In Chapter V of Res Cogitans, Zeno Vendler argues that any analysis of “x knows that p” that has “x believes that p” in the analysans is incorrect. The reason he gives is that the “that p” in “x knows that p” is not the same grammatical object as the “that p” in “x believes that p”. As Vendler puts it, there are thats and thats. The view that there are two kinds of “that” clause, one which follows “know” and another which follows “believe”, is attacked by O.R. Jones in his article “Can One Believe What One Knows?”.

Four years ago, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada asked Professor T.H.B. Symons, an historian and a former President of Trent University, to undertake a study of “the state of teaching and research in various fields of study relating to Canada at Canadian Universities.” The first two volumes of his report have now been published under the title To Know Ourselves. In his Preface, the President of the AUCC observes that few reports commissioned by his organization have been more eagerly awaited by the university community. That is the ideology of Cloudcuckooland. In reality that community, except that part of it that comprises deans and their assistants and the assistants to the assistants of deans, awaits no report of any body with eagerness: it awaits them rather as our forefathers looked forward to the annual descent of the passenger pigeon, and believes that reading and writing reports unfits a person for teaching and scholarship. But this report is one that takes notice of what we are doing and not doing and urges us to change our ways, and the aspects of our practice it considers are ones which in any case a responsible teacher will from time to time pass under review. Others will read the report, if we do not, and will ask themselves and us how we stand on it: it will become part of the background against which we are judged. So it seems fitting to use this occasion to say something about the report, “Though for no other cause, yet for this: that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream…”. It is the occasion, and no skill or interest of the speaker, that determines the subject; for by an unhappy accident the office that goes with this address is filled this year by one who has concerned himself less with public policy than any of his recent predecessors. But if the occasion thus leads the speaker to mouth ignorant and disconnected platitudes instead of philosophizing to some purpose, that in itself may serve either to point Professor Symons' moral or to exemplify the bad effects of reports on academic life.

… [T]he question “valuable to what end?” is one of extraordinary complexity. For example, something obviously valuable in terms of the longest possible survival of a race (or of its best adaptation to a given climate, or of the preservation of its greatest numbers) would by no means have the same value if it were a question of developing a more powerful type. The welfare of the many and the welfare of the few are radically opposite ends.

There is no question that genetic engineering in many forms… will come about. It is a general rule that whatever is scientifically feasible will be attempted. The application of these technics must, however, be examined from the point of view of ethics, individual freedom and coercion. Both the scientists directly involved and, perhaps more important, the political and social leaders of our civilization must exercise utmost caution in order to prevent genetic, evolutionary and social tragedies.

One result of the protracted and inconclusive contemporarydebate over the merits of a materialist theory of mind is that philosophers have been prompted to explore new and credible alternative theories. Campbell's “new epiphenomenalism” is one of these, and Goldman's conception of mental and physical events as “simultaneous nomic equivalents” is another. After a brief introductory discussion of materialism, I shall examine and assess these views. My path leads back, tentatively, to materialism, via a critical look at the main reasons given by Campbell and Goldman for abandoning it.

Even philosophers who are unsympathetic to Thomistic philosophy generally agree that Etienne Gilson is one of the important philosophers of this century. Those who have had the privilege of meeting or hearing Gilson also know him as a man of charm, wit, and integrity. These qualities, combined with his erudition, have made Gilson one of the intellectual leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. And there is probably much truth to the claim of his student, Pégis, that, “[N]on-Catho1ic readers have seen in him a ‘liberal’ Catholic scholar, which is a remarkable tribute…”. I have long been an admirer of Gilson's work, and so I was deeply disturbed and saddened by certain passages about Jews and Jewish philosophy in Gilson's autobiographical book, Le Philosophe et la Théologie. The remarks to which I refer are in the second chapter of this book, which has been translated into English by his daughter, Cécile; and were they the remarks of a minor professor, they would not merit any attention whatsoever. But because they are the remarks of a wise man, of one of the most influential thinkers of the century, they merit a consideration which for one reason or other they have not as yet received. My aim here is to show that certain of Gilson's views on Jews and Jewish philosophy are misconceptions; and though what I say here is mainly intended for Roman Catholic readers, some of the points I make will also be of interest to non-Catholics.

