Showing papers in "The Philosophical Review in 1963"

The sense of justice

Abstract: IN EMILE Rousseau asserts that the sense of justice is no mere moral conception formed by the understanding alone, but a true sentiment of the heart enlightened by reason, the natural outcome of our primitive affections.' In the first part of this paper I set out a psychological construction to illustrate the way in which Rousseau's thesis might be true. In the second part I use several of the ideas elaborated in formulating this construction to consider two questions which arise in the systematic analysis of the concept of justice. These two questions are: first, to whom is the obligation of justice owed?-that is, in regard to whom must one regulate one's conduct as the principles of justice require? -and second, what accounts for men's doing what justice requires? Very briefly, the answers to these questions are as follows: to the first, the duty of justice is owed to those who are capable of a sense of justice; and to the second, if men did not do what justice requires, not only would they not regard themselves as bound by the principles of justice, but they would be incapable of feeling resentment and indignation, and they would be without ties of friendship and mutual trust. They would lack certain essential elements of humanity. Throughout, I think of a sense of justice as something which persons have. One refers to it when one says, for example, that cruel and unusual punishments offend one's sense of justice. It may be aroused or assuaged, and it is connected not only with such moral feelings as resentment and indignation but also, as I shall argue,with such natural attitudes as mutual trust and affection. The psychological construction is designed to show how the sense of justice may be viewed as the result of a certain natural develop-

A fallacy in Plato's republic

Abstract: R ECENT writers on the Republic tend to refrain from detailed discussion of the argument about justice and happiness, the main argument of the work.1 In the last decades there have been few assessments of Plato's conclusions about the relationship of justice and happiness, namely that just men are happier than any men who are unjust, and that the more unjust a man is, the more wretched he will be. Equally rare have been attempts to examine critically the argument by which Plato reached those conclusions.2 In this paper I make such an attempt. My aim is to show that Plato's conclusions are irrelevant to what he sets out-and purports-to establish. The fallacy of irrelevance that, in my judgment, wrecks the Republic's main argument is due to the lack of connection between two conceptions of justice that Plato employs. I begin with an account of the two conceptions. While discussing them, I try to correct some errors and possible confusions about Plato's argument and his understanding of it. In particular, I try to show that Plato consistently viewed his defense of justice as one made solely in terms of justice's effects. I then examine the fallacy in detail. At the end, I briefly speculate about why Plato proceeded as he did.

Is Introspective Knowledge Incorrigible

Abstract: BY SENSE PERCEPTION we can become aware of the current state of our physical environment, including our own body. It is very natural to say that, in similar fashion, we can become aware of the current events in our own minds. Instead of turning outward to physical events, the mind turns inward on itself and perceives a procession of mental events. Locke spoke of the faculty of reflection, Kant spoke of inner sense, modern philosophy often speaks of introspection. I believe this traditional view to be essentially correct. But, it is often held, introspection differs from sense perception in one very important respect. Introspective reports of current mental events are alleged to be logically incorrigible or logically indubitable. If I make the sincere statement "I seem to be seeing something green now," then, it is alleged, it is logically impossible for me to be mistaken in my statement. I may be lying, of course, but then I will know that my statement is untrue. For, it is argued, if mistake were a possibility then it would make sense to say "I think I seem to be seeing something green now, but perhaps I am wrong." But this is nonsense, it is said, and so introspection is logically incorrigible or logically indubitable. (In the rest of this paper I shall simply say "incorrigible" or "indubitable," and I shall use the two words interchangeably.) Incorrigibility, or indubitability, must be distinguished from logical necessity. Whether or not the sincere statement "I seem to be seeing something green now" is incorrigible, it is certainly not logically necessary. This is most easily seen if we remember that a logically necessary truth is true in all possible worlds. Now we can certainly describe worlds where I do not seem to be seeing something green now. Contrariwise, it may be noted, a logically necessary statement need not be incorrigible. It is not true that we assent to any logically necessary statement as soon as we understand it. We may mistakenly think it is false. It took a long

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, A Critical Exposition of its Main Lines of Thought

Abstract: "The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein" by M. O'C. Drury (278pp) "An Introduction to Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus'" by G.E.M. Anscombe (1971 ed., 180pp) "Wittgenstein: Souces and Perspectives" ed. by C.G. Luckhardt (1979 ed., 169pp) "Discussions of Wittgenstein" by Rush Rhees (1970 ed., 169pp) "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language" ed. by Alice Ambrose and Morris Lazerowitz (1972 ed., 325pp) "Wittgenstein's 'Tractacus': A Critical Exposition of the Main Lines of Thought" by Erik Stenius (1964 ed., 252pp)

