Philosophy Research Archives

The vicissitudes of the concept of original choice illustrate the change, and yet the continuity, of Sartre's existentialist thought as he gradually changed the focus of his attentions from psychological to sociological aspects of "the human condition." The relationship of the doctrine to Sartre's own "existential psychoanalysis" is described. The point at which Sartre explicitly repudiated the earlier doctrine of original choice and the general characteristics of his revised doctrine are explicated. In general, Sartre's current position is that the goal- directed structure of human endeavor is a freely-created variation upon the conditioning imposed by society, aiming at liberation from such external determinism. Sartre continues to reject the notion of a causal determinism, psychological or social, which makes the person a product—a "thing"—and which reduces human freedom to the status of illusion.

This is a bibliography on the philosophical topic of existence or being. Nearly all the works listed are in English, and most of them are works that have been published in this century. Many of the works listed also deal with other, but closely related, topics: e.g., identity, truth, essence, substance, predication, intentional objects, properties and relations, reference, quantification, and the ontological argument for the existence of God.

The concept of a positive instance has figured significantly in Hempel's study of confirmation. In fact, Hempel's study has been interpreted as an attempt to explicate the concept of a positive instance. In this paper I examine the concept of an instance and discuss its role in Hempel's study. I show that Hempel's notion of direct confirmation is closely related to that of a positive instance. This fact, however,does not warrant an uncritical identification of Hempel's explicandum with the concept of a positive instance, and I argue that such an interpretation of Hempel's study is grossly inadequate.

Providing an accurate account of the relation of moral values to actions is a major objective of moral philosophy. One reason for the attractiveness of prescriptivism is that it appears to do just this. The article is designed to determine whether prescriptivism does succeed in this respect. After extended argument, I conclude that the prescriptivist account of the relation of values to actions rules out the possibility that one's actions might be inconsistent with one's moral beliefs. This view leads in turn to the position that it is impossible on logical grounds for one to lie about one's moral beliefs, an implication which I argue is untenable. It follows that a central feature of the prescriptivist account of moral language is faulty.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the respect-for- persons theory implicit in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. It merits evaluation not only as a contemporary contribution to the respect-for-persons literature, but because it provides an essential premise in one of his arguments from publicity for his principles of justice.In sections I and II I discuss the meaning and justification of his respect principle. As it stands it seems unjustifiable. In section III I argue that since it is unjustifiable, it renders one argument from publicity unsound. More generally, it seems that Rawls has misconceived the relationships between justice, respect, and self-respect. Perhaps respect and self-respect should be defined in terms of justice, not conversely.

This monograph is divided into four parts: 1. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: Unlike the philosophies of other countries today, it does not pivot about a particular authoritative university or school. Most positions, though, agree in acknowledging a plurality of irreducible ultimate principles and realities. 2. PROCESS PHILOSOPHY: This has been of primary interest to theologians, and is occupied mainly with pointing up differences with Thomism. The strength and weaknesses of both these positions is outlined, and alternative views indicated. 3. THE MODAL PHILOSOPHY: A summary account is given, justifying and describing five irreducible, conditioning realities which govern individual substances, severally and together. 4. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: These have mainly to do with the problem of the One and the Many, raised by the audience. Each finality, it is held, is a One for the Many actualities; each actuality is a One for the Many finalities.

In this paper I have investigated the claim that egoism is incapable of being a moral action-guide. Egoism is that normative view in ethics which claims that a person has an obligation to perform or refrain from performing some act, if and only if so doing is in that person's (the agent's) own best interest. William Baumer and W.D. Glasgow have both presented arguments which purportedly show that egoism leads to contradictions and inconsistencies which prevent it from being a moral action-guide. In my refutation of these charges I argue that Baumer's agrument begs the question against egoism by employing a non-egoistic definition of 'right', and that Glasgow's arguments involve various ambiguities and equivocations. I conclude, then, that at least from a logical point of view, egoism is as acceptable a moral action-guide as any non-egoistic view.

