bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Is there a Social Contract?—I
Authors: Lewis H. D.
Published: February 2009

It is easy to dispose of the historical aspect of this question. When Aristotle affirmed that the family is more natural than the State, in the sense of original rather than final or necessary, and taught his contemporaries to regard the State as the result of a gradual development through the family and the tribe, he adopted a viewpoint which would probably find universal endorsement to-day. Only a particularly perverse writer would endeavour to revive the controversy as to whether or not the institution of the State began with explicit resolutions concluded at a specific date. No doubt there are plentiful instances of the establishment of particular States through some agreement or contract on the part of its members. The case of the Pilgrim Fathers is often cited as a classical example. But this does not give us an original contract. We should seek one in vain.
Conscience and Conscientious Action
Authors: Broad C. D.
Published: February 2009

At the present time Tribunals, appointed under an Act of Parliament, are engaged all over England in dealing with claims to exemption from military service based on the ground of “conscientious objection” to taking part directly or indirectly in warlike activities. Now it is no part of the professional business of moral philosophers to tell people what they ought or ought not to do or to exhort them to do their duty. Moral philosophers, as such, have no special information, not available to the general public, about what is right and what is wrong; nor have they any call to undertake those hortatory functions which are so adequately performed by clergymen, politicians, leader-writers, and wireless loudspeakers. But it is the function of a moral philosopher to reflect on the moral concepts and beliefs which he or others have; to try to analyse them and draw distinctions and clear up confusions in connection with them; and to see how they are inter-related and whether they can be arranged in a coherent system. Now there can be no doubt that the popular notions of “conscience” and “conscientious action” are extremely vague and confused. So I think that, by devoting this paper to an attempt to elucidate them, I may succeed in being topical without being impertinent.
Studies on Protagoras
Authors: Levi Adolfo
Published: February 2009

In the Platonic dialogue that bears his name Protagoras,1 in a myth (320c–324d) and in a logos (324d–328b) positively affirms the absolute character of universal moral values, such as force themselves upon all men; this makes one think that the famous man-measure dictum was subservient to the ends that the sophist had in view as a teacher of areté. Indeed, his condemnation in that dialogue of the sophists who, like Hippias, included in their teaching mathematical and naturalistic studies (318d-e), must be connected with the criticism of mathematics reported by an Aristotelian text.2 These studies, that is to say purely theoretic disciplines, were considered by Protagoras not only useless for the spiritual formation of men and citizens, but also void of any certitude and objectivity whatever.3 We feel therefore allowed to suggest that also the man-measure principle had to perform an office of the same kind: to show that natural philosophy (which then comprehended all theoretical knowledge) could not yield an objective knowledge of φ?σις which formed its object, because such knowledge is denied to man. Mistrust of the general conceptions of the cosmology of physiologists was widely spread at that time, and the authors of some medical treatises of the Hippocratean corpus used it to justify the construction of a discipline founded on the study of empirical materials interpreted rationally and not with the general hypotheses void of certainty
Hegel's Dialectic in Historical Philosophy
Authors: Wisdom J. O.
Published: February 2009

Conflicting Systems in the History of Philosophy. Hegel's logic consists, as is well known, in a chain of categories, connected by a relation of dialectic, which proceeded from the featureless Being, Nothing, and Becoming through more important ones such as Substance, Cause, and Reciprocity to the highest category of all, the Absolute Idea. Now Hegel also pointed to an interesting correlation between the categories of his logic and the dominant concepts of those philosophies that preceded his own: that is to say, the logical order of categories given by him corresponded to the temporal order of the history of philosophy. Such connexion was not, however, to be regarded as an accident but as a necessary truth: for the Absolute manifested itself temporally in the form of the history of philosophy. Seeing that this contention probably contains some psychological truth and is probably assumed in Marxian interpretations of Hegel, it may be of some interest to see how far it can be substantiated.
Science And Human Nature
Authors: Webb Clement C. J.
Published: February 2009

Many of us have lately been reading, hearing or listening in to the present Master of Trinity's Presidential Address to the British Association's meeting at Oxford; and perhaps some reflexions suggested thereby may not be out of place in this number of Philosophy.
Remarks On The Psychology Of Language
Authors: Horzelski J.
Published: February 2009

1. It is proposed to examine selected data concerning mental processes and to confront them with certain observations relating to the phenomena of language in an attempt to trace the functional relationship between these two groups of events.
Escape
Authors: Inge W. R.
Published: February 2009

