One tradition of liberal thought is committed to showing on the basis of an individualistic conception of what is good that it is reasonable for all persons to accept certain common principles. The most recent version of this enterprise is to be found in Professor John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. Rawls has to show that persons in the ‘original position’, with plans of life which will turn out to be different, though equally rational, when the ‘veil of ignorance’ has been lifted, nevertheless have reason to accept common principles of justice. One might have expected divergent views about the best principles of justice to adopt, considering that the rationality of choices is related to desires, and that parties in the original position may have different desires. Rawls meets this problem by introducing the ‘primary goods’: those things it is rational to want whatever else one wants. By employing this ‘thin’ theory of the good in the original position, Rawls attempts to show that the choices of all parties will converge upon his two principles of justice. Each individual's ‘full’ conception of the good may then be developed within the constraints imposed by the principles of justice.

Paternalism has generally been thought of as forcible or coercive interference with a person's liberty of action which is (believed to be) justified because it will prevent harm to that person's welfare interests or the like. Opposition to paternalistic interference with adults, whether it involves the intervention of the state (legal paternalism) or another adult individual, has usually been based on a concern to preserve human autonomy or self-determination. More strictly it is opposition to so-called ‘strong’ paternalism - interventions to protect or benefit a person despite the person's informed voluntary consent to the contrary- which has been grounded on such a commitment to self-determination. ‘Weak’ paternalism involves interference where there is (or is believed to be) a defect in the decision-making capacities of the person interfered with (or to ascertain whether the person's behaviour is fully reflective). It is claimed to be justifiable insofar as consent to the interference would be forthcoming were these capacities restored.

Biologists, more precisely evolutionary biologists, and not only psychologists and philosophers also speak of modularity. However the way in which this theoretical construct functions in their discipline is relatively different from the role it obtains in evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. Rather than postulating modules to explain particular traits of organisms, such as the specificity of input systems or limitations of human reasoning abilities, biologists originally simply assume that some form of modularity constitutes a precondition of evolution. They argue that, in order for natural selection to fine tune organisms to their environment, different traits must be able to evolve independently from one another. This implies modularity in one form or another. Organisms will only be able to adapt if they do not come all in one piece, so to speak. It must therefore be possible for changes to occur in one characteristic of an animal without those changes having repercussions throughout the whole organism.

Professor Foot's Hart Lecture, now published (1995), is largely devoted to an attack on people she calls ‘subjectivists’ and ‘noncognitivists', among whom she includes myself, although she is so good as to allow me, in a footnote, to reject the names. She seems to imply thereby that this is a mere matter of nomenclature or terminology. But in truth her use of these terms makes one suspect that she has not fully understood either the issues or what I have said about them.

It may therefore be useful to explain yet again why I reject these descriptions. I have done so already in a paper to a conference in Moscow which she heard, and to which she kindly refers (Hare 1993a). These explanations would not be important if she were the only person to be confused about this matter; but the confusions are so widespread, even among professional philosophers who should know better, and are so often taught to succeeding generations of students, that it is worth while to make yet another attempt to clear them up - though the confusions are so insidious that I have not much hope that they will ever be eradicated.

Among analytic philosophers in the past few years there has been a growing commitment to taking Marx seriously. Since the publication in 1971 of John Rawls’ book A Theory of Justice there has been a growing commitment to taking problems of Justice and rights seriously. These two developments intersect in mutual criticism: Marx's radical critique challenges the resources of recent theories of rights and Justice, while the sophistication of recent theories raises the possibility that they escape Marx's most basic criticism.

In this paper I offer an ontological elucidation of change. In the first part, I examine two conceptions of change that can be found in Aristotle's Physics and I hold that one of them is more basic than the other. In the second part, I offer an ontological model of change according to which a change is a kind of conjunction of states and times.

According to Aristotle a change, metabolé, is from something to something else. He distinguishes three kinds of changes. One of them is what he calls motion- kinesis- i.e., the transition from a positive term A to a negative term B. Motion in respect to quality is called alteration, in respect to quantity it is known either as increase or as decrease, and in respect to place it is designated by the name of locomotion.

A fair question to ask of any philosopher is: What problems is he trying to solve or to circumvent? The relevance of his work to his readers depends upon how live those problems are for them; the merit of his work depends upon his success in dealing with them. The problems which concerned Berkeley were problems inherited from Cartesianism—problems arising from the dualism of mental and material substance, the Cartesian conception of causality, and the representative theory of ideas. How can mind and matter interact if they are two substances totally different in nature and like can only act upon like? How can matter be a cause at all if it is inert and a cause is by nature active? How can ideas represent material substance and its modes if representation is a matter of resemblance and ideas, being modes of mind, are unlike anything material? All such problems are circumvented if one denies the reality of material substance, if one claims that there are only minds and their ideas and that ideas are neither caused by nor representative of independently existing material objects. This, of course, is Berkeley's position.

My main concern in this paper will be with questions of national identity, multiculturalism, and aboriginal rights as they have emerged in Australia, especially over the past twenty or so years. The issues are not, of course, unique to Australia: similar questions have arisen in other places, including Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. However, each place has specific problems, and while I hope that much of what I say has relevance to these countries, I will not try to establish this here.

The paper falls into two parts. In the first, I argue for certain limits on the practice of multiculturalism. The basis of this argument is a concern for national identity – especially for what I will call ‘national sovereignty.’ This is a familiar conservative position; however, I hope to show that it is one which liberals and those on the left should take seriously. In the second part of the paper, I distinguish the issue of Aboriginal (or indigenous) rights from multiculturalism, and try to establish that the basis of these rights is a principle very similar to the notion of national sovereignty.

Introduction

“What reason is there to suppose that those who did know Parmenides’ poem necessarily thought that he had raised a real problem which they must try to deal with? Empedocles, perhaps also Anaxagoras, knew the poem, but they pursue a very different kind of philosophy from Zeno and Melissus: why, then, must we suppose that they are seeking an alternative answer to the problem posed by Parmenides, and that their ultimate material elements are to be seen as modifications of the Eleatic ἓν έόν?“

These rhetorical questions, taken from M. L. West's recent book, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, make a useful starting point for this inquiry. They are, of course, what the grammar books call “repudiating questions“: the answer hoped for is “no reason“. The argument with which Mr. West goes on to support his negative implication is not likely to convince many students of the Presocratics. He determinedly makes light of Parmenides’ chains of argument, apparently on the ground that “these were not the actual stages of Parmenides’ thinking” — as if Parmenides ought to have been writing his intellectual autobiography instead of a philosophical argument.