According to rationalist conceptions of moral agency, the constitutive capacities of moral agency are rational capacities. So understood, rationalists are often thought to have a problem with feeling. For example, many believe that rationalists must reject the attractive Aristotelian thought that moral activity is by nature pleasant. I disagree. It is easy to go wrong here because it is easy to assume that pleasure is empirical rather than rational and so extrinsic rather than intrinsic to moral agency, rationalistically conceived. Drawing on underappreciated elements of Kant’s moral psychology, I sketch an alternative form of rationalism, according to which moral activity is by nature pleasant because at least some pleasures are by nature rational.

In recent years Jaegwon Kim has propounded and elaborated an influential theory of events. He takes an event to be the exemplification of an empirical property (or n-adic attribute) by a concrete object (or several concrete objects) at a time. He also has proposed and endorsed a version of the “Humean” tradition concerning causation: the view that causal relations between concrete events depend upon general "covering laws." But although his explication of the covering-law conception of causation seems quite natural within the framework of his theory, it gives rise to a serious problem: in numerous garden-variety instances of causation, the Humean conditions (as Kim specifies them) are not satisfied. In this paper I shall suggest a way to modify Kim's theory of events in order to reconcile it with his treatment of causality.

It is has been argued that there is a problem with moral testimony: testimony is deferential, and basing judgments and actions on deferentially acquired knowledge prevents them from having moral worth. What morality perhaps requires of us, then, is that we understand why a proposition is true, but this is something that cannot be acquired through testimony. I argue here that testimony can be both deferential as well as cooperative, and that one can acquire moral understanding through cooperative testimony. The problem of moral testimony is thus not a problem with testimony generally, but a problem of deferential testimony specifically.

It is widely thought among philosophers that Joseph Butler’s criticism of psychological egoism in his Sermons is, in the words of A.E. Duncan-Jones, ‘the classic refutation of it.’ Indeed, no less a philosopher than David Hume restated and put forth Butler’s central argument against hedonistic egoism — without due credit — as part of his own critique. Yet recent commentators have begun to question Butler’s arguments, albeit usually with sympathy and in the hope of saving what they take to be his insights. I propose to focus on Butler’s main objection to hedonistic psychological egoism, to show how and why it fails to refute plausible forms of the thesis, and briefly to indicate why philosophical attempts to disprove this theory of motivation are misguided. I will assume a basic familiarity with Butler’s psychological theory and ethics, and I must refrain from discussing important related topics, e.g., the ‘friendliness’ of self-love to conscience, benevolence, and particular affections.

An important objection to sententialist theories of attitude reports is that they cannot accommodate the principle that one cannot know that someone believes that p without knowing what it is that he believes. This paper argues that a parallel problem arises for propositionalist accounts that has gone largely unnoticed, and that, furthermore, the usual resources for the propositionalist do not afford an adequate solution. While non-standard solutions are available for the propositionalist, it turns out that there are parallel solutions that are available for the sententialist. Since the difficulties raised seem to show that the mechanism by which sentential complements serve to inform us about attitudes and about sentence meaning does not depend on their referring to propositions, this casts doubt on whether talk of propositions should retain a significant theoretical role in the enterprise of understanding thought, language and communication.

In this discussion I consider one aesthetic issue which arises from certain intimate relationships between art and nature. The background to these relationships can be traced to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes factors of considerable importance in the history of the aesthetic appreciation of nature such as the eighteenth century infatuation with landscape gardening and the continuingly influential role of landscape painting. Here, however, I concentrate on these relationships only as exemplified in a contemporary phenomenon – environmental art. By environmental art I mean both the earthworks and earthmarks of artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, and Dennis Oppenheim and certain structures on the land such as those of Robert Morris, Michael Singer, and Christo. Some paradigm cases are Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970), Heizer's Double Negative (1969-70), Singer's Lily Pond Ritual Series (1975), and Christo's Running Fence (1972-76).

Perhaps the most venerable objection to Descartes’ Meditations is the charge that Descartes argues in a circle when he tries to show that his clear and distinct perceptions are true. Arnauld and others raised this objection to Descartes himself, and Descartes’ reply to them, far from clearing the matter up, seems to be entirely unresponsive to their criticism. There has since grown an enormous literature about what is often called the Cartesian Circle, partly because in interpreting the work of someone as important as Descartes we feel obliged to try to read him so that he is not making a patent blunder, and partly because seeing whether a project like Descartes’ is doomed from the start is of intrinsic philosophical interest. But the size of this literature alone suggests how complex and difficult the interpretative and philosophical issues surrounding the Circle are.

