Is it somehow a requirement of justice that we meet people's needs? So, for instance, do people in need of certain goods necessary to sustain life deserve help from those not (similarly) in need because this is a requirement of justice?

The mainstream of the philosophy of science in the second quarter of this century—the so-called “logical empiricist” or “logical positivist” movement—assumed that theoretical language in science is parasitic upon observation language and can be eliminated from scientific discourse by disinterpretation and formalization, or by explicit definition in or reduction to observational language. But several fashionable views now place the onus on believers in an observation language to show how such a language is meaningful in the absence of a theory.

In the present paper, I propose to show why logical positivism failed to do justice to the basic empirical and logical problems of philosophy of science. I also wish to consider why the drastic reaction, typified by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, fails t o provide a suitable alternative, and to suggest that the radical approaches of recent writers such as Mary Hesse and Dudley Shapere hold out a genuine promise of dealing effectively with the central tasks that face the philosopher of science today.

This paper attempts to take a new look at the famous Lewis Carroll paradox about Achilles and the Tortoise. It examines in particular the connections between Lewis Carroll's regress argument for logical inferences and a similar regress for practical inferences. The Tortoise's point of view is espoused: no norm of reasoning or of conduct can in itself “make the mind move,” only the brute force of belief can. This conclusion is a Humean one. But it does not imply that we renounce altogether the normative force of such principles of reasoning as modus ponens. Connexions with the Wittgensteinian rule-following problem are indicated.

C'est avec la grammaire générative (cf. Chomsky, 1966) que la discussion sur les rapports entre l'analyse linguistique et le rationalisme est devenue particulièrement abondante, en même temps qu'elle devenait une affaire idéologique concernant un large public. En présentant sa Cartesian Linguistics comme un chapitre dans l'histoire du rationalisme, Chomsky a prétendu avec éclat que: (i) il y aurait une tradition rationaliste ayant des idées précises sur le langage, liée aux thèses cartésiennes et à la grammaire générale de Port-Royal; (ii) la grammaire générative reprendrait cette tradition et lui apporterait une confirmation définitive. De manière générale, la validité historique des thèses de Chomsky a été contestée avec succès par les historiens: qu'il s'agisse de l'idée d'une linguistique cartésienne (Salmon, 1969; Aarsleff, 1982), de la prédominance du rationalisme aux dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles (Joly, 1977 et 1985), de l'identité de démarche entre Port-Royal et la grammaire générative (Pariente, 1975, 1985), voire même de la définition du rationalisme classique (Cooper, 1972 et la réponse dans Chomsky et Katz, 1975).

Paradigm-Case arguments were set out to meet epistemological scepticism and to refute in a short decisive way, without even the need to examine them in detail, paradoxical metaphysical claims. Stroud, J. J. Thomson and Rorty think they utterly fail to do so.1 I shall argue that supplemented by a perfectly innocuous verificationist argument, a distinct argument of Moore's, given a limited sphere of application and taken as also involving the argument from a non-vacuous contrast, the argument from the paradigm-case presents a decisive argument against such forms of scepticism. If it is not sound, transcendental arguments will also be undermined but if it is sound, they are unnecessary.

Those who criticize as well as those who nowadays defend constructivism in metaethics consider John Rawls’s constructivism to be incomplete. According to them, his ontological agnosticism makes evident this incompleteness; I question this widely accepted charge. I propose an alternative interpretation, according to which Rawls’s agnosticism is the effect of his metaethics rather than a lack of metaethics. Thanks to this interpretation, I question the originality and attractiveness of Rawls’s metaethics. My claim is that Rawls’s metaethics adequately captures the specific historical nature of political norms.

In Plato’s Laches, Socrates ascribes knowledge of courage to his eponymous interlocutor and makes an attempt to reconstruct it in speech. His attribution of knowledge to Laches controls his discursive behaviour in the dialogue, requiring him to withhold judgements of error, construe apparent error as a failure of speech rather than knowledge, and search for the deeper truth underlying the overt content of Laches’ utterances. Socrates’ method in this elenchus can be described as a kind of ‘epistemic exegesis,’ which aims to draw out and give discursive shape to knowledge of virtue that it assumes that the interlocutor already possesses.

