“We Need Not hesitate to translate the word eudaimonia by the English ‘happiness’” (my transliteration). So Burnet wrote in 1900, but the hardening consensus is that he was wrong. The differences between the two notions, it is now commonly supposed, are too many and too deep to think that happiness and eudaimonia are very closely related; and consequently “happiness”, the long-established conventional translation, will seriously mislead us in understanding the nature of Aristotelian eudaimonia.

In book I of the Treatise Hume argues that we have no reason to believe what we do about matters of fact (139, 265); these beliefs are not “just conclusions” (89), nor are they “built on solid reasoning” (90). Therefore, all such beliefs are equally unjustified no matter how they are acquired. One might suppose, then, that he would hold that no ranking of ways of acquiring beliefs is possible; all are on a par, since all the resulting beliefs are unreasonable.

La Représentation est originairement une technique de droit privé dont déjà Cicéron donnait la définition: Unus sustineo tres persona, mei, adversarii et judicis. Dans la politique moderne, l'institution de la représentation en droit public porte, dit-on généralement, la marque de l'idéologie des hommes de 1789 et la Constitution de 1791, en son titre III, détermine le contenu juridique du régime représentatif en alliant au principe individualiste dont Siéyès et Mirabeau avaient été les porte-parole une conception organique de la nation que traduit l'idée de l'indivisibilité de la souveraineté nationale. En conséquence, dans le régime représentatif moderne, les députés représentent la nation entière, ce qui entraîne l'indépendance des élus par rapport aux électeurs.

Pour Répondre à la question qui constitue le titre de cet essai, il faut d'abord répondre à une autre question, à savoir: qu'est-ce que la philosophie de la nature? De quoi parlons-nous au juste quand nous parlons de philosophie de la nature?

Language theorists have recently come to have an increasing appreciation for the fact that context contributes heavily in determining our interpretation of what is said. Indeed, it now seems clear that no complete understanding of a natural language is possible without some account of the way in which context affects our interpretation of discourse. In this paper, I will attempt to explore one facet of the language – context relationship, namely, the relation between conditionals and context. The first part of the paper develops an account of truth for conditionals which allows them to depend on momentary features of the context in which they are uttered. In the second half of the paper, comparisons with other recent theories of the conditional will be considered. Particular attention will be given to the problem of whether the conditional really violates classical inferences such as Hypothetical Syllogism and Contraposition as has often been claimed in recent years.

Part I of this trilogy, Historical and Scientific Setting, set out a general context for selecting a certain subclass of inter-theoretic relations as achieving appropriate explanatory and ontological unification – hence for properly being labelled reductive. Something of the complexity of these relations in real science was explored. The present article concentrates on the role which identity plays in structuring the reduction relation and so in achieving ontological and explanatory unification.

C'est un Radieux amour de jeunesse que celui de Hegel pour «la belle totalité grecque» et cet amour est d'autant plus profond que le monde moderne alentour craque et se déchire. Hegel qui, dans la jeune histoire de la philosophie, occupe une place originale par sa lecture interprétative des œuvres grecques, sait bien que la République platonicienne n'a pas dessein de décrire les champs élyséens de la Grèce primitive; mais il retrouve en elle la vie harmonique et la plénitude de cette communauté première qui, antérieure à l'Etat comme forme politique aussi bien qu'à la religion comme dogme, n'était qu'ordre et beauté en raison de l'intime entrelacs du politique et du religieux.

Les Anciens Tenaient pour évident que la philosophie dans ses aspects les plus formels ne pouvait surgir que dans une société dont les composantes étaient suffisamment efficaces et spécialisées pour soustraire ses citoyens à l'obligation d'employer tout leur temps à s'assurer les nécessités de la vie. La philosophie ne serait-elle dans cette optique qu'une activité secondaire à laquelle l'homme s'adonne quand il a trouvé des solutions aux problèmes plus vitaux ou plus pressants qui l'assaillent? Une sorte de jeu de la pensée ou du langage, agréable certes pour des esprits d'une certaine tournure, mais occupé tout au plus à épiloguer sur ce que les hommes ont déjà accompli par d'autres moyens? La philosophie apparaîtrait donc, et c'est ainsi qu'elle est souvent perçue dans la société et même dans l'université, comme la manifestation d'une virtuosité de la raison à laquelle on tient comme aux bonnes manières prescrites par l'étiquette mais qu'on subordonne aux exigences plus fondamentales de l'existence: primo vivere, deinde philosophari.