Many, I suspect most, philosophers of action afford intentions a central role in theorizing about action and its explanation. Furthermore, current orthodoxy in the philosophy of action has it that intentions play a causal role with respect to the etiology and explanation of action. But action theory is not without its heretics. Some philosophers have challenged the orthodox view. In this paper I will examine and critique one such challenge. I will consider David-Hillel Ruben's case against the need for intentions to play a causal role in the etiology and explanation of mental actions. Contra Ruben, I will defend the orthodox view that intentions play an indispensable causal and explanatory role with respect to mental actions.

Epistemologists have profited from studies of the ways in which ‘know’ is ambiguous. We can also profit by studying the ways in which ‘know’ is vague. After classifying sources of vagueness for ‘know,’ I spend the second section examining theories of vagueness. With the exception of the theory that vague predicates are incoherent, which I try to refute, we need not take a stand on a particular theory to show that the vagueness of knowledge has substantive epistemological implications. The third section supports the thesis through a survey of ways in which appeals to vagueness can be applied to the field's issues. First, I show how higher order vagueness is evidence against the KK thesis, the incorrigibility of sense data, and the completability of epistemology. An interesting resemblance between infinity and vagueness provides the point of departure for the next type of application. For this resemblance suggests a new way of handling apparently infinite belief structures. The approach is illustrated with an analysis of common knowledge. The third type of application concerns the ways in which disguised sorites creep into our thinking about knowledge. In addition to brief illustrations concerning naive holism, question begging, and an objection to incorrigibilism, I provide more detailed illustrations involving Jonathan Adler's sceptical appeal to epistemic universalizability, the prediction paradox, and William Lycan's objection to Gilbert Harman's social knowledge cases. I conclude with some general remarks on the lessons to be learned from the vagueness of knowledge.

Spinoza semble adopter une position pleinement nominaliste lorsqu'il discue des notions universelles dans YEthique, mais on y trouve aussi plusieurs arguments ou, semble-t-il, des universaux sont presupposes. La solution avance par plusieurs commentateurs, y compris Haserot, est que le systeme spinoziste est d'inspiration platoniste, et qu'il faut reinterpreter les passages d'apparence nominaliste pour les accorder avec le platonisme ou l'essentialisme. J'argumente qu'un tel procede n'est justify ni par le texte ni par la structure du systeme de Spinoza. L'interpretation du spinozisme que je propose le place dans le cadre logique du nominalisme contemporain, k l'instar du systeme de Nelson Goodman, par exemple.

Well, why not, for heaven's sake? A speech impediment, perhaps. Imagine a cross between a severe lisp and a roar. That would be difficult to understand. But not impossible. The claim is that we could not understand him. Very well, who are we?

Perhaps we are the English speakers. Of course what we could understand would depend upon which language the lion spoke. I couldn't understand him, for example, if he spoke in Basque or Hittite or Old Icelandic. If he spoke in Spanish or German, I might be able to puzzle out a few words. But I don't understand anyone who speaks in Basque or Hittite or Old Icelandic. I have friends who do, however.

Of course, he might speak in Lion, in the language of the lions. That would indeed be difficult to understand. I don't even have any friends who speak in lion. So perhaps then we could not understand him. (Perhaps then lions do speak—in the language of the lions. Would that be worth looking into?) So we should need to learn the language of the lions.

In its earliest stages the macroscopic properties of a human embryo are merely those of a few-celled organism, not so very different from (say) a fly embryo. If all goes well, however, it will eventually develop into a human infant. Expectation of such future development leads to the absolutist view that from the moment of conception the zygote has the same moral status as an infant. When the absolutist view is based on this expectation, I shall say it is based on a potentialist intuition that sees fetal development as the unfolding of a pre-established essence. This intuition was expressed by a Tennessee judge dealing with a custody case concerning frozen embryos, who claimed that ‘the entire constitution of the man is clearly, unequivocally spelled-out, including arms, legs, nervous system and the like ....’ Singer and Dawson put the potentialist picture (with which they disagree) in these terms: ‘The development of the embryo inside the female body can be seen as a mere unfolding of a potential that is inherent in it.’

