Recent work in moral theory includes an intriguing new argument that the vagueness of moral properties, together with two well-known and well-received metaethical principles, entails the incredible conclusion that it is impossible to be moral. I show that the argument equivocates between “it is true that A and B are morally indistinguishable” and “it is not false that A and B are morally indistinguishable.” As expected the argument is interesting but unsound. It is therefore not impossible to be moral.

I examine in detail the argument vaguely suggested by Davidson to the effect that holism entails the irreducibility of the mental. I defend this argument against two objections often made against arguments that attempt to derive metaphysical theses from premises that concern our ordinary criteria for applying terms. I appeal to two-dimensional semantics to explain the links between these criteria and issues about reference and reduction. I show how the irreducibility of the mental follows from the holistic and flexible character of our criteria for attributing beliefs and intentional states.

Recently the discussion surrounding the conceivability thesis has been less about the link between conceivability and possibility per se and more about the requirements of a successful physicalist program. But before entering this debate it is necessary to consider whether conceivability provides us with even prima facie justification for our modal beliefs. I argue that two methods of conceiving—imagining that p and telling a story about p—can provide us with such justification, but only if certain requirements are met. To make these arguments, I consider those of Paul Tidman, whose position I use as a foil.

The conclusions on libertarianism Robert Nozick reaches are appropriate for a bygone era. In a modern market economy, libertarianism requires that employable people have the option of taking up a publicly provided income instead of employment. This is the only way to compensate the involuntarily unemployed that a market economy requires and to ensure that all employment is voluntary. Taxation on voluntary exchanges is unobjectionable because it alters prices, not property, and no one has a right to a particular price. The best way to provide state incomes for the capable unemployed is through a negative income tax.

Pasch is usually credited with having presented the first axiomatization of a geometrical theory, but the Vorlesungen über neuere Geometrie (1882) contains many features which do not fit the Hilbertian paradigm. Thus Pasch, while axiomatizing his “elementary geometry,” claims that it is an empirically true theory. Scholars usually regard the discrepancies between Pasch and the post-Hilbertian standard method as mere inconsistencies of Pasch's theory. On the contrary, this article aims at reconstructing the coherence and originality of the Vorlesungen. We will first display the historical background of this work and then try to reconcile Pasch's logical axiomatic claim with his empiricist stance. More importantly, we will insist on the remarkable logical procedures worked out by Pasch in order to adapt his mathematical development to the strictures of his broad philosophical position.

It has been argued that most truths about macroscopic states of affairs are entailed by a (hypothetical) complete description P of the world in microscopic terms. In principle, micro-reductive explanations of non-microphysical truths could be constructed a priori. Against this claim, I show that reductive explanation requires knowledge about the phenomena to be reduced which cannot be a priori extracted from microphysical information alone. Such reductions proceed in two steps: a “reductionR0” (“role-occupant”) establishes that a macroproperty M plays a certain causal role (specified in macro-terms), while a “reductionMM ” (“micro-macro”) establishes that some microproperty gives rise to M.

This article explores the relation between Descartes's appeal to God's veracity and his connected notions of “metaphysical” and “moral” certainty. I do this by showing their roles in his proof of the external world, his position on other minds, and his position on the “beast-machine.” Descartes uses God's veracity in the first proof, but not in the second or third. I suggest that the reason for this is that extending his appeal to God to other minds would have placed his beast-machine doctrine in jeopardy. I conclude by accounting for some Cartesian passages that might seem incompatible with my reading of moral certainty's important role in his philosophy.

I defend the Interdependency Thesis, according to which rational evaluations of dispositions and actions are made in light of each other. I invoke a model of rationality that relies on various levels of consistency existing between an agent’s reasons for adopting a moral disposition, the argument for the moral theory she endorses (relying on the Kantian notion that all persons are equal in humanity), her desires, disposition, and choice to be a moral person as reflected in the maxim she adopts. The Interdependency Thesis shows that we do not need to demonstrate the rationality of every morally required action in order to defeat scepticism fully.

This article offers a novel sceptical argument that the sensitivity-contextualist must say is sound; moreover, she must say that the conclusion of this argument is true at ordinary standards. The view under scrutiny has it that in different contexts knowledge-attributing sentences express different propositions, propositions which differ in the stretch of worlds across which the subject is required to track the truth. I identify the underlying reason for the sceptical result and argue that it makes sensitivity-contextualism irremediably flawed. Contextualists, I conclude, should abandon sensitivity for some other piece of epistemic machinery.

One of the main challenges faced by Russell's theory of judgement was to provide a satisfactory account of judgement that was not committed to the existence of true, false, or non-existent complex entities such as Meinongian objectives. In the study of the Russell-Wittgenstein debate on that theory, scholars never considered the idea that Wittgenstein might not have followed Russell on that issue. In this article. I address that question and hold, first, that problems raised by Russell's theory of judgement find their solution in the picture theory. Then, I show that Wittgenstein hesitated for a long period of time in the Notebooks between a version of his solution which is committed to the existence of possible (non-existing) complex entities and one which is not. Finally, I argue that he did, along with Meinong, go for a committing version in the Tractatus.

