If someone abstains from meat-eating for reasons of taste or personal economics, no moral or philosophical question arises. But when a vegetarian attempts to persuade others that they, too, should adopt his diet, then what he says requires philosophical attention. While a vegetarian might argue in any number of ways, this essay will be concerned only with the argument for a vegetarian diet resting on a moral objection to the rearing and killing of animals for the human table. The vegetarian, in this laense, does not merely require us to change or justify our eating habits, but to reconsider our attitudes and behaviour towards members of other species across a wide range of practices.

Colin Turnbull's book The Mountain People has aroused much non-academic as well as much academic interest. The success of The Ik, Peter Brook's recent stage adaptation of the book, shows how widespread this interest is. The interest centres on Turnbull's anthropological descriptions of his life with the Ik people. The Ik society is one in which the weak, the old and the children are left to fend for themselves and die. Help proffered to the needy is frowned upon. Food is snatched from the mouths of the old, medicine stolen from the sick, and children left to feed and house themselves at about the age of three. Sexual codes no longer exist, cruelty is thought amusing, and the weak and dying are exploited. Turnbull believes that he has discovered a people without morality; a society that previously possessed a moral code, but which lost it.

Arthur Prior is perhaps best known for his contributions to the philosophy of time. I shall argue here that his views about reference are not easily reconciled with his views about time, and suggest that his views about existence and his acceptance of some dubious Cartesian epistemological principles led him to increasingly bizarre and counter-intuitive claims about the sufficient conditions for successful reference to particulars. First he seems to have claimed that we cannot refer to individuals which no longer exist; then that we can refer only to individuals which stand in a direct perceptual relationship to us; and finally that one can really only talk about oneself. In this paper I shall trace the development in Prior's thought which led him to this extraordinary conclusion.

A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false (Tractates Logico-Philosophicus, 2.21).

What does this agreement consist in, if not in the fact that what is evidence in these language games speaks for our proposition? (On Certainty, 203).

The purpose of this paper is to outline a constructivist account of the notion of sense and to indicate why such an account is to be preferred to that given by classical semantics.

In part I of this paper I defend Locke's account of personal identity against three well-known objections; in part II, I put forward a criticism of my own.

It is a welcome development when academic philosophy starts to concern itself with practical issues, in such a way as to influence people's lives. Recently this has happened with one moral issue in particular—but infortunately it is the wrong issue, and people's actions have been influenced in the wrong way. The issue is that of the moral status and treatment of animals. A number of philosophers have argued for what they call ‘animal liberation’, comparing it directly with egalitarian causes such as women's liberation and racial equality and suggesting that, if racism and sexism are rationally indefensible, so is ‘speciesism’. If one ought to give equal consideration to the interests of all human beings, then, so they daim, one must on the same grounds and in the same way recognize that ‘all animals are equal’, be they human or non-human. We believe that this assimilation of ‘animal liberation’ to human liberation movements is mistaken.

What force has the Argument from Design—the attempt to argue to Design, and hence to God, from various alleged signs of it in Nature?

Some preliminary points. First: To establish the reality of God need not be to prove that there exists an actual person meriting that name. Many theologians, for example P. Tillich, have denied that God is any manner of existent. On a fairly simple and attractive interpretation, their view is that ‘God’ names the principle that ethical requirements are creatively powerful. In previous papers I tried to make sense of this principle: there is much that can be said for it. So when talking of ‘design’ I am not presupposing anything as specific as an actual designer.

Much debate in contemporary metaphysics of time has centred on whether or not tense is essential to the understanding of a temporal reality. The rival positions in this debate are associated with two very different pictures of the relationship between time and existence. Those who argue for the dispensability of tense see the phenomenon of tense as an epistemological accretion which infects our perception of the world but is in no way essential to a complete description of reality. With respect to existence, things past and future are supposed to be on an equal footing with things present. Thus the Quinean ‘time slice’ ontology, which sees the world as a four-dimensional entity in space-time, repudiates any ontological significance to the differences between past, present and future. For the Quinean, what differences we see between past, present and future existents pertain to our limited mode of access to reality. In a perception which grasped the world as it really is tense differences would have no place. In this respect the Quinean position resembles Spinoza's claim in the Ethics that in so far as the mind conceives a thing under the dictates of reason it is affected equally, whether the idea be of a thing future, past or present.

