Philosophy is now in its 77th year. It likes to think of itself as still sprightly in approach and open-minded in content. Nevertheless it has a burden of history and of expectation, and it has an academic level to maintain. Even though it strives, as always and unlike some of its contemporaries, to be written for the most part in a language recognizable as English and to address topics of genuine human interest, its reputation defends on its being recognized as a leading journal of philosophy in the academic world.

So it is a pleasure to welcome, in April 2002, a sister periodical, called simply Think. Like Philosophy, Think will be published under the auspices of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. It will do some of the educational things the Royal Institute of Philosophy was originally set up to do, but cannot be done in an academic journal such as Philosophy. Think will consist, for the most part, of short articles of genuine philosophy, but they will be articles accessible to any who are prepared simply to think. In particular, Think will aim to interest young people, including the increasing numbers who now take philosophy as part of the school curriculum, but who may have little or no knowledge of academic philosophy.

Think is not a magazine. Its pages will not contain philosophical gossip or anecdote. These are not unworthy activities, even in a philosophical context, but there are other places for them. Even where imaginative in presentation, and even though they need not have the originality and depth expected in an academic journal, the articles in Think will be recognizably philosophical in tone and ambition. Think's articles will aim, simply, to make their readers think philosophically, in the best possible way, and to think about topics which are recognizably philosophical.

Not that Think will eschew controversy. Its authors will, from time to time, defend controversial positions, and will provoke equally controversially replies. And if at times the opinions expressed in Think have a younger or more radical feel to them than those characteristically expressed in its older and more venerable relation, that is as it should be, and all a proper part of the role of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Though written several years earlier, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has had quite a vogue since September 11th. Philosophers of history, however, will recognize its themes as a re-hash, albeit a timely re-hash, of the eighteenth century dispute between the universalism and optimism of the enlightenment and the cultural relativism and pessimism of Herder.

Instead of Voltaire and Diderot in the eighteenth century, in 2002 we have what Huntington calls Davos people, after the annual World Economic Forum meeting in that place. Those who go to Davos include many of the top businessmen, bankers, government officials and opinion formers in the world. They and their kind control most international institutions, most of the world's finances and many governments. They believe in individualism, market economies and political democracy.

There is nothing wrong with these beliefs or with holding them. Problems arise when, in enlightenment fashion, Davos people think of these beliefs not just as universal in content but as universally believed in. For though Davos people control much of the world and form political elites in many countries inside and outside the West, outside the West they and their ideas find favour with probably less than one per cent of the world's population. As Huntington puts it this provokes a typically Herderian reaction: ‘The non-Wests see as Western what the West sees as universal. What Westerners herald as benign global integration, such as the proliferation of worldwide media, non-Westerners denounce as nefarious Western imperialism. To the extent that non-Westerners see the world as one, they see it as a threat.’

And not only non-Westerners. Much of the success of so-called far right and nationalist movements in Western Europe is undoubtedly due to a Herderian reaction within the West to globalization and federalism, and much of the anger implicit in that reaction is stoked by the complacency of the Davos people.

There is indeed nothing wrong with Davos beliefs in themselves, at least nothing that would convict those who hold them of any nefarious or sinister motives. Nor is there anything wrong with the more general enlightenment belief in a universal human nature and a universal standard of morality. The difficulty is to hold this and cognate beliefs, while recognizing that they may not be universally shared, and understanding and even respecting the sensibilities of those who might not share them. In the minds of those who disagree, failure on this point will transform what is supposed to be a liberating faith in universal human rights into an instrument of oppression. But how can one respect what one believes is wrong and even harmful, while not acceding to the very relativism one's commitment to universal truth would strenuously contest—and for the best of philosophical reasons?

We are no nearer to solving this problem on a philosophical level than were our predecessors two hundred years ago. But if Huntington and other observers of the world scene are right, its solution is more urgent now than it has ever been.

