeeded another in the same body. If this were so, would—or should—culpability transfer undiminished from one self to another?

In the present paper I propose to examine St. Thomas Aquinas' third way of proving the existence of a God (henceforth TW), keeping in view and applying the proposals I have made elsewhere concerning the number andorder of the “Five Ways” and the role therein played by TW. I maintain that the first three ways take as starting-points the three types of act or actuality presented by Aristotle in Metaphysics 9.6: that the first way starts from imperfect actuality (motion), the second from secondary actuality (action or efficiency), and TW from primary actuality (being, or substantial actuality). The idea, of course, of a way of proving the existence of a God is that one proceeds from an effect, itself better known to us than its cause, to a knowledge of the existence of the cause. The problem is to develop a vision of the effect as an effect, i.e., a vision such as to reveal dependence on another, and so lead us in knowledge to the existence of that other.

Hume notoriously maintains that contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of causation. While his arguments for the necessity of constant conjunction have been thoroughly dissected, his arguments for contiguity and succession have generally been either ignored or misstated. I hope both to correct this unfortunate state of affairs and to show some fatal defects in Hume's account.

The pertinent passages in Hume's writings acknowledge three conceivable ways in which the temporal relation between causes and effects might be construed: (i) as separated by some interval; (ii) as perfectly contiguous, so that the effect succeeds the cause in the very next moment; (iii) as perfectly contemporaneous, existing at the same moment. Hume defends the correctness of (ii) and denies the tenability of both (i) and (iii).