The purpose of this essay is to study the problem of inherent obscurity of the criterion for maximal utility in utilitarianism. For the sake of convenience of analysis, situations of moral actions are classified into four categories. It is shown that morality is flexible, especially in the positive sense, in that a virtuous action can be taken in various ways and/or to various degrees. For some situations it is inherently unclear what the moral requirement is, and whether it is a maximum or a minimum. It is concluded that the schism of the principle of utility between the principle of the good and the principle of the right seems to be inevitable, and the interpretation of the ultimate criterion for maximal utility should be relaxed or interpreted separately and differently according to the situation of action.

When purged of its connection to libertarian forms of capitalism, Ayn Rand’s ethical “egoism” is not an implausible ethical theory. I argue (1) that Rand in fact fails to show the connection between her ethics and the political economy she has championed and (2) that in fact her ethics is at least as compatible with socialism as with capitalism.

Motilal Shastri developed an ethical theory which closely resembles rule utilitarianism at roughly the same time as and yet in complete independence of English-speaking philosophers. The philosophic significance of his view lies in the manner in which he develops and justifies his position. Shastri contends that efficiency in action requires indifference or inattention to ends. He appears to use the same device for justifying rule-governed duties that Mill uses to justify a move from egoism to altruism: that actions first viewed as means may later become ends in themselves. However, in Shastri’s theory, ends appear to be retained as unconscious motives.

A unifying perspective to bring to bear on Wittgenstein’s thought is that it represents a continual grappling with the problem of formulating a consistent version of scepticism--one that would not succumb to the charge of being self-refuting. His ultimate resolution of this problem hinges upon the precise content to be invested in his famous philosophical doctrine of the priority of Gezeigt (showing) over Gezagt (saying). I shall argue for a democratic participatory gloss of this doctrine as offering the most satisfactory resolution to the sceptical dilemmas haunting Wittgenstein.

Paul Hoffman (in “Kripke on Private Language”, Philosophical Studies 47, 1985, 23-28) argues that Kripke’s Wittgenstein fails in his solution to his own sceptical paradox. I argue that Hoffman fails to see the importance for Kripke’s Wittgenstein of the distinction between agreement in fact and judged agreement. Hoffman is right that no solution to the sceptical paradox can be based on agreement in fact, but the solution of Kripke’s Wittgenstein depends upon judged agreement. An interpretation is given: by ‘judged agreement’ Kripke’s Wittgenstein does not mean understanding oneself to judge agreement but having a feeling of agreement. On this interpretation Hoffman’s argument fails.

Saul Kripke is struck by a skeptical argument which he says is neither Wittgenstein’s nor his own. I call this new skeptic “Saul Wittgenstein”. SW’s conclusion is that there is no such thing as following a rule. My first aim is to show that Kripke misunderstands the Investigations when he says it offers a “skeptical solution” to SW’s paradox. Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy commits him to a dissolution of the paradox. I show next that LW’s writing contains an implicit dissolution of it. Finally, I point out the main lesson to be derived from Kripke’s discussion--namely, that there is nothing which is common and peculiar to what we call following a rule.

In paragraphs 107-108 of his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein remarks, “The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination round. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)” This paper attempts to illuminate his notion of this “real need” which is shared by that work and by his earlier Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by comparing these works with some of the writings of Tolstoy and Schopenhauer with which he was familiar. I do this not to discredit either of his writings as works on logic but to show in what manner they are, indeed, works on logic.

Recent work of Gustav Bergmann develops an ontological framework within which an account of relations has been sketched out. The approach is a kind of new logical atomism which has some of the features of an Aristotelian hylomorphism (of sorts). It recognizes a number of categories and groups of a hylomorphic kind, chiefly “determinates” and “subdeterminates”--the latter only indirectly or implicitly. Winsome though it is, the approach is flawed by certain difficulties it gives rise to, among them inability to speak of subdeterminates and failure of a relation to be had by a referent towards a relatum. Instead of having a sense, a relation is conceived of as a determinate which enters an arrangement whose existence and nature are not properly accounted for. Finally, Bergmann’s Ideal Language is assayed and shown not to be as useful philosophically in itself as he takes it to be.

This essay is an analysis of conscious perception and conscious memory. It tries to show that percepts and mental images (roughly, experientially, the same as Hume's "impressions and ideas") are sets of particles at the perceived stimulus objects and at the remembered stimulus objects. It is thus a theory of direct perception and direct memory, and a materialism but not a central state materialism. The percept (we claim) is an "appearance" of the stimulus object particles (perceived object particles) which is due to the way the particles at the perceived object are interconnected (interrelated) by the networks of stimuli-plus-neuron-impulses starting from them. The same is true of the mental image. This essay is primarily an analysis of such networks--to show, we claim, how they make the sets of object particles seem to have sense qualities and gestalts and other properties of percepts and mental images.

Delmas Lewis has argued that the tenseless view of time is committed to a view of personal identity according to which no one can be held morally responsible for their actions. His argument, if valid, is a serious objection to the tenseless view. The purpose of this paper is to defend the detenser by pointing out the pitfalls in Lewis’ argument.

By tracing the general evolution of HusserI’s theory of logic and mathematics, this essay explores Husserl’s identification and strategic overcoming of the two forms of psychologism--Iogical psychologism and transcendental psychologism--that bar the way to rigorous phenomenological inquiry. In the early works “On the Concept of Number” and the Philosophie der Arithmetik Husserl himself falls victim to a particular form of logical psychologism. By the time of the Logical Investigations this problem has been dealt with: the method of eidetic intuition enables an account of the “origins” of logical and mathematical concepts without reducing such concepts to mere predicates of mental acts. The task of Formal and Transcendental Logic is to disclose the more pervasive problem of transcendental psychologism, one that taints even the theory of pure logic articulated in the Logical Investigations. A radical solution is provided through the development of an “ultimate logic” of transcendental subjectivity.

