Dans cet article, nous nous demandons quelles sont les raisons de la distinction et de l’opposition établies par Hegel entre le doute et le scepticisme antique dans son essai de 1802 et dans quelle mesure ce point de vue est original. L’article montre que cette séparation se fonde sur l’attribution au sceptique d’une certitude de sa négation et que cette attribution se révèle à travers l’interprétation hégélienne du rapport entre Pyrrhonisme et Nouvelle Académie, d’une part, et d’autre part du Parménide de Platon.

(i) God is omniscient; therefore, for any change, C, among particulars, God knows the occurrence of C. (ii) If God knows the occurrence of C, then X. (iii) not-X. It is clear that the set of propositions (i)—(iii) is inconsistent. This is the general form of two problems—which I call the ‘problem of change in knowledge’ (PCK) and the ‘problem of change in essence’ (PCE)—for Avicenna concerning God’s knowledge of particulars. No work in the secondary literature has discussed exactly what PCK and PCE are. In this paper, I will clarify exactly what they are.

Le but de cet article est de proposer un examen de l’ontologie matérielle de Franz Brentano. Nous soutenons ici la thèse selon laquelle Brentano défend un type original de monisme. Ce monisme peut être vu comme la conjonction de trois théories : le réisme (la thèse selon laquelle il n’existe que des choses individuelles concrètes), le monisme de priorité (la thèse selon laquelle il n’y a qu’une seule substance) et le super-substantialisme (la thèse selon laquelle cette substance est l’espace).

Consider two epistemically possible worlds that are as similar as can be, except that atheism is true in one world and theism is true in the other world. Which world is it rational to prefer? I explore the strongest defence of the somewhat counterintuitive claim that it is rational to prefer the atheistic world. I also discuss the opposite conclusion, namely, that it’s rational to prefer the theistic world. Surprisingly, my conclusion is that it’s difficult to tell whether to prefer theism or atheism overall.

In this paper, I introduce the articles contained in this special issue, and I briefly explain some of the main arguments presented in my book A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. A central claim in my book is that a verbal and yet also philosophically substantial disagreement over the word ‘justice’ lies at the heart of a number of issues in contemporary political philosophy. Over the course of introducing my book’s arguments and the commentaries in this issue, I also offer an account of what it means for a dispute to be verbal, but not merely verbal.

In his A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen suggests a theory of disability that holds that to have a disability just is to be worse off, sometimes referred to as the ‘medical’ or ‘individual’ model of disability. I argue that Johannsen’s understanding of disability might force some of his key claims into an uncomfortable position. In particular, for his theory to avoid the thrust of Elizabeth Anderson’s criticisms of luck egalitarianism, the assumption of the medical model of disability must be dropped, but this comes at the cost of his criticism of John Rawls’ difference principle.

One of the central aims of Kyle Johannsen’s monograph, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, is to defend the idea that we should think of justice as a fundamental value—a value that can come into conflict with other fundamental values. This pluralism is associated in particular with G.A. Cohen’s work and his critique of John Rawls’s theory of justice. In this commentary, I sketch some of the implications of Cohen’s pluralism for a Cohenite ethos of justice.

This paper provides a critical rejoinder to some themes in Kyle Johannsen’s A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. The discussion focuses on Johannsen’s analysis of fundamental value pluralism and identifies a number of challenges to the form of value pluralism defended by Johannsen. I suggest that Johannsen’s analysis fails to explain how conflicts between fundamental values can be resolved, and that there is greater harmony between fundamental values than Johannsen recognizes.

In A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen maintains that the strongest version of John Rawls’s theory of justice is one that incorporates the luck egalitarian conception of fairness developed by G.A. Cohen. He also contends that, once the theory is modified in this way, it becomes clear that the original position doesn’t yield principles of justice but rather what Cohen calls ‘rules of regulation.’ I argue that the minimal conception of fairness that Rawls favours is the right one for his purposes, and that bringing in luck egalitarian fairness would render the outcome of the original position indeterminate.

Kyle Johannsen’s conceptual investigation of justice urges us to think of justice as a simple value, which is independent of the exigencies of practice. In what follows, I highlight two methodological issues as a way to raise concerns over whether Johannsen is operating with the ‘correct’ understanding of justice, and to persuade Johannsen that complex problems, such as those of social justice require understanding justice as a complex value. So, while contextualists about justice should embrace the distinction between justice and rules of regulation, justice must be more than an input in our deliberation, and instead constitutes an output.

In this paper, I explain the arguments my critics target and I respond to their criticisms. Some of my replies further expand upon the ideas covered in my book—A Conceptual Investigation of Justice—and some cover matters that weren’t discussed there. This paper thus substantially contributes to the arguments made in my book.