There is a natural view of nonsense, which owes what attraction it has to the apparent absence of alternatives. In Frege and Wittgenstein there is a view which goes against the natural one, and the purpose of this paper is to establish that it is a possible view of nonsense.

What is one to make of Sartre's treatment of his waiter in one of his famous analyses of bad faith? The example is supposed to be an obvious one, but the more we examine it, the less obvious it becomes. Let us remind ourselves of Sartre's example:

Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with a recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.

Descartes thought that belief was a voluntary matter. His account of error in the Fourth Meditation is based on this. Given his account of what it is to have a true idea he thought that our false beliefs could be accounted for by the fact that while our intellectual capacity is limited our capacity for willing is unlimited, and so allows us to give our assent to what we do not truly perceive. Spinoza, on the other hand, thought that the intellect and will cannot be separated in such a way, and urged that ‘In the mind there is no volition or affirmation and negation excepting that which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves’ (Ethics, Pt. 2, Prop. 49). One philosopher, S. Hampshire, sees this distinction between Descartes and Spinoza as one of the dividing lines of philosophy (Thought and Action, p. 155). Yet it is not easy to see wherein the division lies.

What is often called Descartes' dream problem (‘How do I know that I am not now dreaming?’) should perhaps be called Plato's dream problem instead. Certainly it can be found in Plato's Theaetetus at 158b–c. It can also be found in Cicero (Academica 2.27.88) and, through Cicero's influence, in much of the work of St Augustine.

Like theories of punishment, theories of reverse (positive) discrimination can usefully be divided into forward-looking (teleological) ones and backward-looking (compensatory/retributive) ones. One example of the former type of theory is Dworkin's, who defends the policy on the ground that it will (perhaps) produce ‘a more equal society’. Another is Sher's, who defends it on the ground that it increases equality of opportunity. This essay is an examination of the latter type of theory. Compensatory discrimination is related, then, to discrimination thus: discrimination is the genus, of which reverse discrimination is a species, of which compensatory discrimination is a sub-species. It will be convenient to proceed by examining successively the ideas of discrimination, of compensation, and of compensatory discrimination.

Philosophers have taken some salutary exercise in recent years—notably in this journal—on the question of the rights of non-human animals and the obligations of human to non-human individuals and species. In so contentious an area there has been striking unanimity on two aspects. One of these is that, irrespective of the merits of the arguments on specific issues, this is a matter which is bound to affect the conduct of our lives. The other is that, other things being equal, it is prima facie wrong to be cruel to animals.