There are times when we are so much in harmony with our surroundings that we are content to bask in the sunshine and to say to the passing hour, like Faust, “Stay with us; you are so fair.” There have been times when whole nations, or the most vocal part of them, have believed themselves to be living in a world which, if not the best of all possible worlds, is an abode from which they have no desire to escape. They are being challenged, for, as Walt Whitman says, “it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.” But the challenge is unheeded, and the price is demanded later.Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur.
Appeal to Philosophers
Authors: Joad C. E. M.
Published: February 2009

I want in this paper to enter a protest against the preoccupations of many contemporary philosophers, and to put in a plea for a return to the classical tradition in philosophy. According to this tradition, philosophy is, or at least should be, concerned with the whole conduct of life. It has two main functions, to clarify the wisdom of common-sense people, and to increase it. To put it technically, philosophy, as traditionally conceived, is an activity of self-conscious beings which seeks, among other things, critically to examine the manifestations of human consciousness and the principles which guide human activity; to examine not disinterestedly, but in order to illuminate, to assist, and to reform. Philosophy has, therefore, the dual purpose of revealing truth and increasing virtue. One of the methods traditionally employed for achieving these two purposes consists in the attempt to discover those values which are ultimate in the sense that, while other things are desired for the sake oi them, they alone are desired for their own sakes, to uncover by a process of analysis the values which underlie the judgments commonly passed by contemporary society—as for example, in our own society, the values implied by the judgment that increase of efficiency in slaughter is desirable, especially if combined with a readiness to undertake it whenever the State to which one happens to belong deems the moment expedient for the mass slaughter of the citizens of some other State—and to show how the latter deviate from the former.
John Locke and Natural Law
Authors: von Leyden W.
Published: February 2009

It has been said, and few would deny, that John Locke is as important as the founder of philosophical liberalism as he is as the founder of the empiricist theory of knowledge. Though he was a most versatile thinker, writing on philosophy, politics, medicine, education, religion, and economics, and on all these with the knowledge of an expert and the influence of an authority, his fame no doubt derives on the one hand from his treatises on Toleration and Civil Government, and from his Essay on Human Understanding on the other. Whenever these are expounded by scholars, the political writings are discussed independently of the Essay and the Essay independently of the political writings. The reason for this is obviously that scholars have seen very little connexion between Locke's principal works. This has been changed with the appearance of a manuscript in which are preserved eight essays on the law of nature written by Locke in Latin shortly after the Restoration of 1660 and thirty years before the appearance in print of his major works. This manuscript has been published by me, and it is now possible to recognize that Locke's two main bodies of doctrine, namely his political theory and his theory of knowledge, have a common ground and that this lies in his early doctrine of natural law. Admittedly, the notion of a natural law can be seen to be of central importance in his treatise on Civil Government and it also plays its part in the Essay.
Philosophy in France
Authors: Smith Colin
Published: February 2009

It need occasion no surprise that Recherche de la Liberté by Daniel Christoff (P.U.F.) 1957, 220 pp., is devoted to philosophy of value. Freedom, one wants to say in this sort of context, is the attribute or even the essence of, for example, Sartre's pour soi; but since such a description would be, in existentialist language, a contradiction in terms, freedom had better be identified with the means whereby the dynamic self escapes from its essence, as Sartre would say. Because of this dynamic role of freedom in Continental philosophy it is natural that M. Christoff should be happier talking of liberation than of liberty. The word liberation refers to the process of value-making, and perhaps it is chosen in order that such question-begging terms as “creation of values” may be avoided. Question-begging because, although M. Christoff is by no means an exponent of the “objectivist” theory of values, he does not play down the importance of the concept in the interest of what is strictly never done but always in process of being done. He denies that rational thinking is “an immobile system of concepts”, and sees an alternation (presumably “dialectical”) of conceptualization and valuation as the activity of mind. It is not only in his view of liberty as liberation that M. Christoff reminds one of Lavelle and Gabriel Marcel, but also in his particular brand of altruism. He seems to see Sartre's point of view about “others” without sharing it.
Phenomenal Organization and Perceptual Mode
Authors: Myers Charles M.
Published: February 2009

In recent years sense–datum theories have received much criticism, but there is one type of error frequently involved in the sense–datum concept which is in need of further consideration. This error consists in a category confusion of such a nature that what is properly regarded as perceptual mode is treated as though it were the attribute of a thing. The mode or manner of perception is mistakenly transferred to the sense–datum with results which a little careful reflection shows to be absurd. In what follows a specific case of this error connected with the notion of phenomenal organization will be discussed.
Esotericism
Authors: Wisdom J. O.
Published: February 2009

