In discussions of the underrepresentation of women in professional philosophy, those sceptical of discrimination as an explanation often suggest that gender differences in interests are a plausible alternative hypothesis. Some suspect that if women’s differing interests explains underrepresentation, then interventions suggested by the discrimination hypothesis might be unnecessary—or even risky. I argue that one needs to consider how stereotypes might influence interests, and that doing so can provide a more even-handed assessment of the risks involved in proposed interventions.

One challenge involved in integrating so-called ‘non-Western’ philosophies into ‘Western’ philosophical discourse concerns the fact that non-Western philosophical texts frequently differ significantly in style and approach from Western ones, especially those in contemporary analytic philosophy. But how might one bring texts that are written, for example, in a literary, non-expository style, and which do not clearly advance philosophical positions or arguments, into constructive dialogue with those that do? Also, why might one seek to do this in the first place? This paper addresses these questions by means of a case study involving the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi.

ABSTRACT: Meno’s Thesis—the idea that knowing something is better than merely having a true belief about it—is incompatible with the joint claims that (a) believing the truth is the sole source of the value of knowledge and (b) true belief and knowledge are equally successful in believing the truth. Recent answers to that so-called “swamping” problem reject either (a) or (b). This paper rejects Meno’s Thesis instead, as relying on a confusion between expected value and value proper. The proposed solution relies on an externalist view of rationality, which is presented.

According to Kant, there is some doctrine, which he sometimes calls ‘empirical realism,’ such that it was doubted by Descartes, denied by Berkeley, and endorsed by Kant himself. The primary aim of this paper will be to reconstruct Kant’s own narrative of the historical relationship between Descartes, Berkeley, and himself, in order to identify the doctrine Kant calls ‘empirical realism.’ I argue that the empirical realism that Descartes doubted, Berkeley denied, and Kant endorsed is the doctrine that the concept of extended substance has legitimate application.

La parution d'un ouvrage entièrement consacré à la théorie kantienne du sublime mérite d'être saluée avec un certain enthousiasme, a fortiori lorsqu'il provient de la tradition anglo-saxonne, où la question du sublime est généralement considérée comme une «erreur» dont la théorie esthétique de Kant gagnerait à être expurgée. Paul Crowther remarque d'entrée de jeu que le regain d'intérêt pour l'esthétique de Kant qui s'est fait sentir dans le monde anglo-saxon depuis les années soixante-dix s'est concentré presque exclusivement sur les questions de la beauté et de l'art, au détriment du sublime. Paul Guyer avait prétendu fixer les raisons de cet ostracisme: d'abord, le sentiment du sublime est selon lui inconciliable avec l'explication fondamentale que donne Kant de la «réponse esthétique» en général en termes d'harmonie de l'imagination et de l'entendement; ensuite, la discussion du sublime minimiserait l'importance de 1'intersubjectivité esthétique, qui constitue selon lui l'essentiel de la théorie esthétique kantienne comprise comme une théorie du «goût»; et finalement, la discussion kantienne du sublime ne posséderait plus qu'un intérêt historique, qui ne saurait rencontrer nos sensibilités esthétiques modernes, tandis que nous aurions au contraire beaucoup à apprendre de la discussion des jugements sur la beauté (1979, p. 399 sq.). Or, c'est précisément d'une nouvelle sensibilité à l'endroit du sublime, qui se ferait sentir depuis les années quatre-vingt, que se réclame Crowther pour justifier son entreprise théorique (p. 2).

Nous partirons du thème cent fois rebattu de l'allégorie de la Caverne. Les interprétations classiques du célébre passage de la République sont connues de tous. Il ne s'agit pas pour nous de les répéter, mais de proposer une nouvelle lecture de l'allégorie qui nous sortirait des sentiers battus.

La Grammaire (1660) et la Logique (1662) de Port-Royal ouvrirent une ère nouvelle dans l'histoire des sciences du langage. On a beau insister sur la dette des Messieurs de Port-Royal (Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot) envers Descartes, Augustin, Sanctius, ou meme Aristote, l'originalité de leur œuvre logico-grammaticale ne fait malgré tout aucun doute. Quant à l'influence de cette oeuvre sur les grammairiens philosophes des générations suivantes, elle est d'une remarquable persistance et demeure sensible pendant un bon siecle et demi, en dépit des critiques, corrections et innovations qu'elle a pu inspirer, et de la diversité des orientations philosophiques ou gnoséologiques des plus illustres grammairiens des Lumières. L'œuvre des Messieurs propose une vision unifiée des phénomènes langagiers et «l'appareil mis en place à Port-Royal continue à fonctionner pour l'essentiel» (cf. Dominicy, La naissance. …, p. 14), aussi bien chez les grammairiens philosophes de l'Encyclop'dic (Du Marsais, Beauzée), que chez Condillac et ses successeurs idéologues (en particulier Destutt de Tracy).

