Showing papers in "Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume in 1983"

A Defence of Arbitrary Objects

Abstract: There is the following view. In addition to individual objects, there are arbitrary objects: in addition to individual numbers, arbitrary numbers; in addition to individual men, arbitrary men. With each arbitrary object is associated an appropriate range of individual objects, its values: with each arbitrary number, the range of individual numbers; with each arbitrary man, the range of individual men. An arbitrary object has those properties common to the individual objects in its range. So an arbitrary number is odd or even, an arbitrary man is mortal, since each individual number is odd or even, each individual man is mortal. On the other hand, an arbitrary number fails to be prime, an arbitrary man fails to be a philosopher, since some individual number is not prime, some individual man is not a philosopher. Such a view used to be quite common, but has now fallen into complete disrepute. As with so many things, Frege led the way. Given his own theory of quantification, it was unnecessary to interpret the variables of mathematics as designating variable numbers; and given the absurdities in the notion of a variable number, it was also unwise. It was with characteristic irony that he wrote: 'Perhaps there is a seminal idea here which we could also find of value outside mathematics' ([5], p. 160). Where Frege led, others have been glad to follow. Among the many subsequent philosophers who have spoken against arbitrary objects, we might mention Russell ([12], pp. 90-91), Lesniewski ([8], pp. 22-3, 27), Tarski ([13], p. 4), Church ([3], p. 13), Quine ([10], pp. 127-8), Rescher ([11], pp. 134-7) and Lewis ([7]) p. 203. If more philosophers of the present day have not added their voices to the protest, it is probably because they have not thought it worth the bother. As Menger says ([9], p. 144), the thesis that there are no variable numbers is 'today one of the few propositions about which logicians as well as mathematicians are in general agreement'. In the face of such united opposition, it might appear rash to

Sins of Omission? The Non-Treatment of Controls in Clinical Trials

Abstract: Most discussions of the ethics of clinical trials have focused on such matters as informed consent and the morality of submitting human subjects to previously untried, and hence possibly dangerous, forms of treatment. What I wish to concentrate on here is the complementary problem, curiously neglected by philosophers and clinicians. Suppose there is some condition for which there exists no generally accepted cure (or prophylactic), but for which some new form of treatment has been mooted; what should then be said of the ethics of non-treatment, of deliberately failing to administer some promising new drug, say, to a control group of patients, with the aim of demonstrating its efficacy, as administered to others? Is it morally acceptable for a doctor to withhold treatment from a subject, for the sake of making him a control, when it is the doctor's opinion, based either on the progress of the study, up to that point, or on prior experiments with animals or tissue cultures, that such treatment, if administered, would be very likely to save the patient from permanent injury or even death? Some doctors are reluctant to admit that randomized clinical

Empirical Realism and Transcendental Anti-Realism

Abstract: Some years ago, a student of mine penned the following line, to which I hereby give the immortality it surely deserves: 'Descartes held that when he was thinking, his mind could detach itself from his body and think about it completely objectionably'. Perhaps I must bear some responsibility for the less than perfect understanding of Descartes there displayed, but the final slip of the pen which gives the line its memorability invites a Freudian explanation which, assuming that the student was suffering under the old Scottish tradition of compulsory philosophy, attributes to him the unconscious thought 'All this attempt at philosophical objectivity is really objectionable.' Be that as it may, other people who have pursued their philosophical inquiries rather further than my nameless student have recently found reason to question how far objectivity is desirable or even possible. Thomas Nagel diagnoses a whole cluster of philosophical problems (the meaning of life, freewill, personal identity, mind and body, consequentialist versus agent-centered views in ethics) as involving a tension between the claims of subjective and objective points of view,1 and offers the suggestion that 'perhaps the best or truest view is not obtained by transcending oneself as far as possible, perhaps reality should not be identified with objective reality'.2 Bernard Williams, in evaluating the contemporary relevance of Descartes' philosophical project, claims that what is most fundamental to it is something to which we still find ourselves committed, namely the search for 'an absolute conception of the world', that is, 'a conception of reality as it is independently of our thought, and to which all representations of reality can be related'.3 Williams concludes that although physical science is (legitimately) a search for such absolute knowledge, it is not to be had in the social sciences, since there can be no such objectivity about the mental.4