The aim of this article is to defend the inferentialist conception of qualia introspection against some apparently decisive objections. According to inferentialism, a self-attribution of a qualitative state is to be understood as the conclusion of an inference, rather than as issuing from an experience of a specific kind. It has been objected that formally correct inferences warranting introspective conclusions are simply not to be found. I concede this point, but maintain that inferentialism should not be abandoned. Some deductive inferences are correct because of the contents of the concepts which occur in them, rather than in virtue of their logical form. I claim that this is what happens for introspective inferences: they are materially correct because of a priori conceptual liaisons linking the concept of a conscious experience with a certain class of demonstrative concepts.

If Hegel's philosophy were to be characterized by a phrase, it might be “The Dialectical System of Absolute Spirit.” The phrase would seem formidable to some but merely pretentious to others. There are recent signs of an exhumation of the systematic features of Hegel's philosophy in the English-speaking world, and it is to be hoped that the durable clichés of an earlier English period will not prevent a fresh look at Hegel's philosophy. There is, of course, no denying his systematic ambitions, nor any wish on my part to do so. It is just these that I find fascinating. He sought to bring within a comprehensive intellectual order the whole of reality—and a little more besides, say his detractors. In the Phenomenology of Spirit by a turbulent dialectic he scrabblesup to the top of Mount Parnassus in order to clutch the petticoats of the Absolute. In the Science of Logic and in the first part of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences he lays out the logical paradigm of intellectual necessities which are subsequently exhibited in the philosophy of nature and of concrete spirit.

Andre Gombay gives a penetrating, accurate account of the functioning of duress as a defence in current Canadian law, and puts forward an intelligent and very appealing suggestion as to how the law on duress might be reformed. As part of the underpinnings for his reform proposals, he attempts to unravel the elements of justification and excuse that intertwine in duress and provides his analysis of how duress is distinguishable from other excuses or defences. I agree with him that the present working conception of duress in law falls far short of its appropriate moral potential as a defence, and I wish in these comments to support his proposals for reform. However, I think his arguments regarding the nature of duress, and its bearing on our responsibility for what we do under duress, are less persuasive, and it is here that I will begin.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I carry out an application of the debate between simulationism and theory theory to the issue of episodic memory. I first criticize the approach favored by the theory theory. Then I advance a simulationist conception of the relationship between the phenomenology of episodic memory and its specific kind of self-consciousness. On my view, subjectivity belongs to the very content of episodic memory, not as an element of its content, but as the perspective it gives to the content that makes the simulation of past experience possible. In support of that view, I provide an analysis inspired by J. Perry of the semantics of de se thought. It gives the remembering subject a non-representational presence in the mnesic content.

One challenge involved in integrating so-called ‘non-Western’ philosophies into ‘Western’ philosophical discourse concerns the fact that non-Western philosophical texts frequently differ significantly in style and approach from Western ones, especially those in contemporary analytic philosophy. But how might one bring texts that are written, for example, in a literary, non-expository style, and which do not clearly advance philosophical positions or arguments, into constructive dialogue with those that do? Also, why might one seek to do this in the first place? This paper addresses these questions by means of a case study involving the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi.

In this paper, I explain the arguments my critics target and I respond to their criticisms. Some of my replies further expand upon the ideas covered in my book—A Conceptual Investigation of Justice—and some cover matters that weren’t discussed there. This paper thus substantially contributes to the arguments made in my book.

Hegel has a metacritical standpoint that can be related to but not reduced to the Herderian metacritique. Hegel’s philosophical language must not be understood in terms of the opposition between an ‘absolute’ and a ‘finite’ language; rather, it must be understood in terms of the opposition between abstract and concrete language. At a theoretical level, concrete language cannot be understood without assuming an organic function of memory. At the practical level, the difference between abstract and concrete language will be understood as the difference between everyday language and a philosophical one. Hegel justifies this last difference by following Humboldtian standpoints.