Some readers, even though well versed in philosophy, may be bewildered by Wittgenstein's posthumous book on the philosophy of mathematics and unable to find a dominant theme running through even a part of it; to list the main contents–headings would make them none the wiser. Although two main themes may in the end be discerned in it, they do not pervade the book after the usual manner of themes; one has rather the sense of wandering about the corridors of a maze; and, to add to the reader's perplexity, the maze has no definite centre. This mode of presentation, leading one through a maze, whose “centre” is the discovery that there is no centre, in itself conveys some philosophical message. Can we possibly say what Wittgenstein was trying to do? To answer this, seeing that this work is largely in line with the rest of his philosophizing, I propose to bid the present book a long farewell, to take an excursion into the field of Wittgensteinian and related philosophy, and against this background to try to give some picture and assessment of the contents of the work.
Modern Moral Philosophy
Authors: Anscombe G. E. M.
Published: February 2009

I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty—moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of “ought,” ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. My third thesis is that the differences between the wellknown English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.
The Justification Of Beliefs
Authors: Russell L. J.
Published: February 2009

Justification of beliefs can be spoken of from two points of view. In ordinary life it consists in giving reasons of a kind which will be accepted as good under normal circumstances. I know that my friend is still in the garden, because I was talking with him there a few moments ago, and I have not seen him come out. We can sometimes give reasons for our reasons, but there is a limit to this. For the most part we do not go beyond common-sense considerations.
Quasi-Aesthetic Appraisals
Authors: Harré R.
Published: February 2009

IN the right circumstances and the right frame of mind we are prepared to make aesthetic appraisals of almost anything, from hills, cottages and cars, to symphonies, people and poems. My problem is to try and set a boundary in at least one direction to the catholicity of this kind of judgement. I want to argue that when we use a word from our aesthetic vocabulary for appraising a theory in science or a proof in mathematics we are not properly to be described as making an aesthetic appraisal, though there are close parallels with our normal use of these words.
“Charientic” Judgments
Authors: Glassen Peter
Published: February 2009

It is one of the objects of what is sometimes called “general theory of value” to study all sorts of value judgments or (what would be a better name for them) evaluational judgments. But what the sorts of evaluational judgment are is a question that has so far by no means been settled. There are only two kinds of evaluational judgment that are universally recognized and that have well–established names, the ethical or moral, and the aesthetic. Another pair that have sometimes been mentioned are the prudential and the economic. The object of this paper is to direct attention to still another, quite distinct, sort of evaluational judgment which we commonly make, to give judgments of this sort a name, and to characterize them in a provisional way.
An “Orthodox” Use of the Term “Beautiful”
Authors: Henderson G. P.
Published: February 2009

The word “beautiful” plays a surprisingly unimportant part in the language of sophisticated artistic appreciation; I mean in the informed criticism and comparison of specific works of art. Though in ordinary conversation it can be used naturally and easily, it does not serve readily as a technical term in expert writing or discussion. To become a technical term of this kind it would have to be definable, and definable in terms which commanded sufficient agreement: but attempts to define “beauty” and “beautiful” may well have become restrained by the popularity of philosophical discussion about the significance of these words. No philosophical question is discussed more commonly or from more firmly held opposite positions than the question whether beauty is “objective” or not. Discussion of this and related topics, however, not being the monopoly of professed philosophers but being familiar amongst artists and art critics themselves, tends to remove all shadow of technicality from the crucial terms discussed. Other terms come to serve for the “objective” features of works of art, and others again for the impressions which works of art may make upon us: “beauty” and “beautiful” tend to fall away between these two classes.
Hume and Philosophical Analysis
Authors: Wasserstrom Richard
Published: February 2009

In his article entitled “Moore and Philosophical Analysis”, Professor Morris Lazerowitz selects Hume's analysis of causality as an example of the way in which philosophers have in the past misleadingly stated what they were trying to do. Professor Lazerowitz asserts at least three things of Hume's analysis. (1)Since Hume insisted that there was no impression of necessary connection, it follows that Hume could not have been examining sequences of events. (2)Therefore, Hume must have been doing something else; namely, misleadingly calling attention to the fact that it always makes literal sense to say of any two supposedly causal events that they are only accidentally connected. Hume, in other words, deprived causal verbs of their use “by linguistic fiat” so that he could more pointedly illustrate the likeness between causal and accidental-occurrence statements.
Is ‘Moral’ A Dirty Word?
Authors: Midgley Mary
Published: February 2009

