A retributive theory of punishment must at least say that it is a necessary condition for the justification of a punishment that the person punished should be guilty. But “guilty” here may be taken in two different senses, giving two very different kinds of justification. In the first sense, to be guilty is to have wilfully disobeyed a law or order of some authority, and it is the defiance of this authority which justifies punishment. Mr. Mabbott has put up a (...) good case for a view of this kind. It is clear that we regularly do justify the punishment of offenders on the ground that they have broken rules, and therefore deserve to be punished. And there are some moral situations in which this is the only fact to be considered in deciding whether or not to punish. As to the view that this constitutes the only valid justification of punishment, I wish to make two comments. (shrink)

The problem I shall discuss is What reason have we for believing that there are physical objects? My purpose is not either to raise or to dispel doubts as to the existence of physical objects; this doubt constitutes a medical rather than a philosophical problem. The point of asking the question is that, while there can be no reasonable difference of opinion as to whether there are physical objects, there can be and is reasonable difference of opinion as to how (...) the notion of a physical object is to be analysed; and if we are clear as to what grounds there are for believing in physical objects, we shall also be clearer as to what sort of physical objects we have grounds for believing in. Also, it is worth while to inquire which other beliefs are logically connected with, and which are logically independent of, the belief in physical objects. (shrink)

I Take and as correlative terms: to say of words or other symbols that they have meaning is to say that they are understood, or could be understood, by some interpreter. To specify a meaning fully, one must specify the interpreter or class of interpreters who do or might understand the symbols in a given way. There aretwo ways of doing this for a given utterance of words: we can take the interpretation which the utterer intended () the words to (...) receive, or the interpretation which would be given to them by the majority of speakers of the language to which they belong (or a specially qualified group of such speakers). In the vast majority of cases these interpretationswill coincide; in a small minority of cases they will not. Sometimes a speaker will coin a new word, or use an old word in a new sense. Sometimes he will ignorantly or carelessly intend his words to be interpreted in a way inwhich they would not be interpreted by most understanders of his language. In cases of this kind, we have to distinguish between and . (English judges, in interpreting statutes, are supposed to consider only the former, ignoring the latter; but usually it is rather the latter which matters.) Normally,however, an utterer of words uses them with meanings already determined independently of his use of them (though not, of course, independently of the totality of uses of them). (shrink)