Whether seen after a vehement denunciation of one's former values or a subtle change of heart, it is often thought that significant change to one's evaluative character could undermine responsibility for past wrongdoing. In this article, I explore this intuition by analyzing Angela Smith's concept of “responsibility as answerability.” I introduce an alteration/replacement distinction to define the limits of answerability over time. These limits are then further qualified by drawing on Delia Graff's work on Sorites type cases to argue that persons are answerable for past wrongdoing if they remain “saliently similar” in some relevant respects

Descartes believed the extended world did not terminate in a boundary: but why? After elucidating Descartes’s position in §1, suggesting his conception of the indefinite extension of the universe should be understood as actual but syncategorematic, we turn in §2 to his argument: any postulation of an outermost surface for the world will be self-defeating, because merely contemplating such a boundary will lead us to recognise the existence of further extension beyond it. In §3, we identify the fundamental assumption underlying this argument by comparing Descartes’s and Malebranche’s respective conceptions of the ontological status of modes of extension.

Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that consciousness not only historically constrains experience but also allows strangeness to intelligibly speak to it. This historically effected and effective consciousness features in Gadamer's idea that a common language is unearthed for the interpretive horizons of those involved in dialogue with each other through a logic of question and answer. I argue, however, that this reveals a conceptual uncertainty about evaluating progress in interpretive understanding. Gadamer's failure to escape from this uncertainty risks the possibility of a problematic relativism. Effectively, even if sufficient interpretation occurs when horizons are infinitely structured, this does not preclude incoherence between a horizon's elements.

According to Kant, there is some doctrine, which he sometimes calls ‘empirical realism,’ such that it was doubted by Descartes, denied by Berkeley, and endorsed by Kant himself. The primary aim of this paper will be to reconstruct Kant’s own narrative of the historical relationship between Descartes, Berkeley, and himself, in order to identify the doctrine Kant calls ‘empirical realism.’ I argue that the empirical realism that Descartes doubted, Berkeley denied, and Kant endorsed is the doctrine that the concept of extended substance has legitimate application.

Many have argued that there is no room for experiments in Aristotle's natural science: experiments intervene in nature, but Aristotle holds that we must simply observe nature; if we intervened, the result would be something artificial or contrary to nature. Against this, I argue that Aristotle not only performed experiments, but also holds that there is much about nature that can be discovered experimentally.

Le processus d'autonomisation des patient.es qui s'opéra en France au cours du XXe siècle peut, artificiellement, être divisé en trois grandes périodes marquées par les principes de solidarité, d'agentivité et d'autorité. Cette tripartition permet de mieux saisir les enjeux de ce mouvement et de comprendre en quoi l'avènement de la démocratie sanitaire, auquel il a abouti au début du XXIe siècle, consiste, par sa dépolitisation des enjeux d'autonomie, au renvoi des patient.es vers une forme de subalternité qu'incarnent, paradoxalement, les nouvelles figures de patient expert ou partenaire.

It is commonly agreed that Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence is hard to understand. The difficulty lies not so much in any great complexity or highly technical character as in uncertainty over what kind of doctrine it is intended to be. Without knowing this we are in no position to agree upon the guidelines for assessing its validity or invalidity. In this discussion I intend to suggest an approach to the problem which will help us to answer these questions—and to avoid some of the difficulties encountered by previous interpretations.

In this article, we re-examine Pascal's Mugging, and argue that it is a deeper problem than the St. Petersburg paradox. We offer a way out that is consistent with classical decision theory. Specifically, we propose a “many muggers” response analogous to the “many gods” objection to Pascal's Wager. When a very tiny probability of a great reward becomes a salient outcome of a choice, such as in the offer of the mugger, it can be discounted on the condition that there are many other symmetric, non-salient rewards that one may receive if one chooses otherwise.

The doctrine I have in mind is the theory of intensional meanings, the theory according to which unitary descriptive expressions (and some complex ones) have not only extensions, but intensions as well. According to this theory, found in fullest flower in Carnap's Meaning and Necessity, individual expressions, one-place predicates and sentences, have corresponding to them individual concepts, properties and propositions respectively, these latter being the intensions, or, meanings, or, logical contents, of the expressions in question. In the first part of this paper I shall attempt to show that the whole theory of intensional entities represents not just an ontological extravagance, but a fairly clear absurdity. In the second I shall sketch briefly an alternative semantical method and in the third shall attempt to exploit this method for the clarification of a couple of puzzles.