A young Greek student who arrived in Cambridge thirty years ago to readfor the Classical Tripos went to Bowes and Bowes to equip himself with the necessary works of reference. Besides his Liddell and Scott and his Lewis and Short he came away with a copy of A Guide to the Classics by Michael Oakeshott and G. T. Griffith, Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, not noticing that it was subtitled ‘How to Pick the Derby Winner’. Even when an author or editor is trying to avoid ambiguity there may still be questions of interpretation. The April 1926 issue of the Journal of Philosophical Studies printed three articles under the collective title ‘The Problem of Colour in Relation to the Idea of Equality’. They were the texts of papers read at a meeting of the newly founded British Institute of Philosophical Studies at the Royal Society of Arts on 16 February 1926. The title might suggest a symposium on problems discussed earlier by Goethe or later by Wittgenstein, or perhaps some investigation into the distinction between a priori and empirical concepts. The uncertainties of readers cannot have been long-lived. The symposiasts were Sir Frederick Lugard, KCMG, CB, DSO, Morris Ginsberg, MA, D.Litt. and the Hon. H. A. Wyndham. The same volume contained ‘The Primitive and the Civilized Mind’ by N. Lossky and the 1927 volume added Professor R. F. A. Hoernlé's ‘Prolegomena to the Study of the Black Man's Mind’.

Kant writes: If … the only aim of Nature regarding some creature possessed of reason and a will were its preservation, its well-being, in a word its happiness, then she would have come to a very bad arrangement in choosing its reason as executor of that aim. For all actions that it had to execute in this her intention, and the whole regulation of its behaviour would have been able to be prescribed to it much more precisely by instinct, and that aim thereby much more certainly maintained, than ever could happen through reason …

1. There is an important argument which can be traced back to Kant's second and third Critiques, and which has been defended by a number of distinguished modern philosophers.1 It goes as follows. Moral judgments are universalizable; that is, I am logically committed to making the same moral judgment about all relevantly similar cases. If I refuse to make the same moral judgment about two relevantly similar cases, then either I believe that they are relevantly different, or I have changed my moral views between examining the first case and examining the second, or I am simply irrational and not a proper subject for discussion. In contrast, however, aesthetic judgments are not universalizable; works of art are necessarily unique. If I say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing or successful or important or striking or whatever, I am not committed to making the same judgment about any relevantly similar work. Occasionally no doubt I might make the same judgment about a relevantly similar work, but I am in no way logically committed to doing so. Indeed in certain cases—the cases which are the topic of this paper—I am logically committed to making an entirely different aesthetic judgment of a relevantly similar work. Since works of art are necessarily unique, copies, fakes, forgeries, pastiches and ‘works in the style of …’, however plausible, however skilful, however close to the original, can never have the same aesthetic merit. Even if my Athena print of a Canaletto were qualitatively identical with the original, it could not have the same aesthetic merit. Even if a modern symphony reproduced perfectly the style of Mozart and even if it were in general of comparable musical quality, it could not have the same aesthetic merit as (most of) the forty-one originals.

Those who examine Plato's theory of forms have from Aristotle onwards tended to interpret it as a theory of universals. Enough in the dialogues appears to support such an interpretation for it not to be entirely wrongheaded. Nevertheless, the conception of forms as universals or as the meanings of general terms produces a baffled incredulity when we consider some of the things that Plato has to say about them. It would be outlandish enough anyway to be told that a universal is an object; it becomes positively outrageous when we are informed furthermore that the object which is the universal being a so-and-so is itself a very superior so-and-so, existing separate from and independent of the particulars it characterizes and causing them to have the nature that they do. Could Plato have seriously thought and meant things so foolish? I doubt it, for there is a more charitable, less Aristotelian, way to interpret what Plato says about forms. This is the way suggested by Eudoxus and those others who apparently drew on Anaxagoras’ theoryof the homoiomeries in the exposition of Plato: a Platonic form is like an Anaxagorean stuff and accounts for the character of a particular ‘as white does, by being mixed with the white thing’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics 991314–19, 1079–8–23). In this paper I wish to build on Eudoxus’ suggestion and show how all the most troubling contentions that Plato makes about forms turn out to be either true or at least quite plausible if we suppose that forms are meant, not as universals, but as chemical elements instead. Plato's theory of forms is not a grotesque misunderstanding of universals; it is a sober, intelligent, and largely true account of the elemental stuffs from which the world is made.

Would Earth be sadly underpopulated if all life on it had died? I shall argue for a Yes, against two main groups. In the first are those who say that life's absence could not be sad, a pity, something less than ideal, because there would be nobody to be sad about it. The second group maintains that life's absence would be preferable to its presence since living can be nasty.

