The basic argument is that the consensus debate has not been very meaningful until now because consensus has not been closely studied as a concept, and deliberation has not been studied precisely in terms of the propensity to reach common agreement. In particular, deliberation—as well as issues for deliberation—has not been categorized into different levels with a view to exposing the varying challenges of reaching common agreement and the kinds of deliberative approaches entailed in each category. In this research, I attempt to provide this categorization in order to clarify the debate.

La phénoménologie a connu trop peu de sommets créateurs depuis Husserl et Heidegger pour qu'il soit possible d'ignorer le dernier ouvrage de Jean-Luc Marion, aussi superbement écrit qu'il est ambitieux. Certes, de très exhaustives encyclopédies conçues par nos collègues américains, pour lesquels le terme de phénoménologie sert un peu d'équivalent à celui de philosophie continentale (c'est-à-dire «non analytique»!), recenseront des légions de phénoménologues depuis Husserl et Heidegger, mais aucun n'aura eu d'impact vraiment déterminant sur la conception même de la discipline. Ces listes comprendront de redoutables penseurs comme Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas et Paul Ricœur, où l'on reconnaîtra les plus illustres représentants de la tradition de la phénoménologie française (les autres traditions dites phénoménologiques étant beaucoup moins riches).

ABSTRACT: Indifference is a term often used to describe the sort of freedom had by the will according to the libertarian, or Molinist account. It is thought to be a univocal term. In fact, however, it is used in at least seven different ways, in a variety of domains during the early modern period. All of them have plausible roots in Descartes, but he himself uses the term in only one sense, and failure to notice this consistent use by him has bedeviled interpretations of his account of the will.

Kant often compares reason to an organized body, which suggests that reason should be understood as a whole from which all possible uses of the faculties of reason are derived. However, Kant does not elaborate his conception of the whole of reason. Nor does the secondary literature. This paper suggests that the wholeness of reason is the apodictic modality of reason, i.e., the necessary standard that determines what can systematically belong to reason, and thus works as the systematic condition for all possible uses of the faculties of reason. This necessary standard is the discipline of pure reason.

This paper explores the idea of robust discursive equality on which respect-based conceptions of justificatory reciprocity often draw. I distinguish between formal and substantive discursive equality and argue that if justificatory reciprocity requires that people be accorded formally equal discursive standing, robust discursive equality should not be construed as requiring standing that is equal substantively, or in terms of its discursive purchase. Still, robust discursive equality is purchase sensitive: it does not obtain when discursive standing is impermissibly unequal in purchase. I then showcase different candidate conceptions of purchase justice, and draw conclusions about the substantive commitments of justificatory reciprocity.

There is no more central feature of Francis Hutcheson's moral philosophy than his theory of the moral sense. In the past this sense or faculty was widely understood to be a distinctive and independent sense devoted to the apprehension of moral qualities, but William Frankena has in recent years challenged this traditional view of Hutcheson's theory, and offered in its place an emotivist interpretation. Without question Frankena's study was of the first importance, in that it seems to have overturned the much too simplistic traditional view of the moral sense. Unfortunately, however, Frankena's own interpretation of the moral sense is as inadequate and misleading as the view he overturns, for he concludes that the moral sense is not at all a cognitive faculty, that it does not, that is, apprehend moral qualities, but, rather, is a faculty that enables and motivates us to feel, express, and evoke moral emotions. The moral sense, he argues, is “the source of the feelings involved” in moral approbation or disapprobation, and this approbation is “wholly non-cognitive, very much as it is on Ayer's more recent [emotivist] view … This, I shall show, is much too narrow a view; Hutcheson did not limit the moral sense to a single function, nor did he — lacking as he did twentieth-century perspectives — find it either necessary or desirable to assume that the domains of the cognitive and the emotive (or affective) were mutually exclusive.

Le Thème de cet article est assez vaste : il s'agit de reconsidérer un des lieux communs de l'épistémologie historique des sciences du langage concernant les rapports de la logique et de la grammaire générale. Nous le restreindrons en étudiant seulement l'état auquel parvient cette dernière discipline dans l'œuvre de Nicolas Beauzée (1717–1789), collaborates important de l'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert ; sa Grammaire Générale (1767) constitue sans doute la perfection du genre inauguré par Port-Royal.

Après avoir, en préambule, défini l'expérimentation humaine au sens qui est ici visé, j'identifierai le don qu'elle implique au sein d'une chaîne de solidarité, puis j'analyserai quelques difficultés auxquelles donne lieu l'intégration culturelle de cette démarche de partage, enfin je mettrai en évidence un conflit entre solidarité et autonomie.

ABSTRACT: The paper argues that applications of the principle that “ought” implies “can” (OIC) depend on normative considerations even if the link between “ought” and “can” is logical in nature. Thus, we should reject a common, “factualist” conception of OIC and endorse weak “normativism.” Even if we use OIC as the rule “‘’therefore‘ought not’,” applying OIC is not a mere matter of facts and logic, as factualists claim, but often draws on “proto-ideals” of moral agency.

