Even today, apologists for modernist and post-modernist architecture frequently appeal to what, following Sir Karl Popper, I will call historicist arguments. Such arguments have a particular poignancy when they are used to justify the replacement of some familiar part of an ancient city with some intentionally untraditional structure; as, for example, when a familiar nineteenth century block of offices in a prime city site is swept away to make room for something supposedly more fitting to the ‘new millennium’, a ‘twentieth century contribution to monumental architecture’, a building ‘of substantial importance to the present age’. Similarly, those architects or consumers of architecture who fail to conform to whatever stylistic demands the age is held to demand are marginalized in many supposedly serious discussions of architecture, and made to feel out of place and out of time.

The biblical injunction to love one's neighbour has long been regarded as a central pillar of morality. It is taken to be an ideal which gives direction to our moral aspirations, even though most of us find it difficult to live up to, owing to our selfish natures. But the difficulties I wish to raise are of a logical kind, as distinct from those depending on personal character. They fall under three headings: the first concerns the scope of ‘my neighbour’, the second the injunction to love, and the third the idea of loving oneself. The first will probably be the most familiar.

Over the last three decades the sexual morality of many Western societies has changed beyond recognition. Most of the prohibitions which made up the traditional, extremely restrictive outlook on sex that reigned supreme until the fifties–the prohibitions of masturbation, pre-marital and extra-marital sex, promiscuity, homosexuality–are no longer seen as very serious or stringent or, indeed, as binding at all. But one or two traditional prohibitions are still with us. The moral ban on prostitution, in particular, does not seem to have been repealed or radically mitigated. To be sure, some of the old arguments against prostitution are hardly ever brought up these days; but then, several new ones are quite popular, at least in certain circles. Prostitution is no longer seen as the most extreme moral depravity a woman is capable of; but the view that it is at least seriously morally flawed, if not repugnant and intolerable, is still widely held. In this paper I want to look into some of the main arguments in support of this view and try to show that none of them is convincing.

A psychoanalyst is said to provide the real explanation of a person's behaviour; an explanation which the person has arrived at with the help of a psychoanalyst. The person was not aware of the real character of his behaviour. It may have exhibited unconscious thoughts, beliefs, motives, intentions and emotions. In his paper ‘The Unconscious’, in Mind 1959, Ilham Dilman says, ‘What those who talked of “Freud's discovery of the unconscious” had in mind is a group of innovations which “the founder of psycho-analysis” brought to bear on the study of the human mind’ (p.446). I have ten questions concerning the relation of this ‘group of innovations’ to human behaviour.

In trying to reach some view regarding the philosophical exchanges that went on between F. H. Bradley and William James at the turn of the century, it is in some respects tempting to endorse Bradley's view that ‘our differences may perhaps on the whole be small when compared with the extent of our agreement’. Indeed, in most of the articles, letters and books in which the debate between these two men was carried on, one finds the protagonists claiming to be mystified as to the grounds of the dispute, and to see no great distinction in their respective outlooks.

At the end of the opening chapter of his Second Treatise of Government, Locke describes political power in the following terms: ‘Political Power then I take to be a Right of making Laws with Penalties of Death, and consequently all less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws, and in the defence of the Common-wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only for the Publick Good.’

David Stove's sarcastic dismissal of sociobiology rests on a false dilemma.

Cuckoos lay their eggs in reed-warbler nests, and the large gape of cuckoo chicks so readily triggers the feeding reflex of the adult warbler that the warbler chicks go underfed. However, argues Stove, the cuckoos (or the cuckoos' genes) are ‘manipulating’ the warblers, getting them to feed cuckoo chicks, only if the cuckoos (or their genes) consciously intend their behaviour to have this effect: ‘The moon causally influences the tides, but it cannot manipulate them…. [C]ausal influence plus resulting advantage are not enough to constitute manipulation. The causal influence must also be purposeful and intended.’