The aims of this paper are to survey, explicate, compare, contrast, and critically evaluate a number of (mainly recent and technical) contributions (Kanger, Porn and Áqvist) to the logic of action locutions in connection with their treatment of the concept of an agent's bringing about a state of affairs. The discussion is primarily concerned with practical applications of these formalisms for the action theorist. It is suggested that these systems are best understood as capturing a strategic sense of bringing-about, and not a notion of actual bringing-about, which is merely presupposed by them. It is argued that the developments surveyed open up a new 'intensional' style of action theory, contrasted with the 'extensional' approach of Davidson. Yet because of the treatment of conditionals, they fail to capture a basic notion of 'bringing about' important for action theory. It is concluded that a study of the behavior of 'bringing-about' over non-standard conditionals would be a useful next step for intensional action logic.

Writers on action theory have said much about the notion of basic action but little about that of doing an action basically. In my paper I set forth a definition of basic action, then argue that neither it nor the definitions of various other philosophers captures the distinct notion of doing an action basically, and finally propose a definition of this latter notion.

There appear to be two major areas of uncertainty in the abortion dispute, namely the status of the fetus with respect to personhood and the validity of the doctrine of the double effect, or which of several moral principles takes priority in cases of conflict. This paper attempts to show that one can accept the uncertainty on these issues and yet reach a plausible view on the morality of abortion. This is done by consideration of the various possible combinations of controversial factors and which combinations indicate abortion to be right and which wrong. Probabilities of rightness and wrongness are then generated for several kinds of cases where abortion is usually desired. The conclusion of the paper is that in the absence of certainty in the basic issues, we can make a decision on the strength of the probabilities, in which case abortion is justified in those cases where it has usually been requested.

The paper is a defense of the moral methodology of John Rawls against criticisms by R.M. Hare and Peter Singer. Rawls is accused of intuitionism and subjectivism by Hare and of subjectivism and relativism by Singer, I argue that Rawls does not rely on intuitions as such, but on judgments on which there is a consensus. This does not commit Rawls to subjectivism for what is required for objectivity in ethics as in science is simply a rational justification procedure for principles, which Rawls provides. Moreover, an appeal to a moral consensus at some point is inescapable. Finally, concerning the charge of relativism, I point out that Rawls includes in his justification procedure only those judgments on which there is a consensus among competent judges. Though there is the possibility that conflicting sets of judgments may be equally valid for different societies in the unlikely case that there is nothing invariant in the judgments of competent judges, this is a relativism we can accept.

Work on 'can' in Action Theory is dichotomized into two styles of analysis: (1) what I call the indeterministic analysis, whereby for x to be able to do A means that there is no obstacle to x's doing A, and (2) the hypothetical analysis, which asserts that x is able to do A if and only if x will do A if x tries (wants, wills, chooses, etc.). This paper explores the general hypothesis that 'can' is two-ways ambiguous, that a sense of opportunity corresponds to (1) and a sense of ability to something after the pattern of (2), and that a general concept of 'can' of the kind often sought after by action theorists requires a certain kind of integration of both concepts into a unified definition. The two previous most well-worked-out attempts to lay out a program along these lines, those of Sellars and Chisholm, are analyzed in detail in the hope of smoothing out some of the technical differences to provide foundations for further work of this type. An attempt is made to integrate the program with some recent developments in the concept of ability in the social sciences. The applicability of this work to some very vexing and significant problems in the social sciences is suggested.

This is a translation of II Motore Immobile (Metafisica, libro XII), Traduzione intégrale, introduzione e commento by Giovanni Reale (Editrice La Scuola, Brescia, 4th Ed. 1971)- The author offers a unitary reading of the famous twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The book is intended for students who wish to read the text itself of Aristotle’s, so that the introduction and commentary to the text and the summaries of the entire Metaphysics as well as the twelfth book gives the student ample material to read the text intelligently. The work is aware of the current state of Aristotelian studies but does not intrude them into the commentary, because they should be reserved for more specialized work which the author has completed.

