I examine Spinoza's claim in the Metaphysical Thoughts (CM) that the attributes of God are only distinguished by a distinction of reason. I contend that for Spinoza essential attributes, such as Thought or Extension, cannot be distinguished by Francisco Suarez's distinction of reasoning reason, as Martin Lin (2019) suggests, nor can he be using Suárez’ distinction of reasoned reason for this purpose, as Yitzhak Melamed (2017) believes. Since reasoning reason and the distinction of reasoned reason are the only two kinds of rational distinction available to Spinoza, it follows that for him the distinction between God's essential attributes in the CM cannot be a distinction of reason. But I show that Spinoza is not mistakenly using Suarez's distinction in the CM. Rather, I argue, Spinoza consistently follows Suárez and uses reasoned reason to distinguish between God's necessary properties and not between God's essential attributes.

Notwithstanding the burgeoning literature on death, philosophers have tended to focus on the significance death has (or ought/ought not to have) for the one who dies. Thus, while the relevance one's own death has for others (and the significance others' deaths have for us) is often mentioned, it is rarely attributed any great importance to the purported real philosophical issues. This is a striking omission, not least because the deaths of others – and the anticipated effects our own death will have on those we leave behind – are normally of great importance outside the confines of academic philosophy. In this paper I want to do three things: (i) argue that philosophers' treatment of death tends to distort the issue (Sections I–III); (ii) outline some of the ways others' deaths figure in how we assess our own mortality (Sections IV–V); and (iii) raise some general questions about the value of ‘theorising’ death (Section VI).

The philosophy of perception currently considers how perception relates to action. Some distinctions may help, distinguishing object perception from perceptual recognition, and both from that-perception. Examples are seeing a man, recognising a man, and seeing that there is a man. Perceiving an object controls self-location by its recognising an object, which depends on memory of how it looks, controls looking for it and interacting with it, or not, and that-perceiving controls saying that an object exists. Perception controls action. Milner and Goodale, Jacob and Jeannerod, and Noë are considered.

In his autobiography, Mein Leben, Wagner tells us that it was partly his reading of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), and the need to give ‘rapturous expression’ to the ‘frame of mind produced’ by that reading, that gave him the initial conception of Tristan and Isolde.

Many authors have argued that emotions serve an epistemic role in our moral practice. Some argue that this epistemic connection is so strong that creatures who do not share our affective nature will be unable to grasp our moral concepts. I argue that even if this sort of incommensurability does result from the role of affect in morality, incommensurability does not in itself entail relativism. In any case, there is no reason to suppose that one must share our emotions and concerns to be able to apply our moral concept successfully. Finally, I briefly investigate whether the moral realist can seek aid and comfort from Davidsonian arguments to the effect that incommensurability in ethics is in principle impossible, and decide that these arguments are not successful. I conclude that the epistemic role our emotions play in moral discourse does not relativize morality.