The controversy over teleology raged in the early modern period with particular intensity. In this paper, I will show that Guillaume Lamy represents a “radical” current of antifinalism, devoid of weakness, and far from compromise with his adversaries. This antifinalism makes of Lamy not so much a sincere supporter of the unknowability of God’s ends, as scholars have maintained — in other words, a proto–fideist — but rather a radical Lucretian materialist, whose aim is to openly distance himself equally from the partial Cartesian rejection of final causes and from the sugar–coated Epicureanism of the Gassendists.

I defend the Interdependency Thesis, according to which rational evaluations of dispositions and actions are made in light of each other. I invoke a model of rationality that relies on various levels of consistency existing between an agent's reasons for adopting a moral disposition, the argument for the moral theory she endorses (relying on the Kantian notion that all persons are equal in humanity), her desires, disposition, and choice to be a moral person as reflected in the maxim she adopts. The Interdependency Thesis shows that we do not need to demonstrate the rationality of every morally required action in order to defeat scepticism fully.

Le but de cet article est de proposer un examen de l’ontologie matérielle de Franz Brentano. Nous soutenons ici la thèse selon laquelle Brentano défend un type original de monisme. Ce monisme peut être vu comme la conjonction de trois théories : le réisme (la thèse selon laquelle il n’existe que des choses individuelles concrètes), le monisme de priorité (la thèse selon laquelle il n’y a qu’une seule substance) et le super-substantialisme (la thèse selon laquelle cette substance est l’espace).

In two recent papers, Jaegwon Kim offers an account of action explanation that is agent-centered and reasons-based. I argue that, despite his claims to the contrary, Kim’s proposal points the way to a pluralist view of explanation that might resolve the problem of explanatory exclusion and provide a way for nonreductive physicalists to escape the supervenience/exclusion argument.

Christine Overall has argued that miracles, if they exist, would be an evil committed by God and therefore disprove the existence of God. However, her notion of a miracle as an intervention presupposes a view about the relation between God and creation that posits God as an ‘outsider.’ Such a view has not been held by all theists. It was not held by Thomas Aquinas. I show that Aquinas’s conception is not susceptible to Overall’s criticisms. The upshot is that theists should avoid any view of God as an ‘outsider,’ if they wish to avoid Overall’s criticisms.

In this article, I show and discuss the relevance of Wittgenstein's arguments as to the spatial structure of sight to recent issues in the philosophy of mind. The first, bearing upon the dimensionality of the manifolds at play in depiction, plays a critical role in Clark's attempt to provide an independent account of qualia and of their differentiative properties. The second, pertaining to the properly spatial structure formed by the data of sight, is explicitly appealed to in the debate on the realistic character of any genuinely spatial scheme. I argue that if Wittgenstein rightly assumes that the simultaneous presence of sensible places in vision is a key condition for objectivity, he fails nevertheless to warrant the allegedly realistic character of the scheme employed in his own search for a phenomenological description of the visual field.

I examine Thomas Kuhn’s work regarding the role played by the concept of practice in the development of his theory of scientific rationality. I outline the epistemological implications of his theory of incommensurability. I then show how the original intuition of a practice-based and social conception of incommensurability is replaced by a more conventional linguistic interpretation. I then examine Kuhn’s solution to the problem of incommensurability and explain its inadequacy. I then show that, ultimately, his failure to grasp the epistemological dimension of practice prevents him from providing a fully satisfactory solution to the epistemological problem raised in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Over the years it has been suggested that it is possible to construct deductive arguments for the existence of Satan and other sorts of evil beings, modelled on Anselm's argument in the Proslogium. From time to time such suggestions and similar proposals have also appeared in print. In my judgment, such suggestions and proposals are ill-conceived, misguided and foolish. My reasons for this judgment are all implicitly contained in Anselm's Proslogium or in his reply to Gaunilon. When examined in light of Anselm's insights, arguments for the existence of Satan and other sorts of evil beings turn out to be unsound.

The etymologizing which forms the torso of the Cratylus gives way, in the final pages, to an interesting, but brief, discussion of Heraclitean Flux. The transition is made on pages 437–8. Knowledge of reality through names has proved elusive because the names yield contradictory theses (411ff. versus 436–7). This being so, it is argued that the truth is only to be obtained by a direct acquaintance with reality (ta onta, 438E).

C'est une observation ancienne que nous rétérons en affirmant que la possession de biens en propre, à la différence de la possession commune, est nécessaire, mais que l'usage des biens privés doit être commun; commun en ce sens que Ton doit etre tout disposé à donner une part de ces biens aux nécessiteux. Le défaut d'une telle disposition rend compte des plus criantes injustices que rapporte l'histoire, de celles qui semblent aussi bien son constituant principal. Afin d'y remedier, les uns préconisent la possession commune, et d'autres un usage privé égal à un droit de possession illimitée.

A “hypothetical imperative” tells what to do to get a certain result. Equivalently, it says what is the “right” thing to do to achieve that result. Insofar as achieving that result is the sole end in view, wondering what is the right thing to do to achieve it just is: wondering what to do. Insofar as it is the sole end in view, deciding what is the right thing to do to achieve it is simply deciding what to do. Something's being the right thing to do to achieve a certain goal does not, of course, guarantee that it actually will succeed in achieving that goal: the meaning is only that, in the existing circumstances, it is more apt to achieve the goal than any available alternative.

J'emprunte le titre de cette étude au stock des slogans révolutionnaires répétés dans les rues de Paris lors des journées mémorables de mai 1968.

Que signifiait au juste ce slogan pour ceux qui l'employaient à l'époque? Il n'est pas facile de le dire avec précision. On devine néanmoins qu'il exprimait la revendication que fin soit mise à l'usure et à la sclérose supposées du régime en place, par l'invention de nouveaux modes d'action, de gouvernement, de lois, peut-être, et d'institutions inédites.