In recent years, a particular doctrine about forms of life has come to be associated with Wittgenstein's name by followers and critics of his philosophy alike. It is not a doctrine which Wittgenstein espoused or even, given his understanding of philosophy, one which he could have accepted; nor is it worthy of acceptance on its own merits. I shall here outline the standard interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on forms of life, consider the textual basis for such a reading of Wittgenstein, present a more consistent reading of the texts, place the problem of forms of life within a wider philosophical context, and show the ways in which it is indeed possible to say that a form of life is wrong. In the process, I shall note some important similarities between Wittgenstein's actual position, Quine's analysis of scientific knowledge, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's claims about the fusion of horizons.

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that William James's well-known attempt to justify religious faith in ‘The Will to Believe’ is a failure. But despite the fact that James wrote his essay as a reply to the ‘tough-minded’ ethics of belief represented by such thinkers as W. K. Clifford and T. H. Huxley, the reasons commonly given today for rejecting James's position seem to be mostly based on the same principle of intellectual ethics that motivated Clifford and Huxley. Clifford, it may be recalled, maintained that ‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. Although this is a rather rhetorical way of stating it, the principle is basically the same one adhered to by most scientists and philosophers who consider themselves rigorous and ‘objective’ thinkers. Even philosophers not associated with the hardheaded modern Anglo-American style of empiricism commonly pledge their allegiance to such a principle. For example, Brand Blanshard (who is an epistemological idealist) holds that the ‘main principle’ of the ethics of belief is that one should ‘equate one's assent to the evidence’ and he then goes on to criticize James, on the basis of this principle, for advocating self-deception and intellectual dishonesty.

Exchanging views in Philosophy with a two-year time-lag is getting rather like conversation with the Andromeda Nebula. I am distressed that my reply to Messrs Mackie and Dawkins, explaining what made me write so crossly about The Selfish Gene, has been so long delayed. Mr Mackie's sudden death in December 1981 adds a further dimension to this distress.

Are we responsible for our misdeeds in dreams? The obvious answer would seem to be ‘No’. Dreams catch us with our defences down: just those critical and discriminative abilities which are distinctive of our waking lives as responsible moral agents seem out of play when we dream; el sueño de la razón produce monstruos. Moreover, if we are responsible for our dreamt misdeeds, then parity of reasoning demands that we be praised for dreaming noble dreams. But that is absurd. Moral credit should not come that easily, and so neither should moral blame.

Like Professor Manser (January 1983) I felt moved to comment on D. Z. Phillips's article on Sartre (‘Bad Faith and Sartre's Waiter’ (January 1981)); and the editor thoughtfully suggested that we should exchange our comments. We both agree, I think, that Phillips's concern over Sartre's alleged unfairness to waiters has led him to be unfair to Sartre, but whereas Manser is concerned to pursue in general terms the questions of sincerity and commitment I am more concerned to see the example, and the implications that Sartre draws from it, as showing the kind of writer he was and the view of the world that he held. It is this context that seems to me to be lacking in Phillips's article. He thinks that Sartre is unfair to waiters by over-simplifying their attitudes to their jobs, the ways in which they behave when doing them, and the satisfaction that they derive from them. He draws out of these specific comments some more general criticisms of the way in which Sartre over-simplifies the problems of choice: how much of our total personality we express in any particular choice that we make; and the degree of commitment that individual choices involve. All this is very reasonable, but he does not really get to grips with Sartre's concern.

In her well-known paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (Philosophy, 1958) G. E. M. Anscombe makes the following assertion: ‘he [Sidgwick] thinks that humility consists in underestimating your own merits—i.e. in a species of untruthfulness’. I should like to show that this is not so.

McTaggart's argument for the unreality of space, unlike his argument for the unreality of time, has nothing to do with token-reflexives. The argument for the unreality of time depends on the contention that there would be no time if there were no facts whose descriptions essentially contain temporally token-reflexive expressions such as ‘now’, ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’. According to Michael Dummett, McTaggart was right not to make an analogous claim about space

Prominent among the principles put forward by Professor Bernard Williams in ‘The Idea of Equality’ were that for every difference in the way men are treated a relevant reason should be given and the proper ground of the distribution of medical care is ill health. Prominent among his conclusions was that we are confronted with an irrational state of affairs where wealth functions as a necessary condition for receiving medical care. In ‘The Idea of Equality Reconsidered’ Philosophy (January 1973) 85–90), I argued that, on his principles alone, this conclusion though correct was one-sided.

God's public image has perennially suffered from the apparent botch He has made of Creation, or our portion of it, at any rate. “What's so good about God”, people ask, “when He permits volcanoes in Lisbon, famines in Ghana, earthquakes in San Francisco?” Why is there always, in fact, whichever way we bite it, a worm in the apple?

Mr William Charlton (Philosophy 56, No. 216 (April 1981)) quotes Russell on Motion. It has been pointed out to me that the book referred to in line 5 as Principles of Philosophy should in all probability be The Principles of Mathematics, and on looking into the matter I find that this is indeed the case. On p. 473 of the latter book I read: 447. It is to be observed that … we must entirely reject the notion of a state of motion. Motion consists merely in the occupation of different places at different times, subject to continuity as explained in Part V.