Many have argued that there is no room for experiments in Aristotle's natural science: experiments intervene in nature, but Aristotle holds that we must simply observe nature; if we intervened, the result would be something artificial or contrary to nature. Against this, I argue that Aristotle not only performed experiments, but also holds that there is much about nature that can be discovered experimentally.

In Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry, Robert H. Myers and Claudine Verheggen spell out, and extensively build on, the triangulation argument advanced by Donald Davidson. This paper is an introduction to a symposium devoted to their development of that argument. The symposium began in 2018 as an authors-meet-critics session at the Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Congress, and consists in the responses of three critics, Kirk Ludwig, Alexander Miller, and Paul Hurley, followed by Verheggen's and Myers's replies. I offer a brief sketch of each of the two parts of the book, and an overview of the questions raised by the critics.

En guise d'introduction à la traduction anglaise d'un article de Jocelyn Maclure préalablement publié en français dans la revue, je présente ici quelques réflexions sur le bilinguisme de Dialogue dans le contexte philosophique actuel.

À l'occasion de la parution dans Dialogue de la traduction anglaise de l'un de mes articles, je formule ici quelques réflexions sur la publication de travaux philosophiques dans des langues autres que l'anglais.

Dans Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry, Robert H. Myers et Claudine Verheggen offrent une élucidation ainsi qu'une édification de l'argument de la triangulation avancé par Donald Davidson. Cet article est une introduction à un symposium consacré à leur développement de cet argument. Le symposium a débuté en 2018 en tant que table ronde réunissant les auteurs et des critiques lors du congrès annuel de l'Association canadienne de philosophie, et comprend les réponses de trois critiques, Kirk Ludwig, Alexander Miller et Paul Hurley, suivies des répliques de Verheggen et Myers. J'offre ici un bref aperçu de chacune des deux parties du livre et une esquisse des questions posées par les critiques.

Même si l'appréhension que l'on peut avoir des formes aristotéliciennes résulte de ce qu'Aristote nomme «induction», rien ne nécessite que leurs composantes soient reliées entre elles de façon intelligible, comme le sont, au contraire, les propriétés de la matière. C'est ce qui porte René Descartes à en débarrasser les sciences par une démarche effectuée subrepticement dans sa VIe Méditation, et à leur substituer la matière, dénominateur commun des êtres naturels. C'est cette démarche — elle continue d’éluder certains de ses lecteurs —, que nous tentons de mettre au jour dans ce qui suit.

Recent work by Joseph Raz, Niko Kolodny, and Sergio Tenenbaum suggest that there are no normative constraints peculiar to intentions as such. Such constraints are a myth. We can understand the rationality of intention without positing that intention is a mental state. I argue that, further, we can understand the descriptive nature of intention (i.e., its role in intrapersonal coordination) without positing that intention is a mental state. Such a posit is itself a myth. Instead, intention is an action with certain characteristic sub-actions that play a coordinating role.

I defend a version of what Sharon Street called “Humean constructivism.” I'll first sketch out why I think that contextual constructivism provides us with a more plausible understanding of the ontological status of values than both Kantian constructivism and moral realism. In addition to its recognition of the role of evolutionary pressures in the emergence of human morality, contextual constructivism must now clarify the role of historical intersubjectivity in the subsequent development of morality. I will then claim that adding a coherentist module to Humean constructivism provides a satisfactory answer to those who fear that contextual metaethical theories can only be non-cognitivist. Finally, I will sketch out why I think that the notion of a mind-independent “space of moral reasons” is largely compatible with Humean constructivism.

Scholarship on the political ramifications of Aristotle’s account of friendship has focused on “political friendship” and has lost sight of the importance of his account of “like-mindedness” or “concord” (ὁμόνοια). Such a focus is mistaken for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, whereas Aristotle has a determinate account of like-mindedness, he has almost nothing to say about political friendship. My paper examines the ethical and political aspects of like-mindedness in light of a disagreement between Richard Bodéüs and René Gauthier about the autonomy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a work of ethical theory.

This article raises two questions about Robert Myers and Claudine Verheggen's terrific book, Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry. The first question, concerning the first part of the book, is whether, starting from the assumption that a solitary individual cannot have thought contents, we can show that adding another individual to the picture cannot resolve the problem. The second question, concerning the second part, is whether a more sophisticated, decision-theoretic, Humean about the pro-attitudes can respond to the objections to the simple Humean view, and whether Davidson was not in fact just such a sophisticated decision-theoretic Humean.

