Contemporary moral philosophy and much contemporary moralizing almost radiate respect for persons. Thomas Nagel is one of many who take its primacy for granted. In a review of Scanion he says:

Many others take the centrality and foundational role of such respect as a given. This is a big change from the days when moralists held that all human beings deserved a certain basic and equal disrespect.

Throughout his mature writings, Berkeley speaks of minds as substances that underlie or support ideas. After initially flirting with a Humean account, according to which minds are nothing but ‘congeries of Perceptions’ (PC 580), Berkeley went on to claim that a mind is a ‘perceiving, active being … entirely distinct’ from its ideas (P 2). Despite his immaterialism, Berkeley retains the traditional category of substance and gives it pride of place in his ontology. Ideas, by contrast, are ‘fleeting and dependent beings’ (P 89) that must be supported by a mental substance. There is no doubt that Berkeley's conception of the relationship between minds and ideas is non-traditional, but that fact does not undercut his commitment to the traditional conception of substance.

Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained: Jackson (1982), (1986); Levine (1983), (1993), (2001); McGinn (1991); Sturgeon (1994), (2000); Chalmers (1996), (1999). Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form of ontological dualism (Jackson, 1982; Chalmers, 1996), whereas others argue that no such entailment holds (Levine, 1983; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994). In the other main camp, there are people who argue that a reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness is possible in principle (Block and Stalnaker, 1999), and yet others who claim, moreover, to have provided such an explanation in practice (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Tye, 1995,2000; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000).

This paper argues that if epistemological contextualism is correct, then not only have knowledge-ascribing sentences context-sensitive truth conditions, certain comparative and superlative constructions involving ‘know’ have context-sensitive truth conditions as well. But not only is there no evidence for the truth of the latter consequence, the evidence seems to indicate that it is false.

The position I aim to criticize has been defended by, most notably, Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, and David Lewis. While the contextualist theories offered by these authors differ in their details, the problem to be presented seems to arise irrespective of these details. And though in most of the illustrations below I rely on Lewis's account, I could have made essentially the same points in terms of any of the other accounts.

In so many of his epistemological writings, Aristotle defends a sensible flavor of gradualism about our cognitive capacities: we Start with the partial grasps afforded by what is better known to us, and if things go well, we end up with understandings of those objects better known by nature. The picture is of a step-wise process, rather than a transforming moment of illumination.

In a difficult passage in Metaphysics IX, however, Aristotle introduces a kind of cognition which admits of no more or less, no better or worse. With respect to simples (ta asuntheta), Aristotle Claims, knowing is like touching — there is contact, or there isn't. Put differently, for simple objects, what is necessary for thinking of them at all is sufficient for grasping them completely. For this reason, Aristotle sees error about simples as impossible: any successful thinking about them will be such as to preclude error. The only possible mistakes are failures even to have them in mind.

Innocence is a notion that can prove controversial. Claims of innocence typically support not imposing burdens on the innocent when their conduct is relevantly unobjectionable. This paper examines innocence in the context of violent conflict between states or groups. Many thinkers about the morality of such violence want to establish a principle that would protect innocent civilians. Yet the common view in just war theory does not affirm the moral innocence of civilians. Similarly, the common view that soldiers have an equal right to kill does not affirm their equal moral culpability.

Talk of innocence usually Starts from the idea that a kind of moral appraisal makes sense. We assume that persons can be innocent or not by virtue largely of the choices they have made. I will accept this assumption and set aside metaphysical doubts about our capacity for freedom. There is, of course, no issue of moral innocence if in fact we cannot be morally responsible for our actions.

Berkeley's Principles is a curious work. The nominal topic is epistemic. The actual topic is ontological. And it is not uncommon to suggest that ‘Berkeley's System presents us with unique puzzles, particularly at its foundation.’

If, as many commentators suggest, Berkeley's principal arguments for idealism are weak, this might suggest that we are approaching his works from a set of assumptions Berkeley did not share. In this paper I explore such a possibility.

The volitional theory of human action has formed a basis for a prominent account of voluntary behavior since at least Aquinas. But in the twentieth century the notions of will and volition lost much of their popularity in both philosophy and psychology. Gilbert Ryle's devastating attack on the concept of will, and especially the doctrine of volition, has had lingering effects evident in the widespread hostility and skepticism towards the will and volition. Since the 1970s, however, the volitional theory has received some renewed interest in the philosophy of action.

When a debate seems intractable, with little agreement as to how one might proceed towards a resolution, it is understandable that philosophers should consider whether something might be amiss with the debate itself. Famously in the last Century, philosophers of various stripes explored in various ways the possibility that at least certain philosophical debates are in some manner deficient in sense. Such moves are no longer so much in vogue. For one thing, the particular ways they have been made have themselves undergone much critical scrutiny, so that many philosophers now feel that there is, for example, a Quinean response to Carnap, a Gricean reply to Austin, and a diluting proliferation of Wittgenstein interpretations.

Among the current topics in Hume scholarship witnessing an upsurge in attention, few can match the inherent complexities associated with his doctrine of space, that of ten neglected and occasionally maligned theory put forth in Book I, Part II, of the Treatise.Yet despite this increase in academie interest, Hume's concept of spatial magnitude — i.e., the spatial size or magnitude of visible and tangible figures — as opposed to his more generai notion of space, has not attracted the same degree of attention. Even if commentators agree that Hume took the idea of space to be an idea derived from ‘the impressions of color'd points, dispos'd in a certain manner’ (T 1.2.3.3), this fact does not teil us what measures the distance between these impressions (perceptions), or what psychological processes and empirical properties are involved in the act of determining size or magnitude. If one bears in mind that the concept of spatial magnitude is also intimately connected with the status of geometry, and the debate on whether Hume endorsed a synthetic or analytic a priori account of geometrical knowledge, the failure to study exhaustively Hume's concept of distance becomes all the more astonishing.

