Leibniz avait certes raison d'opposer Locke à Descartes et de le situer plutôt dans la lignée de Gassendi et l'atomisme antique. Mais le problème est de distinguer entre Gassendi et ses disciples contemporains de Locke comme source immédiate d'inspiration pour celui-ci. Ses Commonplace Books attestent que Locke avait lu Gassendi avec attention, et son Journal indique que pendant ses séjours à Paris (mai 1677–juin 1678, novembre 1678–avril 1679), il fut en contact avec des gassendistes tels Bernier et Launay, dont il acheta les oeuvres pour les emporter en Angleterre. L'analyse que Locke fournit de l'espace est d'un intérêt particulier, car tout en témoignant de l'orientation que Leibniz attribuait à Locke, elle s'écarte nettement des vues de Gassendi sur la question.

So begins a recent ontological argument. But what if there are no most perfect beings? Letting God be one, that is, letting “God” name one at the very beginning seems premature. Clearly it is best to leave “God” out of the argument until one is in a position to introduce him by existential instantiation, or, by further argumentation, to identify him with a most perfect being: clearly it is best to leave “God” out of the argument until it has been established that there is a most perfect being.

During the 1982 Canadian Philosophical Association Meeting in Ottawa, a workshop on the philosophy of religion in Canada was held. Its participants were all contributors to a previously published book edited for the University of Ottawa Press (1982), entitled Analytical Philosophy of Religion in Canada, who were thus given the opportunity to comment on their own positions and to reply to the criticism that had been made of them.

These comments are a response to Professor John King-Farlow's criticism of three of my essays that have recently been reprinted in the volume Analytical Philosophy of Religion in Canada, edited by Mostafa Faghfoury. I shall try to present them in a way that is intelligible to those not familiar with the book; but, inevitably, the choice of topics will be determined by the particular disagreements between King-Farlow and myself that emerged there, and will not deal with the many questions on which we have similar views.

L'étude que nous proposons ici a fait l'objet d'une communication au dernier Congrès de l'Hegelgesellschaft (Athènes, avril 1982). Elle était en vérité un peu extérieure au thème central de ce congrès, qui avait choisi de méditer sur le Weltgeist. Mais nous en avions maintenu la présentation pour deux raisons essentielles, où, selon une combinaison en un sens très hégélienne, l'accidentel se mêlait au rationnel, le «Zufallige» au «vernunftige». L'accidentel résidait dans le fait que l'objet de cette étude correspondait à nos travaux du moment sur les catégories hégéliennes et kantiennes. Le rationnel pouvait s'exprimer en une remarque toute simple: c'est dans le Rapport absolu, l'«absolutes Verhältnis», que s'achève, dans la dialectique hégélienne, la constitution logique du «Welt» et que s'opère l'«Aufhebung» de la sphère de l'objectivité à celle de la subjectivité et du concept, où se définit la figure du «Geist».

To read a paper of Professor Penelhum's is usually to learn more about carefulness and truth. In the first part of this reply I try to meet his challenge on a matter where we clearly seem to disagree. In the second part I attempt to show that religious believers need not be so very worried about such a challenge, and that this conclusion affects materialists far more than Penelhum. In the third part I clarify where my haste i n expression clouded a point of agreement with Penelhum, other than those which he has generously pointed out already.

I am grateful to Professor Garceau for his thoughtful and gracious characterization and critique of my account of religion. As will become apparent, as I proceed, there is much in his account, both methodological and substantive, that I think is fundamentally mistaken, but, that notwithstanding, I very much appreciate the tone and spirit in which his critique of my work was conducted. Benoît Garceau has carefully studied my views and has in an exemplary manner tried sympathetically to understand them to capture what divides reflective and informed religious believers and reflective and informed skeptics. It is, I believe, fair enough to say that the task of trying to ascertain what most fundamentally divides contemporary literate believers and skeptics is of fundamental significance in any attempt to come to grips with the contemporary significance of religion, though it does seem to me that this task is much more problematic than is usually thought. In responding here to Carceau's specific criticisms, I shall, in the general drift of my remarks, be trying to make some contribution to the clarification of that issue. Though I shall only be able to touch on a small corner of it, I shall be concerned to examine in what way, if at all, it is possible for there to be, as Garceau would put it, a dialogue between such believers and skeptics; and I shall be concerned, as well, somewhat more broadly, to ascertain what it would be like for us, not only to understand each other, but, if indeed such a thing is possible at all, what it would be like to move a step forward in the ancient but still ongoing and developing debate concerning whether one should, all things considered, be, if one can, a believer, or a skeptic.