Richard Rorty sings in the antifoundationalist chorus. His song equates the rise of foundationalist epistemology with the professionalization of philosophy. The discordant notes he finds in the foundationalist score become, as a consequence, subversive of philosophy as an autonomous discipline.

Nonetheless, the most salient feature of Rorty's recent book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is that it is by a professional philosopher, for professional philosophers and about the future of philosophy as a profession. The early chapters of the book are polished pieces of professional philosophical prose addressed to issues which have provoked interest in recent years among members of academic philosophy departments. They represent efforts to undermine foundationalist epistemology even in some of its currently fashionable guises as philosophy of language.

Our understanding of classical mechanics (CM) has undergone significant growth in the latter half of the twentieth century and in the beginning of the twenty-first. This growth has much to do with the explosion of interest in the study of nonlinear systems in contrast with the focus on linear systems that had colored much work in CM from its inception. For example, although Maxwell and Poincaré arguably were some of the first to think about chaotic behavior, the modern study of chaotic dynamics traces its beginning to the pioneering work of Edward Lorenz (1963). This work has yielded a rich variety of behavior in relatively simple classical models that was previously unsuspected by the vast majority of the physics community (see Hilborn 2001). Chaos is a property of nonlinear systems that is usually characterized by sensitive dependence on initial conditions (SDIC). In CM the behavior of simple physical systems is described using models (such as the harmonic oscillator) that capture the main features of the systems in question (Giere 1988).

When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves; and has his judgement warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue. History keeps in a just medium betwixt these extremes, and places the objects in their true point of view. The writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and, at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to pervert their judgment.

I offer Jimmy a dollar to wiggle his ears. He wiggles them because he wants the dollar and, as a result of my offer, thinks he will earn it by wiggling his ears. So I cause him to believe something that explains, or helps to explain, why he wiggles his ears. If I push a button, and a bell, wired to the button, rings because the button is depressed, I cause the bell to ring. I make it ring. Indeed, I ring it. So why don’t I, by offering him a dollar, make Jimmy wiggle his ears? Why, indeed, don’t I wiggle them? If I ring a bell by pushing a button, why don’t I wiggle Jimmy’s ears by offering him a dollar?

That is a question that has always vexed a compatibilist’s vision of human freedom. If an intentional act–say, wiggling one’s ears in order to earn a dollar–is caused by one’s beliefs and desires (the reasons one has for wiggling one’s ears), then, by the transitivity of the causal relation, it appears to follow that it is (also) caused by whatever causes one to have those beliefs and desires. But the causes of belief and desire are often (in fact, if we trace the causal chain far enough backward, always) factors over which one has no control. So intentional behavior is often (or always) something one is made (caused) to do by factors over which one has no control. This, however, robs intentional behaviorand, presumably, also voluntary action–of its autonomy. Deliberate acts–Jimmy wiggling his ears to earn a dollar–have the same causal structure as does a bell that rings because a button is pushed. The only difference is the switch.

It is a common view among philosophers of language that both propositions and sentences are structured objects. One obvious question to ask about such a view is whether there is any interesting connection between these two sorts of structure. The author identifies two theses about this relationship. Identity (ID) – the structure of a sentence and the proposition it expresses are identical. Determinism (DET) – the structure of a sentence determines the structure of the proposition it expresses. After noting that ID entails DET, the author argues against DET (and therefore also against ID). This argument is based on considerations to do with unarticulated constituents, but it is not ultimately empirical. As well as answering a question suggested by contemporary theories of propositions, the conclusion is significant because some, but not all, of the theories of propositions currently popular entail ID and/or DET. Unless there is a response to the argument here, those theories are refuted.

In acting intentionally, it is no accident that one is doing what one intends to do. In this paper, I ask how to account for this non-accidentality requirement on intentional action. I argue that, for systematic reasons, the currently prevailing view of intentional action – the Causal Theory of Action – is ill-equipped to account for it. I end by proposing an alternative account, according to which an intention is a special kind of cause, one to which it is essential that it represents its effect.

The Equal Weight View holds that, when we discover we disagree with an epistemic peer, we should give our peer’s judgment as much weight as our own. But how should we respond when we cannot tell whether those who disagree with us are our epistemic peers? I argue for a position I will call the Earn-a-Spine View. According to this view, parties to a disagreement can remain confident, at least in some situations, by finding justifiable reasons to think their opponents are less credible than themselves, even if those reasons are justifiable only because they lack information about their opponents.