Metaphysical theories heavily rely on the use of primitives to which they typically appeal. I will start by examining and evaluating some traditional well-known theories and I will discuss the role of primitives in metaphysical theories in general. I will then turn to a discussion of claims of ‘equivalence’ between theories that, I think, depend on equivalences of primitives, and I will explore the nature of primitives. I will then claim that almost all explanatory power of metaphysical theories comes from their primitives, and so I will turn to scrutinize the notion of ‘power’ and ‘explanatory’.

ABSTRACT : On many accounts, Rule IV appears to be composed of two distinct texts, and this should be justified by the difference between the mathesis universalis and the Cartesian method. This article runs counter to the usual interpretation by showing that the discussion on mathematics in Rule IV has enabled the introduction of method constraining scientific research to operate on grounds of order and measurement. The mathesis universalis is not so much a science of higher mathematics as a universal method by the means of which one can find truth.

Authenticity and diversity have both become catchwords in contemporary North Atlantic societies. What has not, however, been widely explored is the interrelation of these two ideas. To this end, the present article takes up the sometime convergent, sometime divergent writings of Charles Taylor and Martin Heidegger, drawing out their thoughts on authenticity and showing how they can serve as a ground for a new form of cultural diversity. For both, authentic being-in-the-world affords us access to our own deep reservoir of cultural material that is the necessary resource for fruitful engagement with other cultures.

Determinism presents us with a sceptical problem by casting doubt upon the basic common sense conviction that we are free agents who are, on occasion, confronted with genuine alternatives. A genuine alternative is present in a situation in which an agent must choose between two actions, each of which he can both select and perform. Which of the actions he chooses and does is determined at the moment of his decision, but not prior to it. The non-determinist hangs steadfastly onto this conviction and seeks to bolster it by common sense arguments; yet the arguments of the determinist are so clear, simple and “scientific” that the would-be libertarian often finds himself at a loss. In this paper I shall argue that the seemingly irrefutable arguments of the determinist rest upon an implicit assumption which is inconsistent with determinism. This assumption is a quasi-Kantian one: that a human being is a rational agent who, on occasion, acts on the basis of reasons which justify but do not causally explain his action. The relation between the reason and the action which it justifies is logical rather than causal. Although the determinist explicitly rejects this assumption, he also holds determinism to be objectively true and supports his claim by appealing to justifying reasons. I shall argue that it is a logical consequence of determinism that appeals to justifying reasons and also the very concept of objective truth must be abandoned.

Imagine asking a typical, well informed, contemporary philosopher whether or not she considered biology to be a science. Our informant, being a philosopher, would not necessarily respond with the straightforward “of course” that would be expected from anyone else. She might first reason through a complicated and heavily qualified definition of science, or she might distinguish certain parts of biology (molecular genetics, perhaps) that she held to be more clearly scientific than others (sociobiology, perhaps). If she were partial to a certain sort of critical stance, she might question the political basis for wishing to dignify certain parts of our inquisitive practice with the honorific ‘scientific’ in the first place. But there is at least one thing that she would almost certainly not do. She would not simultaneously embrace a version of the conventional philosophical view of science and deny that biology is a science. This is despite the fact that, as she will acknowledge, biology exploits a range of methodologies and explanatory strategies that have not yet admitted of systematic, consensual philosophical explication.

ABSTRACT: This paper aims at providing a general assessment of Habermas’s recent positions on the place of religion in the public sphere. After reviewing and contrasting Rawls’s and Habermas’s respective positions on the issue, it argues that Habermas’s contribution raises some difficulties both theoretical and practical. At the theoretical level, it is shown that Habermas’s contribution poses a problem of coherence with respect to his more general conception of deliberative democracy. At the practical level, the soundness of Habermas’s view of the respective roles expected of religious and secular citizens in the public sphere is brought into question.

In this paper, I focus on the notion of creation in Bergson’s works, and I characterize it as a virtuous circle. The pattern of the virtuous circle displays a process that retrospectively finds its identity in itself through present events. I show that this pattern is at work in the free act, in the actions of living organisms, and mostly in the evolutionary process itself. I then move on to ask weather it is possible to broaden the perspective beyond the traditional pattern associated with Bergson’s spiritualism. I show that, contrary to what Bergson envisioned, this virtuous circle can be broadened as to include even the material world.