The word moral and its derivatives are showing signs of strain. Like a small carpet, designed to fit a room which has been enlarged, they are wrenched this way and that to cover the bare spaces. Perhaps in the end we shall be forced to abandon them altogether, as Nietzsche suggested. But this would be wasteful, and it seems a good idea to examine first the various spaces they can cover, and try to fix them to the one where they are needed most. I shall approach this problem by making very full quotations. It is not an isolated verbal puzzle which can be settled by showing that a particular usage exists; we need to know as well just what it is doing. There are real muddles here, within common-sense, about the relation of thought to life. There is no simple plain-man's usage prepared for us to follow. Anyone who uses moral in anything beyond the Daily Mirror sense is no longer a quite plain man anyway, and we had better follow careful writers than casual ones, real ones than imaginary ones. Philosophers, unlike the Erewhonians, do not have to study a hypothetical language. I am sure both that quotations are necessary and that mine are inadequate; I hope other people will supplement them. As for my choice, I can only say that I have tried very hard not to be tendentious. Certainly I have quoted authors who are capable of being silly and perverse, but as far as I can see the remarks I have taken from them are sober and normal. Anyone may disagree with them, but not, I hope, think them oddly worded. My point affects all the derivatives of moral and to some extent those of ethical too, so I have drawn my illustrations from all of them.
Language and Understanding in Morality
Authors: Ward Keith
Published: February 2009

It is significant that one of the influential books on the philosophy of morality in recent years was called “The Language of Morals”. The title is significant because it overtly expresses the two-fold short-sightedness of many British moral philosophers in the 20th century. First, it assumes that there is just one language of morality, presumably the same for all human persons, which is distinct and separable from other sorts of language. This is the thesis of the linguistic autonomy of morals; and it ignores the possibility that there are many different sorts of moral language correlated in part with different patterns of culture; and that moral language often cannot be separated out, as an autonomous universe of discourse, from other sorts of language. Second, it assumes that the primary or even sole concern of philosophers is with the language of morality, thus ignoring the behavioural, cultural and experiential aspects of morality which may be equally, or more, important features of the total human phenomenon with which moral philosophers are concerned. These two assumptions, as my statement of them implies, seem to be highly disputable, if not plainly mistaken. It is the main purpose of this paper to throw doubt on them, and consequently on the sorts of philosophy which embody them.
Punishment and Remorse
Authors: Teichman Jenny
Published: February 2009

Certain unwise, careless, or as we say, ‘self-destructive’ actions often bring in their train consequences unpleasant to the agent according to natural law. If an agent through folly or otherwise acts in a way which shows that he has ignored or forgotten predictable or possible consequences people will say ‘it serves him right’, meaning ‘he ought to have foreseen that’. Sometimes they will even say ‘he got what he deserved’. For these reasons such consequences can be called punishment, or a kind of punishment.
Understanding a Primitive Society
Authors: Mounce H. O.
Published: February 2009

In recent times Wittgenstein's work in logic has had an influence on other branches of philosophy. I am thinking, in particular, of social philosophy and the philosophy of religion. In these branches, Wittgenstein's followers have made much use of his notion of a language game. It has been argued, for example, that religion forms a language game of its own, having its own standards of reason, and is therefore not subject to criticism from outside. This argument has given rise to controversy, some seeing it as a subtle attempt by the religious to evade criticism. I have come myself to feel that the notion of a language game has been put to uses with which Wittgenstein himself might not have agreed, or, if he had, would have been wrong to do so. In order to explain what I mean I should like to look closely at the opening section of Peter Winch's article ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’.
Philosophical Survey: Philosophy in France
Authors: Smith Colin
Published: February 2009

Only one volume has reached us to mark the centenary of Bergson's birth. Is this significant? If a writer lives to an advanced age his centenary usually falls at a time when fashion has turned against him, and the consequent attitudes are perhaps more interestingly gleaned from comparitively informal assessments than from carefully timed publications. In the Nouvelles Littéraires of October 22,1959, there appeared, almost a hundred years to the day after Bergson's birth, a reported discussion on his philosophy between Gaston Berger, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Gouhier, Jean Brun and a young “normalien” Dominique Janicaud.The talk, presumably more or less spontaneous, was naturally desultory. The older participants could always compensate for implicit misgivings by falling back on affectionate personal recollections, and the youngest would perhaps have preferred not to have to say anything at all. The most cogent general estimate was probably M. Jean Brun's, when he described Bergson as in effect making a stand against the danger of specialist appropriation of the dismembered fragments of philosophy by the various branches of science. We have seen this very nearly come about in England, where a fairly narrow linguistic and logical sector alone has been held with any feeling of conviction. What is here exemplified is the difference of outlook on any question that the English Channel makes. I once heard an English professor of English literature say that when reading Emile Legouis' History of English Literature he had some difficulty in persuading himself that his own professional speciality was being dealt with. It is not difficult to see how this comes about. What one nation takes for granted appears to another as excitingly significant.
The Message of Kant
Authors: Ewing A. C.
Published: February 2009