The Three Papers comprising this series, together with my earlier [34] also published in this journal, constitute an attempt to set out the major issues in the theoretical domain of reduction and to develop (tentatively) a general theory of theory reduction. The fourth paper, [34], though published separately from this trio, is integral to the presentation and should be read in conjunction with these papers. Even so, the presentation is limited in scope – roughly, to intertheoretic reduction among empirical theories – and informal in presentation – not least because a satisfying formal account of theories has yet to be offered. And despite the length, the treatment is still condensed; often corroborating and/or intuitively helpful detail has had to be consigned to footnotes or omitted. I approach the problem from within my own naturalistic realist philosophy of science and formal analysis of abstract hierarchy in theory. The sources for the former are [25], [29], [31], and [32] and those for the latter essentially [27] and [30]. Hierarchical notions played a significant role in the already published [34].

It is often said that knowledge is justified true belief. But when is a belief justified? Again, it is often said, that belief is justified when it is entailed by something I know. As a definition of knowledge, this account is circular and generates a regress. So much then for justified true belief. Still, knowledge must certainly be true and believed, so – grasping at straws – we ask whether some kinds of beliefs may be known without justification. As the history of epistemology shows, this question is more dangerous than a mine field, and many philosophers have thrown up their hands and gone on to knitting or backgammon.

If we accept the traditional definition of knowledge according to which S knows that P provided that (i) P is true, (ii) S accepts P and (iii) S is justified in believing that P, the Gettier's counter-examples will prompt us to look for a fourth condition to complete the analyses of knowledge. Before we determine whether such a fourth condition is, indeed, needed and, if so, how it is to be formulated, we may do well to examine with some care the situations which, according to Gettier, are counter to the traditional definition of knowledge. There are two reasons why this course of action is to be recommended. First, it may enable us to expose the presuppositions, other than those involved in the traditional definition of knowledge itself, which Gettier appeals to in order to construct his counter-examples. Second, this may provide us with an insight into exactly what it is that is supposed to be wrong with that definition.

Ceux Qui Lisent l'Ecole de Francfort sont frappés par le caractère spéculatif de ses démarches: préférant se définir comme « philosophie sociale » et non comme sociologie elle semble bien accorder à la philosophie plus d'importance qu'à la société. A cette philosophie de l'émancipation on a donc plus d'une fois jeté à la tête – et c'est bien l'expression qui convient – qu'elle n'émancipe que dans la tête. Après la révolte étudiante de 1968, nombreux sont ceux qui ont considéré que l'Idée de la théorie critique s'était discréditée sur la scène de l'histoire.

I Want to argue in this paper that the optimism with respect to scientific development that has been shown by materialists since Place and Smart is in the process of being vindicated. What I shall attempt is to indicate one way in which the fledgling science of sociobiology complements Central State materialism. A secondary objective is to get philosophers to take sociobiology seriously, even if they are not materialists.

Chapter fifteen of Leviathan is concerned with what Hobbes calls “the laws of nature”; however, it is evident from the start that justice is the central problem of the chapter. Hobbes demonstrates a rather subtle sensitivity to a possible misunderstanding of his views on the state of nature and the function of natural reason by inventing the character of the fool who purports to use Hobbes' own principle of self-interest to deny the existence of justice. The fool may finally be a “straw man” who proposes precisely that argument which Hobbes can quickly refute, but even if this is so, the straw man has Hobbes' face, or one like it, because the line between the views of the fool and those of Hobbes himself is very fine indeed. This section of Leviathan is more significant than it would seem at first glance because it provides an avenue by means of which one can distinguish the political philosophy of Hobbes from that of classical “individualists” such as Callicles and Thrasymachus. It is all too easy to read Hobbes as an elaborate restatement of the sophistic position of Socrates' famous opponents; the example of the fool belies this facile identity and to a certain extent constitutes a refutation of the classical power theorists.

Perhaps the Clearest and most impressive use of the Principle of Continuity by Leibniz in the evaluation of a theory is that offered in refutation of the Cartesian laws of motion, as given in his Critical Remarks Concerning the General Part of Descartes' Principles. With regard to the Cartesian laws of impact Leibniz says:

On Article 49. Rule 4. If B, which is moving, is smaller than C, which is at rest, B will be reflected with the velocity it had before the shock while C will remain at rest.

