I consider some ways in which the Copy Principle (CP) and Hume's nominalism impinge on one another, arguing for the following claims. First, Hume's argument against indeterminate ideas isn't cogent even if the CP is accepted. But this does not vindicate Locke: the imagistic conception of ideas, presupposed by the CP, will force Locke to accept something like Hume's view of the way general terms function, the availability of abstract ideas notwithstanding. Second, Hume's discussion of nominalism provides support for the “old Hume” interpretation, that which takes the CP to be a criterion of meaningfulness, as against the “new Hume” reading, according to which it constrains what we can know. Finally, nominalism forces Hume to adopt a more complicated theory of ideas.

Joyce Havstad has argued in this journal that the argument from inductive risk is deductively valid and sound. As far as we know, this is the best reconstruction of the argument in the literature. Unfortunately, it suffers from a small flaw that renders the argument invalid. We identify this flaw, show that it is superficial, and show that a small amendment to the argument rescues the claim of its validity.

Kant holds that some nonhuman animals “are acquainted with” objects, despite lacking conceptual capacities (“understanding”). What does this tell us about his theory of human cognition? Numerous authors have argued that this is a significant point in favour of Nonconceptualism—the claim that, for Kant, sensible representations of objects do not depend on the understanding. Against this, I argue that Kant’s views about animal minds can readily be accommodated by a certain kind of Conceptualism. It remains viable to think that, for Kant, (i) humans’ sensible representations necessarily represent objects as temporally structured in ways that allow us to have thoughts about them, and (ii) such representations are produced, and could only be produced, by the understanding. This allows Conceptualists to maintain that humans’ sensible representations depend on the understanding, while accepting that animals have sensible representations of objects too. We must, therefore, reassess both the warrant for Nonconceptualism and the shape Conceptualist readings must take.

I examine a range of issues concerning Kant's conception of cognitive spontaneity. I consider whether we can cognize or know ourselves as spontaneous cognizers, and why Kant seems to regard the notion of cognitive spontaneity as less problematic than the idea of moral spontaneity. As an organizing theme of my discussion, I use an apparent tension between the A-edition and the B-edition of the first Critique. Against common interpretations, I argue that in the B-edition Kant does not revoke his claim that we can cognize, and (perhaps) even know, that our noumenal selves are absolutely spontaneous cognitive agents.

In two recent papers, Michael Della Rocca accuses Descartes of reasoning circularly in the Fourth Meditation. This alleged new circle is distinct from, and more vicious than, the traditional Cartesian Circle arising in the Third Meditation. We explain Della Rocca’s reasons for this accusation, showing that his argument is invalid.

This paper argues for a novel sentimentalist realist metaethical theory, according to which moral wrongness is analyzed in terms of the sentiments one has most reason to have. As opposed to standard sentimentalist views, the theory does not employ sentiments that are had in response to morally wrong action, but rather sentiments that antecedently dispose people to refrain from immoral behavior, specifically the sentiments of compassion and respect.

The primary objective of this paper is to improve the defense of the thesis that

This is to be done by establishing (in Parts Ill and IV) that there is a unique sense in which

A secondary objective of the paper is to illustrate (in Part I) the way in which the value and validity of (2) has been obscured in recent defenses and criticisms of (1), which inappropriately interpret it in terms of the claim that

Since the truth of (3) will be denied, the defense of (1) will also involve arguing (in Part II) that the traditional alternative to the bodily criterion, namely the criterion of memory and psychological characteristics, not only is not a necessary condition of personal identity but also is not a sufficient condition.

Much has been said about Moore’s proof of the external world, but the notion of proof that Moore employs has been largely overlooked. I suspect that most have either found nothing wrong with it, or they have thought it somehow irrelevant to whether the proof serves its antiskeptical purpose. I show, however, that Moore’s notion of proof is highly problematic. For instance, it trivializes in the sense that any known proposition is provable. This undermines Moore’s proof as he conceives it since it introduces a skeptical regress that he goes at length to resist. I go on to consider various revisions of Moore’s notion of proof and finally settle on one that I think is adequate for Moore’s purposes and faithful to what he says concerning immediate knowledge.

