In 1938, four years before his death, Collingwood characterized his life as “in the main an attempt to bring about a rapprochement between philosophy and history” (Autobiography, 77). Collingwood's success in this matter has been a subject of much debate. The majority of his critics have argued, following the leadership of T. A. Knox, that the alleged rapprochement was a failure. In the early writings, such as Religion and Philosophy and Speculum Mentis, it is simply obscure. In An Essay on Philosophical Method it emerges more clearly but with a definite bias in favour of philosophy. Sometime between 1936 and 1938, however, Collingwood underwent a radical conversion to the historicist doctrine, typical of the thought of Croce, that philosophy is a branch of history. The result, according to the Knox thesis, was an explicit repudiation, in the Autobiography (1938) and An Essay on Metaphysics (1939), of Collingwood's earlier belief in the priority and autonomy of philosophy.

In 1975, Gauthier discussed Schelling’s pure coordination games and Hodgson’s Hi-Lo game. While developing an original analysis of how rational players coordinate on ‘focal points,’ Gauthier argued, contrary to Schelling and Hodgson, that successful coordination in these games does not depend on deviations from conventional principles of individually rational choice. I argue that Gauthier’s analysis of constrained maximization in Morals by Agreement, which famously deviates from conventional game theory, has significant similarities with Schelling’s and Hodgson’s analyses of coordination. Constrained maximization can be thought of as a pragmatic and contractarian variant of the team-reasoning approach pioneered by Hodgson.

ABSTRACT: I argue that Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority cannot convincingly account for the nature and source of democratic authority. It cannot explain (a) why decisions made democratically are more likely to be sound than decisions made non-democratically, and therefore, (b) why democratic decisions might be understood as constituting moral reasons for action and compliance independently of their instrumental dimensions. My argument is that democratic authority cannot be explained completely in terms of the truth or soundness of the outcomes it tends toward. A full account of democratic authority must involve non-instrumental values about the moral caliber of democratic procedures.

Au moment où, dans la postface de 1973 à son livre Erkenntnis und Interesse, Habermas dresse le bilan des principales objections quilui ont été adressées, il est amené à faire état d'une distinction cruciale qui n'avait pas été dégagée de façon suffisamment claire dans le texte. Le point six de cette postface est intitulé « Reconstruction contre autocritique », et il débute comme suit:

Le modèle causaliste en théorie de l'action a pour point de départ l'idée que les rationalisations sont des explications causales de l'action, c'est-à-dire que les énoncés à propos des croyances et des pro-attitudes qui ont motivé un agent à accomplir une certaine action expriment les antécédents causaux de cette action. Pour reprendre un des exemples classiques, le meurtre de César par Brutus a été causé par le désir que Brutus avait de prendre le pouvoir et par sa croyance que la seule façon d'y parvenir était d'éliminer César. Bien qu'intuitive, cette position soulève immédiatement un problème du fait que les états intentionnels, en raison de leur contenu propositionnel, ne s'imposent pas d'office comme appartenant au règne des choses physiques et de la causalité. Comment, en effet, des entités d'ordre mental peuvent-elles interagir avec les entités complètement différentes que sont les événements physiques? Et même, plus largement, comment un événement mental peut-il avoir une quelconque efficace causale sur un événement physique ou sur un autre événement mental? Une réponse bien connue à cette difficulté est le monisme anomal de Davidson, selon lequel il n'y a pas d'obstacle à ce que le mental soit en relation causale avec le physique puisque les occurrences d'événements mentaux sont identiques à des occurrences d'événements physiques. Toutefois cette approche, qui, comme bien d'autres, mise sur une stratégie matérialiste pour ne pas isoler le mental du physique, en a conduit plus d'un à douter de l'indispensabilité du mental.

ABSTRACT: In Treatise 1.4.4, on behalf of modern philosophers, Hume described a causal argument that shows that our impressions of secondary qualities do not resemble qualities of objects themselves. However, in their respective arguments, Hume’s philosophical predecessors did not argue causally, but appealed to contrary qualities. I argue that Hume’s presentation was not simply a “gratuitous” stylistic difference, but an important correction of his predecessors in light of his own philosophical discoveries.

This paper suggests that reference to phenomenal qualities is best understood as involving iconicity, that is, a passage from sign-vehicle to object that exploits a similarity between the two. This contrasts with a version of the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ that takes indexicality to be central. However, since it is doubtful that phenomenal qualities are capable of causally interacting with anything, indexical reference seems inappropriate. While a theorist like David Papineau is independently coming to something akin to iconicity, I think some of the awkwardness that plagues his account would be remedied by transitioning to a more inclusive philosophy of signs.

In “Moral Responsibility for Dreams,” Harvey Mullane maintains that although there is something inappropriate about blaming people for their dreams, this is because we do not have very direct control over our dreams: but although this is the case, it is not the case that we have no control over them. We can work at having the right dreams, or not having the wrong ones, as we can work at blushing and not blushing and at loving our neighbour: and therefore presumably (although he does not say this) there must be a sense in which or a degree to which we can be responsible for what we dream. There are a number of aspects of this question, and of Mullane's treatment of it, which I would like to explore further.

We expound an economic explanation of the nature, causes, and effects of moral conventions. We show, first, that systems of moral rules lead to Pareto-efficiency; second, that the efficiency they induce may be interpreted as the outcome of an exchange of courtesies; third, and finally, that moral exchange takes place whenever the costs of transaction are sufficiently low. We also explain various phenomena, including the diversity of moral rules in time and space. Finally, we give sufficient conditions for universal moral rules to emerge in a sequence of agreements involving two agents only at a time.

Whether or not men have free choice is a question which arises within two distinct moral contexts. At issue in the one is their ability to decide among genuine alternatives; in the other their ability to do what they think they ought to do although their desire to perform their duty is weaker than their desire to do otherwise. The former has to do with moral decision; (he latter with moral effort. Although the two are distinct they are not unrelated. For in any moral decision a fully conscious, or rather self-conscious agent, will always take into account the likelihood of his effort succeeding in action and this will have an important bearing on the decision he makes.

In some strains of current philosophy, there is a growing interest in the passive and receptive aspects of the human condition. This interest is often paired with a criticism that ‘Western’ philosophy unduly neglects those aspects because of an ‘agential bias.’ This criticism has also been directed against the philosophy of Charles Taylor. I try to show that this criticism has some force in principle but is not plausible in the case of Taylor. First, I analyse John Rawls’ hugely influential concept of a life plan and show how this ‘agential bias’ applies here. Second, I argue that such a bias does not apply to Taylor’s The Language Animal by showing how active and passive moments are interwoven in his concepts of articulation and narration.