L'objectif de l'ouvrage de R. Bernier et P. Pirlot est d'être un essai de «biophilosophie». L'organisation du texte détermine la mise en oeuvre de ce projet, nous serions meme porté à dire qu'ici la fonction et l'organe participent du même scheme de détermination causale et/ou fonctionnelle. Mais peut-être les auteurs pretendraient-ils que nous jouons sur les mots en assimilant par analogie indue le projet finalise de deux «biophilosophes» à l'illusoire argumentation teleologique que certains «philosophes», voire certains scientifiques devenus «philosophes», s'obstinent à retracer dans les figures les plus positives de l'explication biologique. Sans jeu de mots, nous le promettons cette fois, lafonction du livre de R. Bernier et P. Pirlot est de tenter la reduction des subterfuges téléologiques qui hantent parfois le langage théorique de la biologie et qui subvertissent à coup sûr les analyses de certains métaphysiciens de la biologie.

In the first Critique Kant introduced the analytic/synthetic distinction and illustrated it with theoretical propositions. As his main aim in that work was to justify synthetic a priori propositions, Kant was able to bring his central questions into relief and discuss the methodology of their solution by contrasting synthetic propositions, such as: “Every event has a cause” with analytic propositions, such as: “Every effect has a cause.” Consequently, few commentators have any difficulty in stating as propositions the propositions Kant is justifying in the first Critique or in pointing out the difficulty of justifying such propositions.

The philosophers of Canada will long remain indebted to Helier Robinson. In 1969–70 he founded the Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy from his Ontarian base at the University of Guelph. Under the aegis of his Association arose the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, edited by the three Universities of Alberta; then a Canadian Monograph Series first administered by David Braybrooke at Dalhousie, and now by R.B. de Sousa at Toronto; more lately the Canadian Library of Philosophy, run by J.A. Brook at Carleton. A native of the (partly francophone) Channel Islands, he has shown a strong commitment to bilingualism, reflected in all of c. A.P.P.'s instruments du travail. Since 1971 his efforts have led to considerably more philosophical research being published in this country.

Errors and mistakes are of course common enough, and as often as not have unfortunate consequences. When we fail to do something we set out to do, we sometimes feel compelled to point to the errors and mistakes we have made, or sometimes less generously to the errors and mistakes others have made. For to be able to point to an error or mistake in this way is commonly thought to provide an explanation for what went wrong, and sometimes even to offer an excuse for it. In this paper I want to explore the significance of the terms ‘error’ and ‘mistake’ when we use them to talk about our failures. There are some good reasons for being interested in these matters. For some philosophers in the past have made much philosophical mileage out of our errors and mistakes, so much so that a whole breed of thinkers, sceptics, has come into being as a result. And I shall want to examine their attitude towards errors and mistakes, for it may turn out that the serious conclusions of the philosophical sceptic cannot rest upon the existence of either errors or mistakes, and as a result, are not so compelling as they might seem at first sight. In fact, I shall argue that our common experiences of error and mistake cannot support the weight that the sceptic places upon them. I also briefly look at the connection between error and mistake as I interpret them, and philosophical determinism. I argue that the existence of errors and mistakes is incompatible with conventional determinist philosophy.

John Locke, in his Essay, poses the following problem:

It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion? How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?

Yoshida's explicit aim is to defend the standard empiricist model of reduction-bydeduction (SERM hereafter) from recent attacks. Thus the treatment is limited in both scope and orientation.

I shall argue that Yoshida does not succeed. The failure is both internal (on his own terms) and external (what is outside his scope).