À l'occasion de la parution dans Dialogue de la traduction anglaise de l'un de mes articles, je formule ici quelques réflexions sur la publication de travaux philosophiques dans des langues autres que l'anglais.

Aristotle discusses character in four contexts: ethics, poetic theory, the study of rhetoric and zoology. What he means by character is different in each of these cases, but not radically different. He always uses it as a device to explain actions or behavioural patterns: in animals, in people, and in fictional people. The similarities between the character exhibited by different species, moral character, and tragic character have gone unexamined. As a result, the notion of character as explanatory, and the possibilities and limitations of explanation by means of character are still undetermined.

Cet article est une défense de la position exposée par Nelson Goodman dans Langages de l'art. Goodman affirme que les images fonctionnent dans des systèmes symboliques denses. La différence entre texte et image ne se situe pas là où nous l'aurions spontanément cherchée : dans l'expérience perceptuelle que nous avons des images. Une telle théorie de la dépiction peut sembler iconoclaste, voire complètement fausse, et ce, parce que nous y voyons à tort une explication de la représentation picturale. Elle offre cependant, rapportée à d'autres intuitions philosophiques qui essaiment ailleurs dans l’œuvre de Goodman, une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement des images.

En guise d'introduction à la traduction anglaise d'un article de Jocelyn Maclure préalablement publié en français dans la revue, je présente ici quelques réflexions sur le bilinguisme de Dialogue dans le contexte philosophique actuel.

Some responses to analogies between abortion and infanticide appeal to Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument for the permissibility of abortion. I argue that these responses fail because a parallel argument can be constructed for the permissibility of infanticide. However, an argument on the grounds of a right to choose to become a parent can maintain that abortion is permissible but infanticide is not by recognizing the normative significance and nature of parenthood.

The moral problem of authority can be expressed as follows: how can authority, and the deference it entails, be compatible with freedom and rationality? The pluralist approach separates political obligation from authority. For pluralists, authority is both unjustifiable and unnecessary, and so legitimate political obligation, including the duty to obey the law, does not entail deference. I argue that it is possible to retain the pluralist commitment to plural grounds of legitimacy, while rebutting the pluralist objections to authority. As a result, whenever authority does have legitimacy, the moral question of authority will demand an answer.

Malgré son importance dans divers domaines, le raisonnement par analogie n'a pas encore reçu de représentation formelle unifiée. Notre contribution suggère un schéma d'inférence général compatible avec différentes logiques. Premièrement, une assertion analogique définit la similarité entre deux objets en fonction de leurs propriétés, de façon seulement relative. Deuxièmement, une inférence analogique transfère une propriété nouvelle d'un objet à un objet similaire, grâce à une méta-hypothèse d'arrière-plan qui relie deux ensembles de propriétés. Le degré de croyance dans la conclusion est directement relié au degré de croyance dans cette méta-hypothèse.

This article raises two questions about Robert Myers and Claudine Verheggen's terrific book, Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry. The first question, concerning the first part of the book, is whether, starting from the assumption that a solitary individual cannot have thought contents, we can show that adding another individual to the picture cannot resolve the problem. The second question, concerning the second part, is whether a more sophisticated, decision-theoretic, Humean about the pro-attitudes can respond to the objections to the simple Humean view, and whether Davidson was not in fact just such a sophisticated decision-theoretic Humean.

There is no consensus regarding whether Gilles Deleuze offers a cogent theory of the Other. Deleuze develops the notion of the Other-structure, but given his scarce remarks on this concept, his treatment of this issue is debated. This article argues that to elucidate Deleuze's philosophy of the Other, his notion of the Other-structure must be analyzed in parallel to Edmund Husserl's intersubjective theory. This comparison, made possible by Natalie Depraz's reading of the Husserlian alterity, reveals nuanced phenomenological traces in Deleuze's Other-structure and its implicated structural moments while substantiating his affirmation of the Otherless world, as an impetus to surpass phenomenology.

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.

I argue that the use of elected political representatives undermines the political equality of citizens. Having elected representatives politically stand-in for individual constituents makes ordinary citizens the political inferiors of their representatives. This in turn creates democratically problematic social inequality between elected politicians and their constituents. I then offer an alternative to representative politicians that does not face the avatar of the people problem: representative mini-publics. Through these bodies, we can achieve a representative system without a class of political elites, where citizens share the responsibilities and powers of government as equals.

Most books defending the position now know as “libertarianism”, the thesis that government ought to confine itself only to the most minimal functions of preventing or punishing force and fraud, can be dismissed with little scruple as the work of cranks. And some have already done so with this one as well: but wrongly. It is clearly the work of a person of extraordinary brilliance, penetration, and learning, possessed of a pungent style and an uncommon flair for paradox and counterexample. Those who are inclined to reject it out of hand because its conclusions will seem incredible might also bear in mind that its author is a man to whom his colleague John Rawls (whose conclusions do seem very credible to many) has expressed gratitude and indebtedness. At any rate, I propose to take the work with complete seriousness. And after all, should there not be considerable attraction i n the view that the only enforceable duty is that of respecting the freedom of our fellows as completely as possible? Surely it behooves us to see just why this will not do, if it won't; and no better opportunity for examining the view has arisen than that provided by the publication of this book.

The Principle that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility (hereafter referred to as “the freedom principle”) has received a variety of explications, but few philosophers have doubted that in some plausible sense it is true. However, two philosophers have recently challenged it using very different but equally ingenious arguments. J.F.M. Hunter has provided the more obviously direct attack in arguing that considerations of freedom as such are in no way relevant to assessments of moral responsibility. Harry Frankfurt has directed his fire at the version of the freedom principle which says that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. Both Frankfurt and Hunter point out the significance of their arguments for the determinism/moral responsibility debate: if there is no freedom requirement for moral responsibility, then even if determinism threatens freedom, it does not follow that determinism threatens moral responsibility.

It is often quite proper, philosophically speaking, to raise objections to a philosophical inquiry because it is seeking an answer to a question which ought not to have been raised in the first place. So in this instance, one might maintain that it is illegitimate to ask questions about the metaphysics of the Tractatus, just because the Tractatus is not the sort of book which is supposed to have a particular metaphysics. The Tractatus, we have heard said, is a book on the philosophy of language, not one on metaphysics; it is a specification of what language is, or ought to be like, and is not meant to have anything to do with the metaphysical constitution of the world.