The Aim of this paper is to argue the case for a moral philosophical doctrine which, while Kantian in spirit and in much of its detail, permits an easier accommodation with certain widely held moral judgments than Kant's theory allows. The point at issue is Kant's doctrine of direct duties, namely, that any duty is ultimately to a person; indirectly a duty may be to a non-person, but if the duty in question has moral force it is by virtue of the fact that it is sanctioned or underpinned by a duty to a person. To take a conspicuous example: Kant does not believe animals to be persons, for he holds that a person is essentially rational and that animals lack rationality. Yet he accepts that we have certain duties with regard to animals, in particular a duty not to maltreat them. Kant's solution to this problem is to say that our real duties are to persons, and that it is by virtue of our duties to persons that we are morally required to set restrictions on our behaviour towards animals. It is for the sake of people that we must be kind to animals and never treat them cruelly.

Any theory of reduction that goes only so far as carried in Parts I and II ([165], [166]) does only half the job. Prima facie at least, there are cases of would-be reduction which seem torn between two conflicting intuitions. On the one side there is a strong intuition that reduction is involved, and a strongly retentive reduction at that. On the other side it seems that the concepts at one level cross-classify those at the other level, so that there is no way to identify properties at one level with those at the other. There is evidence to suggest that there will be no unique mental state/neural state association that can be set up, because, e.g., many different parts of the nervous system are all capable of taking over ‘control’ of the one mental function. And it is alleged that infinitely many, worse: indefinitely many, different bio-chemo-physical states could correspond to the economic property ‘has a monetary system of economic exchange’; and similarly for the property ‘has just won a game of tennis’. Yet one doesn't want an economic system or a game of tennis to be some ghostly addition to the actual bio-chemo-physical processes and events involved (cf. Rudner [188]). Similarly one hopes that neurophysiology allied with the rest of natural science will render human experience and behaviour explicable.

La distinction entre contexte de découverte et contexte de justification remonte en philosophie des sciences à John Herschel (1831). Le positivisme logique, surtout à travers Reichenbach, a repris cette distinction pour centrer la philosophie des sciences sur le problème de la justification en excluant le contexte de découverte. Popper suit d'ailleurs la même voie en faisant de l'invention des hypothèses scientifiques un problème psychologique qu'il exclut de son entreprise. Ce n'est qu'avec Kuhn et Hanson que le contexte de découverte deviendra dominant. Plus récemment, en voulant dépasser l'opposition entre Popper et Kuhn, Lakatos a commencé à penser l'interdépendance de la découverte et de la justification. Le présent texte vise à expliciter et préciser cette interdépendance, en clarifiant formellement les problèmes épistémologiques auxquels nous nous confrontons aujourd'hui.

Routinely, in Arriving at decisions on what treatments to recommend in intensive care wards, the moral presumption is that there is an intrinsic difference between the positive duty to save lives and the negative duty not to take lives. The discontinuation of treatment – say stopping chemotherapy or removing a ventilator – is thought of as a “negative” action, an allowing to die, not “positively”, say as an act of suicide by the patient, or a killing by the hospital staff. But the distinction between “positive” and “negative” here, despite its grave ethical import, is elusive and difficult to grasp firmly. St. Anselm of Canterbury was fond of citing the trickiness of the distinction between “to do” (facere) and “not to do” (non-facere). In answer to the question “What's he doing?” we say “He's just sitting there.” (positive), really meaning something negative: “He's not doing anything at all.” Sometimes the “negative” action is described in “positive” terms, or vice versa, and that makes one wonder if the distinction might be somehow trivial, a bit of jesuitry too insubstantial to bear much serious ethical weight.

In a recent review David Gauthier presents two arguments designed to support the eminently comforting belief that, while recognizing aboriginal rights in Canada will entail some costs for the dominant European community, these costs will be of a comparatively modest nature, and certainly far less than the sort of compensation currently claimed by the indigenous peoples themselves. Unfortunately for the Europeans, but fortunately for the indigenes, there seems to be no moral justification whatsoever for the arguments he adduces. In fact, the only way his arguments can be made to work is by assuming that radically different sets of moral principles operate for different peoples. As usually happens in such cases, the Europeans get better protection from the moral principles designed for them, than the aborigines do from the principles designed (as it happens, by the Europeans) for them.