Like his earlier Language and Philosophy. and Problems of Analysis, Models and Metaphors is a collection of Black's papers unified by the belief that linguistic considerations can play an important part in framing and solving philosophical problems. Broadly speaking, the linguistic approach takes two forms: examining the uses of a word, or of a set of related words, frequently occurring in philosophical inquiries, either for the general purposes of clarification or as a useful aid to the solution, or dissolution, of (...) a specific philosophical problem ; considering questions about language, meaning, and related subjects. Obviously, given that the concepts involved are of language or meaning, the former approach can be readily incorporated in the latter. (shrink)

The word ‘dualism’ can be used to pick out at least four different theories concerning the relationship between mind and body. A mind and a body are two different entities and each is “had” by a man. A man is thus a composite being with two components, one “inner”, the other “outer”. You, for example, are a man and your mind is “inner” in the sense that you alone can reflectively experience yourself thinking, or feeling pain, or seeing colours . (...) I can in a sense observe you thinking, but only by observing you use your body in certain ways—e.g. to make certain sounds, write certain things, look at the pages of an open book and frown. My “experience” of you thinking is thus not a reflective experience. Your body is “outer”, on the other hand, in the sense that you cannot experience it or its properties in any exclusive way. That is, in whatever sense you can be said to experience your body, someone else can equally be said to experience it. (shrink)

John Loke is often referred to as the first of a triumvirate of major British Empiricists, and sometimes even as the father of British Empiricism. In many cases the reference is extremely guarded, and at times the word ‘empiricist’ is being used merely as a convenient label for organising university courses, amounting to little more than a synonym for ‘Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and to some extent Bacon, Hobbes, Reid, and Mill’. Given that ‘empiricist’ is being used in a philosophically (...) interesting way, however, there is some question as to just how guarded its application to Locke should be. (shrink)

Suppose that a jury in a murder trial brings in a verdict of guilty and one of the jurors still wonders whether the verdict is a good one, although he is not inclined to try to have it reversed. Is his attitude coherent?

The principle that epistemic justification is necessarily transmitted to all the known logical consequences of a justified belief continues to attract critical attention. That attention is not misplaced. If the Transmission Principle is valid, anyone who thinks that a given belief is justified must defend the view that every known consequence of the belief is also justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection principle is modified, the (...) possibility of deductive justification is threatened. If some known consequence fails to be justified, the failure may extend to every known consequence. To reject Transmission is to insert a logical gap between the justification of a premise and the justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection on the Transmission Principle therefore usefully brings us face to face with the following dilemma: accept the principle and hand Cartesian scepticism a powerful weapon, or modify the principle and risk undermining deductive justification. (shrink)

EVEN IF ’MIRACLE’ MEANS A VIOLATION OF A LAW OF NATURE, A CASE CAN BE MADE FOR THINKING THAT MIRACLES ARE POSSIBLE, DETECTABLE, AND COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENCE. THE CASE WORKS BY DEFINING A LAW-VIOLATION AS AN EVENT OF A KIND THAT IS EPISTEMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS THERE IS GOOD EVIDENCE OF A GOD’S PRODUCING AN INSTANCE. HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN OBJECTIONS ARE CONSIDERED AND ANSWERED.

The question ‘For Spinoza, what body is identical with the human mind?’ deserves more attention than it has received. On first view it looks plausible enough simply to answer ‘the human body’, using the latter expression in its ordinary sense. Yet a second look, prompted by the question What then are we to make of the human brain?’, can easily create dissatisfaction and send us searching for firmer guidelines in Spinoza’s philosophy. I want to unearth such guidelines here. My investigation (...) will be undertaken mainly from the viewpoint of someone familiar with issues of current interest in philosophy of mind. It will therefore be helpful to begin the discussion with a brief attempt to classify his general position on mind and body from a contemporary point of view. (shrink)

I intend to defend three claims in this paper: Locke's position does imply a specious present theory, one which importantly resembles a version adopted by C. D. Broad. Contrary to what some commentators think or imply, Locke does not make the ideas which occupy the specious present durationless and he does not confine the specious present to the duration of what we experience in reflection. The theory he implies does create a serious problem for him, however, and in order to (...) avoid the problem he must drop the reflective specious present.The specious present theory in general holds that what we experience as a whole is never instantaneous and that at least part of the duration of what we experience as a whole at a given time is earlier than that time. The experienced present is always at least in part a bit of the past. For example, if at t I hear a sequence of sounds, then at least the first sound in the sequence is earlier than t, since I first heard it before t. (shrink)