Some puzzles concerning omnipotence

Abstract: T HE DOCTRINE of God's omnipotence appears to claim that God can do anything. Consequently, there have been attempts to refute the doctrine by giving examples of things which God cannot do; for example, He cannot draw a square circle. Responding to objections of this type, St. Thomas pointed out that \"anything\" should be here construed to refer only to objects, actions, or states of affairs whose descriptions are not self-contradictory.' For it is only such things whose nonexistence might plausibly be attributed to a lack of power in some agent. My failure to draw a circle on the exam may indicate my lack of geometrical skill, but my failure to draw a square circle does not indicate any such lack. Therefore, the fact that it is false (or perhaps meaningless) to say that God could draw one does no damage to the doctrine of His omnipotence. A more involved problem, however, is posed by this type of question: can God create a stone too heavy for Him to lift? This appears to be stronger than the first problem, for it poses a dilemma. If we say that God can create such a stone, then it seems that there might be such a stone. And if there might be a stone too heavy for Him to lift, then He is evidently not omnipotent. But if we deny that God can create such a stone, we seem to have given up His omnipotence already. Both answers lead us to the same conclusion. Further, this problem does not seem obviously open to St. Thomas' solution. The form \"x is able to draw a square circle\" seems plainly to involve a contradiction, while \"x is able to make a thing too heavy for x to lift\" does not. For it may easily be true that I am able to make a boat too heavy for me to lift. So why should it not be possible for God to make a stone too heavy for Him to lift? Despite this apparent difference, this second puzzle is open to essentially the same answer as the first. The dilemma fails because it consists of asking whether God can do a self-contradictory thing. And the reply that He cannot does no damage to the doctrine of omnipotence. The specious nature of the problem may be seen in this way. God is either omnipotent or He is not.2 Let us assume first that He is not. In

The availability of what we say

Abstract: In two recent articles, ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ and ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’2 (to which we shall refer as M and A, respectively), Professor Stanley Cavell has set forth his position on the relation between the claims Oxford philosophers make about ordinary-language and the methods and results of empirical investigations of ordinary language. These articles are important because they represent a viewpoint that is widely held by current philosophers—widely held but rarely made explicit. Cavell is surely right when he says that the conflict about the nature of our knowledge of ordinary language ‘is not a side issue in the general conflict between Wittgenstein (together with, at this point “ordinary language philosophy”) and traditional philosophy; it is itself an instance, an expression of that conflict’ (A, p. 184 above). The position Cavell advocates in M and A seems to us, however, to be mistaken in every significant respect and to be pernicious both for an adequate understanding of ordinary-language philosophy and for an adequate understanding of ordinary language. In the present paper, we seek to establish that this is in fact the case.

The Tractatus: Seeds of Some Misunderstandings

Abstract: pROFESSOR Alexander Maslow wrote his essay, A Study in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, in I933.1 Twenty-eight years later he published it without significant alteration. It has an introduction and four chapters: "Objects, Atomic Facts and Language," "Symbol and Sign." "Truth Functions and Atomic Propositions," and "Wittgenstein's Philosophy." In them Maslow discusses solipsism and "the mystical" and likens Wittgenstein's philosophy to Kant's. He says that many details of his exposition are "derived from the lectures of and discussions with Professor Schlick" (to whom the book is dedicated) and that he has "been generally strongly influenced by Schlick's logical positivism." "Most of my original contributions," he says, "are in the first two chapters," in which he criticizes the "metaphysics" of the Tractatus. He speaks of "the promised book on Wittgenstein by Friedrich Waismann," but he does not refer to either Schlick or Waismann in anything he goes on to say. He hopes that his "criticisms of the Tractatus are in the direction of Wittgenstein's own changes after he wrote the book." When he is just giving an exposition he writes clearly, and he puts some things extremely well. Students will be able to understand these matters more easily now. He calls his chapter on truth functions the least original part of his study, but I think it is much the best. On the other hand, when he tries to revise the Tractatus to make it a consistent positivism, he is confusing. That view of the Tractatus belongs to a time before the Investigations appeared, or Miss Anscombe's book or the Notebooks. But Maslow's criticisms would have been confusing anyway. In I929 Wittgenstein discussed the idea of "a phenomenological language," and in connection with this he spoke of "hypotheses" in the rather special way he did at that time; of these especially he would say that their sense was the method of their verification. During vacations from Cambridge he had regular discussions with Schlick and Waismann and some others. But Schlick and the logical positivists never followed him closely, although they borrowed a good deal. When Maslow is making the original contributions of his first two chapters

Mathematical Discovery and Concept Formation

Abstract: I T HAS recently been claimed that in the philosophy of mathematics, Platonists, who hold among other things that the mathematician is primarily a discoverer of truths which are in some sense independent of us, stand opposed to constructivists who claim that the activity of the mathematician is essentially one of creating rather than finding.' Now, is the mathematician a discoverer or a creator? Compare:

Skepticism and Memory

Abstract: HE WHO is skeptical about the trustworthiness of ostensible memory may contend that we cannot justify our reliance upon even one memory belief without appealing to another memory belief in the process of justification.2 The skeptic's position may be construed as a challenge: "I challenge you to cite a single memory belief which does not itself need to be grounded by ostensible memory." R. F. Holland accepts the challenge. He points out that

Taylor's Fatal Fallacy

Abstract: R ICHARD TAYLOR has argued that we must either become fatalists or abandon the law of excluded middle and/or the inefficacy of time. In his ingenious essay "Fatalism," Taylor formulates six plausible "presuppositions" and deduces from them a fatalistic theorem to the effect that, for a given act, either it is not in one's power to perform the act or it is not in one's power to refrain from the act.' Taylor concludes that the only way to avoid this fatalistic consequence is to jettison his first presupposition (the law of excluded middle) and possibly also his sixth (the inefficacy of time). Now I should not like to give up either the law of excluded middle or the atemporality of the laws of nature. Fortunately, there seems to be an easier alternative, namely, to show that Taylor's other presuppositions are at fault. For the sake of brevity and easy reference, I shall list and paraphrase Taylor's six presuppositions: