Central to R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history, and among the most controvrsial of his doctrines, is the contention that historical understanding requires a re-anactment of past experience or a re-thinking of past thought. Some critics have found this contention in it-self incoherent or otherwise unsatisfactory, even as applied to what Collingwood apparently regarded as paradigm cases of historical thinking: for example, accounting for Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in terms of his political ambitions. Others, while accepting the applicability of notions like re-enactment and re-thinking to such cases, have nevertheless rejected them as a basis for a general theory of historical understanding on the ground that their range of application is too narrow to encompass anything like the normal concerns of historians. In particular, these notions have been held to throw little light on what historians have had to say about largescale social events, conditions and processes.

“Marxists,” Eugene Kamenka has written, “have failed to develop an original or comparatively coherent view of ethics that can be ranked as a type of ethical theory finding its natural place beside utilitarian ethics, ethical intuitionism, existentialist ethics, or even Greek ethics.” This judgment, that Marxism has no theory of ethics or no coherent one or that if it does have a coherent theory that theory is just a version of some type of ethical theory that is independent of Marxism, seems supported by various recent philosophical discussions of Marx or Marxism and morality. Thus, Marx himself has been taken to be everything from a moral skeptic or relativist to an ethical intuitionist to a utilitarian to a proponent of a quasi-Aristotelian morality based on a notion of the function of man.

Any organised society needs some method for determining common policy: public decisions must be forged from private preferences, and particular interests must find a reconciliation in the general good. A society is tolerable only if its decisions are reached by a rational path; for, just as a reasonable man decides his private life on the basis of reasonable procedures, so a reasonable society must formulate its communal behaviour on the basis of reasonable principles. If the Principle of Rationality is violated, society collapses into an anarchic tohubohu, governed by naked power or arbitrary caprice.

In this essay I shall try to show that the egoist's inability to avoid the Prisoners’ Dilemma is not a reason for rejecting egoism. In the first section I shall outline the Prisoners’ Dilemma and indicate why the egoist cannot avoid the dilemma. In the next section I shall consider an argument against egoism based upon an appeal to our intuitions as to what is rational. And in the final section I shall consider the argument that egoism is not self-supporting and so is not an adequate conception of rationality.

But first a few words should be said about what is meant by egoism here. The egoist is commonly thought of as someone who acts from selfinterest. This is in keeping with the present use of the term as long as ‘self-interest’ is not understood in a too narrow a fashion. Perhaps a Jess misleading way of characterizing the egoist, though, is as someone who tries to maximize his happiness - i.e., he is an individual utility maximizer.

Locke's division between primary and secondary qualities in chapter viii of Book II of the Essay is a hardy philosophical perennial which has weathered centuries of misrepresentation. Gradually, however, a new dawn in Locke scholarship is breaking, in the light of which it transpires that the importance and interest of the dichotomy belongs not to classical philosophy of perception but to philosophy of science. The excellence of current Locke exegesis, however, should not blind us to the fact that recent readings are in urgent need of supplementation: and one aim of this paper is to show how this might be achieved.

There are some Marxist moral philosophers who think that a distinctive and defensible ethic can be unearthed from Marx's writings. The task of unearthing it must, of course, be kept distinct from the task or elaborating and defending it. Professor Aronovitch undertakes both tasks in his paper, but he does not always succeed in keeping them apart. As a result, I believe, damage is done to the exegetical side of his project.

The question of whether there is a Marxian ethic is a problem both of textual interpretation and of moral philosophy. Consider, for instance, the claim that Marx has an ethic whose centrepiece is a principle of selfrealization. It is an exegetical problem to provide evidence that a principle of self-realization is to be found in Marx and to explain how he understands it.

