This paper attempts to show that Robert Cumming’s effort in a recent article to explain the work of Jacques Derrida to American philosophers fails to present an adequate account of Derrida’s position because Cumming does not take Derrida’s philosophical views (in this case, his critique of Heidegger) seriously enough. By returning to the Heideggerian and Derridian texts, three main points become clear: first, that Cumming fails to present an alternative interpretation of Heidegger on which to base his criticisms of Derrida’s reading; second, that Cumming’s specific criticisms of Derrida often fail because he engages the issues on a relatively superficial level; and, finally, that Cumming has not proven that Derrida’s work does not present a substantial challenge to Heidegger’s position. I conclude that the task of explaining Derrida’s work to American philosophers has yet to be accomplished.

A dozen philosophers have recently groped for a formula to pick out coercive offers: when P proposes to give a benefit or withhold a harm for Q’s compliance, when does p’s proposal count as coercive? Five formulae are analyzed here. One account is completely “moralized,” claiming that we can’t pick out coercive offers without first settling questions of rights. Two accounts are completely “non-moral,” using as criterion a baseline of “What would in fact have happened” if P had not wanted Q’s compliance. Finally, two accounts offer “two-baseline” accounts, asking “What should have happened?” and/or “What would have happened otherwise?” four accounts are found quite inadequate; the fifth account (my own earlier formula) is threatened by two odd counter cases. Finally, an alternative to “defining coercion” is sketched.

As part of an attempt to give a “libertarian” account of some aspects of human agency, the author articulates and defends a modified interpretation of “internalism” which makes coherent the notion of a genuinely, self-determined choice amongst fundamental conceptions of practical reason. That such choices are “nomologically irreducible” is evidenced by the fact that although (contextually) unavoidable, they are nonetheless under-determined with respect to any combination of the agent’s (specific) desires and circumstances. Alternatively, to the extent that orthodox “externalism” subordinates reason to the field of externally determined “passions,” it is rejected, in conclusion, as yielding a naive and excessively reductive analysis of human agency.

Accounts of theistic faith according to which it does not involve referring to or believing in God as existing independently of the life of faith are instances of theistic reductionism. Theistic reductionism, in holding that ‘God’ does not refer to reality outside the life of believers, holds thereby that theism is not rightly to be regarded as true or false. Such accounts may be proposed or used as defenses of theistic faith. They ‘defend’ faith insofar as they describe the form of life faith involves and show that the human and cultural functions it performs are valuable. Examining several reductionist accounts, ordered from weaker to stronger, I argue that they fail as defenses of theistic life and language. Whereas the reductionist views claim to leave the practice of theism as it is, I argue that in fact they imply a different form of life from the one theism actually is. Thus reductionist defenses of religious practice fail and fail precisely where they insist on treating God in some way other than as existing outside of religious life. From this I infer that theism as it exists can only be defended in ways that include taking ‘God’ as referring to a God who is real outside the life which recognizes him. The religious reductionists discussed include R.B. Braithwaite, P.F. Schmidt, Paul Holmer, Paul van Buren, Gordon Kaufman, and D.Z. Phillips.

The following paper will attempt (i) to set forth a form of materialism that is ‘Spinozistic’ in maintaining that there is a conceptual, but not an ontological distinction between mental and physical phenomena; (ii) to undermine objections to this based on (a) ‘functionalism’ and (b) the conception of (and identity conditions for) an event that has been advocated by Goldman, Brandt, and Kim; and (iii) to explain why, according to the identity ‘theory’, the apparent failure of the indiscernibility of identicals is merely apparent.

This paper evaluates three recent attacks on what Harry Frankfurt has called the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), i.e., the principle that if a person could not have done otherwise he is not morally responsible for what he has done. One critic of PAP argues that, if a person was drawn irresistibly to a drug yet was “altogether delighted with his condition”, he might well be morally responsible even though he could not have done otherwise. A second critic describes circumstances in which, if the agent had failed to perform a certain action, physical forces would have taken effect and caused him to perform that action. Such a person, he argues, may be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise. I argue that both of the preceding counterexamples fail. The third argument against PAP shows, I maintain, that PAP is not acceptable as it stands; appropriately supplemented, however, it will continue to serve its traditional role in the compatibilist-incompatibilist debate.

