The first solid bit of argumentation you get in Plato's Phaedo goes something like this: Whatever comes to be, comes to be from its opposite (cf. 70e, sqq.). If at a certain time t a given thing a begins to be F, before that time t it must have been non-F. Wherever a pair of predicates, F and G, are genuine contradictories; where, that is, they stand to each other in the same relation as F stands in to non-F; it is necessarily true that if a began to be F at t before then a was G. The only trouble comes from the difficulty of finding substitutes for F and G that people will allow to be genuine contradictories. It the butter began to be soft at four o'clock, we may suggest, before four it was hard. A tiresome opponent will retort that there is a state in which butter cannot properly be called either hard or soft. We try again: If Ann began to be asleep at eight, before eight she was awake; if my shirt became dirty on Tuesday, before Tuesday it was clean; if Bonzo died last week, before last week he was alive. And when the advocate of the borderline state reminds us of the various twilight areas of consciousness or cleanliness, we are reduced to legislation: “asleep” shall henceforth apply to every mental state short of complete wakefulness, “alive” to every condition of the body before the onset of putrefaction, “clean” to every shirt incapable of producing a certain measurable discoloration in the water in which it is washed. “Let F and G be contradictories”, we still guardedly maintain: “then if a comes to be F at time t, before time t a was G”.

Recent advances in physics render a reconsideration of the Place of Mathematics in the Interpretation of the Universe particularly timely. On the one hand, we have the introduction of non-euclidian geometry, which has given rise to much controversy informed or otherwise; on the other hand, we find mysterious forms of mathematics, invented to cope with the quantum difficulties, which so far have escaped metaphysical investigation or criticism. It would seem most desirable that these modes of interpreting reality should be examined from the broader philosophical point of view.

In Part I of this paper I attempt to present, in more or less summary fashion, some well-known difficulties in the concept of deontic morality (i.e. the moralty of duty, obligation, what is morally wrong, and what one morally ought to do), as shown by certain features of deontic moral discourse. I make no great claims for originality here, although perhaps there may be some virtue in the presentation and ordering. In any case, Part I is a necessary preliminary to Part II, where I attempt to defend the rationality of and the necessity for deontic language against some recent (direct and indirect) attacks.

In this paper I shall deal with a new form of Optimism. Rationalists once believed that it was mistaken to suppose that a world without God is a meaningless one; material progress along with the improvement of men and their institutions, indefinitely protracted, ensured that life was meaningful. More recently it has become fashionable to claim that the pessimist, the cosmic mourner, is not mistaken at all, but rather incoherent. It is not that there is no answer to his question but rather that no sensible question has been asked—at least in the terms in which he poses it. The latter qualification is necessary, for no one is denying that people's lives may either possess or lack meaning. Rather what is being denied is that life as a whole, tout court and without limitation, can be said either to have or not to have sense. One cannot, it is argued, regret what could not, logically, be otherwise, and since nothing could possibly count as endowing the cosmos as a whole with meaning it is not logically possible for the cosmos as a whole to have, or not to have, meaning. The regret evinced by the pessimist becomes, therefore, a pseudo-regret. ‘… it is perverse writes Ayer, ‘to see tragedy in what could not conceivably be otherwise.’ Just as a pseudo-problem is one for which there could, logically, be no solution, so a pseudo-regret is one in which there can be no assuagement of the regretted situation. None of this is to deny, of course, that a man can experience a state of mind which might be described as ‘cosmic anguish’, but such an experience has no cognitive value: it is a state of mind, no doubt painful for the possessor, which tells us nothing about the world beyond it. That people have confused this state of mind with a judgement about the world is understandable, but mistaken.

THE word “ Organicism,” although it may seem unfamiliar to the younger generation of biologists, is not a new one, and has been heard of already in that shadowy limbo where philosophical and biological conceptions meet on common ground. The genius of its original minting is not known, but it figured largely in the great work of Yves Delage, the French zoologist, in which he attempted to survey and criticize every important biological theory which had ever been seriously produced. Hisl'Hérédité et les grands Problèmes de la Biologie appeared in 1903, and in it he classified all biological theories, past, present, and future, under the four heads of

In this paper I attempt to explore the significance of the terms ‘accident’ and ‘chance’ when they are used in connection with events that are sometimes said to happen ‘by accident’ and sometimes ‘by chance’. The significance of these terms is not always made clear in everyday conversation, and here I shall try to discuss the distinction between them and the sorts of situation therefore to which they properly apply. Perhaps an example will show that these expressions are different. Thus ‘I met Smith in the library by chance’ is different from ‘I met Smith in the library by accident’, different because these statements reflect different interpretations of the events referred to. We see accidental and chance events in a different light. And this is the point; ‘accident’ and ‘chance’ are terms of interpretation, not of description. And I hope to show that the expression ‘by chance’ is appropriate in contexts which develop as a result of human decisions and intentions in a way in which the expression ‘by accident’ is not appropriate.

This paper is a defence of the combination of three theses. First, selfknowledge is a requirement of good lives, but it must include knowledge of our limitations. Second, these limitations are set by certain unavoidable conventions whose observance is another requirement of good lives. Third, Sophocles's Oedipus the King is a moral text of the highest significance, for it contains a profound account of why self-knowledge must include knowledge of unavoidable conventions limiting human aspirations.