It is very unfortunate that the philosopher who, as would be generally agreed, has had the greatest influence on modern thought is a writer whose style presents a particularly formidable barrier to the layman, or indeed to any reader tackling him for the first time; and this makes it all the more necessary that an effort should be made by those who have read and studied his works to communicate what they take to be the essential parts of his message. The present article is an attempt to fulfil a part of this function, i.e. to convey a few of the leading ideas of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, while leaving aside altogether his other writings. I hope Kantian scholars will forgive me if in the attempt to make some of Kant's ideas clear in a very small space to readers who have not specialized in the subject but are interested in philosophy I seem not to do justice to the complexity of his finer distinctions. Also I had better add that this article is simply an attempt to state Kant's doctrine; it is not intended as an expression of my own views, and refrains from criticism.
On Doing One's Best
Authors: Laird John
Published: February 2009

On page 157 of Bradley's Ethical Studies (the second edition) the following passage occurs: “There are few laws a breach of which (in obedience to a higher law) morality does not allow, and I believe there is none which is not to be broken in conceivable (imaginable) circumstances, though the necessity of deciding the question does not practically occur.” And Bradley added the extremely significant footnote: “Except, of course, the universal law to do the best we can in the circumstances.”
Science, History and Philosophy
Authors: de Ruggiero Guido
Published: February 2009

Contacts between Italian and English thought of late years have been both frequent and effective.
Hypnotism and Suggestion
Authors: Brown William
Published: February 2009

In any consideration of the nature of suggestion we cannot omit reference to the extraordinary and startling phenomena which may sometimes be observed in hypnotized subjects. But it would be a mistake to look upon hypnosis as something uncanny, mysterious, and occult. Although we have even yet no thoroughly satisfactory theory of hypnosis, we understand it in general terms, and can bring it into line with other facts and phenomena of psychology known in everyday life. The hypnotic subject, and the phenomena of hypnosis, can be explained firstly in terms of mental dissociation, of the tendency for certain forms of psychical activity to occur independently of the rest of the mind, independently of other considerations; and, secondly, in terms of suggestion, of increased suggestibility. And these two, the phenomenon of dissociation and the phenomenon of suggestibility, are not unrelated to one another. They are related, but not to the extent of being identical with one another. It was the Nancy School of Hypnotism, led by Bernheim, who considered that hypnosis could be explained in terms of suggestibility.
A Scholastic Theory of Art
Authors: Evans Valmai Burdwood
Published: February 2009

Those philosophers who are interested in the contemporary philosophy of all countries have come to recognize the importance of the “neo-scholastic” or “neo-thomist” movement. This current of ideas is not least strong in France, owing much at the present time to the work of Jacques Maritain. In this essay I propose to consider neo-thomist ideas in the field of art, limiting myself somewhat arbitrarily to their expression by Maritain and their application to French art throughout the period in which thomism has appeared in “modern dress,” i.e. since 1879, the date of the famous papal encyclical Æterni Patris. This limitation is arbitrary, since in the first place there are living thomists who do not agree entirely with Maritain's interpretation of St. Thomas, and in the second place scholastic principles, if true, must from their nature apply to art as such—Greek, mediaeval, and modern, to say nothing of Oriental and primitive art.
Values and Their Relations
Authors: Garvie A. E.
Published: February 2009

(I)The meaning of the word philosophy, “love of wisdom,” the dominant interest of Socrates, the developments of Greek philosophy in Epicureanism and Stoicism, Kant's reliance on the practical reason as a clue to reality—all justify the direction of attention in this essay from the abstract theoretical to the concrete practical aspects of thought. Not that the two can or ought to be separated from, or opposed to one another; for human personality is a unity, and theory and practice must act and react the one on the other. The familiar saying: “More harm is wrought for want of thought than even want of heart,” indicates that in moral activity under-standing of consequences is no less necessary than goodness of intention or motive. The preacher who declared that he was an Agnostic in mind, and a Christian in heart, if he really knew himself and was not deceiving himself with a rhetorical phrase, was in a perilous and unsatisfactory state of mental equilibrium.
Poetry and Truth
Authors: Wodehouse Helen
Published: February 2009

The vitalizing effect, spoken of somewhere by Graham Wallas, which one University “subject” may have upon another if the traditional division of compartments can be broken down, has nowhere been better illustrated of late years than by the life brought into the English school at Cambridge through the teaching of Dr. I. A. Richards, who came out of the school of Mental and Moral Science. Not only his students, but contemporaries and elders as remote as myself, are grateful for the stimulus he has given; and not least grateful for the necessity imposed upon them of making clearer to their own minds the grounds upon which at various points they find themselves in disagreement with him, and the positive suggestions which they would wish to substitute for his. Their final task must be to try to make those suggestions in some language which both sides may agree to use; barring out, therefore, a good many terms which Dr. Richards regards as standing for “evident fictions”—“fictions such as universals, essences, concepts, causes.”
Liberalism
Authors: McCloskey H. J.
Published: February 2009