Husser believed that Kant's great attempt to achieve and to understand the viewpoint of transcendental subjectivity failed. For “Kant, … so many presuppositions are ‘obviously’ valid, presuppositions which in the Humean sense are included in the world enigma (of how objectivity based on subjectivity is possible), (that he) never penetrated to the enigma itself.” The attempt failed in its origins, because Kant did not fully appreciate the character and extent of Hume's problem of the nature of the self and the possible extent of knowledge. Kant's attempt failed also in its results because Kant created mythical constructions; the noumenal object ‘behind’ sensible appearances, and the noumenal self ‘behind’ conscious describable acts and experiences. “Because he understands inner perception in this empiricist, psychological sense and because, warned by Hume's scepticism, he fears every recourse to the psychological as an absurd perversion of the genuine problem of the understanding, Kant gets involved in his mythical concept formation.”

The Megarians, as well as their Stoic heirs, are known to have been fatalists or logical determinists in the following, very broad sense of these terms: with respect to at least certain classes or kinds of nontautologous propositions, they held that the mere truth of a proposition entails its necessity. This paper explores, in a very tentative fashion, the relation between several versions of logical determinism and two passages in the Aristotelian corpus, one of which is specifically directed against Megarian doctrine and the other of which is an argument purporting to establish a thesis concerning the necessity of future events which Aristotle wished to reject but which the Megarian logician Diodorus Cronus apparently accepted.

Often Bertrand Russell defends his view that names differ from descriptions in that names have meaning but descriptions do not by using a “proof.” Recently in this journal it has been debated whether Russell's “proof” fails or not. The familiar objection to Russell's argument is that it is circular or it involves a sense/reference equivocation. Avrum Stroll suggests a novel criticism by making use of a “mirror argument“ which attempts to show that Russell's argument can be used to conclude that "Scott" has no meaning, and that thus the argument proves too much or nothing. Robert Fahrnkopf defends Russell's argument, but, I believe, he does not go far enough in his defense. So it will be useful to carry this debate a few steps further.

Professor Allen acknowledges that Marx's writings underdetermine the nature of his ethical views and that, with due caution, "the attribution of ethical views to Marx will have to be inferential; they will not be supportable merely by direct quotation" (p. 379). I am therefore rather puzzled by Allen's unease with the general nature of my project and by his repeated insistence for more direct texts. I confess that I am also somewhat surprised that Allen's exegetical concern has led him in dealing with the moral theory I have adumbrated to ask for the most part just, Is it Marx? and not also, in any detail, Is it true? I think it is clear though, by inference, that Allen has his doubts on the latter score, but what I must deal with are the various questions or problems Allen has regarding my attributions to Marx and the implications I find in his texts. There are as I see it four such questions, though each is perhaps the heading for a cluster of ones.

A typical view of Leibniz’ extraordinary metaphysical and methodological views is to regard them as having appeared by certain “applications” of his mathematical and physical discoveries. If we believe Couturat and Russell the monadology is largely only the expression of certain logically formal relationships: it is the logic of Leibniz that is basic to his mature metaphysics. Even more typical is the view that Leibniz’ work in mathematics, especially his work on the calculus, is the source of the key ideas in his metaphysics. J. M. Child, the translator of the early mathematical manuscripts, says it straight out: “ … the main ideas of [Leibniz’] philosophy are to be attributed to his mathematical work, and not vice versa.” In a philosophically much more interesting way Paul Schrecker argues that what he calls Leibniz’ “infinitesimal method,” a method obviously derived from his mathematical work, pervades all of the important basic contributions of both his metaphysics and methodology.

So much of importance hinges on judgments about someone's rationality that it is nearly disgraceful how unclear we are about this concept. Judgments of irrationality are used to justify paternalistic intervention into people's lives and, as a result, mental institutions are replete with people who are in cages because their actions are ‘contrary to reason'. Furthermore, when someone engages in extremely dangerous or bizarre behaviour simply because he enjoys it, this is seen by many as proof of at least some degree of irrationality. The idea appears to be that imprudent acts are irrational.

It is widely held that the insane are not culpable for their offenses, or at least that they are not culpable for those offenses which are specific manifestations of mental disorder. Indeed, this is generally regarded by philosophers as a platitude. Yet it seems to me that what we have here is not a platitude, or even a truth, but an overly broad swipe with a dull blade. When we have brought the issues into sharper focus I think we will see that the mere fact that an offense was a manifestation of mental disorder never in itself exculpates, though it is sometimes relevant to determining whether the action was excusable in one of several standard ways. Moreover, I think it emerges that the issue is not nearly as significant as one might initially suppose it to be.