Blowing people up in the shopping centre of Warrington or of a provincial Irish town, or in a Jerusalem restaurant, flying planes full of people into heavily populated skyscrapers or centres of government, massacring defenceless villagers simply because they belong to another tribe. These are certainly hate crimes, that is, crimes fuelled by hate. For most of us the hate and the crime, when we watch such events unfold, are unimaginable. We cannot imagine what it is which can drive people in our time to do such things.

Terrorism must be outlawed once and for all, we think, surely rightly. Yet we are unsure how to do it. But there is a vague feeling that some of this terrorism arises from violent differences of belief, and from people being driven by their beliefs to kill those of other beliefs. But again, as liberals, we do not know how to handle this thought.

There are, it seems, 30 or more philosophical societies in Britain. Some, such as the Aristotelian Society or the Mind Association, are mostly for professional philosophers, but of all stripes. Others, such as the Royal Institute of Philosophy, are for anyone interested in philosophy, whether professional or, in the best sense, amateur—that is, not paid for their philosophy. Then there are those smaller, but by no means unworthy bodies, which cater for interest in some special branch of philosophy, such as phenomenology or philosophy of religion or of science. There are societies for European philosophy, for the history of philosophy, for applied philosophy, for women in philosophy, and for much else besides.

If not exactly chaos, it all testifies to a real and possibly fruitful diversity in the British philosophical world. But in the last year or so, leading figures in many of the societies have been meeting to discuss forming an umbrella organization to encompass the whole lot. Whether this umbrella is to provide shelter for philosophers from squalls raining down on us from above, or whether it is for some other purpose, is not entirely clear.

That there are squalls, at least for those teaching the subject in universities and elsewhere is clear. Teachers everywhere, from universities to primary schools, suffer from a deluge of managerial irrelevance, much of it apparently predicated on the latest managerial nostrum. According to the Government's own guru of ‘delivery’, managers no longer need to ‘win hearts and minds’, but should rather push through short term measures for long term gains, come what may. We have little idea what this means, but it sounds unpleasant. There may well be a case for an Association to speak with one voice on behalf of a profession which needs a degree of freedom from management in which to teach and to think, and which is increasingly called on to respond as a profession to managerial initiatives.

But not, we would hope, to speak with one voice on anything else. A one voice philosophy is a contradiction in terms, even were there only one philosopher. Nor does philosophy need a slate of people to speak to the media and the general public. It would be too much like a list of officially licensed authorities where there should be no authority. And it will not work anyway. Good producers and editors will continue to consult the philosophers they know and like, just as they always have.

The concept of consciousness has been the source of much confusion over the past two decades. Current orthodoxy in ‘consciousness studies’ has it that the key to understanding the concept of consciousness is to grasp the idea of qualia. But the appearance of mystery here is the product of conceptual confusion. There is nothing to ‘the qualitative character of experience’ beyond the individual character of a specific experience and how the subject felt in undergoing it, and here there are no mysteries beyond empirical ignorance and conceptual mystification.

Given as an address to the American Philosophical Association on the occasion of its centennial, this paper examines the character and standing of American philosophy now and at the outset of the twentieth century as seen (then and now) from a British point of view. A century ago Britain was itself the unquestioned leader of Anglo-Saxon thought. Now, however, as in so many areas, the US is the pre-eminent world power. This status brings prestige and various benefits but it also carries responsibilities. In considering the latter I recall some virtues of an earlier generation of American philosophers, especially as they were possessed by William James.

Mary Kate McGowan

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. She works in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. Forthcoming articles include ‘Gruesome Connections’ in Philosophical Quarterly and ‘Privileging Properties’ in Philosophical Studies.

Anthony Skillen

Recently retired as lecturer in the Philosophy Department of the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Charles D. Tarlton

Professor of Political Science at the University of Albany. In recent years he has written on Locke, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. He is currently engaged in an analysis of the structural ambiguities of Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondaments de l'inegalité parmi les hommes.

Stephen J. Boulter

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. His research areas include the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science and medieval philosophy.

Gabriele De Anna

A tutor in the Philosophy Department at St Andrews and research fellow at the University of Padua, Italy. He has published papers in American, British and Italian journals and is the author of the forthcoming book, Realismo Metafisico e Rappresentazione Mentale (Padua: Il Poligrafo).

