In his recent ‘A Prolegomenon to an Identity Theory of Truth’ (Vol. 74, 1999) Stewart Candlish discusses the so called identity theory of truth. His aim in the article is to clear away initial difficulties that apparently stand in the way of developing the budding theory. There is one difficulty, however, that, by Candlish's lights, cannot be overcome—at least not easily. My aim in this paper is to help the identity theory by showing that, pace Candlish, the given difficulty is merely apparent. I do not ‘solve’ the alleged problem; I dissolve it. Dissolution, however, is solution enough.

I here discuss an argument frequently dismissed as a fallacy – the slippery slope or camel's nose. The argument has three forms – analogical, argumentative, and prudential. None of these provides a deductive guarantee, but all can provide considerations capable of influencing the intellect. Our evaluation of such arguments reflects our background social and evaluative assumptions.

Fr. Bernard Lonergan's writings have not so far received much discussion in British philosophical journals, although they contain one of the most fully-developed contemporary presentations of Catholic Christianity and have a substantial and distinctive philosophical content. They have not lacked theological commentators, both in print and in conferencediscussions. The present article has three aims: to draw attention to Lonergan's work and its philosophical relevance; to notice the publication of his latest book, Method in Theology, and to venture some critical comments on certain arguments about the intelligibility of being, being and the good, and God, in his book Insight (published first in 1957). These arguments are central to Lonergan's account of theism, a theism which, in its orthodox Roman Catholic form, is presupposed by Method in Theology. The books are organically interrelated. One admirer of Lonergan described the newer book (before its appearance) as ‘the book [Lonergan] originally set out to write’.

Mr Newton-Smith and Mr Boyce, in discussion notes in the January 1972 number of Philosophy, have raised a number of interesting points about my original paper. But I feel that they have not gone beyond a simple denial of the central argument, which is to be found on pp. 124–126 and 128–130 of the April 1971 number, and that much of what they say therefore fails by petitio.

Two rival passions are at work in men's hearts to-day, the cult of individuality and the cult of society. They give rise all too often to extravagant praise of liberty and to a no less extravagant insistence on discipline for society's sake.

It is impossible to form a balanced idea of the functions of liberty and discipline, or of the right relation between the individual and his social environment, without having a clear view of the nature of personality and community. I offer a brief and dogmatic sketch of this subject.

A personality is the product of the impact of the objective universe, past and present, on a particular experiencing subject.

I do not wish to imply that a “subject” is necessarily a substance (in the philosophical sense) or a metaphysical ego, or an immortal soul. Whether such eternal individual spirits exist or not, I do not pretend to know. I do not even, by the word “subject,” pledge myself to what Professor Broad has called a “centred theory” of the nature of mind, I do not know whether a mind is a system of experiences united in an enduring centre, as the spokes of a wheel are united in the hub; or whether it is a centreless “net” of experiences all related together in a special way. By “subject” I mean only “that which experiences,” whatever the true philosophical account of it. I mean the seeming focus or centre of experience and action. This focus is in some sense located in time and space, in fact it is located within the organism. For my purpose the subject is simply that to which experience happens, and that which responds with conscious behaviour. I do not wish to raise the epistemological problem. I merely assume the rejection of solipsism, and the reality of an objective universe which the individual experiences, however imperfectly.

The relation between religious and scientific explanations of events and states of affairs has been the subject of much debate. For example, are the statements

‘John's life was saved by surgery’

‘John's life was saved in answer to prayer’

in competition with each other and, if so, in what way? They do not seem to be rival causal explanations, nor are they straightforwardly contradictory. Yet each seems to cast doubt on the other, or at least to make it to some extent redundant.

In ‘Berkeley and God’, Jonathan Bennett diagnoses Berkeley's intermittent advocacy of the proposition that physical things ‘do sometimes exist when not perceived by any human spirit’ (380) by pinning on him the invalid argument, vitiated by the ambiguity of ‘depend’, from (i) all ideas depend on (=belong to, are owned by) some spirit or other, via (ii) some sensible ideas do not depend on (=are not caused by) these spirits themselves, to (iii) some ideas depend on (=belong to, are owned by) non-finite spirits.