RESUME: Cet article défend que les applications du principe «“devoir” implique “pouvoir”» (OIC pour l’anglais ‘ought’ implies ‘can’) dépendent de considérations normatives quoique ce lien soit de nature logique. Nous devrions donc rejeter la conception «factuelle» de l’OIC et plutôt défendre un «normativisme» faible. Même en supposant que l’on utilise l’OIC comme étant la règle «“ne pas pouvoir” implique “ne pas devoir”», appliquer l’OIC n’est pas seulement une question de faits et de logique, comme le soutiennent les «factualistes», mais découle souvent de «proto-idéaux» de l’agentivité morale.

Epigenetics reveals the biological mechanisms underlying the reproduction and even the transmission of social inequalities in health. It also emphasizes the complexity of factors involved in the development of some diseases. This complexity raises new difficulties for theories of justice. Is the equal opportunities theory the most appropriate to solve these difficulties? I demonstrate that epigenetics requires a multifactor model of justice—one that is grounded on principles of fairness, impartiality, and environmental and intergenerational justice. Depending on the point of view assumed (i.e., individual, population-based, or intergenerational), the relevant principle of justice is different.

Since philosophers do not write down all they think, there are logical spaces in every text. The commentator's job is to bridge these, relying upon the implications of his author's statements. He usually works on the assumption that his philosopher is a rational and, therefore, a consistent thinker. When he has to contend with statements that are ambiguous, elliptical or apparently inconsistent, or with logical gaps that are unusually wide, he chooses the interpretation that confers the maximum coherence upon the theory under review. There are hard choices to be made, especially when the philosopher has avoided committing himself explicitly on a central point. Where the philosopher has been silent, is the critic allowed to speak? It is presumptuous of him to do so, no doubt, but, I think, warranted if the philosophical theory is thereby strengthened.

I submit what, I believe, is a fairly new definition of the nation, one which I call the sociopolitical conception. I try to avoid as much as possible the traditional dichotomy between the exclusively civic and ethnic accounts, and try to explain my reasons for doing so. I also adopt as a general framework a certain conceptual pluralism which allows me to use many different concepts of the nation. After that, I proceed by formulating some constraints on any acceptable new definition. My own sociopolitical conception is then finally introduced. The sociopolitical nation is a political community, most often composed, sociologically, of a national majority, national minorities, and individuals with other national origins. The concept of national majority is crucial for the account and refers to the largest sample in the world of a given population sharing a common language, history, and culture. National minorities are defined as extensions of neighbouring nations, while individuals of other national origins are those members of ethnic minorities that have come from immigration. There would be no sociopolitical nation if there were no national majority, but this is compatible with a pluricultural and multi-ethnic view of the nation, since the political community may also include national minorities and individuals with a different origin. I end the article by showing that this definition meets the constraints that were initially introduced.

Stephen Braude, a philosopher, believes that scientists, scholars and intellectuals ignore the wide range of evidence for psychic phenomena. They dismiss what is known and refuse to inquire further. He uses strong words such as “intellectual dishonesty and cowardice.” He means me and probably you. He made these allegations in his second book on parapsychology, The Limits of Influence, which is subtitled Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science. It was published in 1986. The editor of Dialogue thought that the charges had not been adequately discussed, and that the appearance of a paperbound edition would be a good occasion to treat them seriously.

ABSTRACT: In Die Frage nach dem Ding, Martin Heidegger characterizes Galileo as an important transitional figure in the struggle to replace the Aristotelian conception of nature with that of Newton. However, Heidegger only attends to Galileo’s modernity and not to those Aristotelian elements still discernible in Galileo’s work. This article fleshes out both aspects in Galileo in light of Heidegger’s discussion. It concludes by arguing that the lacuna in Heidegger’s account of Galileo is the consequence of Heidegger’s own self-conscious modernity − a modernity that he slyly hints at in a remark he makes in FD concerning Galileo and Democritus.

ABSTRACT: Jeremy Waldron argues that the historical ownership rights of Aboriginal peoples can be superseded, yet acknowledges that programs of historically grounded compensation are justifiable in the absence of widespread redistribution. This article argues that existing states lack social justice programs of the requisite kind, and that they will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Moreover, even the best-designed programs will be far more ambiguous than Waldron encourages us to recognize, given the unavoidability of inheritance-based inequalities. The article argues that philosophers should pay special attention to political context when evaluating the claims of socially vulnerable populations such as Aboriginal peoples.

This article aims at understanding the functions of the forms of Being and the Other in Plato's Sophist. In contrast with a linguistic interpretation purporting to draw a distinction between uses of the verb “to be,” I shed light on the ontological role ascribed to “the great genus” in the interweaving of forms. Focusing on the vowel analogy, I argue that the roles of Being and the Other respectively are that of a connector and a separator actualizing the participations and the differences between the forms. The outcome of this analysis is to offer an explanation of the dialectical methods described in that dialogue in a rather obscure, abstract way; the much-debated question of self-predication can be settled without recourse to selfparticipation.