Recently, Paul Horwich has developed the minimalist theory of truth, according to which the truth predicate does not express a Substantive property, though it may be used as a grammatical expedient. Minimalism shares these Claims with Quine's disquotationalism; it differs from disquotationalism primarily in holding that truth-bearers are propositions, rather than sentences. Despite potential ontological worries, allowing that propositions bear truth gives Horwich a prima facie response to several important objections to disquotationalism. In section I of this paper, disquotationalism is given a careful exegesis, in which seven known objections are traced to the disquotational Schema, and two new objections are raised. A version of disquotationalism which avoids two of the seven known objections is recommended. In section II, an examination of minimalism shows that it faces eight of the nine objections facing disquotationalism, plus a new objection.

Frederic Fitch's celebrated reasoning to the conclusion that all truths are known can be interpreted as a reductioof the claim that all truths are knowable. Given this, nearly all of the proof's reception has involved canvassing the prospects for some form of verificationism. Unfortunately, debates of this sort discount much of the philosophical import of the proof. In addition to its relevance for verificationism, Fitch's proof is also an argument for the existence of God, one at least as strong as the traditional demonstrations. Perhaps unlike other such proofs, Fitch's also operates as a key lemma in a proof that (if sound) establishes that God can't exist.

While the implications of Fitch's proof are thus very important for our understanding of key concepts in the philosophy of religion, they are also relevant to the proof's traditional reception. With these results, I am able to provide a principled motivation for Neil Tennant's recent defense of a restricted form of verificationism.

Scorned by analytic philosophers for much of the twentieth Century, the a priori has been newly befriended in recent years. This development is healthy but there is reason to be concerned about how it is unfolding. In particular, it is largely characterized by a certain historical myopia: contemporary philosophers are able to see back to Kant but not much beyond him. While it may be true that the a priori changed with Kant, this in itself provides us with a reason to go back before him. For other conceptualizations of the a priori, all but forgotten now, might help us to meet worries about it that Kant's familiar version cannot.

In philosophy of mind, there is functionalism about mental states and functionalism about mental contents. The former — mental State functionalism — says that mental states are individuated by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental states. The latter — usually called functional or conceptual or inferential role semantics — says that mental contents are constituted by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental contents (and in some versions of the theory, with things in the environment). If we add to mental State functionalism the popular view that mental states have their content essentially, then mental state functionalism may be seen as a form of functional role semantics and a solution to the problem of mental content, namely, the problem of giving a naturalistic explanation of mental content. According to this solution, the functional relations that constitute contents are physically realized — in a metaphysically unmysterious way — by the functional relations between mental inputs, outputs, and the mental states bearing those contents.

How we understand Descartes's physics rests on how we interpret his ontological commitment to individual bodies, and in particular on how we account for their individuation. However, Descartes's contemporaries (notably, Cordemoy and Leibniz) as well as contemporary philosophers (notably, Kenny and Garber) have seen Descartes's account of the individuation of bodies as deeply flawed. In the first part of this paper, I discuss how the various problems and puzzles involved in Descartes's account of the individuation of bodies arise, and the relevance of these problems for his physics. With an eye toward resolving these puzzles, I argue for an interpretation of the Cartesian ontology in which bodies are not individuated by motion but, instead, are mind-dependent. As part of this reading, I demonstrate the sense in which we can clearly and distinctly perceive bodies, and also the senses in which the real, conceptual, and modal distinctions apply to them.

In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically Quine's version of empiricism. In doing so, Bealer identifies three fundamental principles of Quine's empiricism. First, the principle of empiricism states that:

Second, the principle of holism states that:

Can an effective argument against scepticism about objective values be modelled on Donald Davidson's familiar argument against scepticism about external things?

Davidson evidently thinks so. He has long been on record as maintaining that a theory of interpretation must be ‘unified’ in the sense that it cannot merely solve f or beliefs and meanings but must simultaneously solve for desires as well. And he has made it quite clear that he thinks a theory of interpretation can do this only by subjecting attributions of desires to a ‘principle of charity’ analogous to the principle that he claims must govern attributions of beliefs. Since his argument against external world scepticism is in large part powered by his claim that charity must govern attributions of beliefs, his feeling that charity must likewise govern attributions of desires might appear to commit him to a similar argument against value scepticism.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues for two principles that concern magnitudes. The first is the principle that ‘All intuitions are extensive magnitudes,’ which appears in the Axioms of Intuition (B202); the second is the principle that ‘In all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree,’ which appears in the Anticipations of Perception (B207). A circle drawn in geometry and the space occupied by an object such as a book are paradigm examples of extensive magnitudes, while the intensity of a light is a paradigm example of an intensive magnitude. These principles justify and explain the possibility of applying mathematics to objects of experience. The Axioms principle also explains the possibility of any mathematical cognition at all.

In this paper I offer an interpretation of Malebranche's conception of ideas. This is no easy matter. Malebranche says so many different things about ideas that it is daunting to try to weave them all together. To make matters worse, some of the things he says are not very clear. Worse still, some of the things he says are not obviously consistent with each other or with other Malebranchean doctrines. It is not surprising, therefore, that his account of ideas came under attack from the beginning, and continues to be attacked to this day. It is with trepidation, then, that I offer any interpretation at all. It is with even greater trepidation that I suggest that this interpretation affords Malebranche a clear and coherent theory of ideas, one that is consistent with the rest of his philosophy, has its primitives in the right places, and may even satisfactorily address the common charges laid against him.