Je m'accorde en général à la thèse de Lennon suivant laquelle Locke aurait admis certains des arguments de Gassendi sur la distinction entre espace et corps ou matière, mais rejeté l'engagement ontologique impliqué par l'existence sui generis d'un espace absolu, distinct de l'étendue corporelle. Il semble raisonnable de concéder que l'analyse de l'espace chez le Locke de la maturité se développe en parallèle à la doctrine révisée des néo-gassendistes sur certains points essentiels: l'espace s'analyse en connexions de distance et de capacité (contenant-contenu) entre éléments solides; le pur espace est une idée abstraite obtenue par généralisation à partir de relations observées; et, comme telle, cette idée représente des connexions potentielles ou imaginaires entre composants matériels analogues aux corps de la perception sensible. Je suis d'accord avec Lennon pour admettre comme sources possibles pour de telles révisions la répugnance de Descartes et des cartésiens à concevoir un infini positif dans tout autre cas que celui des attributs de Dieu, et corrélativement l'analyse cartésienne du lieu et de la distance comme relatifs aux coordonnées géométriques abstraites de l'observateur. Malgré cette influence, Locke n'a de cesse de condamner la doctrine cartésienne de la substance matérielle, dans la mesure où elle ramène les conjuncta des attributs matériels à la pure étendue comme substrat, parce qu'il en résulterait confusion et paralogismes dans l'usage des catégories cosmologiques.

Depuis 1967, Donald Davidson defend l'idée qu'une théorie de la signification pour une langue naturelle doit prendre la forme d'une théorie tarskienne de la vérité. Je me propose ici d'exposer les grandes lignes de l a conception davidsonienne de la sémantique des langues naturelles et de chercher à préciser en quel sens une theorie tarskienne de la vérité pour une langue L constitue, selon Davidson, une théorié de la signification pour L. Je ferai pour cela abstraction des obstacles qu'il pourrait y avoir à la réalisation du programme de Davidson (et des stratégies suggérées par ce dernier pour les surmonter).

Je voudrais d'abord remercier Kai Nielsen d'avoir bien voulu me communiquer, deux semaines avant cette rencontre, le texte de son exposé. Cela m'a donné le temps d'absorber le choc de sa critique, de préparer une réplique qui soit autre chose qu'une riposte et puisse contribuer à clarifier quelque peu le débat dans lequel nous sommes tous deux engagés.

Some have argued that because factually meaningful assertions must be falsifiable, putative theistic assertions such as “God loves us” are not meaningful because they are not falsifiable. It is further suggested that every attempt to make a factually significant theistic assertion founders on the same shoal of falsifiability.

Nous semblons, mon commentateur et moi, nous accorder sur les points principaux de mon analyse. Notre seul motif de divergence concerne les raisons pour lesquelles Locke aurait rejeté la théorie cartésienne du plein. Je crois que cette divergence est plus apparente que réelle, car elle provient d'une certaine indétermination dans la façon dont j'ai caractérisé la position cartésienne par contraste avec l'empirisme de Locke. Puisque la question est de conséquence pour mon interprétation de la théorie lockienne de l'esprit et par ailleurs intrinsèquement intéressante, je vais tenter de reformuler ma position.

The problem of the person may be described as the crux of Descartes' philosophy in the fairly obvious literal sense that it is the point of intersection of the two chief axes of the system, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind. The actual, if not professed aim of the former is the ousting of the occult powers and faculties of Scholastic-Aristotelian physics by the mechanical concept of force or action-by-contact. The chief tenet of the latter is that mind, whose essence is thinking, is clearly and distinctly conceivable apart from matter, the essence of which is extension. From this, by an illicit inference which need not concern us further, Descartes concludes that the mind is “really distinct” from matter, that is, a substance capable of existing apart from body in its own right. Where these two lines of thought meet, the problem of the person constitutes itself in the following manner.

L'astrologie, affirme Francis Bacon, «est tellement infectée de superstitions qu'on a peine à y trouver quelque chose de sain». A la différence de l'astronomie, qui est «assez bien fondée sur les phénomènes; mais [qui] s'élève peu, et manque tout à fait de solidité», Bacon estime que l'astrologie «en bien des choses … manque même de fondement». Tout en soulignant que certaines parties doivent en être retenues et épurées, Bacon en rejette l'essentiel comme «extravagances astrologiques». Mais comment au juste l'astronomie se différencie-t-elle de l'essentiel de l'astrologie? Que veut dire Bacon lorsqu'il affirme que l'astrologie est sans fondement et remplie de superstition? Le problème philosophique tient à ce que, en dépit de la vraisemblance des remarques de Bacon, il ne semble y avoir aucun moyen satisfaisant pour distinguer des parodies de science de la science authentique. Science et pseudoscience diffèrent en espèce, pense-t-on, mais la réflexion philosophique semble révéler qu'au mieux elles diffèrent en degrés.