Some moral philosophers, Such as ross and moore, Think that, Whereas we can be sure of limited judgments concerning "prima facie" duties and intrinsic values, We cannot be sure of judgments of rightness or wrongness. Two arguments for this type of scepticism are examined. The first works only if we assume, With ross, That '"prima facie" duty' is a moral notion, Not an epistemic notion. The second works only if we assume that there is no difference between uncertainty about a (...) moral judgment and uncertainty about the evidence that bears on the judgment. Since neither assumption is sound, Neither argument works. (shrink)

Let us use ‘sensation’ such that we can talk about ‘visual sensation’ and ‘auditory sensation’, and such that ‘sensation’ cannot readily be pluralized. It then makes sense to talk about the “objects” involved in sensation. For example, if someone sees red, where his seeing red is a case of sensation, then there is an “object” involved in the situation in the sense that we can talk about “what” he sees. One of the enduring problems in philosophy is to try to (...) determine the status of such objects. (shrink)

It is important to try to understand Berkeley's exact position on what it is for someone to perceive an idea. He is frequently presented as holding that to perceive an idea is to be confronted by an object which is in some sense mind-dependent and private, and, if taken in a certain way, such a remark is not inaccurate. But the interpretation which renders it accurate needs to be specified and this is a task which awaits completion. Until it is (...) completed, questions like ‘Can Berkeley account for everything we, as plain men, legitimately want to say?’, ‘Are his arguments against the possibility of mind-independent material substances sound?’, and ‘Is he right to hold that the ideas involved in different sense modalities are always different?’, cannot be finally resolved.George Pitcher, in “Minds and Ideas in Berkeley”, makes a good start on the problem, but he does not consider a sufficient number of alternative analyses of ‘So and so perceives such and such an idea’. As a result he fails to pinpoint the exact analysis which Berkeley himself would favour. (shrink)

1. Introduction. Can Berkeleian idealism draw any support from the following argument?

Robert richman tries to defend a justified-True-Belief analysis of knowledge by attacking the assumption that a justified belief can be false. But, Although 'p is justified but false' is incoherent if asserted about the way things actually are, It is not incoherent if asserted about a supposed situation. And critics of a justified-True-Belief analysis need only do the latter.

Almeder effectively defends his view that justification entails truth against some earlier objections and offers new arguments for the entailment. Although the arguments make clear that truth claims depend on justification claims, They still fail to establish an entailment.

According to Plato's Republic, human knowledge in highest form owes its existence to a priori discoveries made during the course of dialectical investigations. Being a priori, such discoveries are neither empirical observations nor conclusions based upon empirical observations, although in some cases they may be “occasioned” by experience. They are matter for intellectual, not literal, vision, and making them is what distinguishes the successful philosopher from the non-philosopher. Thus, in the Phaedo, Plato is in a position to argue that the (...) separation of the soul from the body in death is no evil for a genuine philosopher: he has no need to rely on the bodily senses in order to acquire philosophical knowledge; and he is well free of the errors and confusion generated by the senses, and of the physical desires nourished in the soul as a result of residing in a body. (shrink)

Descartes' attempt to avoid the charge of circularity is unconvincing, And more recent efforts by scholars such as frankfurt and kenny to defend him on this point have not been entirely successful. The only way to remove the circle is to replace the search for perfect knowledge by a search for knowledge that is less than perfect, Yet not obviously attainable. Philosophers can then defend knowledge claims against metaphysical doubts without fear of having to beg the question, Indeed can even (...) adopt the cartesian principle that defending knowledge claims is impossible without engaging in this type of epistemology. (shrink)

One reasonably familiar argument for epistemological scepticism maintains that knowledge requires foundations and that we rarely, if ever, have such foundations. The conclusion of this argument is that we rarely, if ever, have knowledge. A second, less ambitious sceptical argument is that philosophers cannot justifiably say that they have knowledge unless their statement is based on foundations and that we never have such foundations. The conclusion of this argument is not that we never have knowledge, but that philosophers are never (...) justified in saying that they have knowledge. The scepticism is Pyrrhonic, rather than Academic, and merely attempts to counter knowledge assertions, not establish that they are false. It tries to show that in most cases the best response we can give to ‘Do we have knowledge?’ is to remain indifferent. (shrink)