The division between “erklaren” and “verstehen” is not as sharp as the conventional wisdom maintains, for all understanding, including the understanding of people, consists in the connecting, ordering and appraising of things encountered, believed or known. The understanding of people is a distinctive kind of cognitive understanding which has a practical side, involving the emotions. The education of the emotions, needed for us to understand ourselves and others, can be achieved both by the observation of real life and importantly by the study of realistic fiction and of biography.

Plausibly perceptual knowledge satisfies the following: (1) It is knowledge about things from the way they appear. (2) It can embrace more than the way things appear. (3) It is phenomenologically immediate and thus, in one sense, non-inferential. (2) and (3) place a significant constraint on adequate elucidations of (1). Knowledge about an object, from the way it looks, which embraces more than the way it looks, should not turn out to be inferential in the relevant sense. The paper shows how this constraint can be met, drawing upon a conception of a discriminative capacity. The discussion touches on literature dealing with observation in science, knowledge of other minds, and the possibility of moral knowledge.

It is accepted that first-person thoughts are immune to error through misidentification. I argue that there is also immunity to error through misascription, failure to recognise which has resulted in mistaken claims that first-person thoughts involving the self-ascription of bodily states are, at best, circumstantially immune to error through misidentification relative to ‘I’ and, at worst, subject to error. Central to my thesis is that, first, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification absolutely, and that if there is any problem with first-person thoughts this cannot be with the self-identification component, but only with the self-ascriptive component. Secondly, the ‘know who’, or ‘know what’, or ‘know which’ requirement is appropriately relevant to considerations of different self-ascriptive properties, and thus its inapproriateness in self-identification does not entail that ‘I’ may fail to refer and identify.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the central argument of Derrida's paper ‘White Mythology’. The crucial claims are that the concept of metaphor presupposes philosophy, that philosophy presupposes the concept of metaphor, and that philosophy cannot accommodate the concept of metaphor. I offer support for the first two claims, explaining the general kind of view of philosophy and of metaphor which they require, but I argue that even if we grant the first two claims, the concept of metaphor only presents a difficulty for a particular conception of philosophy, rather that philosophy as such.

W. A. Hart argues that Martha Nussbaum does not make a convincing case there are genuine moral dilemmas to be found in Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Hart claims that the impossibility of moral dilemmas flows from the Kantian principle that ‘ought implies can’. A certain understanding of OIC does rule out the possibility of moral dilemmas. However, this particular formulation of the OIC principle does not fit well with the eudaimonist framework common to ancient moral philosophy. It emerges that there are trade offs to be made between the ancients' views on the point of moral evaluation and ours. Thus the possibility of moral dilemmas is an issue that in inextricably enmeshed in larger issues in moral philosophy.

How do people learn names for kinds of sensations? Wittgenstein identifies two possibilities. 1. Direct acquaintance: A person feels a sensation, notes its intrinsic character, and sets about to use the word thereafter for this sensation. 2. Outward signs: A person pins his use of the word to the sensation's outward signs. Wittgenstein rejects 1 and endorses 2. He thinks a sensation name can be learned only if people pin their use of the word to outward signs. I identify a third procedure and show we name many sensations and other kinds of mental states this way.

Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it is argued that various forms of naturalistic dualism, of an emergentist character, are consistent with the strongest physical causal closure principles that can plausibly be advocated.

There is both theoretical and experimental reason to suppose that no-one could ever have learned to speak without an environment of language-users. How then did the first language-users learn? Animal communication systems provide no help, since human languages aren't constituted as a natural system of signs, and are essentially recursive and syntactic. Such languages aren't demanded by evolution, since most creatures, even intelligent creatures, manage very well without them. I propose that representations, and even public representations like sculptures, precede full languages, which were devised by the first human children as secret tongues to create fantasy realms inaccessible to their proto-human parents. Language, in brief, is not required for truth-telling or for the convenience of hunters. It is a peculiar modification of public representation, which permits us to construct new public worlds.

An exploratory discussion. Call a desire “finitisic” if some conceivable eventuality would fulfil it completely (so that no conceivable eventuality would fulfil it more). That flexibility of behaviour distinguishing the animate from the mindless is accounted for fundamentally by supposing ultimate motivation all infinitistic and outweighable. Decision-making by the counterpoise of such motivation contrasts with algorithmic thinking; and this suggests a non-computational view of mentation, a compatibilist understanding of creative imagination, and (with some additional conceptions) a possible definitional avenue for breaking the circle of intentionality.

