It is often held that movement can be defined in terms of places and times. Thus Russell says:

We must entirely reject the notion of a state of motion. Motion consists merely in the occupation of different places at different times, subject to continuity as explained in Part V (Principles of Philosophy §447).

There is a natural view of nonsense, which owes what attraction it has to the apparent absence of alternatives. In Frege and Wittgenstein there is a view which goes against the natural one, and the purpose of this paper is to establish that it is a possible view of nonsense.

In this paper there is some old news, but not, I hope, stale news. I shall reiterate the view that the dominant aim of education is to contribute to the good life for individuals, an aim expressed by J. S. and Harriet Mill in their famous essay On Liberty. But the paper is not stale news because it is no longer commonplace to defend individualism. The Mills' essay now appears to be a subversive document. Secondly, characterizing the good life at least partly in terms of ‘self-cultivation’ and ‘self-perfection’ seems anachronistic. Conceptions of the good life have changed. Thirdly, On Liberty was subject to sustained criticism by James Fitzjames Stephen, and some of that criticism requires modification of some of the views expressed by the Mills.

It has frequently been lamented that while the human species has made immense progress in science it is nevertheless ethically backward. This ethical backwardness is all the more dangerous because the advanced state of scientific knowledge has made available a technology with which we are able to destroy ourselves—indeed a technology which may have got so much out of hand that we may not even have the capacity to prevent it from destroying us.

My three main points are:

(a) Mental disease is a metaphor, but mental illness is not.

(b) Feeling ill and having a physical illness are logically related. If there were no such thing as feeling ill, there would be no such thing as suffering from a physical illness. Yet there is no logical connection between feeling ill and being mentally ill.

(c) Mental illness is manifested in various forms of behaviour, for example, suspiciousness, elation, depression, etc.; if a form of behaviour is to count as mental illness, it has to be an insane form; yet it is possible to be mentally ill without being insane and it is possible to be insane without being mentally ill.

To discover David Hume's views on women it is necessary to bring together remarks scattered somewhat sparsely throughout his philosophical and historical writings. Although the titles of Hume's major works might suggest that he was describing the understanding and nature of all human beings, both male and female, in none of the works do we find a specific section devoted to an analysis of sexual differences in these two respects. There is a tidy chapter on female morality in A Treatise of Human Nature, but nothing comparable for female nature as such (T, 570–573). This omission does not, however, imply that Hume thought that biological differences had no concomitants in character and understanding. Neither, despite Hume's bantering remark that an essay on a ‘Subject so little to be understood as Women’ would be ‘unintelligible’, does this neglect imply that Hume was uncertain about these attendant differences (L, i, 45). Hume's exclusion of such a section seems to stem only from his desire to stress human uniformity, not from any lack of recognition of human variety. Because of the absence of any systematic treatment of the subject by Hume, it is necessary to proceed cautiously in interpreting his remarks on women. There is a further reason for caution in that Hume offers ‘jests and pleasantries’ as well as more serious comments on this subject; Hume, on occasions, gallantly woos his so-called ‘favourites’, his female readers, and when he does so sincerity is gallantly put aside.

What is one to make of Sartre's treatment of his waiter in one of his famous analyses of bad faith? The example is supposed to be an obvious one, but the more we examine it, the less obvious it becomes. Let us remind ourselves of Sartre's example:

Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with a recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.

Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy.

In a famous passage in her book, Intention, Professor G. E. M. Anscombe argues that we can only render intelligible the idea of someone wanting a thing if we know under what aspect the person sees the thing as desirable. The wanted thing must be characterized by the wanter as desirable in some respect. ‘[What] is required for our concept of “wanting”’, she says, ‘is that a man should see what he wants under the aspect of some good’ (p. 74). And furthermore, ‘the good (perhaps falsely) conceived by the agent to characterize the thing must really be one of the many forms of good’ (p. 76). Thus, while the object of desire need only be conceived as good by the wanter, and need not be really good, this can only be because the object does not have the desirable character the wanter believes it to have, not because the character supposed to be desirable is not really so. Desire cannot but be for one of the real forms of good.

My question is whether a prevalent conception of morality can admit the existence of moral delusion. The conception of morality I refer to is that of a set of rules, or principles, ‘accepted’ or ‘assented’ to by persons, which stipulate that certain kinds of human act or behaviour are permitted, or required, while other kinds are to be avoided. This conception of morality can be found virtually everywhere, outside as much as within philosophy, in anthropology, sociology, political studies, history, literary criticism, psychology, and law. But it is to a particular philosophical instance that I shall attend here. The instance in question is an essay by Jonathan Bennett which appeared in this journal seven years ago under the title ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’. My reason for addressing myself to Bennett's paper will become clear as I proceed.

Deep beneath the surface of Kant's theory of knowledge lies the metaphysical doctrine of noumena, things in themselves, intelligible entities. For lengthy periods these creatures are surprisingly unobtrusive and can be safely disregarded. But at certain points Kant hauls them to the surface and tries to put them to work in perplexing ways. My concern is not with these attempts, but with what can be learned, if not salvaged, from the metaphysical doctrine as it is expounded in the chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason entitled ‘The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena’. I shall start by giving, for the most part in Kant's own words, as blunt an account as possible of how he appears to reduce his own doctrine to nonsense. I shall then argue that such an account, while not straightforwardly wrong, ignores matters of very great interest. I shall do so in terms of two theories, which I distinguish, about the relationship between knowing, changing and conceptualizing. Finally, I shall draw some more and less general conclusions.

Descartes thought that belief was a voluntary matter. His account of error in the Fourth Meditation is based on this. Given his account of what it is to have a true idea he thought that our false beliefs could be accounted for by the fact that while our intellectual capacity is limited our capacity for willing is unlimited, and so allows us to give our assent to what we do not truly perceive. Spinoza, on the other hand, thought that the intellect and will cannot be separated in such a way, and urged that ‘In the mind there is no volition or affirmation and negation excepting that which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves’ (Ethics, Pt. 2, Prop. 49). One philosopher, S. Hampshire, sees this distinction between Descartes and Spinoza as one of the dividing lines of philosophy (Thought and Action, p. 155). Yet it is not easy to see wherein the division lies.