One speaks of a person having a duty to do something and also of a person having a duty to another person to do something. It seems natural to treat the first as a case of a two-termed relation and the second as a case of a three-termed relation. However, the problem is what to take as the second term of a case of the two-termed relation and the third term of a case of the three-termed relation. For a long time act, instances of which would seem natural contenders, has been a suspect concept; its deficiency being integrally connected with the lack of a specification of how to individuate acts. This paper urges a particular solution to what sort of entity could serve as that which a person has a duty to do. Although discussion will be limited to the legal relations of duty, right, and so on, the problem is similar for the basic moral relations of duty, right, and so on, and the same solution avails for that problem. Before providing the solution to what sort of thing it is that people have a duty, right, etc. to do, it is important to set out what conditions an adequate solution must satisfy.

The nature of analogies, and their legitimacy in argumentation and inference, is a disputed subject. This essay is intended to shed some light on the tangle of issues that it involves. After discussing in section one the different functions of analogy, in particular in explanation and in science, we present in section two a prima facie defense of analogical argument against those who repudiate it entirely and in section three an account of its logical structure. Section four argues that analogical inference does not collapse, as some of its critics contend, into standard induction, and section five attempts to explicate more precisely the warrant for analogical inference. We conclude in section six by suggesting a typology for arguments from analogy.

It has recently become quite fashionable for one to defend a functionalist theory of mental states. However, as with most trends, functionalism has come under fire in certain philosophical quarters. In this paper, I shall not take up the question of whether any version of functionalism is true. I shall instead discuss a particular objection to a specific brand of functionalism.

More nonsense, in my view, has been purveyed in print about Wittgenstein than about any other recent philosopher. Moreover, of this nonsense a great deal has been about Wittgenstein's notion of “criterion”. I have read, therefore, with an immense lightening of the spirit two recent studies of precisely this notion, each of which is both thorough and fundamentally sensitive to central elements of Wittgenstein's later thought which most philosophers, admirers as well as critics, have missed. Part One of Stanley Cavell's monumental The Claim of Reason deploys Wittgenstein's notion of “criterion” with telling effect in the initial exposition of Cavell's general view of human knowledge. John Canfield's Wittgenstein: Language and World is a very detailed and systematic presentation of Wittgenstein's notion of “criterion” itself, together with Canfield's reasons for judging it so important. The two books complement each other very well. There are differences between them as well as similarities, differences not merely of emphasis and nuance but of doctrine. As will emerge in subsequent pages, I believe Cavell's to be the deeper and subtler work. But Cavell's book is relatively inaccessible to those who do not have already some acquaintance with Wittgenstein's later thought and have not already made some attempt to think that thought for themselves (and parts of it are still inaccessible even to those who have!).

Opposer modernité et post-modernité relève d'un procédé simplifica-teur certes commode à des fins polémiques et tactiques, mais qui achoppe rapidement sur la vanité de toute tentative cherchant à s'ac-crocher à la modernité comme à une valeur immuable. II faudrait pour que ce fût possible que la modernité n'eût pas changé et qu'elle cons-titue, à partir d'une date précise, un complexe susceptible d'une définition univoque. Or, un rapide survol historique des usages de ce terme, même s'il tente d'introduire une première délimitation entre la conception antique et la conception chrétienne du rapport anciens/modernes, montre bien plutôt un processus de redéfinition permanente: la Be-griffsgeschichte rend à peu près possible une périodisation, non une définition univoque, en sorte que cette périodisation ressemble bien plutôt à une scansion mettant en relief des périodes de crise et de mutation idéologiques qui prennent conscience d'elles-mêmes au moyen des catégories anciens/modernes, aujourd'hui: modernes et post-modernes.

James E. Tomberlin [6] has recently argued that the logical systems of conditional obligation proposed by Azizah al-Hibri [1] and Peter Mott [5] are incapable of resolving at least one variant of the notorious contrary to duty imperative paradox, formulated originally by Chisholm [2]. Tomberlin concedes that these systems offer the very best of the' “conditional obligation approach” to deontic logic and concludes his critical discussion with the pessimistic remark that “the best of this approach is simply not good enough. Deontic logic … is obliged to turn elsewhere for its proper formulation and resolution of the deontic paradoxes” ([6], 373). Below I argue that Tomberlin's three central arguments against al-Hibri and Mott are fallacious.