Roy Sorensen

Roy Sorensen seeks Fame and Fortune as a Dartmouth College philosophy professor. He is the author of Blindspots, Thought Experiments and Pseudo-Problems, and most recently Vagueness and Contradiction.

David Beisecker

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has published articles in the philosophy of mind and language, with an eye towards writing a book on the metaphysics of mind and meaning.

Here are two widespread responses to Kant's categorical imperative. On one hand, one might note the absence of detailed rational derivation. On the other hand, even someone who maintains some skepticism is likely to have a sense that (nevertheless) there is something to Kant's central ideas.

The recommended solution is analysis of elements of the categorical imperative. Their appeal turns out to have different sources. One aspect of the first formulation rests on the logic of normative utterances. But others can be justified only in terms of their contributions to desirable functionings of a moral order.

In what follows, I motivate and clarify the controversy over metaphysical realism (the claim that there is a single objective way that the world is) by defending it against two objections. A clear understanding of why these objections are misguided goes a considerable distance in illuminating the complex and controversial nature of m-realism. Once the complex thesis is defined, some objections to it are considered. Since m-realism is such a complex and controversial thesis, it cannot legitimately be treated as inevitable unless, of course, there are no viable alternatives to it. For this reason, a brief defense of non-realist metaphysics is offered. Since m-realism is both controversial and substantive, a commitment to it requires both explicit recognition and sustained defense.

It is argued that there is much to be said for a fairly standard interpretation of the thesis that colour, unlike shape, is a subjective or phenomenal property of objects. But if this fairly standard thesis fails to do justice to the ‘objective’ aspect of colour, and justice in this regard is called for, then it is argued we can settle for less; we can settle for the strategy of ‘dividing the spoils’ between subjective and objective accounts. But it is also argued that if we do settle for this, we need to realise that the same ‘egalitarian’ division cannot be made in application to the primary properties. And that it is argued is the insight at the heart of the traditional account.

In an influential paper, Peter Singer claims that affluent people have a strong obligation to relieve famine. If they fail, they allow others to die, and makes them murderers. In responding to this outrageous claim, which has given uneasy conscience to many, I show that Singer is engaged in indefensible moralizing that substitutes bullying for reasoned argument and gives a bad name to morality.

Anselm is commonly credited with two a priori arguments for God's existence, the non-modal argument of Proslogion 2 and a modal argument some find in Proslogion 3. But his Reply to Gaunilo contains a third. The argument as Anselm gives it has flaws, but they are not fatal, and its main premise can serve as the basis of a simpler, stronger argument.

The article seeks to function as a cluster of reminders of the rich, robust and subtle place of ‘our’ concept of beauty—hence of its contrasts. It illustrates this through everyday life examples as well as through criticism of writings that, in apparent embarrassment about using the idea, seek to supplant it with something less suspect. The article seeks to show the concept of beauty at work not only in art but, as Plato urged, in human action and reaction at all levels, as well of course in nature. I try to sketch an epistemology of sensibility and a logic of beauty as a more-or-less topic neutral concept attaching to whole, hence individual and perhaps unique situations.

A significant ontological commitment is required to sustain metaphysical realism—the view that there is a single, objective way the world is—in order to defend it from common sense objections. This involves presupposing the existence of properties (or tropes, or universals) and relations between them which define the objective structure of the world. This paper explores the grounds for accepting this ontological assumption and examines a sceptical argument which questions whether, having assumed the world is objectively divided into fundamental properties, we could ever know which properties these are. It then assesses the responses available to the metaphysical realist, arguing that the sceptical difficulty cannot merely be dismissed by means of another assumption in the manner of radical scepticism, as David Lewis suggests, but that the sceptic's argument might be defused by the non-question-begging success of some form of strong scientific realism which links the predicates of our scientific theories directly to the fundamental properties the world contains. It remains unclear however whether this widely accepted metaphysical theory can find principled philosophical support.