Liberalism is commonly believed, especially by its exponents, to be opposed to interference by way of enforcing value judgments or concerning itself with the individual's morality. My concern is to show that this is not so and that liberalism is all the better for this. Many elements have contributed to liberal thought as we know it today, the major elements being the liberalism of which Locke is the most celebrated exponent, which is based upon a belief in natural, human rights; the liberalism of which Kant is the best known exponent, which is based on respect for persons as ends in themselves; and the liberalism of Bentham and the Mills, which is based upon utilitarian ethical theories and most especially with concern for pleasure and the reduction of pain. These different elements of liberalism have led to different emphases and different political and social arrangements, but all have involved a concern to safeguard values and to use force to that end. Today they constitute strands of thought which go to make up liberal thought as we now know it, hence it is not simply a historical fact about liberalism, but a fact about its philosophical basis, that liberalism is firmly involved in certain value and moral commitments. In the remainder of this paper I shall seek to bring this out.
Austin's Mistake About ‘Real’
Authors: Angluin D. J. C.
Published: February 2009

This paper is written in an analytic style, but it is meant to deprive analysis of an important prop.

The title needs a short introduction. The mistake is to take ‘real’ as governed in its separate uses by criteria; and this paper is meant to show that this is a mistake and that Ausin makes it. In the course of the argument I try to develop my own account and, although I am not altogether satisfied with it, the result gives something to build upon. I believe the mistake is by no means confined to Austin, but that it is connected with a particular conception of philosophy.
The Concepts of the Sceptic: Transcendental Arguments and Other Minds
Authors: Smith G. W.
Published: February 2009

Strawson's attempt to refute scepticism about the existence of other minds has itself been a popular target of sceptical criticism. But the very persistence of the attacks suggests that no clinching rebuttal has yet been produced. One of the earliest and still one of the most effective responses to Strawson is Ayer's celebrated paper ‘The Concept of a Person’, in which he reasserts the position of classical empiricist scepticism on the existence of other minds. By reinterpreting and partly reconstructing Strawson's arguments I shall try to show that the sceptical position represented by Ayer is indeed incoherent, as Strawson maintains, and I shall suggest why a conclusive rebuttal of Strawson's anti-sceptical arguments has not been and is unlikely to be produced.
The Positive McTaggart on Time
Authors: King-Farlow John
Published: February 2009

It is increasingly fashionable to attack McTaggart's arguments about the Unreality of Time with a minimum of attention to what he was trying to establish. Those who have only read his one still famous paper ‘The Unreality of Time’ [III] are too likely to assume from professional philosophers' current counter-arguments that the man was a sceptic with only a single (negative) idea in his head, rather than an ingenious, constructive metaphysician. Since so much formal and informal analysis has been directed against so few of McTaggart's comments on Time, and mainly against his destructive claim that the vulgar concept of Time requires as explicans an incoherent ‘A-series’ of becomings with ever-shifted pasts, presents and futures, perhaps it is time to encourage some redirection of analytical assessment to what he was arguing for. I say this not only for historical reasons, though I shall draw historical comparisons, but because rationally assessing what McTaggart really denies about Time may require some serious interest in what he so interestingly asserts about our experience of what we call ‘Time’. Trousers, pace Austin, normally have one wearer but two legs. If McTaggart's negative points deserve such a plethora of analysis, then the positive view needs attention or the analysis is ill-aimed.
The Lords' Debate On Hanging July 1956: Interpretation and Comment
Authors: Gallie W. B.
Published: February 2009

The House of Lords debate of July last on the Death Penalty Abolition Bill1 may prove to have been a landmark in British constitutional and legal history; certainly it was of the greatest interest as a specimen of current moral thinking and moral conflicts on the death penalty; and it is in this latter light that I shall discuss it here. Socialists and radicals might of course complain that a predominantly Conservative House of Lords could not be representative of current thinking; and they might contrast the voting for the second reading of Mr. Silverman's Bill in the Lords—Contents 95, Non-contents 238—with the votes that had previously been recorded in the Commons.
Moral Facts
Authors: Remnant Peter
Published: February 2009

