One of the most important insights that Russell had in presenting his philosophy of language was his view of singular definite descriptions. Russell held that singular phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ should not be viewed as names, but rather incomplete symbols which can be said to have meaning only in a context. We should not represent the sentence

(1) The inventor of bifocals is bald.

as a simple subject-predicate sentence of the form ‘Fa.’ but rather as a complex existential sentence. According to Russell we should analyze (I) as

(2) There is a unique x such that x invented bifocals and x is bald.

Moreover, if Russell's analysis is correct then the proposition expressed by (1) will be true in a given circumstance provided that there is a unique inventor of bifocals who is bald in that circumstance.

Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with their racism. Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into moron jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider two answers to ‘What has an I.Q. of 1007’: (a) a nation of morons; or (b) Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as cowards, and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how skinflints, cowards, or dishonest people get on in the world. But they are less funny as such (at least if one is not Jewish, Greek, or Italian). As this suggests, racist humor is ‘put down’ humor. We laugh, in part, because we find put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many contexts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within reason, it may be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why, then, all the commotion about racist humor?

When Keats identified truth and beauty, he surely intended mere extensionality. I myself have never had much trouble with either half of the equivalence. Others have considerable difficulty. A case in point is the Watson-Allaire-Cummins interpretation of Berkeley's idealism, which I shall refer to henceforth as the inherence account (IA). That account is put forward to answer an extremely perplexing question in the history of philosophy: Why did Berkeley embrace idealism, i.e., why did he hold that esse est percipi, that to be is to be perceived, indeed that what is perceived must be perceived in order to exist? In essence, the IA answers these questions very simply and elegantly: perceived qualities are, for Berkeley, qualities of the mind in the same sense that, in the tradition of substance metaphysics, blue is a quality of a blue flower; just as the blue of the flower is inseparable from it, so the perceived blue is inseparable from the mind that perceives it.

It was the middle of winter now and the Grasshopper was long dead. Skepticus and Prudence, being not quite grasshoppers had retreated into a burrow dug by Prudence and stocked by her for the winter.

Unfortunately, Skepticus had taken the Grasshopper far too seriously and had not assisted Prudence in laying up for winter. Thus, by the time January came around, the cupboard was bare (metaphorically speaking) and the insects once again had to choose between going the way of the Grasshopper and another (seemingly appalling) alternative.

PRUDENCE: There is simply no doubt about it. We must either starve like the Grasshopper or we must take refuge with the Ant. He laid up enough food to tide a dozen insects over the winter so he couldn't possibly mind if we went over to share it with him.

Let Hn stand for an assembly of n grains of salt. Then the paradox of Sorites may be presented this way:

1. H10,000 is a heap. p

2. If H10,000 is a heap then H10,000-1 is a heap. p

3. H9,999 is a heap. MP

4. H9,999 is a heap then H9,999-1 is a heap. P

   19998. If H2 is a heap then H2-1 is a heap. P

   19999. H1 is a heap. MP

   20000. H1 is not a heap. P

   20001. H1 is and is not a heap. Con

A more significant example of the argument results where Ht stands for a human being (h.b.) at time t (in seconds) where t=O is the present and the human being is one year old.

In studying logic, one learns how to establish that a conclusion follows from a set of premises. Those arguments that exhibit one of the valid forms of the deductive system under study are valid. There may be questions about what forms are exhibited by various arguments - Is this English conditional (or any other) really truth-functional? Is this disjunction really inclusive? Are the English predicates used with uniform meaning? - but none of these problems undermine the claim that if an argument exhibits a valid form of a system for deductive logic, then that argument is valid.

When we move on to study invalidity, however, we find that the situation is not parallel. Every argument is an instance of some invalid argument forms, and we cannot say that every instance of every invalid form is invalid.

Locke, in his discussion of essences, makes extensive use of a distinction he introduces between nominal and real essences. This distinction has always been found interesting and important, and in fact, R.I. Aaron said of it that ‘there is no more important distinction in the Essay.’ Nevertheless, to say there has not been general agreement about what Locke was getting at is putting it mildly. Interpretations of Locke's point in making such a distinction have varied widely, depending upon whether the importance of the real or the nominal essence is stressed. Locke tells us we should distinguish the nominal essence, which is the abstract idea to which a general name is attached and for which it stands, from the real essence, which is the ‘real internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things, whereon their discoverable Qualities depend (3.3.15. See also 3.6.2).’

I want to present some evidence that facts about de re attitudes or causal facts are important in the explanation of actions. In particular, I will argue that an attempt by Ernest Sosa and Mark Pastin [4] to give a scheme for explaining intentional actions fails. By adding either de re or causal locutions we can devise a more adequate schema for explaining action, but their analysis had been designed to eliminate de re locutions from explanations of intentional action. Showing the failure of their analysis does not, of course, show that de re or causal elements are required in these explanations, since it does not rule out the possibility of alternative explanatory schemes. But the centrality of de re or causal elements is supported by the inadequacy of their attempts to dispense with them.

Ambiguous terms (e.g., ‘bank,’ ‘pen’) are applicable to different kinds of things, but so are general terms, since a general kind (e.g., ‘animal’) may include various species. Thus a bank may be the side of a river or a certain kind of financial institution, and an animal may be a dog or a cat. Similarly, an ambiguous sentence is true in different kinds of situations, and so is a general sentence in that different specific situations may make the same general sentence true. Thus the sentence, The bank collapsed yesterday,’ can be true of different varieties of banks, and the sentence, The animal is untrained,’ can be true of different varieties of animals. These similarities of ambiguity and generality have led many linguists and philosophers to confuse the two. Basic to this confusion is a failure to notice a difference in the scopes of disjunctions involved in ambiguity and generality.

With very few exceptions philosophers believe that no account of the doctrine of divine omnipotence is adequate if it entails that God can do what is logically impossible. Descartes is credited with believing otherwise. In his article ‘Descartes on the Creation of the Eternal Truths’ (The Philosophical Review, 86, 1977) Harry Frankfurt attributes to Descartes the belief that God is ‘a being for whom the logically impossible is possible’ (44). In addition, Frankfurt claims that because of this belief Descartes’ account of God's omnipotence is open to the charge of being incoherent. I will argue that it is wrong to attribute this belief to Descartes and that if his account of divine omnipotence is incoherent, it is incoherent for reasons other than that it entails the possibility of what is logically impossible.

The central problem of epistemology is to give an account of when beliefs are justified. Traditional epistemological theories are ‘internalist’ in the sense that they make justification entirely a matter of what beliefs one has and what sensory states, mnemonic states, etc., one is in. But there is a currently popular move in epistemology to import ‘external’ considerations of reliability into matters of justification. The feeling is that if a particular belief forming mechanism is to issue in justified belief, then ‘surely it must be reliable.’ Thus it is proposed that reliability is either a necessary condition, or a sufficient condition, or both, for justified belief.

The course of my experience is quite consistent with the hypothesis that it is being produced by a mad scientist who is feeding into my sensory receptors entirely delusive stimuli. Indeed, I could at this very moment be nothing more than a brain floating in a vat of nutrients, my nerve ends linked up to some infernal apparatus by means of which my unknown deceiver induces in me utterly erroneous beliefs about the world.

So begins a familiar line of thought which dramatizes an equally familiar sceptical problem about the relation between our experiences and the world. However, Hilary Putnam has recently offered a marvellously ambitious argument which is intended to kill stone-dead the philosophical fantasy that we might be deluded brains in a vat.