It is notorious that great philosophers are apt to be misunderstood. Controversy rages about their work, and sometimes they are credited with completely contradictory views. Consider the sharply contrasted opinions of Plato's political thought by Sir Karl Popper, on the one hand, and G. C. Field and H. B. Acton on the other.

Non-human animals are as a matter of routine used as means to human ends. They are killed for food, employed for labour or sport, and experimented on in the pursuit of human health, knowledge, comfort and beauty. Lip-service is paid to the obligation to cause no unnecessary suffering, but human necessity is interpreted so generously that this is a negligible constraint. The dominant traditions of Western thought, religious and secular, have provided legitimation of the low or non-existent moral status of beasts. The rival tradition, which includes the Neo-Platonists, Plutarch and Montaigne, is eccentric and archaic. But the teleologies and hierarchies of orthodoxy are equally incredible now and owe their greater respectability and influence to the inertia of custom. Disregard for beasts is supported partly by the vestigial and unowned belief that they are intended for our use, partly by a more recent piece of lore which is not only thought to be compatible with, but is sometimes held to be integral to, an enlightened scientific outlook, namely that beasts are mere complex stimulus—response mechanisms. The latter is a vexatious obstacle to progress but despite that the state of scientific and philosophical knowledge is now enormously more propitious for a re-appraisal of the moral status of beasts. Two moral philosophers, Peter Singer and Stephen Clark, have recently published books in which such a re-appraisal is attempted. Here I try to compare and assess some of the main features of their very different approaches.

The question why we are ‘bound’ by moral requirements is as old as it is fundamental. Its interest is both practical and theoretical. Its practical interest comes out in this way: nothing is easier—at least on occasion—than to disregard the restraints imposed by morality. In submitting to them we must often forgo what we would otherwise desire. A man may have sacrificed much in the interests of ‘behaving well’. He may wish therefore to know whether his sacrifice has been foolish. It is only reasonable to ask why we are ‘bound’, if indeed we are. Scepticism on this point is not merely playful. We want to know the reason (at least in outline) for accepting moral restraints. I say ‘at least in outline’ because just as it may be reasonable to act on your doctor's advice although you do not understand his reasons in detail, so it may be reasonable to accept advice on some moral matter although you do not understand its justification in detail.

It is obvious that two contingent statements, each of which denies the existence of something, can be inconsistent with one another: for example, ‘There are no non-black ravens, and there is at least one raven’, and ‘There are no black ravens’. But it is also obvious that these two statements are inconsistent only because one of them, as well as denying the existence of something, asserts the existence of something. The mere denials of existence, ‘There are no non-black ravens’ and ‘There are no black ravens’, are consistent with one another. (Both of them would be true if there were no ravens at all.) Indeed, it must hold quite generally that two contingent statements cannot be inconsistent, where each is a mere denial of existence in the sense that it denies existence and does not also assert existence. For in order to be inconsistent with a mere denial of existence, a second statement must assert existence, whatever else it may do; and if it asserts existence, it is not itself a mere denial of existence.

I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.

Most of us believe that we are entitled to treat members of other species in ways which would be considered wrong if inflicted on members of our own species. We kill them for food, keep them confined, use them in painful experiments. The moral philosopher has to ask what relevant difference justifies this difference in treatment. A look at this question will lead us to re-examine the distinctions which we have assumed make a moral difference.

To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher. Yet according to the standard interpretaion, this is just what Descartes did believe. He held, we are informed, the ‘monstrous’ thesis that ‘animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind’. The Standard view has been reiterated in a recent collection on animal rights, which casts Descartes as the villain of the piece for his alleged view that animals merely behave ‘as if they feel pain when they are, say, kicked or stabbed’. The basis for this widely accepted interpretation is Descartes' famous doctrine of ‘animal machine’ (‘bête-machine’); a doctrine that one critic condemns as ‘a grim fortaste of a mechanically minded age’ which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’.