It has been claimed that decisions reached democratically have the consent of those subject to them. It will be shown that arguments for this view rest on either a Kantian or a utilitarian conception of consent. When the distinct nature of these arguments is kept clearly in mind, it becomes apparent that little remains of any of them. Nothing remains of the argument based on the Kantian conception, at least in so far as it is used to support the view that democratic government rests on the consent of the governed. Though something remains of the arguments based on the utilitarian conception, what remains is not what they often are thought to establish. The spurious plausibility of consent arguments for democracy is due to switches between the Kantian conception of consent and the utilitarian.

In this paper I shall defend the traditional claim that Aristotle's nonsubstantial particulars discussed in the second chapter of the Categories are unsharable particulars against G. E. L. Owen's claim that they are sharable universals. I shall proceed by presenting first a sketch of the traditional position that makes explicit why it holds that non-substantial particulars are unsharable particulars. Secondly, I shall sketch Owen's position and recount how it differs in certain important respects from the traditional position. Thirdly, I shall present some of my own considerations that I believe support the traditional position at the expense of Owen's position. Finally, I shall offer what I take to be the primary reason Aristotle was committed to the existence of such odd items as non-substantial particulars.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls defines a hypothetical contract situation and argues rational people will agree on reflection it is fair to contractors. He solves the rational choice problem it poses by deriving two lexically-ordered principles of justice and suggests the derivation justifies the principles. Its soundness aside, just what justificatory force does such a derivation have?

On one view, there is no justificatory force because the contract is rigged specifically to yield principles which match our pre-contract moral judgments. Rawls provides ammunition for this claim: “By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments [about what is just] and conforming them to principle, I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.”

Do non-persons have moral rights? I will suppose this question can best be answered by inquiring whether some animals and/or environmental objects have moral rights, for if any non-persons are possessors of rights, animals and/or environmental objects are the most plausible candidates. As so interpreted, this question has received an extraordinary amount of recent attention from philosophers. Arguments have been offered and defended; rebuttals have appeared in print. Yet, so far as I am aware, no one has presented a clear and accurate statement of what turns on the issue of whether non-persons have moral rights. In the absence of such a statement, philosophers are likely to be at sea in determining on which side of the controversy their initial sympathies lie. In this paper it is my central concern to help clarify what turns on the issue of whether non-persons are possessors of moral rights, rather than to argue decisively for one position or the other.

The primary purpose of this paper is to explain Russell's notion of ‘incomplete symbol’. The paper was provoked by some discussions of a controversial argument, advanced by Russell in several places - as early as Principia Mathematica (1910) and as late as My Philosophical Development (1959) - whose conclusion is that definite descriptive phrases have no meaning. It will be shown how the doctrine of incomplete symbols helps to resolve some of the questions raised about this argument.

One virtue of the account given here is that the theory of definite descriptions may be seen to continue the departure from the earlier Principles of Mathematics approach, where it is allowed that “grammar, though not our master, will yet be taken as our guide” (p. 42), to the quite different outlook of “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” where logical grammar and a logically perfect language are distinguished from natural languages and their (apparent) grammars. It marks a departure from “surface” grammar even more radical than that marked by the Frege-Russell treatment of quantification, but yet is a continuation of that same approach to language.

We all suppose that it is sometimes reasonable to project common properties, to argue from the premise that each member of a sample possesses a certain property to the conclusion that members of a population from which the sample is drawn also have that property. Even the most ardent anti-inductivist in the philosophy classroom can be found arguing in just this way when he buys a bottle of wine, takes an aspirin or is deciding whether to wear a raincoat.

This fact constitutes a major challenge, for (as everyone knows) instantial confirmation, simple induction, the straight rule - call it what you will - faces serious philosophical difficulties. This paper is concerned with two of these difficulties, namely, the one which arises from the fact that any finite sample exemplifies indefinitely many common properties and the one which arises from terms like ‘grue’ and ‘emerose’.