Twardowski's On the Content and Object of Presentations (1894) is one of the most influential works that Austrian philosophy has left to posterity. The manuscript Logik (1894–1895) supplements that work and allows us to reconstruct Twardowski's theory of judgement. These texts raise several issues, in particular whether Twardowski accepts propositions and states of affairs in his theory of judgement and whether his theory is acceptable. This article presents Twardowski's theory, shows that he accepts states of affairs, that he has a notion of proposition, and that his theory is interesting and sophisticated.

The purpose of this article is to determine which of the two representations of the highest political good in Kant's philosophy is the more consistent with his whole practical philosophy. After having defended a strong version of the highest political good, in which the Völkerbund was more like a Völkerstadt, Kant went on to affirm a non-state version of the international political and juridical order, now conceived as an association of free states. The arguments Kant proposes to ground his new conception of the international political order cannot be very convincing unless we admit that he has definitively abandoned the earlier analogy he made between the individual and the state. The collapsing of this analogy, which he had first proposed in order to justify a legalization of the international political order, shows that the model he has in mind for the highest political good is not the power of the national state but the ideal of an ethical commonwealth which relies only on the autonomy and the moral intentions of the states.

I argue in this article that, contrary to some recent views, Berkeley's bundle theory of physical objects is incompatible with the thinking that we immediately perceive such objects. Those who argue the contrary view rightly stress that immediate perception of ideas or objects must be non-conceptual for Berkeley, that is, the concept of the object cannot be made use of in the perception, otherwise it would be mediate perception. After a brief look at the texts, I contrast how a direct realist view of immediate perception differs significantly from a bundle theorist's view. The difference is so great that one rationale for the alternative view, the claim that Berkeley allies himself with common sense by claiming we immediately perceive physical objects, loses plausibility.

According to Barry Stroud, Wittgenstein thought that language is social only in this minimal way: we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can describe her as using signs in conformity with the linguistic practices of some community. Since a solitary person could meet this condition, Stroud concludes that, for Wittgenstein, solitary languages are possible. I argue that Wittgenstein in fact thought that language is social in a much more robust way. Solitary languages are not possible because we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can think of her as actively participating in the linguistic practices that fix the standards governing the applications of her words.

This article defends two theses: that a mental state is conscious if and only if it has phenomenal character, i.e., if and only if there is something it is like for the subject to be in that state, and that all state consciousness involves selfconsciousness, in the sense that a mental state is conscious if and only if its possessor is, in some suitable way, conscious of being in it. Though neither of these theses is novel, there is a dearth of direct arguments for them in the scholarly literature and the relationship between them has so far gone underrecognized. This article attempts to remedy this lack, advancing the claim that if all conscious states have phenomenal character, then all state consciousness involves self-consciousness.

In explaining the relationship between hypotheses and images in the Line of Plato's Republic VI, I first focus on Plato's elucidation of the nature of mathematics as the mathematician himself understands it. I go on to criticize traditional interpretations of the relationship above based on the doubtful assumption that mathematics concerns Platonic Forms. To formulate my view of that relationship I exploit the notion of “structure.” I show how “hypotheses” as principles of proof can determine the structures of “images” by which the corresponding intelligible ones of mathematical objects become known.

One holistic thesis about symbols is that a symbol cannot exist singly, but only as apart of a symbol system. There is also the plausible view that symbol systems emerge gradually in an individual, in a group, and in a species. The problem is that symbol holism makes it hard to see how a symbol system can emerge gradually, at least if we are considering the emergence of a first symbol system. The only way it seems possible is if being a symbol can be a matter of degree, which is initially problematic. This article explains how being a cognitive symbol can be a matter of degree after all. The contrary intuition arises from the way a process of interpretation forces an all-or-nothing character on symbols, leaving room for underlying material to realize symbols to different degrees in a way that Daniel Dennett's work can help illuminate. Holism applies to symbols as interpreted, while gradualism applies to how the underlying material realizes symbols.

I propose an interpretation of Quine's position on the asymmetry between indeterminacy of translation and underdetermination of theory. The positions of Chomsky, Rorty, and Friedman, who reject the asymmetry, are presented and criticized. The same is done with Follesdal's and Gibson's views, which are favourable to Quine's. I argue that we must admit Quine's realism but not his physicalism in order to accept the asymmetry.

When it comes to explaining life and living organisms, it is as insufficient to see in Descartes a proponent of radical mechanicism (the human body is not any sort of body since it is united with a soul) and in Kant a proponent of radical finalism (in biology, scientific explanations are in the last resort mechanicist), as it is to see in Bergson nothing other than an opponent of mechanicism. In fact in Creative Evolution Bergson “dreams” of a “mechanism of transformation” that should consist of a reform of mechanicism, the conditions of possibility of which are based not only on the progress of chemistry, but first of all on the progress of mathematics, and more precisely of infinitesimal calculus, the only method able to objectively grasp movement.