This paper deals with Marx's claim that he has presented a scientific or non-ideological account of social problems. Having explained what an ideology is for Marx, I criticize those of his followers who view possible understandings of the world as self- inclosed language games which can offer no justification for their validity except by appealing to the rules of the particular language game in question. To show that Marx would be dissatisfied with the relativism implicit in the more contemporary position, I compare his analysis of history to Hegel's Phenomenology and argue that the latter work is useful in understanding why one particular mode of thought is seen as non-perspectival or scientific.

Among the many assaults upon widely held views in social and political philosophy to be found in Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, is a novel criticism of the utilitarian deterrence theory of punishment. Nozick believes that this criticism is absolutely decisive, and, indeed, in his words, establishes the utilitarian deterrence theory's "non existence." The purpose of this paper is to show that Nozick's criticism rests upon a tacit crucial error about the nature of punishment. This error, while an elementary one, is evidently easy to make since not only Nozick falls prey to it but also some prominent utilitarians themselves. Recognizing the error makes possible a more careful statement of the utilitarian deterrence theory that avoids Nozick's criticism.

The Kantian logic of science has shaped much of the critical-historical tradition of scripture analysis, partly by canonizing a specific set of limits defining the possible and, correspondingly, limits to what a human being may defensibly believe in the way of historical reports. Residual inexplicable incidents are regarded as mythical or unhistorical in that tradition. However, by training a Wittgensteinian lens on certain religious applications of the verb 'to believe' we can begin to notice a rainbow of diverse and finely shaded uses, none of them privileged. The fact that some of these make no connection with the canonical sense of 'to believe' puts in serious question the recent tendency to employ the category 'myth' in scripture scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the frequently held view that since obligation is a rule-dependent concept it can be explicated by reference to rules. H.L.A. Hart's attempt to explicate the normative character of a legal system in terms of rules is examined and it is shown that (A) the notion that obligation is rule-dependent necessitates that there be an ultimate rule in the legal system, that (B) if obligation is rule-dependent and there is an ultimate rule in the legal system it is mysterious, indeed unintelligible how rules themselves can oblige and (C) the attempt to capture the normative character if the legal system fails. The appeal of this analysis of obligation is traced to the tempting but ill-founded supposition that rationality always consists in applying a general rule to a specific case.

Marx called his philosophical position a materialism; he was concerned, however, with social life, not with matter as the ultimate constituent of the universe. His materialism is a thesis about the relation between the forms which social life takes and the content which constitutes that life. Traditional materialisms are unable to address themselves to the particular concerns of Marx. Consequently, an alternative source must be found in order to explicate his materialism. Using Aristotle’s distinction between form and matter from the central books of the Metaphysics, I show how Marx’s materialism is a corrective to the formal determinism of Hegel.

Wilfrid Sellars attempts to deflect traditional objections to the straight rule of inductive acceptance by embedding it in a complicated system of levels. This system rests on a theory of probability in which the meaning of "probable" is reconstructed in the context of Sellars' general theory of practical reason. To say a statement is probable means, according to Sellars, that there is good reason for accepting the statement as true. In this paper I examine Sellars' attempt to resuscitate the straight rule and conclude that not only does he fail, but his account of "probable" is circular.

This paper argues that there is a confusion or inconsistency in Popper's claiming both that the social sciences should adopt the principle of methodological individualism and that they should maintain a unity of method with the natural sciences. Conjointly with the argument and in an appendix, a survey of Popper's philosophy of social science is presented. First, Popper's individualism is given an exegesis and elaboration, being characterized by me as 'the autonomy position'. Second, suggesting unity of method requires minimally the general application of the principle of faisIflability, I show the failure of two arguments apparently suggested by Popper that falslflability entails individualism. To fill the lacuna I then propose other arguments for individualism Popper may have had in mind. But finally, I show the inconsistency by arguing that individualism must on Popper's own assumptions be regarded as an empirical rather than a metaphysical position, thus rendering its stipulation by Popper as methodological incompatible with the application of falslflability.