An important part of ethics consists in the attempt to find a theoretical framework for the sincere moral discourse of ordinary people; to present, if possible, a consistent account of the ways in which such terms as “good,” “right,” “duty,” “obligation” are used in moral contexts. It is surprising that it should ever have been thought possible to account for such utterances as expressions of emotion. For the most part nothing could be less like the sighs, groans, shouts, and chuckles with which we normally express emotion than are our assertions about right and wrong, good and bad; these are usually the outcome of careful consideration and they are almost invariably expressed in cognitive terms. That is, we describe ourselves as “thinking out what we ought to do,” “coming to a conclusion as to what is right,” “knowing the difference between right and wrong,” “recognizing our obligations,” “seeing our duty.” When we do employ “emotive” words in these contexts it is almost always for the purpose of expressing anger or remorse or disgust with regard to our own moral lapses or those of others. Moral utterances, in short, have all the appearance of being statements of fact, and statements, moreover, which cannot be made in other than moral terms.
The Philosophy Of Vladimir Jankélévitch
Authors: Smith Colin
Published: February 2009

Vladimir JankéLéVitch, who teaches philosophy at the Sorbonne, is one of the most highly individual philosophical writers in France today. He has been publishing books for some quarter of a century on both philosophy and music, of which the most recent, entitled La Rhapsodie: Verve et improvisation musicale, unites his two specialities. It is with his philosophical work that I want to deal here.
What Morality Is Not
Authors: Macintyre Alasdair
Published: February 2009

The central task to which contemporary moral philosophers have addressed themselves is that of listing the distinctive characteristics of moral utterances. In this paper I am concerned to propound an entirely negative thesis about these characteristics. It is widely held that it is of the essence of moral valuations that they are universalisable and prescriptive. This is the contention which I wish to deny. I shall proceed by first examining the thesis that moral judgments are necessarily and essentially universalisable and then the thesis that their distinctive function is a prescriptive one. But as the argument proceeds I shall be unable to separate the discussion of the latter thesis from that of the former.
Reflecting on Morals
Authors: Hems John M.
Published: February 2009

In order to do anything intelligently a certain degree of reflection is necessary. This is particularly obvious with regard to any practical activity or occupation. Take, for example, the case of a naїve bricklayer. Let us assume that this man never reflects upon the nature of his occupation, but simply looks upon it as a more or less mechanical procedure of laying one brick upon another for a certain period of time during the day. He does not relate his occupation with the occupations of his fellow–workmen, or even with the purpose of erecting buildings. If such a man were left to his own devices on a desert island with a plentiful supply of bricks and mortar, we could imagine him erecting a gigantic pinnacle of bricks, without purpose or meaning, where a more intelligent man would have endeavoured to construct a shelter against the rigours of the climate.
On Retribution
Authors: Whiteley C. H.
Published: February 2009

A retributive theory of punishment must at least say that it is a necessary condition for the justification of a punishment that the person punished should be guilty. But “guilty” here may be taken in two different senses, giving two very different kinds of justification. In the first sense, to be guilty is to have wilfully disobeyed a law or order of some authority, and it is the defiance of this authority which justifies punishment. Mr. Mabbott has put up a good case for a view of this kind. It is clear that we regularly do justify the punishment of offenders on the ground that they have broken rules, and therefore deserve to be punished. And there are some moral situations (those of officials charged with the administration of regulations) in which this is the only fact to be considered in deciding whether or not to punish. As to the view that this constitutes the only valid justification of punishment, I wish to make two comments.
Awareness of God
Authors: Ewing A. C.
Published: February 2009

‘PROOFS of God’ are under a cloud today, and whether the cloud can be dissipated or not, I am not going to try to dissipate it in this article. Modern thinkers have created a mental climate very unfavourable to metaphysics, but they have certainly not succeeded in disproving on principle the possibility of valid and fruitful metaphysical arguments even in the old transcendent sense of ‘metaphysics’. However, I must admit that in my opinion the best that can be said of arguments for the existence of God is that they give some intellectual support to the belief, not that they are really decisive. If this is so, it becomes of very special importance to consider whether those may be right who maintain that we can come to knowledge of or at least justified belief in God otherwise than by inference. I am not considering the views of those who base the belief solely on authority: argument would be required to decide whether we ought to accept an authority, and if so which. What I am referring to is the claim that there are certain 'mystical' and other religious experiences which can without argument adequately and rationally assure one of God's existence. Obviously from the nature of the case a man who makes this claim for himself cannot prove to others that he is right, but can any good reason be given to support the view that he is wrong? If not, the possibility remains that those who dispute with him are in a similar position to that of a tonedeaf man disagreeing with Beethoven about the value of music.
Freedom
Authors: Ryan Alan
Published: February 2009

In this paper I intend to do two things. The first is to discuss a method of doing philosophy, the method of ‘ordinary language’ philosophy, as it is commonly and misleadingly called. (Its other common title: ‘Oxford Philosophy’ is even more misleading, since the roots of the method lie in Cambridge, and many of the most flourishing branches are in the United States rather than England.)If it needs a name, perhaps the best is—adapting Popper to our purpose—‘piecemeal philosophical engineering’. Such a title would emphasise the attention to detail and the caution about conclusions that characterise the best of such work. The second aim of this paper is to apply the method thus discussed and defended to three questions connected with the concept of freedom. These problems arise out of three recent discussions of freedom—Thought and Action and Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom by Professor Hampshire, and Two Concepts of Liberty by Professor Berlin.
Oxford Moralists
Authors: Gallie Ian
Published: February 2009

