In this paper I try to solve some problems concerning the interpretation of Socrates' conversation with Gorgias about the nature of rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias (448e6-461b2). I begin by clarifying what, ethically, is at stake in the conversation (section 2). In the main body of the paper (sections 3-6) I address the question of what we are to understand Gorgias as believing about the nature of rhetoric: I criticise accounts given by Charles Kahn and John Cooper, and suggest an alternative (...) account of my own. In the final section I spell out some of the implications of my account for the interpretation of the Gorgias, and of Plato more generally. (shrink)

Moral rationalism is identified as the view that moral constraints are rational constraints. This view seems implausible to many because it seems to involve belief in the fantastic-sounding possibility of egoist-conversion: that, in principle, an argument for moral constraints could be produced which would motivate a rational person who does not yet accept those constraints to observe them. Furthermore, the Humean want-belief model of motivation---the view that beliefs alone are incapable of motivating---seems to provide a good explanation for the impossibility (...) of egoist-conversion. I argue that the moral rationalist is not in fact committed to the possibility of egoist-conversion, and that an explanation of its impossibility can be given which is compatible with rationalism; so this impossibility counts neither against rationalism nor for the want-belief model. I consider a number of apparent objections to my position and rebut them. (shrink)

educational judgments Education, like art, politics, science, and other activities on which men pinned their highest hopes, has become the object of heated ...

Moral rationalism is identified as the view that moral constraints are rational constraints. This view seems implausible to many because it seems to involve belief in the fantastic-sounding possibility of egoist-conversion: that, in principle, an argument for moral constraints could be produced which would motivate a rational person who does not yet accept those constraints to observe them. Furthermore, the Humean want-belief model of motivation-the view that beliefs alone are incapable of motivating-seems to provide a good explanation for the impossibility (...) of egoist-conversion. I argue that the moral rationalist is not in fact committed to the possibility of egoist-conversion, and that an explanation of its impossibility can be given which is compatible with rationalism; so this impossibility counts neither against rationalism nor for the want-belief model. I consider a number of apparent objections to my position and rebut them. (shrink)

This portrait of Hume as an ironist is offered as a supplement to recent historical and biographical studies, and especially to Mossner's The Life o] David Hume. While others have commented on the irony in Hume's writings, Price goes further and suggests that irony is a key with which to unlock Hume's philosophical attitudes and beliefs. Since ap- preciation of irony depends on an awareness of context, Price interprets this to mean that Hume's writings must be read against the background (...) of his life and intellectual milieu. He traces the development of Hume's use of irony through four successive stages, beginning with the formative influences on the early writings and concluding with the culmination of Hume's ironic style in the last works -- principally the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. (shrink)

I here adapt some ideas of Prior’s 1967 paper ‘On spurious egocentricity’ in the interest of seeing how much sense can be made of the doctrine that ‘I’ is not a referring-expression. I suggest how an account of ‘I’ might draw upon both Prior’s treatment of the operator ‘I believe that’ and of operators like ‘it is true that’ and ‘it is now the case that’, which Prior argues are logically very different from ‘I believe that’. In the final section (...) I present some objections to Prior’s account of ‘now’, and try to give a more adequate account of the analogy between ‘now’ and ‘I’. (shrink)