I shall argue here that the reason supererogatory acts are not obligatory is that they require too much personal sacrifice, and that in order for an act to be supererogatory, it must have a kind of result that you would have an obligation to bring about if you could do so with no personal sacrifice. I further argue that traditional utilitarianism should be modified so as not to treat supererogatory acts as obligatory.

The way individual actions enter into larger courses of action often has an effect on the utility of those individual actions. This simple fact has motivated recent discussions about the intelligibility of act-utilitarianism. (See [1], [2], [4], [5], [6], [7], [10] and [11].) It has become clear that act-utilitarianism is incomplete, if not intelligible, without an account of the utility-making properties of courses of action taken as a whole. In this paper I offer a brief discussion of the difficulties of a simple act-utilitarianism and then offer three complementary principles in which the utility of an action is made to depend upon the courses of action of which it may be a constituent. I hope that the discussion will be of interest not only to committed act-utilitarians but to its sympathetic critics as well.

Consider the case of Gary Gyges, an otherwise normal human being who, for reasons of personal gain, has embezzled $300,000 while working at People's National Bank and is in the process of escaping to the South Sea Islands where he will have the good fortune to live a pleasant life protected by the local authorities and untroubled by any qualms of conscience. If we assume that in the society from which Gyges is fleeing moral standards are generally observed, Gyges's behavior would be obviously immoral. Is it possible, however, that Gyges, a rational person, may have had perfectly consistent reasons for acting immorally? Is it also possible that Gyges may not have had any moral reasons at all to refrain from his act of embezzlement?

Most writers on causation have distinguished causal relations or natural necessities from mere correlations or accidental generalizations. I shall assume that this is a valid distinction. However, a "Dogma" of empiricism has been that natural necessity does not amount to logical necessity and that causes are contingently related to effects. In this paper I shall argue that this Dogma is mistaken.

I want to defend the “bundle theory” of mind from two criticisms which are sometimes levelled against it. The criticisms rest on the claim that particular experiences (for example, particular occurrences of thought and perception) are “individuated” by the experiencer who has those experiences. One of these criticisms is that while it is logically impossible that there be an experience which is not had by some sentient or cognizant being, acceptance of the bundle theory would entail admission of the possibility of experiences without experiencers. The other criticism is one which has been raised at least with respect to the most plausible form of the bundle theory. It is directed at that view which analyzes the conditions for an experience's membership in a given person's mind in terms of some external (e.g., causal) relationship between an experience and that particular person's body. The objection is, once again, that the view in question is committed to regarding as logically possible something which is in fact logically impossible.

“What kind of psychological theory could relate our use of words to sets of possible worlds?” So queries a recent author, but the question is rhetorical, the insinuation being that any analysis or explanation of semantical notions in terms of possible worlds will involve an account that won't square with a naturalistic view of language acquisition or use. Such feelings are widespread; my purpose here is to argue that they are unjustified.

The arguments in the Republic are predicated upon a prior argument which can be expressed as follows:

• There is moral knowledge.

• Possession of it qualifies one to rule.

• Those who do possess it are therefore entitled to rule.

The passage I will discuss in this paper, one of the best known in the Aristotelian corpus, occurs in Book I chapter 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, and concerns the ergon, i.e. the function, of human beings. Aristotle argues that we have a function, that our happiness consists in fulfilling it, and that this function must be idion, i.e. it must be peculiar to us. On this basis, he asserts that our function cannot consist in being alive, nourishment, growth, or perception, for these activities are common to other species. Aristotle then arrives at his familiar conclusion that our function consists in the excellent use of reason.

Writing in 1912, Bertrand Russell declared talk of causes and of causality to be obsolete, noting its elimination from scientific theory as he saw it: “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs .... The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” Causal laws, he claimed, “tend to be replaced by quite different laws as soon as a science is successful.”

Frege begins his exposition of the symbol system employed in his Begriffsschrift by introducing the sign ⟝, whereby, he says, “[a] judgment is always to be expressed” (p. 1 ).

The concept of exploitation plays a key role in Marx's attack on capitalism. No one denies this. Yet there is much confusion as to just what Marx's concept of exploitation is.

Recent discussions tend to fall into two groups. In the first are those which offer extensive analyses of Marx's concept of alienation, but seldom mention ‘exploitation’. When writers in this first group do mention ‘exploitation’ they mistakenly assume that the concept is transparent and unproblematic.

The second group has little to say about alienation, but does attempt an account of exploitation. These writers mistakenly confine Marx's concept of exploitation to the labor process itself. Both approaches fail to articulate important connections between alienation and exploitation.

In the ongoing attempt to provide a satisfactory analysis of knowledge numerous conditions have been proposed as necessary and sufficient — the most noteworthy being justification, truth, and belief. In addition, various epistemic principles are frequently employed. In this paper I intend to show how the seemingly innocuous justification condition, along with two relatively uncontroversial epistemic principles, can give rise to a paradoxical situation.

The analysis of function-ascribing statements, such as “the function of x is y”, is proving to be a difficult matter. It is difficult because we are only beginning to see the complexity which is involved in ascribing functions. The process of discovery has been slow and tedious, with each newly constructed analysis of the meaning of functional ascriptions yielding insights into the structure of functional analysis and functional explanation. However, as each analysis is, in turn, dismantled, we seem to see our insights slip away. In the wake of each exchange, a new member is added to the list of desiderata for an analysis of function-ascribing statements. Thus, the matter of finding a proper analysis of function attributions becomes more and more complex.

Zeno's challenge to the usual mathematical characterization of extension is still with us. Butchvarov, considering the limits of ontological analysis, writes, “I shall not explore [the decision to accept the infinite regress in which the pursuit of the analytical ideal is involved], beyond noting that the infinite divisibility of space is the reductio ad absurdum of any attempt to understand space in terms of its ultimate, simple parts.” Grünbaum states this problem, commonly known as the Measure Paradox, concisely, “[How can one conceive] of an extended continuum as an aggregate of unextended elements ?”