I think it will be generally admitted that if Oxford philosophers have any claim to have added in recent years to the store of our philosophical ideas, it lies in their published works on the theory of conduct. I don’t think it can be claimed that, even in this sphere, they have given us many new and illuminating positive truths. After reading Mr. Ross, Professor Prichard, and Mr. Joseph, we are left, I think, with the impression that the whole subject is much more intricate and puzzling than we should have thought possible. I intend in this paper to try and discover what is true in the theories of these three moralists on one of the most difficult and puzzling of ethical problems, viz., “What Renders a Right Act Right?” Professor Prichard and Mr. Ross, in the main, stand together; it is regrettable that Professor Prichard's published work is so very meagre. And if in quoting from his article in Mind, 1912, on “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake,” I am doing him an injustice in attributing to him any views which he no longer holds, I am sorry; but modesty in publishing has its penalties, and anyhow, the article is too guilty an offender to get off free, for its annoying subtleties started the whole trouble, and led indirectly to Some Problems in Ethics and the Right and the Good.
The Size-factor in Art
Authors: Rowell E. M.
Published: February 2009

In a paper on “Beauty and Greatness in Art” discussed at a recent meeting of the Aristotelian Society, Professor Alexander says: “In Art there are two standards; there is the strictly æsthetic standard, Is the work beautiful or not; has it attained beauty? and there is the question, Is it great or small?… This contrast of beauty and greatness is the old contrast of form and subject-matter.” Here is offered a problem of capital importance and of age-long interest, but alongside of it there is a subsidiary and a much slighter question which has been comparatively little noticed and which may yet have bearing on the larger issue. This question is the relation of actual size, of size-in-itself, to the other factors in a work of art, and the reaction, if such there be, of such a size-factor upon the aesthetic whole.
On Fundamentals: an Adventure
Authors: Fawcett Douglas
Published: February 2009

Most men experience from time to time a wish to know something about the character of the larger reality in which they live, move, and have their being; something much more fundamental than any department of research classed as “scientific” can provide. And the most incurably practical of us has good reason for cherishing this wish. Metaphysics, i.e. inquiry into the general nature of reality, makes appeal first to the contemplative student interested in knowledge for its own sake, but it has a very noteworthy practical side as well. Few, like Earl Russell, can build the soul”s habitation on a “foundation of unyielding despair”; very many will not take life seriously unless its value, which must be lasting, is high. The problems stated by pessimism have to be solved; our burdens must be shown to be worth taking up strenuously. Religious consolations, once potent, are losing their force, and the danger of social decay has therefore to be countered. Let man suspect seriously that he is a day-fly, flitting about futilely a short while ere it perishes, and, whatever a few wild optimists may counsel, his big battalions are lost to progress. The East is right.
A Phenomenological System of Ethics (I)
Authors: Clarke Mary Evelyn
Published: February 2009

Since the appearance, nearly twenty years ago, of the first volume of Husserl”s Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, philosophers have been watching the development of a movement in Germany that has claimed attention through its opposition on the one side to the still powerful Kantian tradition, on the other to the trend of thought arising under the influence of biological science, aptly named by Meinong Psychologismus. The subtlety and originality of this new line of speculation and the exactness of its method have attracted to it some of the most powerful intellects of the country, whose contributions would repay a more detailed study than they have yet received from English or American scholars.
Some Difficulties in Utilitarianism
Authors: Clark Pamela M.
Published: February 2009

Utilitarianism has had an unfortunate history. Its most influential exponents, Bentham and John Stuart Mill, set it out in such a way as to expose it to facile criticism and even to ridicule, and it has never fully recovered from this ill-omened start. In spite of the criticism and the ridicule, however, it still bulks large in ethical studies, and many people still have a hankering sympathy with it.
Self-Evidence And Proof
Authors: Perelman C. H.
Published: February 2009

There is an argument, well known in the history of philosophy, which makes all knowledge ultimately depend on some kind of intuitive or sensory immediacy. According to this argument, either the proposition itself is self–evident;2 or else it can be shown to follow, with the help of a chain of intermediate links, from other propositions which are self–evident. Moreover, it is this self–evidence of immediate knowledge and only this which, again speaking traditionally, sufficiently guarantees the truth of the affirmations of a science as opposed to those of various and fluctuating opinions.