D. M. Armstrong is an eminent Australian philosopher whose work over many years has dealt with such subjects as: the nature of possibility, concepts of the particular and the general, causes and laws of nature, and the nature of human consciousness. This collection of essays explores the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his more recent interests. There are four sections to the book: possibility and identity, universals, laws and causality, and philosophy of mind. The contributors comprise an international (...) group of philosophers from the United States, England and Australia. An interesting feature of the volume is that Armstrong himself has written responses to each of the essays. There is also a complete bibliography of Armstrong's writings. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was, along with G.E. Moore, deserving of accolade as a founder of analytic philosophy, and of its close companion, the linguistic turn. Here I explain how his relocates philosophy's concern with appearance and reality as a concern with grammatical surface and logical depth. I then on remark the irony of Russell's unhappiness with views to the effect that an ethical judgment is not, despite linguistic appearances, really something that can be true or false. A further irony lies in (...) Russell's error of assigning metaphysical grandeur to logical truths, an error he could have avoided by more fully appreciating how logically misleading linguistic appearances can be. (shrink)

The paper suggests a revival of the 17th century distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. Some points are made which seem to me show it obviously false that a fact is merely a true proposition. Truths of fact, contingent truths, are rightly seen as corresponding to facts. Other truths, including ethical truths of right and wrong are, if true, necessarily true. In general, necessarily ture statements, including those of mathematics are wrongly construed as factual. Ethics and aesthetics, (...) it is maintained, can be construed as noncognitive; but not because claims in these domains are other than claims to truth. They are, in large part, not claims to knowledge, which does not bar them from being claims to truth. (shrink)

Frege's scathing comments on Mill on the empirical grounds of arithmetical truth are elaborated. The suggestion is made that some entities are ‘well-behaved' : if you perform two acts and then two more, the ‘result' will be that exactly four acts have occurred. How much it all matters or means is not further discussed.

The great bulk of what we are pleased to deem knowledge comes to us via the words of others. But such knowledge is limited to (mere) information or plain fact.Theoretical, Ethical and Aesthetic discourse are three regions in which, even when we accept the words of others, we transmit content with what I dub prefaces, not flatly, not in our own voice. Explanation of this is suggested: in these regions assertions claim truth without claiming knowledge. So fact-theory and fact-value differ (...) from plain fact for similar reasons, reasons which alleviate the urge to downgrade ethical discourse to the expressive or prescriptive. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam has recently observed that the fact/value distinction has acquired a strength and pervasiveness in our culture that make it akin to an institution. 1 I take it he meant an institution in the sense that Taboo is an institution in some cultures, not in the sense that the Church is an institution in ours. Invoking the distinction is a widespread conversational gambit in social life, not only in academic discussions. ‘That's a value judgment’ and ‘That's emotive’ are to (...) be heard at dinner parties more often than ‘Pass the salt’. (shrink)

In Plato's Meno , there is a famous discussion of desire and evil. This paper is not a contribution to Platonic scholarship, but a direct taking up of the issue whether someone can desire evil. One stock interpretation of the putative impossibility of desiring what is evil or bad is the interpretation which emphasizes an internal or conceptual tie between desire and good. This interpretation compares pairs of terms such as ‘fear—danger’, ‘belief—truth’ and ‘desire—good’. To fear something is to regard (...) it as, or believe that it is, dangerous ; to believe something is to regard it as, or believe it to be, true ; to desire something is to regard it as, to believe it to be, good. Since it is obvious that people believe things which are false, it is maintained that it is equally obvious that people may desire what is bad and fear what is harmless or of no danger. Let us call this interpretation of the doctrine that it is impossible to desire evil the weak thesis. The weak thesis allows what seems a plain fact of human reality, that people believe falsehoods, fear things that cannot harm them and desire things which are not good. Equally obviously, it allows that people fail to believe truths, fail to desire goods, and fail to fear things that are dangerous. On this weak interpretation, the manner in which wickedness to others and self-destructiveness are due to ignorance is that people are ignorant about the nature of things and ways of acting, ignorant about what it would be like to possess something or ignorant about what it would be like to do something or other. (shrink)

Objectivity is not the same thing as independence from the mind. Because the word ‘mind’ has been used to cover myriad things from pains to practices, care must be taken as to just what it is independence from which is in question. The gut notion of objectivity is captured in an anecdote from the life of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and a political colleague were discussing how to get a policy across and the colleague suggested labelling the policy in a certain (...) way; they happened to be near a donkey and their dialogue went like this: ‘Sir, how many legs does this donkey have?’ ‘Four, Mr. Lincoln’ ‘And how many tails has it?’ ‘Why, just one, Mr. Lincoln’ ‘Tell me, sir, what if we were to call the tail a leg; how many legs would the donkey then have?’ ‘Five, Mr. Lincoln’. ‘No, sir; for you cannot make a tail into a leg by calling it one’. (shrink)