Echoing the debate about the nature of law that has dominated legal philosophy for several decades, this volume includes essays on the nature of law and on law not as it is but as it should be. Wherever possible, essays have been chosen that have provoked direct responses from other legal philosophers, and in two cases these responses are included. Contributors include H.L.A. Hart, R.M. Dworkin, Lord Patrick Devlin, John Rawls, J.J. Thomson, J. Finnis, and T.M. Scanlon.

A selection of important writings which together suggest that legal philosophy is the nerve of legal reasoning.

A selection of important writings which together suggest that legal philosophy is the nerve of legal reasoning.

We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the ship seen through different windows, and (...) Mates cases, and we believe that there are many additional applications. (shrink)

Are fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes real? What can fiction tell us about the nature of truth and reality? In this excellent introduction to the problem of fictionalism R. M. Sainsbury covers the following key topics: what is fiction? realism about fictional objects, including the arguments that fictional objects are real but non-existent; real but non-factual; real but non-concrete the relationship between fictional characters and non-actual worlds fictional entities as abstract artefacts fiction and intentionality and the problem of irrealism (...) fictionalism about possible worlds moral fictionalism. R. M. Sainsbury makes extensive use of examples from fiction, such as Sherlock Holmes, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and examines the work of philosophers who have made significant contributions to the topic, including Meinong, David Lewis, and Bas Van Fraassen. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making _Fiction and Fictionalism_ ideal for those coming to the issue for the first time. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays, most being reprints or revisions of works which have appeared elsewhere, focusing on aspects of Rawls’ treatise. The intent of the volume is to furnish a "guide to the problems and lines of criticism which must be pursued" in the furtherance of a "full scholarly assessment of Rawls’ achievement." Additionally, the editor hopes that the collection may serve as "an aid to the education of advanced students" who may be reading Rawls in graduate seminars. (...) The volume is organized around four main themes: 1) contractarianism and the original position, 2) the attack on utilitarianism and the attempt to avoid intuitionism, 3) the doctrines of justice as fairness and the difference principle, and 4) criticisms from the social sciences. The contributors are: Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, Milton Fisk, R. M. Hare, Joel Feinberg, Gerald Dworkin, David Lyons, T. M. Scanlon, Richard Miller, H. L. A. Hart, Norman Daniels, A. K. Sen, Benjamin Barber, and Frank Michelman. Daniels has also provided an excellent introduction summarizing the issues and criticisms which are debated within: it furnishes a helpful overview of the volume’s contents as well as a conspectus of Rawls criticism generally. Finally there is a selected bibliography of further criticism, and a name index. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

Scholars of Plato are divided between those who emphasize the literature of the dialogues and those who emphasize the argument of the dialogues, and between those who see a development in the thought of the dialogues and those who do not. In this important book Russell Dancy focuses on the arguments and defends a developmental picture. He explains the Theory of Forms of the Phaedo and Symposium as an outgrowth of the quest for definitions canvassed in the Socratic dialogues, by (...) constructing a Theory of Definition for the Socratic dialogues based on the refutations of definitions in those dialogues, and showing how that theory is mirrored in the Theory of Forms. His discussion, notable for both its clarity and its meticulous scholarship, ranges in detail over a number of Plato's early and middle dialogues, and will be of interest to readers in Plato studies and in ancient philosophy more generally. (shrink)

In the early part of the paper, I attempt to explain a dispute between two parties who endorse the compositionality of language but disagree about its implications: Paul Horwich, and Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore. In the remainder of the paper, I challenge the thesis on which they are agreed, that compositionality can be taken for granted. I suggest that it is not clear what compositionality involves nor whether it obtains. I consider some kinds of apparent counterexamples, and compositionalist responses (...) to them in terms of covert indexicality and unspecific meanings. I argue that the last option is the best for most of the cases I consider. I conclude by stressing, as against Horwich and Fodor and Lepore, that the appropriate question concerns the extent to which compositionality obtains in a natural language, rather than whether it obtains or not, so that the answer is essentially messy, requiring detailed consideration of a wide range of examples. (shrink)

This book is divided into three parts: in Part I, R. M. Hare offers a justification for the use of philosophy of language in the treatment of moral questions, together with an overview of his moral philosophy of ‘universal prescriptivism’. The second part, and the core of the book, consists of five chapters originally presented as a lecture series under the title ‘A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories’. Hare identifies descriptivism and non‐descriptivism as the two main positions in modern moral philosophy. (...) The former he divides into Naturalism and Intuitionism, and the latter into Emotivism and Rationalism. Hare argues that all forms of descriptivism tend to lead to Relativism because the truth conditions of moral statements are culturally variant. Of the positions discussed, only Hare's own position, a form of Rationalism, which he calls Universal Prescriptivism, meets all of the requirements that an adequate ethical theory should meet. Part III consists of Hare's previously published essay ‘Could Kant have been a Utilitarian?’ (Utilitas 5, 1993). Here, Hare puts forward the controversial thesis that Kant's moral philosophy is, in its basic principles, compatible with utilitarianism. (shrink)

The paper argues that intensional phenomena can be explained without appealing to "exotic" entities: one that don't exist, are merely possible, or are essentially abstract.

I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life's ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all (...) those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms have been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion. True, their skeletons, indigestible to worms, remained, and were surprisingly similar to one another. But I was led to think again about what one can, and what one cannot, achieve in this direction. (shrink)