A teacher announces to his students that he intends to give them a surprise examination. That is, on one of the next five (let us say) days he will give them an examination and they will not know which particular day it will be. He wants it to be a surprise, and so if on the morning of the examination the students can display knowledge that it will be that day he will cancel the examination. A bright student claims that the examination is impossible. Clearly it cannot be saved for the last day, for there would certainly be no surprise then. But similarly it cannot be given on the second last day, because if it was not given on the first three days, then on the morning of the fourth day the students, knowing that it cannot be given on the last day, would be able to predict that it must be the fourth day and so there is no surprise. And so on. At which point the teacher either forgets about the examination, or else, perhaps more wisely, goes on with his plan to have a surprise examination and succeeds.

Socrates argues in the Republic that a certain condition of soul is both best for its possessor and the source of just or right action towards others. He calls this condition ‘justice’, but in order not to beg the question I shall refer to it as the prescribed condition. I shall not be concerned in this paper with the first half of Socrates' thesis, but only with the way the prescribed condition of soul expresses itself in action. A number of questions arise here, for Socrates' conception of just action extends beyond the common understanding to include the performance of that social function for which one is fitted by nature. I shall disregard this extension, however, and restrict myself to one crucial question: what grounds are there of a non-analogical kind for the assertion that a person whose soul is in the prescribed condition will never act in a way which would be agreed by Socrates and the vulgar to be wrong?

Le principe de non-contradiction a depuis très longtemps étéreconnu comme le principe le plus fondamental de la pensée rationnelle. II est facile de l'énoncer sous sa forme symbolique: – (P.–P). Ce principe pose que quelqu'un ne saurait affirmer en même temps une proposition et sa négation. Pour que ce principe ne demeure pas une exigence vide, il faut en outre que l'on puisse déterminer avec précision quelles sont les conditions de son application. Cette détermination des conditions d'application d'un principe commence par la recherche des moyens par lesquels il est possible de démarquer, dans le champ de son application, ce qui en respecte l'énoncé de ce qui n'en respecte pas l'énoncé. Or si rien n'est plus facile que de formuler un précepte, rien, appa-remment, n'est plus difficile que de tracer une ligne nette entre ce qui se conforme au précepte et ce qui le transgresse. Bien qu'il soit l'assise la plus profonde de nos raisonnements, le principe de non-contradiction ne fait pas exception à ce constat. Son énoncé fait sans doute l'unanimité mais il est assez rare que l'on s'accorde, en dehors des disciplines formelles, sur ce qui constitue l'occurrence d'une contradiction. Cet accord sur ce qui constitue ou non l'exemple d'une contradiction m'apparaît faire défaut d'une façon particulièrement marquée en philosophic Cette situation pose un double problème.

Cet article veut présenter une approche épistémologique assez différente de celles qui sont les plus répandues aujourd'hui. Une approche moins formelle, sans doute plus phénoménologique. On s'apercevra qu'elle ne vient pas en contradiction avec ces épistémologies plus formelles, mais qu'elle permet un debut de reponse aux questions ou objections que plusieurs se posent au sujet de la portee cognitive des théories scientifiques. Wittgenstein, par exemple, s'est montre fort insatisfait des explications «illusoires» des sciences (Tract., 6.371–2), alors que plusieurs de nos contemporains se detournent de ce mode de connaissance, jugé trop formel et vide.

Nous avons l'habitude de dire «le moi», «le soi». Nous utilisons l'article pour nominaliser le pronom personnel. Quel sens peut avoir l'expression nominale ainsi obtenue?