In this paper, I engage with the works of Richard Bodéüs about Aristotle’s understanding of the relationship between law, virtue, and education. I argue that there is an important difference between the demands of the law and those of reason, especially in the defective, but more common, regimes. This difference is also found in the best regime possible for most cities, the mixed regime Aristotle calls ‘polity’ (or, in Greek, politeia), insofar as it represents a balance between oligarchy and democracy. To educate citizens in this regime requires what Aristotle calls “political philosophy.”

This paper discusses Claudine Verheggen's account of what she takes to be Donald Davidson's response to the sceptical paradox about rule-following and meaning developed in Saul Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's ‘rule-following considerations.’ It focusses on questions about the normativity of meaning, the social character of meaning, and the role of triangulation in Davidson's account of the determination of meaning, and invites Verheggen to compare the non-reductionism she finds in Davidson with that developed in Crispin Wright's judgement-dependent account of meaning.

Le mot «migrants» n'existait pas dans la langue des Hellènes; ils étaient plus familiers avec le vocable de l'exil et de l'asile. D'ailleurs, l'exil ne saurait se penser sans son corollaire, l'asile, comme le citoyen antique sans le barbare et la démocratie sans la tyrannie. À travers une métaphore située au carrefour de la fiction historique, de la philosophie politique et de la psychanalyse, cet article propose une réflexion sur l'exil comme condition fondamentale du sujet. L'exil est d'origine, car la langue de l'enfance, la langue dite maternelle est d'abord une langue étrangère. L'exil intime porte la marque d'une universalité qui fonde l'expérience subjective.

Dans cet article, je propose une interprétation de la philosophie de Wilhelm Dilthey qui repose sur trois idées directrices. La première idée identifie l'objet de sa philosophie : la vie. La deuxième idée établit sa méthode, soit l'autoréflexion. La troisième idée clarifie ce qui est révélé par l'autoréflexion, à savoir l'universalité et la variabilité de la vie. Dans un premier temps, je défends que la lecture épistémologique de la philosophie de Dilthey doit être abandonnée. Dans un deuxième temps, je présente mon interprétation de la philosophie de Dilthey.

Robert Myers’ interpretation of Donald Davidson's practical philosophy gets Davidson right in many fundamental respects. Myers rightly argues that Davidson avoids inconsistencies among internalism, ethical objectivity, and the belief-desire theory by modifying central elements of the Humean belief-desire theory, and that Davidson's alternative legitimizes the extension of his interpretation and triangulation arguments into the practical sphere. But at a crucial fork in the interpretive road Myers loses his way. Davidson follows G.E.M. Anscombe down a different path, one that takes individual desires to be constituted in part by evaluative judgements.

Novateur à plusieurs égards, l'ouvrage influent de Richard Bodéüs, Le philosophe et la cité, paru en 1982, propose notamment une réinterprétation de la notion complexe de phrónēsis. C'est dans cette foulée que se situe la présente contribution, dont l'objectif est d'analyser une de ses formes plus modeste, l’économie, dans sa partie qui implique le rapport avec les personnes non-libres. À la lumière des observations de Richard Bodéüs sur le commandement, les positions aristotéliciennes concernant la relation maître-esclave seront remises en perspective. Cette démarche conduira, en deuxième partie, à montrer l'extension de la notion servilité, plus large qu'on ne l'admet généralement, ce qui donnera à voir en quoi la nature humaine est esclave, selon le mot du Stagirite (Métaphysique A 2, 982b29-30).

A shallow reading of the 1905 correspondence between Victoria Welby and Bertrand Russell yields the impression that Welby has misunderstood Russell's “On Denoting.” I argue that a deeper reading reveals that Welby should be understood, not as misunderstanding Russell, but as bringing a pragmatic attitude to bear on Russell's theory of descriptions in order to expose the limits of his strictly logical analysis.

We propose a compatibilist theory of free will in the tradition of naturalized philosophy that attempts to: 1) provide a synthesis of a variety of well-known theories, capable of addressing problems of the latter; 2) account for the fact that free will comes in degrees; and 3) interface with neurobiology. We argue that free will comes in degrees, and that these degrees vary with the agent's capacity to make assumptions and use theories. Our model, then, highlights that free-willed actions are consciously monitored by the agent, through beliefs, assumptions, and ultimately theories — hence, the CMT model (for Conscious-through-Monitoring-through-Theories).