In his discussion note ‘J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor’ Peter Glassen argues that it was inconsistent of me both to assert that realism is true and that Occam's razor (or any other principle for that matter) is a reason for the materialist thesis. Glassen says that Occam's razor ‘is not a physical thing, state or process at all’. A little further down on the same page he uses the phrase ‘material or physical thing, state, or process’. It is possible, therefore, that Glassen regards the distinction between ‘material’ and ‘physical’ as unimportant in the present context. I think however that one way of replying to Glassen turns on this distinction.

Mr B. H. Slater (‘A Grammatical Point About Disjunction’, Philosophy, April 1976) distinguishes between various pairs of questions:

1(a) Did they agree either that they would go to the pictures or that they would go out for a meal?

1(b) Did they agree that either they would go to the pictures or they would go out for a meal?

2(a) Is it known either that Jones was guilty or that Smith was guilty?

2(b) Is it known that either Jones was guilty or Smith was guilty?

3(a) Did he say either that he would get the puzzle solved or that he would eat his hat?

3(b) Did he say that either he would get the puzzle solved or he would eat his hat?

According to Slater, if we can only say ‘Yes’ to 1(b) (or, correspondingly, to 2(b) or 3(b)), then we immediately know what was agreed, namely, that either they would go to the pictures or they would go out for a meal; but if we can just say ‘Yes’ to 1(a) (or, correspondingly, to 2(a) or 3(a)), then we cannot immediately say what was agreed; all we know is that either they agreed to go to the pictures or they agreed to go out for a meal. Or, generalizing somewhat, a ‘Yes’ answer to the question ‘Did they agree that either p or q?’ tells us that they agreed that either p or q; but, with the question ‘Did they agree either that p or that q?’, while ‘Yes, they agreed that p’, and ‘Yes they agreed that q’ are possible answers (and Slater thinks that ‘Yes they agreed either that p or that q’ is also a possible answer), there is no answer, ‘Yes they agreed that r’, which is invariably correct, when ‘Yes’ is correct. In particular, the answer certainly cannot be ‘Yes, they agreed that p or q’ (that is, where ‘r’ = ‘p or q’).

Professor Bonnie Steinbock (Philosophy, April 1978, 249–250) writes ‘… I am not going to discuss rights, important as the issue is’; but she adds, en passant, ‘According to the view of rights held by H. L. A. Hart and S. I. Benn, infants do not have rights, nor do the mentally defective, nor do the insane, in so far as they all lack certain minimal conceptual capabilities for having rights’.

Mr. Hanink objects to my ‘Survival Lottery’ which would save Y and Z, who need new organs, by choosing and killing A at random to provide them. He believes the relevant difference between killing A and not saving Y and Z ‘might well be this: Y and Z can not have A killed without intentionally seeking A's death. But a physician can “not save” Y and Z without intentionally seeking their deaths’.

In ‘Considering Equality’, Mrs Margaret Coady criticizes my discussion of Professor Bernard Williams's justly renowned essay ‘The Idea of Equality’. During the course of her paper, Mrs Coady ascribes to me views that I do not hold. But I shall not consider these points of detail because they deflect from the substantive disagreement between Professor Williams and myself. I shall merely examine what, as I see it, is the core of Mrs Coady's case against me. This certainly does relate to the substantive issue.

In his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision Berkeley argues that it is only a happy accident that we are aware of space and objects in space by means of vision, and that the logically primary way in which we are aware of space is by touch. Berkeley's argument is that all connections between the visual and the spatial properties of things are contingent. Thus we may judge an object's distance from us by noting the number and size of intervening objects (3), by the sensations arising when we turn our eyes to it (16), from the confused appearance of the object (21), or from the straining of our eyes (27); but in each case there is only a contingent connection between the method used and the distance of the object from the observer (e.g. 3, 17, 20, 23). Similar considerations apply to the judgements we make by sight of magnitude (see 64) and situation (see 93–95). If this is so then clearly we must have some other way of making spatial judgements, for how else could we establish the various contingent links between what we see and space? This other method must, of course, be by touch, but then touch cannot be merely contingently related to space, for then we would need a third method and so on. Berkeley is therefore led to maintain that there are necessary connections between touch and space. For Berkeley, then, it is impossible for us to make spatial judgements, judgements of the distances between objects and of the magnitudes and positions of objects, by means of sight alone, whereas it is possible to make such judgements on the basis of information obtainable from touch alone. It is this joint claim that I wish to consider.

A philosophical tradition is in part identified by its more durable controversies. The British tradition in moral philosophy running, roughly, from Hobbes to the present day, involves several fine examples of the type—the plausibility or otherwise of the compatibilist view of free will, the case for and against utilitarianism, and perhaps above all the implications of the fact/value distinction. It is always pleasing to find some new variation on such themes; you have a comforting sense of the inherent permanence of this corner of the intellectual universe. Thus R. G. Swinburne's paper ‘The Objectivity of Morality’ (Philosophy, January 1976) is much to be welcomed as a contribution to a well-matured debate. Even more, perhaps, it is welcome on account of its considerable clarity. But clarity often comes at a high price, and the price in this case is too high. By setting out his version of the objectivist position with such precision and lack of ambiguity Professor Swinburne has made its difficulties and weaknesses accessible to all but the meanest intellect.

It is rarely, if at all, thought that Socrates committed suicide; but such was the case, or so I want to suggest. My suggestion turns not upon any new interpretation of ancient sources but rather upon seeking a determination of the concept of suicide itself.

In ‘Scientific Research and Moral Rectitude’ Robert Hoffman defends the scientific community against critics who maintain that ‘the researcher's claim to freedom of inquiry should be upheld only if his discovery does not adversely affect mankind….’ He uses two arguments in his defence, both of which purport to show that this sort of criticism is logically misconceived.

A prolonged (obsessive?) professional interest in the problems of obsessional disorder has led me to a consideration of Professor Hare's arguments for prescriptivism. It is perhaps a tribute to the elegance of Hare's argument and the lucidity with which it is presented that the present paper is concerned with the exceptions he cites.

Can I toss a small but important and oddly neglected point into the debate between Roger Trigg and the Social Anthropologists like Professor Beattie whom it may or may not be right to call Relativists?

Robert Hoffman's note, ‘Scientific Research and Moral Rectitude’ (Philosophy, 50 (1975), 475–7), is a highly misleading introduction to this important topic. Hoffman points out (rightly) that there are some people who ‘believe that the researcher's claim to freedom of inquiry should be upheld only if his discovery does not adversely affect mankind or any significant segment thereof’ (475), and his aim is to reject this belief. But such people are right, as can be shown by some counter-arguments and examples. But first a slight qualification is necessary, for, as Hoffman points out, it is impossible before an inquiry to state categorically that its outcome will (or will not) adversely affect mankind. But it may be possible to estimate whether it is likely to affect mankind adversely, and it is surely reasonable to hold that a researcher's claim to freedom of inquiry should not be upheld if it is likely that the inquiry will adversely affect mankind. If a nuclear physicist interested in particle fusion wishes to carry out research which is likely to lead to an uncontrolled nuclear explosion, no one would seriously uphold his right to carry out this research in a laboratory situated in a densely populated area. And to reply that he still has a right to carry out this research alone on a desert island would be to concede, not to circumvent, the claim that scientific research ought to be under the critical eye of moral responsibility. The critic of science would not in any case accept this reply, since he believes not unreasonably that nuclear explosions adversely affect mankind wherever on earth they occur.