Elle paraît très ambiguë. Car en disant «le moi» nous transformons le mot indicateur en être indiqué, le signe en objet, le signifiant en signifié, comme si le geste de se désigner soi-même devenait à son tour un nouvel être. Il ne faut pas confondre la mention et l'usage du pronom personnel. Il peut être allégué par un tiers sans être assumé par le locuteur.

Behaviour which is said to be motivated primarily or exclusively by unconscious desires and beliefs has created especially troublesome problems for action theorists. Those philosophers who have been captivated by the reason-cause, explanation description distinctions have tended to construe “neurotic” behaviour as something very much apart from “normal” behaviour, — something so different that neurotics, on such a theory, seem to be turned from actors or agents who do things into victims who are compelled by “causes” to “act” (to move?) in ways that are unconnected with their conscious mental lives. R. S. Peters argues, for example, that “Freud thought his explanations relevant only to phenomena which can hardly be called actions in that they seem either to have no point or conscious objective or to fall short of standards of correctness.” Peters takes the behaviour of a married man who suddenly makes an advance to a choir boy as illustrative: “It is because things seem to be happening to him that it is appropriate to ask what made, drove, or possessed him to do that. The appropriate answer in such cases is in terms of a causal theory.” So Freud, Peters has it, appeals to unconscious motivation only in cases where the purposive rule-following model breaks down. To behave neurotically, then, is not, on this interpretation, to act at all.

Il semble que, surtout dans les pays de langue anglaise influencés par un idéal industriel, un assez grand nombre de phi-losophes, nouveaux Pygmalions sans le savoir, aient caressé le rêve pourtant glacial d'une logique toute mécanique, qui organiserait le savoir en se substituant à la pensée. Le désir de transporter en philosophie les victotres sans réplique du calcul et de la technicité, où le génie humain se dissimule mais se sent sûr de soi comme un dieu, le culte de l'objectivité rationnelle joint au scepticisme sur l'Esprit et à ce genre d'aversion qu'on pourrait appeler misopsychie, car il s'y mêle la crainte de l'erreur et l'antipathie pour les royaumes du coeur ou de l'imaginaire, ont contribué à enfanter et à répandre, entre autres choses, ce nouveau « rêve de pierre » hélas sans beauté! Que serait une « science sans conscience »? N'est-ce pas là une notion aussi contradictoire, et même dont 1'objet s'avère plus radicalement impossible, que celle d'un carré-rond? Néan-moins quand on parcourt la litterature contemporaine sur le sujet, on serait en droit de conclure qu'un assez grand nombre de philosophies, qui cependant passent leurs journées ou leurs veilles à s'in-terroger sur les conditions de la science, ont cessé de se le demander.

Dans la seconde partie de son Prologue au Commentaire du premier livre des Éléments d'Euclide, Proclus, un néo-platonicien du Ve siècle après J.-C., a donné sur Platon un jugement qui semble avoir été accepté d'une façon assez unanime par les anciens, lorsqu'il écrit: «Après eux [Hippocrate de Chios et Théodore de Cyrène] vécut Platon qui fit prendre aux Mathématiques en général, à la Géométrie en particulier, un essor immense, grâce au zèle qu'il déploya pour elles, et dont témoignent assez ses écrits tout remplis de discours mathématiques, et qui, à chaque instant, éveillent l'ardeur pour ces sciences chez ceux qui s'adonnent à la philosophie». Les historiens modernes de la géométrie grecque ont dû nuancer ce jugement de Proclus, allant même jusqu'à parler de légende à propos des prétendues découvertes géométriques de Platonz. De fait, il semble que l'essor des mathématiques et de la géométrie au IVe siècle av.

