Le but de ces quelques pages est de clarifier la manière dont Sartre utilise la notion de «l'être» dans son principal ouvrage, l'Être et le Néant. L'être, nous dit Sartre, est « dévoilé par quelque moyen d'accès immédiat» qu'il nomme « l'ennui», « la nausée » etc. « L'être » dont il est ici question est, nous le verrons, le concept général qui s'applique aux deux catégories d'existents qui, selon Sartre, composent le monde: l'être-en-soi et l'être-pour-soi. On a souvent dit que l'intérêt de cet ouvrage se trouve dans les analyses qu'il nous donne de l'être-pour-soi qui est le nom donné à la « réalité humaine », et non dans ce qu'il nous dit concernant l'être-en-soi. II est vrai que Sartre ne consacre que quelques pages à cette derniére question. Cependant, il me semblc que ce que nous dit Sartre concernant l'être-en-soi est la clef de son ontologie de base, et que le sens de cet « En-soi» éclairera, également, certaines de ses affirmations concernant le « Pour-soi». Les deux concepts sont solidaires, mais le sens de l'En-soi est, en quelque sorte, plus fondamental que le sens du Pour-soi.

In §6 of Book 1, Part 4 of the Treatise, Hume appears to be inconsistent in his comments about ascriptions of identity to series of successive, significantly related items or to purported single things whose temporal stages are qualitatively different or temporally discontinuous. For example, in the first few pages of §6, Hume explicitly labels such ascriptions “mistakes” and “confusions” (THN, 1. 4. §6, 253–254). Later on in the same section, however, he deals with the alleged identity-preservation of minds, churches, rivers, and so forth and no longer remarks that these attributions of identity are confused or mistaken. Hume claims that the idea of identity is the idea of an item which is (1) invariable, i.e., serially uniform, and (2) uninterrupted, i.e., temporally continuous, which seems to last through time (THN, 1. 4. §2, 200–201; 1. 4. §6, 253). Thus, on page 255 he states that “identity” is used “in an improper sense” if attributed to a series of related items which are either different in kind or temporally discontinuous, viz., to a purported identity-preserving thing whose temporal stages are different in kind or temporally discontinuous. Yet, on page 258, he comments that calling a church which has been rebuilt of different materials and in a different architectural style the same church as the former one can be done “without breach of the propriety of language”. Presumably, this use of “same” is a proper sense of “same”.

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.

God, by definition, is all-powerful, all-good, all-wise, and all-knowing. Therein lies a problem for the theist, of course, for every one of these attributes has been the subject of fierce debate. In this paper I want to return to the debate by introducing a new problem for the idea that anyone could have the kind of perfect knowledge God is supposed to have. What distinguishes my problem from others is that the sort of knowledge it focuses on is self-knowledge, hence knowledge of a particularly intimate kind. My claim is that God cannot have infallible knowledge of at least some of his own perfections, in particular his being all-wise or ideally rational. Such ignorance is not only inconsistent with the usual conception of God's omniscience, given that whatever knowledge God possesses is traditionally thought to be be a priori and infallible, but, more importantly, is inconsistent with the fundamental idea that God at least knows infallibly or incorrigibly that he has what it takes to be God: qualities such as omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and supreme wisdom. In short, my claim is that God must have a deep “blindspot” about his own nature, something which is inconsistent with a traditional picture of that nature.

According to the received view of scientific theories, a scientific theory is an axiomatic-deductive linguistic structure which must include some set of guidelines (“correspondence rules”) for interpreting its theoretical terms with reference to the world of observable phenomena. According to the semantic view, a scientific theory need not be formulated as an axiomatic-deductive structure with correspondence rules, but need only specify models which are said to be “isomorphic” with actual phenomenal systems. In this paper, I consider both the received and semantic views as they bear on the issue of how a theory relates to the world (Section 1). Then I offer a critique of some arguments frequently put forth in support of the semantic view (Section 2). Finally, I suggest a more convincing “meta-methodological” argument (based on the thought of Bernard Lonergan) in favour of the semantic view (Section 3).

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.

Thomas Hurka's brilliant study on the nature and value of virtue and vice opens with a puzzle. Hurka tells us that as consequentialism defines “all other moral properties in terms of goodness and evil” (p. 8), a fully consequentialist characterization of virtue and vice should define these things by appeal to goodness and evil as well. However, it has traditionally been thought that the most promising analysis of virtue, in terms of what is intrinsically good or evil, embarks from the fundamental claim that virtue is a disposition to promote good and prevent evil (p. 8). But then this been concluded, the bedrock truth that virtue is intrinsically good cannot be captured successfully by any consequentialist approach.

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.

In Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume examines the idea of necessary connection, which, he observes, forms an indispensable part of our idea of cause and effect. He concludes:

The idea of necessity arises from some impression. There is no impression convey'd by our senses, which can give rise to that idea. It must, therefore, by deriv'd from some internal impression, or impression of reflexion. There is no internal impression which has any relation to the present business, but that propensity, which custom produces, to pass from an object to the idea of its usual attendant. This therefore is the essence of necessity. Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider'd as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects and from effects to causes, according to their experienced union.

In the first part of this paper I will outline a feature of Wittgenstein's later views which has not to my knowledge been much noticed. In the second part I will suggest some light that it casts on two main Wittgensteinian themes. In the third part I will offer some critical ruminations.

In a recent issue of Dialogue, John O. Nelson corrects what appears to be an inexplicable error in the Haldane-Ross edition of Descartes' Meditations. At a “very crucial place,” he tells us, the translation “fails to do justice to Descartes' text.”