For many years G. E. Moore asked himself what was wrong with sentences like ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I don't believe that I did’, or ‘I believe that he has gone out, but he has not’. He discussed the problem in 1912 in his Ethics , and was still discussing it in 1944 in a paper to the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge—an event we know about from a letter of Wittgenstein that I shall quote in (...) a moment. Throughout these years of pondering, Moore retained a remarkably stable vocabulary for setting out his solution. Briefly, he held this: saying ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I don't believe that I did’ is absurd, but not self-contradictory. Not self-contradictory, because ‘it may quite well be true’; yet absurd, because the speaker expressly repudiates, in the second part of the sentence, a belief which he implies by uttering the first part. The panoply of distinctions which subtends this doctrine—sentence v. utterance of sentence, saying v. implying, contradiction v. absurdity—was subjected to keen scrutiny a generation or so ago, and much of it has now passed into philosophical lore as a discussion of ‘Moore's Paradox’. (shrink)

Anglophone philosophers have on the whole overlooked much of the last ten years or so of Descartes' philosophical career. In the period following publication of the Meditations, however, Descartes was extremely active in attempting to develop a comprehensive ethics, rooted in his analysis of human passions. His work in this area grew out of a lengthy correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and was later systematically presented in the Passions of the Soul. The present volume is the first collection of (...) essays dealing specifically with this aspect of Descartes' thinking. It is thus a valuable contribution to our understanding of the first modern philosopher. Since in the Passions Descartes provides us with the most sophisticated and extended discussion of the composite human being anywhere in his writings, this volume is an indispensable aid to understanding the full scope of Cartesian anthropology. Just what is the nature of the passions? Does Descartes' analysis of the passions undercut his dualism? How do the passions both contribute to our good, and, if we are not careful, prevent us from recognizing it? How can the passions be regulated rationally? How do the passions affect our freedom? These and other questions are addressed in these original and insightful articles, all by leading Descartes scholars. (shrink)

A bold and insightful departure from related texts, _Descartes_ goes beyond the categorical associations placed on the philosopher’s ideas, and explores the subtleties of his beliefs. An elegant, compelling and insightful introduction to Descartes' life and work. Discusses a broad range of his most scrutinized philosophical thought, including his contributions to logic, philosophy of the mind, epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion. Explores the subtleties of Descartes' seemingly contradictory beliefs. Addresses themes left unexamined in other (...) works on Descartes. (shrink)

A bold and insightful departure from related texts, _Descartes_ goes beyond the categorical associations placed on the philosopher’s ideas, and explores the subtleties of his beliefs. An elegant, compelling and insightful introduction to Descartes' life and work. Discusses a broad range of his most scrutinized philosophical thought, including his contributions to logic, philosophy of the mind, epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion. Explores the subtleties of Descartes' seemingly contradictory beliefs. Addresses themes left unexamined in other (...) works on Descartes. (shrink)

André Gombay; XIV*—What You Don't Know Doesn't Hurt You, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 239–250, https://doi.or.

André Gombay; XIV*—What You Don't Know Doesn't Hurt You, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 239–250, https://doi.or.

In a famous text Descartes has written this:Whenever the thought of God's supreme power occurs to me, I cannot help feeling that he might easily, if he so wished, make me go wrong even in what I think I see most clearly with my mind's eye. On the other hand, whenever I turn to the matters themselves which I think I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I burst out: ‘let who will deceive me, he can (...) never bring it about that I should be nothing at the time of thinking that I am something, nor that it be true that I never existed if it is true that I exist now; nor even that two and three together make more or less than five, or any such thing in which I see manifest contradiction’. (shrink)

1. Legend has it that as Mozart lay dying, a stranger dressed in black entered the room. Without saying word, he walked to the death-bed, removed the manuscript sheets of the Requiem on which the composer had been working until his final hours, and departed. This was not as you might have thought an envoy from beyond—but the servant of a certain Viennese nobleman, Count Walsegg zu Stuppach. The Count was in the habit of commissioning music anonymously, and having it (...) played in his palace as though it were his own. In extremis he was collecting the score for a forthcoming soirée. (shrink)

McCall's argument has two stages. In the first, the hypothesis that someone has both perfect memory and perfect foreknowledge is shown to generate an infinite regress, and this is taken to establish the absurdity of that hypothesis; in the second, this absurdity is made the basis of a proof that time is asymmetrical.

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents preface.

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents preface.

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents preface.

In a famous text Descartes has written this:Whenever the thought of God's supreme power occurs to me, I cannot help feeling that he might easily, if he so wished, make me go wrong even in what I think I see most clearly with my mind's eye. On the other hand, whenever I turn to the matters themselves which I think I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I burst out: ‘let who will deceive me, he can (...) never bring it about that I should be nothing at the time of thinking that I am something, nor that it be true that I never existed if it is true that I exist now; nor even that two and three together make more or less than five, or any such thing in which I see manifest contradiction’. (shrink)

For all his insistence that the mind has no parts, Descartes often describes inner mental conflicts, sometimes his own: ambivalence, fixation to childhood prejudice, are for him fixtures of human life. "Sigmund Descartes?" examines this aspect of his thought.

1. Legend has it that as Mozart lay dying, a stranger dressed in black entered the room. Without saying word, he walked to the death-bed, removed the manuscript sheets of the Requiem on which the composer had been working until his final hours, and departed. This was not as you might have thought an envoy from beyond—but the servant of a certain Viennese nobleman, Count Walsegg zu Stuppach. The Count was in the habit of commissioning music anonymously, and having it (...) played in his palace as though it were his own. In extremis he was collecting the score for a forthcoming soirée. (shrink)

Writers on Descartes are apt to mention one dramatic event of his life—a dream he had in November 1619 in which the “Spirit of Truth” opened up for him “the treasures of all the sciences.” We know of the dream not from the published Descartes, though he perhaps alluded to it in the passage of the Discourse where he speaks of having spent a day alone “in a stove”; no, our textual source is his early biographer Adrien Baillet, writing seventy (...) years after the event. Why do commentators fasten on that episode? I take it they find the paradox alluring—a stern rationalist set on his life-course by an oneiric revelation. (shrink)