This paper first identifies briefly several interpretations of the nature of the general order of eternal objects in the Primordial Nature of God (PNG). W.A. Christian describes the timeless ordering in terms of a “general scheme of relatedness,” or “matrix,” or “reservoir of potentiality.” Others, like Hartshorne, introduce the“continuum” concept. Unfortunately, none of the above terms has strict technical or categoreal meaning in Whitehead’s metaphysics. I try to remedy this defect by utilizing the Whitehead ian notions of abstractive hierarchies and contrast. My interpretation supports the idea that there is one fixed and necessary order of eternal objects in PNG.

In an article published several years ago, Nelson Pike recast his well known argument for the incompatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom in terms of a “possible worlds” analysis of human power. In this version, the argument is based on the assumption that past circumstances in the actual world “help to determine present powers.” If I am able to do something at the present time, Pike claims, there must be a possible world with a past just like the past of the actual world in which I do it.In a recent discussion, Joshua Hoffman attacks Pike’s argument and the analysis of power on which it is based. Specifically, he presents two objections to Pike’s thesis about past circumstances helping to determine present powers. Both objections are attempts to produce counterexamples to Pike’s claim.In the present paper, I hope to accomplish two things. I shall try to work out a reasonably precise formulation of the thesis about power on which Pike bases his argument. I shall also try to show that both of Hoffman’s objections to Pike’s thesis are mistaken. I shall argue that one of them is based on a serious misinterpretation of Pike’s claim, and is successful only against a thesis that is not required for Pike’s argument. The remaining objection, I shall argue, is based on a claim that is demonstrably false.Whether or not Pike’s thesis about power is correct is a larger question that I will not try to decide here. My only concern is to meet Hoffman’s objections.

Considerable scholarship over the last dozen years has greatly increased our understanding of Apology and Crito. However, the knottiest problem between these dialogues--the frequently noted apparent contradiction between Apology 29c-30c and Crito 51b-c, between Socrates’ pledge to disobey a court order to give up philosophy and his argument that legal authority absolutely obligates a citizen to obedience--is far from being resolved. In the end I argue that this contradiction is unresolved, despite numerous ingenious attempts to eliminate it, because it is rooted in deep inconsistencies in Socrates’ principles and character. In the course of reaching a conclusion that most scholars have striven to avoid I review and dispute the major strategies on resolving the contradiction: that it is only apparent, because one of the views is not (unqualifiedly) Socrates’ or a sophisticated analysis of the rhetorical purposes of the dialogues eliminates any contradiction.

Proponents of The Free Will Defense frequently argue that it is necessary for God to create self-directing beings who possess the capacity for producing evil because, in the words of F.R. Tennant, “moral goodness must be the result of a self-directing developmental process.” But if this is true, David Paulsen has recently argued, then the proponent of the Free Will Defense cannot claim that God has an eternally determinate nature. For if God has an eternally determinatenature and moral goodness must be the result of a developmental process, then God cannot be considered morally good. In response, I argue that (1) many contemporary Free Will theists do not affirm a developmental concept of morality and thus avoid Paulsen’s criticism and that (2) even those who affirm a developmental concept of morality on the human level need not grant that divine morality is also developmental in nature.

In an earlier essay I argued that perception involves an assentive propositional attitude. This essay completes the argument by examining the three most familiar propositional attitudes in order to determine which is best suited to perception. In Part I, I examine the contention of C.A. Campbell that perception involves judging, and I conclude that judging is too deliberative to be the assentive attitude in perception. On the other hand, in Part II, a study of David Armstrong’s and and George Pitcher’s claims that perception involves belief concludes that belief is too dispositional to be the assentive attitude in perception. Finally, in Part III, I examine Cook Wilson’s notion of being under an impression that, H.H. Price’s notion of taking for granted, and Roderick Chisholm’s notion of sensible taking, and I conclude that taking is the assentive attitude best suited to perception since it is both spontaneous and an act.

Uobbes calls the perfected method of “logistica.” His definitive explication method is in an inaccessible text. It relates intricately to technicalities elsewhere in his system, and it belies our accusation that he reduces other sciences to geometry by misapplying this method. This paper reprints that text, appending detailed commentary, often word by word. These annotations show (1) precise characteristics of geometrical method as Hobbes understood it, (2) specifics differentiating logistica from methods in physics, philosophi a prima, or humane studies, and (4) adjustments to logico-mathematical categories which we moderns must make in order to reassess his pronouncements. Only with these modified understandings are we able to appreciate the subtlety of his formulation and to correct misapprehensions of his systematic ingenuity.