Cet article a pour but de faire connaître au lecture une approche théorique de la réalité physique différente de celle communément admise depuis les débuts de la science physique. On y montre d'abord comment l'approche traditionnelle traite avec une notion de l'événement physique et des étres physiques en ǵenéral qui laisse systématiquement de côté ces éléments de complexité considérés trop facilement comme superflus, mais qui appartiennent à la réalité physique et en constituent la trame. On proposera alors une nouvelle approche qui s'avérera complémentaire de l'approche traditionnelle, en mettant en jeu la notion d'événement singulier, caractérisé par son unicité dans l'espace-temps tout comme un fait historique muni de toute sa richesse factuelle qui est la base de son individualité.

Keith S. Donnellan and, independently, Saul Kripke have presented counterxamples to that fregean theory of proper names associated with Strawson, Searle and others. As well, Donnellan has put forward a rival theory to the Fregean one. It is not fully worked out, and is obscure; but it is not empty and, in contrast to Kripke's positive account of names, is not meant to be a mere “picture”.

Dans les débats suscités par les écrits de Thomas Kuhn, je me suis intéressée au caractère habituellement non thématisé d'une objection levée contre sa théorie des paradigmes, ainsi qu'au caractère ambigu de la réfutation que lui apporte Kuhn. L'objection porte sur le rapprochement abusif que la théorie des paradigmes opérerait entre l'homme de science et l'homme ordinaire, comme si pour Kuhn la science relevait du bon sens. De son côté, et en dépit de la fréquence de ses références à l'homme ordinaire, Kuhn déclare que cette interprétation de sa théorie n'est pas pertinente.

Quelle est la structure du désir et comment le petit d'homme en vient-il à éprouver le désir pour un objet? Freud s'était posé la question et la théorie du complexe d'Oedipe était une pièce essentielle de sa réponse. R. Girard estime que Freud s'est trompé et que la théorie du désir mimétique, elle, fournit une solution au problème. Je retiendrai trois thèses centrales de la théorie de Girard. Après les avoir situées dans leur contexte pour en saisir correctement le sens, je dirai en quoi, à mon avis, ces thèses ne répondent pas à la question de Freud. Je distinguerai trois moments dans la formation du sujet désirant, moments que je mettrai en rapport avec la structuration de la psyché. À la situation oedipienne, il faut opposer un temps pré-oedipien et un temps post-oedipien; ce dernier implique la résolution de l'Oedipe. Je montrerai que le concept d'étayage permet à Freud de comprendre la genèse du désir à partir du besoin tout en marquant la spécificité du désir par rapport au besoin. Au dire de Girard, Freud a pressenti la nature mimétique du désir. L'usage qu'il fait de la notion d'identification le montre bien. Mais cette intuition n'arrive pas à porter tous ses fruits car Freud soutient par ailleurs une thèse qui contredit la première, à savoir que la libido est directement fixée sur la mère.

I think I am not alone in being troubled on whether existen-tial self-verifyingness and performative self-verifyingness are really two distinct concepts, or what the difference exactly between them is supposed to be as they are utilized by Hintikka in his celebrated analysis of Descartes' cogito argument. My attempts to classify and clarify some permutations on these concepts may therefore be of general interest, given the acknowledged importance of Hintikka's analysis.

In recent papers Fred Sommers and Michael Lockwood have independently argued that the distinction between the ‘is’ of predication and the ‘is’ of identity (henceforth: the IP-distinction) is not well-founded. This claim is somewhat obscure since, on the theories they advocate, it is not only still possible to distinguish between the ‘is’ of predication and the ‘is’ of identity, but important to do so on pain of turning good arguments bad. Sommers' way of putting it, namely that we don't need identity, is no better. Of course we don't need identity since, in second-order quantification logic, identity is definable in terms of predication. Perhaps the best way of putting their point is by means of Sommers' claim (op. cit. p. 500) that identity statements can be formalized by monadic relations. We can therefore mark the IP-distinction by the essentially polyadic nature of identity.

Pour notre excuse, Quine est un auteur difficile. Si la version française de Word and Object (en abrégé WO), annoncée chez Payot, est correcte, elle rendra service, car il est malaisé de lire Quine dans le texte.