ABSTRACT : Alfred Fouillée’s doctrine of ideas-forces is historically and intellectually analogous to William James’s philosophy of the will. Nevertheless, Fouillée’s criticisms of pragmatism appear to be close to a Peircean view which emphasizes the resistance of the real and the clarification of conceptions. That Peirce overtly acknowledged Fouillée’s influence only on his own tychism is quite misleading.

ABSTRACT: Jeremy Waldron argues that the historical ownership rights of Aboriginal peoples can be superseded, yet acknowledges that programs of historically grounded compensation are justifiable in the absence of widespread redistribution. This article argues that existing states lack social justice programs of the requisite kind, and that they will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Moreover, even the best-designed programs will be far more ambiguous than Waldron encourages us to recognize, given the unavoidability of inheritance-based inequalities. The article argues that philosophers should pay special attention to political context when evaluating the claims of socially vulnerable populations such as Aboriginal peoples.

ABSTRACT: Whereas relevance in scientific explanations is usually discussed as if it was a single problem, several criteria of relevance will be distinguished in this paper. Emphasis is laid upon the notion of intra-scientific relevance, which is illustrated using explanation of the law of areas as an example. Traditional accounts of explanation, such as the causal and unificationist accounts, are analyzed against these criteria of relevance. Particularly, it will be shown that these accounts fail to indicate which explanations fulfill the condition of intra-scientific relevance. Finally, the significance of this latter criterion is emphasized, and the epistemic benefits of explanations that fulfill it are highlighted.

ABSTRACT: Love is a broad mental phenomenon, its objects not restricted to thinking beings. Yet most philosophical theories of love focus on some case of interpersonal intimacy. Such theories ignore a wide range of relevant instances and thus fail to capture what is distinctive of love generally. I explore a straightforward alternative hypothesis that deserves a hearing but has been discussed less often: Love consists in intense desire for and delight in its objects. The account is defended against various objections, among them the claim that caring concern is what is most characteristic or central in loving.

ABSTRACT: Brandom argues that functionalism must ultimately fail because it will not be able to explain how we can holistically update our beliefs solely in terms of abilities possessed by non-linguistic things. In this paper I respond to this argument by arguing that non-linguistic animals encounter and overcome an analogous sort of holistic updating problem. I will also try to demystify holism and de-intellectualize language use/reasoning.