This paper proposes interpretations of the vexed notions of intensionality and intentionality and then investigates their resulting interrelations.The notion of intentionality comes from Brentano, in connection with his view that it can help us understand the mental. Setting aside Husserl’s basic definition of intentionality as not quite in line with Brentano’s explanatory purpose, this paper proposes that intentionality be defined in terms of inexistence and indeterminacy.It results that Brentano’s thesis (that all and only mental phenomena are intentional) will not be strictly true. However, intentional descriptions will always be intensional, though not all intensional descriptions will be intentional.

When Wittgenstein said psychology contains conceptual confusions and experimental results, one item he had in mind was the psycho-physiological theory of kinaesthesis, which offers an account of how we know limb movement and position. The aim of this essay is to develop and evaluate the objections to that theory which have been produced by Wittgenstein, Melden and Anscombe. That project involves specifying clearly what is involved in the theory, resolving various disagreements between the critics, showing the pattern of the objections, and lastly evaluating the success of the case against the theory. That case amounts to the thesis that the kinaesthetic sensations we do have simply are not adequate to the evidential burden placed on them by the theory. Unless one thinks that they must constitute such evidence (the piece of conceptual confusion) no one would have thought that they do so.

The view that numerical difference entails qualitative difference has come under attack from various quarters. One classical attack, advanced by Black, involves possible worlds which are symmetrical. In a symmetrical world, it is claimed, the identity of indiscernibles is false. I argue that such attacks are mistaken, basically because they confuse epistemological issues (such as, how to specify a quality difference) with ontological ones (such as, whether there is such a quality difference). In brief, though there may be some reasons for doubting the necessity of the Identity of lndiscernibles, the possibility of a symmetrical world is not one of them.

A general characterization of functionalist theories of mind is offered and a number of issues are discussed which allow for alternative versions of functionalism. Some issues, such as the distinction between the implicit definition and partial specification views are of a general nature, while others raise questions more specific to functionalism, such as whether the relation between psychological and physiological properties is one of identity or instantiation. Section II attempts to undermine several arguments which have been offered to support the non-identity position. In the final section, the suggestions that the relevant notions of functional equivalence might be unpacked solely in terms of abstract automata features or entirely in terms of causal relations to nonintentionally characterized behavior are shown to be inadequate.

This paper traces August Comte’s attempts to get clear about the concept of mathematical analysis at various stages in his intellectual development. Comte was especially concerned with distinguishing a method of analysis for the resolution of complex prolems from analysis in the sense of a method of drawing inferences. Geometrical analysis serves as his model for the former. In his attempt to get clear about this notion, he discovers an historical succession of different methods all of which may be labeled “analytic.” In modern terms, Comte reveals how each of these methods of analysis characterizes a research program in mathematics, even showing us how more powerful methods came to supplant less powerful methods of analysis.

The objective of the article is twofold: to advance an interpretation of Descartes’ position on the problem of explaining how deduction from universal propositions to their particular instances can be both legitimate and useful for discovery of truth; and to argue that his position is a valuable contribution to the philosophy of logic. In Descartes’ view. the problem in question is that syllogistic deductions from universal propositions to their particular instances is circular and hence useless as a means for discovery of truth. Descartes’ solution to the problem is to claim that noncircular, useful deduction from the universal to the particular must first be based on deduction from particular truths to particular truths. I examine previous interpretations of Cartesian deduction given by E.M. Curley, Bernard Williams, and Andre Gombay. None of these interpretations fit with all of Descartes’ criticisms of syllogistic deduction and his characterization of useful and legitimate deduction (such as the cogito). I argue that the key to a correct interpretation is Descartes’ claim that implicit knowledge of universal propositions plays a crucial role in useful and legitimate deduction, and I explain how we may cash in his talk of implicit knowledge through Ryle’s notion of knowing how. Having set out a fuller explication of Descartes’ theory of deduction, I argue that it is consistent with the way people actually reason, that it helps us with problems in the philosophy of logic that have been raised by John Stuart Mill, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett.

Some ambiguities in the verb ‘to know’ are analyzed, and it is argued that “undefeatably justified true belief” is the meaning of most philosophical interest with respect to specifying truth conditions for ‘S knows that p’. Two general conditions for an adequate definition of ‘S knows that p’ are discussed. Then a proposal for a quasi-causal theory of knowledge is introduced and defended.

Conventions in the use of names are discussed, particularly names of linguistic expressions. Also the reference of measure terms like ‘kg’ is discussed, and it is found analogous in important respects to expression names. Some new light is shed on the token-type distinction. Applications to versions of the liar paradox are shown. The use of quotation marks is critically examined.