Donald Regan's book is a study of forms of utilitarian theory and of properties to which these forms may aspire. He deals exclusively with “fully objective” theories that seek to systematize and set conditions for obligations that an agent is supposed to lie under as a consequence of features of situations in which he finds himself, with no dependence on his possibly defective beliefs, attitudes, and values (except as features of his situations). Metaethical questions concerning the nature of these obligations are not raised. And practical problems that could be encountered in attempts to apply these theories receive very little attention. They are said to lie outside the main project of the book which is to explain and then to circumvent a certain apparent logical impasse that utilitarianisms ca. 1980 are supposed to confront. The book consists for the most part of abstract, often very long and difficult, arguments, and detailed elaborations of a small number of minimally specified, highly artificial cases of the sort now common in semi-formal utilitarian theory. In the present note, while leaving unquestioned and unstated the presuppositions of Regan's book, I first outline its central two-stage “argument”. Next I explain several distinctions important to issues it addresses and relate these distinctions to several of Regan's theses. I then discuss prima facie cases against his main claim, according to which the apparent impasse that utilitarianisms confront is circumvented by a new utilitarian theory designed for the task.

Several writers have tried to describe the foundations of an egalitarian moral view. Their aim is to explain the way of thinking on which distinctively egalitarian conclusions depend. Egalitarianism is frequently located by reference to utilitarianism. The basic features of the utilitarian view are reasonably well understood and most of us find it at least plausible. Egalitarians want to show that their own view differs from the utilitarian view in some fundamental respect. They hope to convince us that the egalitarian stand on that fundamental matter is at least as plausible as that of utilitarianism.

Language theorists have recently come to have an increasing appreciation for the fact that context contributes heavily in determining our interpretation of what is said. Indeed, it now seems clear that no complete understanding of a natural language is possible without some account of the way in which context affects our interpretation of discourse. In this paper, I will attempt to explore one facet of the language – context relationship, namely, the relation between conditionals and context. The first part of the paper develops an account of truth for conditionals which allows them to depend on momentary features of the context in which they are uttered. In the second half of the paper, comparisons with other recent theories of the conditional will be considered. Particular attention will be given to the problem of whether the conditional really violates classical inferences such as Hypothetical Syllogism and Contraposition as has often been claimed in recent years.

The lottery paradox plays an important role in arguments for various norms of assertion. Why is it that, prior to information on the results of a draw, assertions such as, “My ticket lost,” seem inappropriate? This paper is composed of two projects. First, I articulate a number of problems arising from Timothy Williamson’s analysis of the lottery paradox. Second, I propose a relevant alternatives theory, which I call the Non-Destabilizing Alternatives Theory (NDAT), that better explains the pathology of asserting lottery propositions, while permitting assertions of what I call fallible propositions such as, “My car is in the driveway.”

In 1498 Cajetan published a short book, On the Analogy of Names, which is often regarded as a masterly summary of Aquinas's doctrine of analogy. It opens in the very first paragraph with an attack on three views of the concept of being (ens): first, that it is a disjunction of concepts; second, that it is an ordered group of concepts; and third, that it is a single, separate concept which is unequally participated by substances and accidents. A number of questions immediately spring to mind. Why are concepts being discussed when analogy is said by Cajetan to be a theory of language? What is meant by ‘concept’? Who held the views under attack and why? So far as I can tell, the extensive literature on both Aquinas and Cajetan offers no satisfactory answers to these questions.

Jack and Jill have both applied for the same entry-level position at a local university. After interviewing the leading candidates, the members of the hiring committee agree that both Jack and Jill have all the necessary qualifications for appointment to the position. Both have the required education and training. Both have strong letters of recommendation from their Ph.D. supervisors and from their current employers. Both are similarly experienced and both are potentially capable of making important future contributions to their chosen discipline. The members of the hiring committee also agree that Jack and Jill are superior to all other applicants for the position. In short, in the judgment of the hiring committee, they are the two best qualified candidates and both meet their potential employer's expectations concerning a successful applicant. Yet neither Jack nor Jill is clearly superior to the other.

For three centuries the primary aspiration of Western governments has been constant economic growth but with the Industrial Revolution this objective became troublesome. In the 20th century unprecedented levels of industrial production and social consumption caused palpable harm to humans and the environment. Hannah Arendt and John Kenneth Galbraith turned their pens to such concerns and Bill Mollison and David Holmgren advocated a permaculture approach to growth, one that strives to limit human interference in natural growth processes. Today’s precarious economic and ecological imbalances could be stabilized by a shift in applied growth paradigms, from capitalist to permaculturist.

