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Open AccessAssertion, Lying and the Norm of Truth
In chapter four of Truth and Truthfulness Bernard Williams presents an account of assertion that relies heavily on the ‘psychological’ notions of belief and intention. In chapter five his definition of lying simi...
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Chapter
Conceptual Corruption
Can we lose our concepts? A case like ‘phlogiston’ invites a positive answer, though the sensefulness of ‘There is no phlogiston’ gives us pause. But concepts are about more than just ‘extension-determination’...
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Chapter
Ethics and Philosophy: Aristotle and Wittgenstein Compared
Insofar as Wittgenstein expounded any moral philosophy, what he expounded appears very far removed from Aristotle’s – or Aristotelian – ethics. Wittgenstein’s very notion of ‘the ethical’ is so distant from Ar...
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Article
Open AccessAre There Any Intrinsically Unjust Acts?
In ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Anscombe characterises the virtue of justice by reference to two features of the just person: (a) that of having a standing intention not ‘to commit or participate in any unjust a...
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Chapter
Rational Choice Theory and Backward-Looking Motives
The paper argues that the philosophical underpinnings of rational choice theory are vitiated by consideration of the phenomenon of backward-looking motives, such as gratitude, fidelity, and many forms of hones...
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Chapter
Ethik und Philosophie: Aristoteles und Wittgenstein im Vergleich
Indem Wittgenstein jede Moralphilosophie auslegt, erscheint dasjenige, was er interpretiert, wenig mit Aristoteles oder einer aristotelischen Ethik zu tun zu haben. Wittgensteins Vorstellung von ›dem Ethischen...
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Chapter
Ryle on Hypotheticals
In ‘General Propositions and Causality’ (1929), F. P. Ramsey argued that for a large class of general propositions of the form ‘All Fs are Gs’, any such proposition amounts to a sort of rule: ‘If I meet an F, ...
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Book
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Chapter
McTaggart’s Argument
It seems appropriate to begin with possibly the most famous argument to take a debunking attitude to the phenomenon of tense: that of McTaggart. The argument is also, notoriously, an attempt to debunk our noti...
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Chapter
Truth-Conditions
We have looked at various possible ways of assessing the thesis that ‘Time is tenseless’. So far, that thesis has been lent little if any support by what we have found. There remains to be considered what is a...
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Chapter
Periods and Instants
In the last chapter, we said that units like ‘second’ and ‘year’ signified the same time in different possible worlds or situations, distinguishing these units from ones like ‘day’. And units like ‘second’ were s...
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Chapter
The Direction of Time
One sort of change is change brought about: caused change. In section 6.1, I referred to the causal account of ‘the direction of time’. I want now to take a look at this account. Prima facie, the account seems to...
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Chapter
Facts, Knowledge and Belief
Some philosophers assume that if our topic is time and the nature of time, we will be talking off the subject so long as we discuss language. These philosophers do not necessarily eschew the use of such expres...
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Chapter
Dates and Units
In Part I, the phenomenon of tense was examined, in the context of a particular philosophical debate: the debate over whether time is ‘tenseless’ or ‘tensed’, and if either, in what sense ‘tenseless’ or ‘tense...
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Chapter
Time and Change
The observation that time and change are connected in some intimate and important way is almost as old as philosophy itself. Change necessarily takes time: roughly speaking, an assertion of change will amount ...
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Book
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Conclusion
In discussing ‘the question of abstract entities’, I have been operating with a list, rather than a concept (either of what it is to be an abstract entity or of what it is to be an abstract term): the list bei...
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Chapter
Abstract Terms
In Wittgenstein’s Tractatus we find the following:
4.1271 — Every variable is the sign for a formal concept. For every variable represents a constant form that all its values p...
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Chapter
Events
Some might think it odd that a chapter on events should be included in a book concerning abstract entities. Have not the fullest modern treatments of the subject of events taken them to be ‘concrete particular...
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Chapter
The Logical Framework
How are we to characterise a philosopher who merits the title of ‘realist’ (as opposed to ‘nominalist’)? A natural way of characterising him would be to say that he believed in the truth of a particular existe...