Some of my best friends are women, but I would not want my sister to marry one of them. Modern-minded persons criticize me for manifesting such out-dated prejudices, and would like to send me to Coventry for a compulsory course of reindoctrination. They may be right. It could conceivably be the case that in due course the Sex Discrimination Act will be tightened up, even to the extent of our recognizing that there are no ‘good reasons why the State should not recognize contracts which are in all respects like marriage, except for the sex of the parties concerned’. We can envisage a society so enlightened that the relations between men and women will be purely platonic and it will be a matter of no concern whether two people are members of the opposite sex or not: or, alternatively, our feelings could be so completely homogenized, that it will make no difference to an emotional relationship whether Leslie and Julian have only one Y-chromosome between them, or two, or none at all. In that event I shall be shown to be wrong, and my critics entitled to erect a monument to female equality on my grave. But I have doubts, and suspect that long after I am dead men will go on falling in love with women and women will continue to find their hearts wooed and won by men. And this fact, if it is a fact, makes a profound difference to our social institutions. I want to follow out the logic of social differentiation, relying as little as I can on putative facts about the differences between the sexes. Scientifically attested knowledge is scarce in this field. Many academics take refuge in a safe suspension of judgment, but this is a craven dereliction of duty. We have yet to develop an adequate theory of knowledge in social matters, and only by thrashing out the apparently telling arguments on this and similar issues can we clear our minds about the nature of social knowledge. Moreover, if those who might argue rationally draw back from doing so, they leave the field clear for others who suffer from fewer inhibitions and fewer scruples. And finally, serious social consequences can follow from public confusion about the logic of a situation, and what things are possible and what desirable. There is a danger that in our attempts to remedy the real wrongs done to women we shall only succeed, as with much modern legislation, in making a bad case worse.

In everyday arguments we often meet with such phrases as ‘That's rational, it is mere common sense’ used in conjunction to approve of or back up some particular statement. The juxtaposition of these everyday locutions embodies a profound truth, the truth, namely, that the basis of rational communication between human beings is plain common sense. I call this point profound because it has been missed in all the discussions about rationality and its basis that I know; certainly its elusiveness thus seems to indicate that participants in these discussions have not delved deeply enough. But I concede that this truth is simple and obvious, and conclude, therefore, that it has been overlooked only because its very obviousness has been taken, wrongly, to indicate superficiality and inadequacy. In suggesting that it is neither superficial nor inadequate I shall be relying on Wittgenstein's interpretation of Moore's ‘Defence of Common Sense’, to which I shall be adding a particular twist of my own.

Did Wittgenstein think that language-games have presuppositions? He sometimes speaks as if he thought that they do, at other times as though he thought that they do not. For examples, in On Certainty 110, after pointing out that the business of giving grounds for what we say has to come to an end sometime, he remarks, ‘but the end is not an ungrounded presupposition’; whereas, in 115, after warning us that if we try to doubt everything we shall not get as far as doubting anything, he gives as his reason ‘the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty’. It is of some importance for a correct understanding of Wittgenstein to clear up this apparent contradiction.

This paper is divided into three sections. The first presents some examples of the killing/letting die distinction. The second draws a further distinction between what I call negative and positive cases of acting or refraining. Here I argue that the moral significance of the acting/refraining distinction is different for positive and for negative cases. In the third section I apply the above distinction to euthanasia, and argue that mercy killing should be regarded as analogous to positive rather than negative cases. On the basis of this, I then support active rather than passive euthanasia.

In Philosophy 51, October 1976, 471–472, Professor Tom Regan takes ud to task for our attack on Kant's theory concerning the moral status of animals. The ground of Regan's criticism is that ‘… it is clear that Kant does not suppose, as… Broadie and Pybus erroneously assume that he does, that the concept of maltreating an animal, on the one hand, and, on the other, the concept of using an animal as a means, are the same or logically equivalent concepts’ (p. 471). Regan argues that Kant does not say that we should avoid treating animals as a means. Rather, he claims, Kant's view is that we have an indirect duty not to maltreat animals, since in maltreating them we treat, or run the risk of treating, as a mere means rationality in ourselves or in others.