Ferdinand Schoeman criticizes the liberal view of the family which holds that parental rights are based in and limited by parental duties to the child. Instead he proposes the construction of principles based on the value of familial intimacy. Schoeman claims that only by recognizing the value of intimacy can we account for the degree of autonomy we legitimately grant parents in their relations with their children. In opposition, I argue that he misinterprets the liberal view. A correct interpretation allows an appropriate degree of parental autonomy and familial intimacy but without sacrificing the child’s developmental needs.

This paper contrasts the religiosity ihai is expressed by the mysticism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, which moves away from ihe traditional “narratives” of revealed religion, with Wittgenstein’s later expressions of religiosity, which endorse those “narratives” and take place within them. The paper discusses the importance of this development in Wittgenstein’s religious experience in relation to the developments in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Both religious and philosophical developments are placed in the context of Wittgenstein’s self-directed anti-Semitism, which is interpreted in terms of the anomalies of Jewish assimilation and acculturation in the inhospitable environment of European anti-Semitism. The outcome is an account of Wittgenstein as a historical figure, which can shed light on many aspects of his philosophy. To gain credibility, the account proceeds by means of a close exegesis of some Wittensteinian passages that were not adequately explained before.

In this essay I try, first, to show that Lockean passages in Book I can be given a Berkeleian interpretation. I take two passages that have, in particular, been cited as allowing only a Lockean interpretation and show how they can be more coherently construed as Berkeleian in their intended meaning. In the process of this demonstration I show that only a Berkeleian interpretation is tenable for Book I. Second, I defend the Berkeleian interpretation against several charges; for instance, a charge of textual inconsistency. I do, however, acknowledge in the process that in the Enquiry and subsequently Hume abandons Berkeley for Locke. I then offer an explanation of why he did and lastly I try to show that though Hume is thereby committed to an inconsistency he provides a way for justifying his (and our) conversational commitment to that inconsistency.

Peter Klein claims to have explicated the notion of relative certainty and shown how it is related to the notion of absolute evidential certainty in his book Certainty. I argue that he has not succeeded at this because the account of relative certainty provided only applies to a subset of the pairs of propositions about which we make judgments of relative certainty.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy is not a simple revision of the themes of Phenomenology of Perception. It is a radical change of the kind Thomas Kuhn found in the history of science which involves: (1) a persistent anomaly, (2) the formation of new assumptions and (3) the creation of a new vocabulary. This paper concentrates on the problem Merleau-Ponty had with the tacit cogito and shows how he broke the tension it caused by changing the paradigm of his philosophy. It also examines that new philosophy to see whether it is more compatible with Christianity as some commentators have claimed.

P.J. McGrath has recently challenged the standard claim that to escape the problem of evil one need only alter one’s conception of God by limiting his power or his goodness. If we assume that God is infinitely good but not omnipotent, then God can scarcely be a proper object of worship. And if we assume that if God is omnipotent but limited in goodness, he becomes a moral monster. Either way evil remains a problem for theistic belief. I argue that McGrath fails to distinguish between the deductive and inductive problem of evil and between a limitation in God’s “strength” and a limitation in God’s “ability to act”, and that once these distinctions are made, his argument fails.

I argue that Nicholas of Cusa agrees with Thomas Aquinas on the metaphysics of analogy in God, but differs on epistemology, taking a Platonic position against Aquinas’ Aristotelianism. As a result Cusa has to rethink Thomas’ solution to the problem of discourse about God. In De docta ignorantia he uses the mathematics of the infinite as a clue to the relations between a thing and its Measure and this allows him, he thinks, to adapt Aquinas’ approach to the problem of his own epistemology. The resulting approach, I maintain, is coherent and reasonable if the metaphysical views behind it are.

Adding to A.O. Aldridge’s 1951 list, this list of British eighteenth-century references to Shaftesbury provides further evidence that the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is an important rival to Lockean empiricism during the early and middle decades of the century. The peak of Shaftesbury’s influence occurs during the 1740’s and 1750’s when the deist controversy was at its height. A more conservative political and religious climate of opinion after 1759 is one reason for the decline of Shaftesbury’s reputation as a philosopher. Another is Shaftesbury’s displacement by Hume as an important enemy of orthodox Christianity. During the 1760’s and later, Hume is attacked by the Scottish “common sense” philosophers, who find anticipations of Humean scepticism in Locke and Berkeley (but not in Shaftesbury), thereby unwittingly helping to provide the foundation for the eventual establishment of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as the “big three” of eighteenth-century philosophy.

In this essay I examine seven of the best-known attempts to define ‘sexual perversion’. I argue that if these definitions are meant to prescribe our use of ‘sexual perversion’, the definitions are really theoretical definitions, and none can be accepted because the arguments offered in support of the definitions are either incomplete or misdirected. Next, I argue that it is not possible to formulate a definition of ‘sexual perversion’ which captures our ordinary use of the term because common usage indicates that ‘sexual perversion’ is a cluster term. Finally, I consider whether it is possible to develop and defend a theoretical definition of ‘sexual perversion’. I argue that to succeed in this task one must first demonstrate that a particular theory of human nature is true, and that this cannot be done because human nature is an essentially contested concept.