Consider a language SL having as its primitive signs one or more atomic statements, the two connectives ‘∼’ and ‘&,’ and the two parentheses ‘(’ and ‘)’; and presume the extra connectives ‘V’ and ‘≡’ defined in the customary manner. With the statements of SL substituting for sets, and the three connectives ‘∼,’ ‘&,’and ‘V’ substituting for the complementation, intersection, and union signs, the constraints that Kolmogorov places in [1] on (unary) probability functions come to read:

K1. 0 ≤ P(A),

K2. P(∼(A & ∼A)) = 1,

K3. If ⊦ ∼(A & B), then P(A ∨ B) = P(A) + P(B),

K4. If ⊦ A ≡ B, then P(A) = P(B).2

How could perceptual experiences reveal matters of essentiality? Answering this question is crucial for vindicating a thesis about the epistemic import of experience, commonly known as Revelation. The thesis comes in a weak and a strong version. Only on the strong one could it make up an authoritative piece of common sense. But this version also seems to demand too much of our experiences, namely that they can reveal essentiality. However, the impression that our experiences are not suited for this turns out to be due to a non-mandatory assumption about how the revelation of essentiality would work.

Philosophers think that there is something fishy about moral deference. The most common explanation of this fishiness is that moral deference doesn’t yield the epistemic states necessary for certain moral achievements (e.g., acting with moral worth or being virtuous). First, I argue that this explanation overgeneralizes. It entails that using many intuitively kosher belief-formation methods (e.g., abduction, reductio ad absurdum, and intuition) should be off-putting. Second, I argue that moral deference is sometimes superior to these other methods because it puts one in a better position to gain the relevant moral achievements.

Peter Unger has recently attempted to defend skepticism by means of a novel and ingenious theory about certain general features of our language. According to his theory, skepticism is a logical consequence of the fact that certain epistemic terms, including ‘certain’ and ‘know,’ belong to a much wider class of absolute terms whose strict meaning is such that they have little or no positive application to things in the world. The purpose of this paper is to enquire whether Unger's theory of absolute terms provides a stronger basis for skepticism than do other, more familiar, approaches. I shall argue that the theory cannot be regarded as an explication of the ordinary meaning of the terms in question; that the ordinary meaning of these terms can be understood by means of an alternative, if less exciting, model; and that the logic of our language does not commit us to skepticism.

Suppose we are able to transplant Jones's pain centres into Smith's brain. Half way through the operation we test the pain centres by stimulating them electrically in vitro. Would there be pain? Roland Puccetti argues that there would not be. Because (a) pains must have owners and (b) the only available candidate for that role — the excised tissue — is logically unfit to play it. He concludes that the firing of such centres in a normally functioning brain cannot be pain either and that, therefore, materialism is false.

So far as I can see, Puccetti's “refutation” is a series of nonsequiturs from start to finish, and that is what I mainly want to show. It will not follow, of course, that materialism is true. Indeed, I think the view which Puccetti attacks under that name is too naive to be taken seriously by anyone.

In defense of anarchism Robert Paul Wolff contends that the moral autonomy of individuals cannot be made compatible with legitimate political authority. A state is legitimate, he maintains, if (and perhaps only if) authorities in the state have a right to command where subjects correlatively have an obligation to obey. However, he also holds both that all autonomous individuals have a primary obligation to refuse to be ruled by all authorities and that all men are normally obliged to remain autonomous. It allegedly follows that anarchism is the only political theory consistent with autonomy (9, 18f). We propose to show that his arguments concerning legitimacy contain a crucial inconsistency and that his conclusions concerning the incompatibility of authority and autonomy fail.

Austin's lecture on this topic contributes little to the problem of freedom of the will, and so in my discussion of his ideas I shall stop short of the difficult part of that problem. His most important positive suggestion is that hypotheticals should be divided into two classes, conditionals and pseudo-conditionals. He claims that neglect of this distinction has been the cause of mistakes in certain forms of the dispositional analysis of the statement that an agent could have acted otherwise, and he then goes on to criticise all forms of that analysis using arguments which do not depend on the difference between the two kinds of hypothetical.

This discussion will be in two parts. In the first I shall take up Austin's distinction between conditionals and pseudos and criticise it and develop it at length, because it seems to me to be the most important thing in his lecture. Since I shall not have space for comment on fortuitous errors made by defenders of the dispositional analysis of the claim that an agent could have acted otherwise, I shall concentrate on the essential features of that analysis.

1. What is the Problem of Personal Identity?

Locke posed the problem of personal identity in one brief question, “What makes the same person?” This formulation is deceptively simple. My aim is to offer a new interpretation of the problem and to suggest a method for finding a solution.

Investigations of personal identity are usually cast in terms of finding the criterion for personal identity. Yet talk of criteria is ambiguous. In one sense of the term, the criterion of personal identity would be special evidence for personal identity. According to the second usage, the criterion of personal identity would be that state of affairs for which evidence for personal identity is evidence. We will not be concerned with the first construal. On that reading, the problem of personal identity would be an epistemological issue. But the basic question concerning personal identity, “What is one person?” does not appear to be an epistemological question.