Insulation is a noticeable phenomenon in the case of most non-Pyrrhonian sceptics about human knowledge. A sceptic is experiencing insulation when his scepticism does not have any effect on his common sense beliefs, and his common sense beliefs do not have any effect on his scepticism. I try to show why this is a puzzling phenomenon, and how it can be explained. It is puzzling because insulation seems to require blindness to one's own epistemic irresponsibility and irrationality, while the sceptic presumably cares a lot about being epistemically responsible and rational. Insulation can be explained by means of a notion of philosophical detachment: to be detached from one's own beliefs about the world is to take an other-personal position towards those beliefs, treating them as if they are another person's beliefs. It is because of this that the sceptic's scepticism is insulated from his scepticism because he cannot be detached from his beliefs about the world when he is engaging in everyday, practical activities. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of the generality of the problem of insulation.

Dummett in his recent paper in Philosophy replies in the negative to the question, “Is time a continuum of instants?” But Dummett seems to think that this negative reply entails giving an alternative theoretical account; he nowhere canvasses the possibility that there is something amiss with the question. In other words, Dummett thinks that he still has to reply to the question, “What (then) is time?”

I offer no answer whatsover to such ‘questions’. Rather, I ask what it could possibly mean to say that time is (e.g.) a continuum of instants (and by extension, whether it can mean anything at all to assert that it isn't).

In the course of doing so, I suggest that Dummett's ‘Anti-Realism’ is invariably a form of Realism, just a subtly inconsistent form. Anti-Realism keeps the fundamental metaphysical picture of Realism intact. Anti-Realism still thinks that there is a Reality...settling whether Realism or Anti-Realism is correct! ‘Anti-Realism’ is never anti-Realist enough.

The paper outlines and explores a possible strategy for defending both the action/omission distinction (AOD) and the principle of double effect (PDE). The strategy is to argue that there are degrees of actionhood, and that we are in general less responsible for what has a lower degree of actionhood, because of that lower degree. Moreover, what we omit generally has a lower degree of actionhood than what we actively do, and what we do under known-but-not-intended descriptions generally has a lower degree of actionhood than what we do under known-and-intended descriptions. Therefore, we are in general less responsible for what we omit than for what we do—which is just what AOD says. And we are in general less responsible for what we do under known-but-not-intended descriptions than for what we do under known-and-intended descriptions—which is just what PDE says.

This paper constitutes a suggested route through the well-trodden minefield that is Mill's proof of Utilitarianism. A deductive course—tramping gamely straight across from an egoistic psychological hedonism to a disinterested ethical hedonism—would seemingly be the most hazardous route across the terrain. Thus, it has become standard policy amongst guides to advise readers of Utilitarianism that this is a route which Mill neither needs nor attempts to take. I shall argue that in travelling down this route one can avoid the dangers with which it is usually associated and I shall tentatively suggest that one may find oneself following Mill's footsteps in doing so.

The argument is currently made that hunting seriously compromises the welfare of the hunted animal, in a way that is morally unacceptable. The paper presents a theory of animal minds, and a theory of our duties of care towards members of other species. It goes on to examine what is meant by compromising welfare, discusses the crucial concept of stress as this concept features in animal welfare science, and explores the conditions under which stress becomes distress. The argument moves towards the conclusion that there are conditions under which distress inflicted by a human being is morally unacceptable, but that these conditions are not met by the normal methods of hunting with hounds, even though they are frequently met by shooting and trapping.

Machiavelli's much advertised science of politics turns out, in the long run, to falter. Machiavelli's various stratagems for controlling political outcomes are workable a small percentage of the time at best. Unpredictability works continually against the theory of practical action. A large part of Machiavelli's adaptation to this deficiency is to turn at many crucial moments, to the unambiguous and startling clarity of murder as a political instrument. It is this central position of murder that helps to account for worrying guiltiness that sticks to The Prince despite many years of efforts to soften the book's message. In the final analysis, one might even suggest that a kind of erotic fascination lurks within the book's texture of murder.