This paper considers on what basis justice may require that people be treated as equals. It begins with an examination of the argument that people are to be treated as equals because they are equals, and suggests reasons for thinking that such an argument is unlikely to succeed. The remainder of the paper considers, and tries to make plausible, the argument that justice requires people be treated as equals because they are individuals. Thus the paper offers some support for the view that the proper foundation of egalitarianism is individualism.

Non language-using animals cannot have beliefs, because believing entails the ability to distinguish true from false beliefs and also the ability to distinguish changes in belief from changes in the world. For these abilities we need both the fixation of belief and counter-factual thought, for both of which language is necessary. The argument of the paper extends Davidson's argument to the same conclusion (which is found wanting). But denying beliefs to animals has no moral implications.

A theory of laws is developed that takes from E. J. Lowe the claim of natural laws being consistent with certain classes of exceptions. Neither abnormal cases, such as albino ravens, nor miracles falsify covering laws. This suggests that law statements cannot have the form of a universally quantified conditional. Lowe takes it that this is best explained by natural laws having normative force in the same way as moral laws and laws of the land. I argue that there is a non-normative, descriptivist account that also explains the exception cases and which is preferable, given our reservations about normative laws of nature. I also suggest an improved account of miracles within the descriptivist account.

Glen Hartz argues, that neuroscience reveals that persons moved or frightened by fictional characters believe that they are real, so such behaviour is not irrational.

But these beliefs, if they exist, are not rational and, in any case inconsistent with our conscious rational beliefs that fictional characters are not real. So his argument fails to establish that we are not irrational or incoherent when moved or frightened by such characters. It powerfully reinforces the contrary view.

In a recent edition of the journal Philosophy, Sophie Botros asserts that modern ethical theorists have badly misunderstood the role of the Doctrine of Double Effect, turning it into a device by which to prohibit actions which are deemed impermissible; whereas the true function of the Doctrine is rather one of justifying actions. In my reply, I argue that Dr Botros has misunderstood the Doctrine: that its ‘prohibitive’ and its ‘justificatory’ roles are merely two sides of the same coin, since its function is to decide for a given action whether it is permissible or impermissible. Furthermore, Dr Botros has misconstrued the essential contribution of the DDE is not the balancing of good results against bad ones, but the quite different position that the crucial moral distinction is between intended and merely foreseen results.

In his recent ‘A Prolegomenon to an Identity Theory of Truth’ (Vol. 74, 1999) Stewart Candlish discusses the so called identity theory of truth. His aim in the article is to clear away initial difficulties that apparently stand in the way of developing the budding theory. There is one difficulty, however, that, by Candlish's lights, cannot be overcome—at least not easily. My aim in this paper is to help the identity theory by showing that, pace Candlish, the given difficulty is merely apparent. I do not ‘solve’ the alleged problem; I dissolve it. Dissolution, however, is solution enough.

Quentin Smith has been arguing for more than a decade that the universe is uncaused. For nearly as long he has also argued that it appeared spontaneously from literally nothing. I have replied to these arguments in many places, including a recent essay in Philosophy. Now, apparently, Smith has changed his mind: in his most recent contribution to Philosophy, he argues not that the universe is uncaused, but that it is self-caused. His motives for so doing remain much the same, however: he would like to undermine the efforts of theists to show that the universe requires an external cause, by arguing that the universe can cause itself (580). I do not think that the arguments he gives for this new position are any more plausible than his older ones for an uncaused universe, so I don't think that he has advanced the cause of atheism. This essay defends that evaluation.

This article responds to Quentin Smith's, ‘The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist’, Philosophy74 (1999), 579–586. My rejoinder makes three main points. The first is that Smith's argument for a finitely old, but causally self-explanatory, universe fails from probative overkill: if sound, it also shows that all manner of paltry event-sequences are causally self-explanatory.The second point is that the refutation of Smith's argument extends to Hume's argument for an infinitely old causally self-explanatory universe, as well as to Smith's two ‘causal loop’ arguments. The problem with all four arguments is their reliance on Hume's principle that to explain the members of a collection is ipso facto to explain the collection. This principle succumbs to counterexamples. The third point is that, even if Hume's principle were true, Smith's argument could not succeed without the aid of a theory of causation according to which causation is production (causation of existence).

This idea of time travel has long given philosophers difficulties. Most recently, in his paper ‘Troubles with Time Travel’ William Grey presents a number of objections to time travel, some well known in the philosophical literature, others quite novel. In particular Grey's ‘no destinations’ and ‘double occupation’ objections I take to be original, while what I will call the ‘times paradox’ and the ‘possibility restriction argument’ are versions of well known objections. I show how each of these can be answered, thereby defending the plausibility of time travel.