Here are two widespread responses to Kant's categorical imperative. On one hand, one might note the absence of detailed rational derivation. On the other hand, even someone who maintains some skepticism is likely to have a sense that (nevertheless) there is something to Kant's central ideas.

The recommended solution is analysis of elements of the categorical imperative. Their appeal turns out to have different sources. One aspect of the first formulation rests on the logic of normative utterances. But others can be justified only in terms of their contributions to desirable functionings of a moral order.

I Venture to take as the subject for our consideration the philosophical study of politics. However imperfect the treatment of such a subject, it seems to me opportune that attention should at this point of time be directed to the question. The study of politics is of increasing importance in the curricula of our universities and in general adult education. There is also the plain fact that we live in times when a deep unrest of spirit and a great variety of experiment challenge ideas and institutions which have received wide acceptance. There has been, in short, a return to politics. It is well that we should consider afresh the value of the study and the methods by which it is studied.

My chief aim here is to achieve a clearer understanding of what it means to say that people perceive that something is the case. I shall assume that to gain such an understanding it will be sufficient to exhibit the logical form of such perception sentences in terms of predicates, quantifiers, and variables. I shall thus attempt to uncover the most important presuppositions housed in our saying that a person perceives that something is so, with a view to making these presuppositions explicit in the exhibition of logical form. To facilitate my discovery of these presuppositions I shall first try to clarify what it means to say that a non-human animal believes that something is so; for it will be my contention that sentences expressing animal belief share some of the main logical features of sentences expressing what one perceives to be the case.

We would be very far from doubting the sincerity of the majority of our politicians or their integrity. People, in Britain at least, who actually meet politicians from all parties are often pleasantly surprised. They usually find ordinary and sometimes quite able people trying to do their best in difficult circumstances, rather than the monsters of sleaze, hypocrisy and self-centredness of the caricatures. Nor is it the place of Philosophy to criticize the policies of governments, particularly not those of democratic governments, popular in themselves and with popular mandates.

What, though, does seem a disturbing contemporary trend is for political leaders to present themselves as articulating the feelings of a whole people, particularly when this is over specific issues or events. Should a whole people have just one feeling? What happens to those within the society who do not share the feeling? Are they still part of the ‘people’? Do they have to hide and go underground? And should politics be driven by feeling, however sincere, however worthy, rather than by reason and dispassionate analysis? Whatever is the case with politics, philosophy involves reason and dispassionate analysis. It is at this point that the philosopher may find him or herself at odds with popular feeling, particularly with feelings of the synthetic sort political spinners are tempted to whip up. It is then that the philosopher may find him or herself a stranger in his or her own land, perhaps not for the first time this century.

Anselm is commonly credited with two a priori arguments for God's existence, the non-modal argument of Proslogion 2 and a modal argument some find in Proslogion 3. But his Reply to Gaunilo contains a third. The argument as Anselm gives it has flaws, but they are not fatal, and its main premise can serve as the basis of a simpler, stronger argument.

A long line of writers on Evans – Andy Hamilton, Lucy O'Brien, José Bermúdez, and Jason Stanley, to name just a few – assess Evans' account of first-person thought without heeding his warnings that his theory comprises an information and an action component. By omitting the action component, these critics are able to characterize Evans' theory as a perceptual model theory and reject it on that ground. This paper is an attempt to restore the forgotten element. With this component put back in, the charge of Evans' theory as a perceptual model of such thoughts falls apart, and the theory turns out to have enough merit to project itself as a legitimate contender for a plausible account of ‘I’-thought.

In a philosophical paper the point one wishes to make should be stated at the very outset. And in dealing with a problem which is as controversial as religion, the bias should be confessed before any points are made. I want to conform at once to both these requirements. I want to discuss beliefs, ordinary beliefs but mainly religious ones, for the expression of which, oddly enough, we use the same word. “Belief” and “Faith” are admittedly different in English, but many languages possess only one word for these and further I shall try to show that even in English the difference is not very great and that they have, if not the same, at least a very similar logical grammar. The point of my argument is that beliefs can be discussed rationally and that they should be so discussed. Religious arguments have been going on for a very long time, and I find it incredible that people of immense intellectual qualities, who devoted their time and energy to these discussions, have been working under a simple delusion, not understanding the very nature of the thing they were doing.

I Take it that my part in this series is not to set forward some particular world outlook, or even to describe different kinds of world outlook. That will have been done already much more adequately by the lecturers who precede me. My part is to discuss what in general is meant by world outlooks, why it is so difficult to arrive at agreement on them, and what kind of considerations should be taken into account in deciding for one rather than another.

John Searle has recently produced an argument for strong altruism which rests on the recognition that ‘I believe my need for help is a reason for you to help me’. The argument fails to recognize the difference between ‘a reason for me for you to help me’ and ‘a reason for you for you to help me.’ These are two logically distinct types of reason and the existence of one can never therefore be enough to establish the existence of the other. The existence of this logical gap is a major obstacle for any argument for morality as a rational requirement that attempts to universalise from reasons individual persons have to act morally.

If we ask what are the problems which have to be dealt with when the subject of art is being discussed in a philosophical manner, we shall no doubt receive a variety of answers: but there will be in one respect a considerable measure of agreement, viz. that the main problem consists in discovering (a) what is the common property in all works of art which distinguishes them from things that are not works of art, and (b) what is the common property in all good works of art which distinguishes them from bad or mediocre ones. Certainly an immense amount of labour has in the past been devoted to this purpose. Recent philosophical practice, however, has implied some dissatisfaction with this type of approach, and the purpose of this article is to try to show that the dissatisfaction is justified.

I examine Spinoza's claim in the Metaphysical Thoughts (CM) that the attributes of God are only distinguished by a distinction of reason. I contend that for Spinoza essential attributes, such as Thought or Extension, cannot be distinguished by Francisco Suarez's distinction of reasoning reason, as Martin Lin (2019) suggests, nor can he be using Suárez’ distinction of reasoned reason for this purpose, as Yitzhak Melamed (2017) believes. Since reasoning reason and the distinction of reasoned reason are the only two kinds of rational distinction available to Spinoza, it follows that for him the distinction between God's essential attributes in the CM cannot be a distinction of reason. But I show that Spinoza is not mistakenly using Suarez's distinction in the CM. Rather, I argue, Spinoza consistently follows Suárez and uses reasoned reason to distinguish between God's necessary properties and not between God's essential attributes.

In his book The Right and the Good Professor W. D. Ross states a theory that ethics is concerned with two distinct conceptions which are logically quite independent of each other and must not be confused: the right, viz. the act which we are under an obligation to do irrespective of our motives, and the morally good, viz. the good motives, desires and so on, irrespective of what actions they lead us to. In a later book, Foundations of Ethics, he repeats this theory somewhat altered and enlarged. Professor Broad says about the first book that it is “the most important contribution to ethical theory made in England for a generation,” and for the second book he proposes the nickname “the righter and the better.”