Only there occur certain lags in scholarship which need to be remedied. One of these is the lack of appreciation of the efforts of the American critical realists to attain a direct, referential realism which would avoid the difficulties confronting an intuitional type of naive realism and the well-recognized dilemma of Lockean representative perceptionism. In the latter case, the puzzle is, of course, that, if we perceive subjective ideas, how can we know that they give us cognitive access to external things.

ABSTRACT: In the search for a more fine-grained criterion of propositional identity in order to provide an adequate analysis of sense and thought, I propose a revision of the ontology of the Frege and Church theory of types of sense and denotation, and I set up a natural predicative propositional logic that explains their logical form in terms of acts of predication. I also define a more subjective notion of truth according to an agent and a new strong propositional implication. The intensional logic thus set forth explains why human agents possess a minimal rationality. I conclude by proposing a new axiomatisation of a minimal epistemic logic.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I carry out an application of the debate between simulationism and theory theory to the issue of episodic memory. I first criticize the approach favored by the theory theory. Then I advance a simulationist conception of the relationship between the phenomenology of episodic memory and its specific kind of self-consciousness. On my view, subjectivity belongs to the very content of episodic memory, not as an element of its content, but as the perspective it gives to the content that makes the simulation of past experience possible. In support of that view, I provide an analysis inspired by J. Perry of the semantics of de se thought. It gives the remembering subject a non-representational presence in the mnesic content.

Pour ceux qui entreprennent de parler de la liberté, la conception grecque constitue une référence quasi inévitable. Mais si les uns l'invo-quent avec nostalgie comme un modèle, d'autres s'efforcent au contraire d'en exposer les limites ou la spécificité. C'est que la notion elle-même de «liberté grecque» continue à être l'objet de controverses; et il n'est pas étonnant que les interprétations proprement philosophiques des doctrines s'en ressentent directement. On peut sans doute trouver à ces divergences plusieurs explications: la difficulté intrinsèque du sujet et les passions qu'il suscite presque immédiatement, la diversité des domaines et des auteurs concernés, les choix philosophiques des interprètes, notamment.

The author struggles to come to grips here with the philosophical complexities and personal tragedies that disorient us when we reflect on the great and pervasive inequalities in human societies. His egalitarianism is radical in denying the justice of the inequalities that liberals like Rawls would countenance, and in denying that justice and capitalism are compatible. Nielsen displays a masterly knowledge of the literature of social justice, especially that which bears on Rawls's A Theory of Justice and Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia, the celebrated philosophical flagships of liberalism and conservatism respectively; this feature of the book should be useful for advanced students of social and political philosophy who need to acquire a sense for the texture of contemporary argument in the field. The thicket of sturdy arguments in Equality and Liberty should convince Rawlsians to accept many tenets of Nielsen's radical egalitarianism, or else to re-examine their thinking about social justice. And the extended critique of Anarchy, State and Utopia should persuade Nozickians of the need for “a reasonably sophisticated political sociology and a sound critical theory of society” if one is to philosophize adequately about social justice (5). Many will find this critique the most valuable part of the book.

What were Aristotle's aims in the Categories? We can probably all agree that he wanted to say something about different uses of the verb ‘to be’ – something relevant to ontology. The conventional interpretation goes further: it has Books Γ and Z of the Metaphysics superseding theories put forward in the Categories. We should expect then that the Categories and these books of the Metaphysics try to do the same sort of thing. Most exegetes do indeed ascribe to the earlier work fairly elaborate ontologies, though they are in disagreement as to what theory Aristotle held while writing it. I shall argue in this paper that the whole enterprise of reconstructing the ontology of the Categories from its small stock of clues is misguided; that the business of the Categories is to set out data for which the Metaphysics tries to account. This view is not without consequences relevant to some widely held theses. I shall claim that the differences between the Categories and the Metaphysics cannot uncritically be used to trace the development of Aristotle's ontology, that the differences between the two doctrines has been greatly exaggerated. More of this later: let me first explain the distinction on which I shall depend.