In this inquiry, I testify to the central place of signs in Peirce’s cosmology, and to the power of entertaining novel propositions (complementary and conflicting) through dialogue to foster the unity necessary to weld members of his continuum. Peirce’s concept of dialogue becomes the conduit to weld each member of the continuum. Peirce’s primary mover in bringing about this ‘welding’ is chance/habit in sign use itself. Although the self’s place as an expression of all components of the physical world will be addressed, primary focus will be accorded to logical shifts ascertained via transition from inter- to intra-actional dialogue.

In this paper I shall presuppose that:

(1) logic and epistemology are disciplines which supply us with normative statements pertaining to states of belief.

(2) as such, logic and epistemology have implications concerning what we ought and ought not to believe.

(3) as such, logic and epistemology presuppose that there is some sense in which a person controls what he believes — some sense in which ‘can’ has a place in contexts where one comes to believe things.

David Gauthier distinguishes maximizing given the actions others do from maximizing given the happiness others get, and maintains that universal conformities to the first rule coincide with equilibria in utility spaces of possible interactions, whereas universal conformities to the second coincide with optima. In Part One of the present paper some of his views concerning these matters of technical detail are tested under a variety of interpretations, and against a range of situations including most prominently situations in which actions of agents are interdependent. Several limitations and needed qualifications are discovered.

I see someone who looks vaguely familiar. I wonder if he could be the same person I had a fight with on my birthday ten years ago. I hear that some scientist has received the Nobel prize in chemistry for some work very similar to that which interested the brightest boy in my chemistry class twenty years ago. I wonder if that scientist and the brightest boy might be the same person. What facts, if they could be discovered, would be decisive in answering these questions? Are there any facts that, if it turns out that they do not obtain, would show conclusively that the two people are not the same person? That is, are there any necessary conditions for personal identity? Are there any facts that, if it turns out that they do obtain, would show conclusively that the two people are the same person? That is, are there any sufficient conditions for personal identity?

ABSTRACT: With a view to suggesting the possible relevance of Aristotelian thought to current notions of complexity and self-organization, studies Aristotle’s notions of teleology and final causation. After a sketch of the historical process by which such notions were finally rejected in the science of Galileo and Newton, attention is drawn to some contemporary trends in philosophy of science that argue for a return to some (modified) versions of the notion of final causation (I. Prigogine, R. Thom, S. Rosen). These arguments are illustrated by the example of Bénard cells, and the theories of Schneider, Kay, and D. Sagan.

Is self-deception always immoral? That it is always immoral to deceive oneself seems to have been the ‘received’ view amongst philosophers. Such a view was vigorously supported by Bishop Butler in the eighteenth century. Recently, Herbert Fingarette has argued for a similar position. In this paper I wish to examine Butler's and Fingarette's arguments and contend that no morally sensitive and reasonable person can possibly accept them without thereby ceasing to be morally sensitive and reasonable.

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a real problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is patently untenable or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted. Then, I show that those who reject both types of scepticism because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons.

The Humean tradition claims to show that the direct perception of causal power is in principle impossible. One argument for this conclusion is very simple: One cannot perceive what is not there; ‘causal power’ entails ‘necessary connection’; there are no necessary connections between matters of fact; therefore one cannot perceive causal power. The heart of this argument, of course, and the backbone of the Humean tradition, is that there are no necessary connections between matters of fact. This contention is supported by the familiar Humean dialectic. If there were a necessary connection of any kind between C and E, then the conjunction of C · ˜ E would be self-contradictory. However, all events are complete in themselves and never alone require that any other event will or must result from them. It is very strange to think of water freezing when heated or air pressure decreasing with depth, but no matter how foreign these conceptions may seem there is nothing self-contradictory about them. Since the assertion of C · ˜ E is never self-contradictory, it follows that there can be no necessary connection, logical or “causal”, between them, and hence there is no causal power that we could directly perceive.

Recently Wesley Salmon has argued that a certain class of confirmation functions (C-functions) must be rejected for yielding contradictions. The C-functions involved happen to be the kind ingeniously constructed and employed most notably by Professor Carnap. More recently Keith Lehrer has argued that these C-functions may be salvaged by the adoption of a rule that eliminates certain languages. In the paragraphs that follow, it will be shown that Salmon's reply to the sort of program suggested by Lehrer is not at all convincing and that Lehrer's defence of his suggested rule of greater completeness is unacceptable.

Dans un célèbre ouvrage sur Contemplation et Vie contemplative selon Platon, A.J. Festugière donnait de la dialectique platonicienne une interprétation selon laquelle celle-ci constituait une véritable expérience mystique possédant presque tous les traits de la contemplation chrétienne. La dialectique platonicienne y était présentée, surtout dans son acte final, comme une sorte d'extase, une union d'ordre mystique, un contact de l'âme perdue dans son objet, contact qui suscite en elle un sentiment qui dépasse tout l'ordre normal de la connaissance. Le Bien ou l'Un en tant qu'objet dernier de l'ascension dialectique y était conçu comme quelque chose d'ineffable et d'indéfinissable.