In many contemporary philosophical writings, what is most surprising to me is not the things asserted, nor those denied, but those not even mentioned (or barely mentioned as of no importance). Several of these slighted topics are summed up in the title of this essay. At the age of twenty, when I was not reading any technical philosophers, nor any author (unless a poet or two) who held an essentially social view of experience, I attempted to persuade myself of the adequacy of a non-social view, expressed partly in a self-interest theory of motivation, and partly in an idea of perception as experience of things not themselves constituted by any sort of experiences. So far from succeeding in this attempt, I began to find reasons for regarding both motivation and perception as manifestations of a single principle, that of the overlapping or inter-individual unity of minds, not simply of human minds, but of mind on various levels of, nature, including inorganic nature. This overlapping I thought I found in experience itself, and not merely through speculation or postulation. Subsequent reading in philosophy has not shown me a basic error in Hhis early philosophizing, but only a vagueness and blurring of dis; Jinctions which, when taken into account, strengthen rather than weaken the case.

Gödei's Theorem seems to me to prove that Mechanism is false, that is, that minds cannot be explained as machines. So also has it seemed to many other people: almost every mathematical logician I have put the matter to has confessed to similar thoughts, but has felt reluctant to commit himself definitely until he could see the whole argument set out, with all objections fully stated and properly met. This I attempt to do.

In this paper I wish first of all to argue against two possible views about colour qualities, which I shall label the Objectivist and Subjectivist views respectively. I find these views to be prevalent among philosophers of my acquaintance, though sometimes they are hidden by a veneer of post-Wittgensteinian sophistication. Part of my argument will depend on modern scientific theories of colour vision. In the second part of the paper I shall argue for a different view of my own.

In what it will be convenient to call “the Scandinavian school”; of jurisprudence, Hagerstrom is clearly the master. But his leadership is of a somewhat special kind. For all that he wrote a large book on Roman law, Hägerström was trained as, and continued to be, a philosopher, not a jurisprudentialist or a sociologist. His essays on law and morals are ancillary to his main purpose: to destroy transcendental metaphysics. The epigraphhe chose tohead his contribution to Die Philosophic der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen was uncom-promising: “Praeterea censeo metaphysicam esse delendam.” If, in his published work, he to so considerable a degree concentrated his attention on ethics and jurisprudence, that is because he took them to be a particularly rich source of metaphysical mystery-mongering. Through a study of men's moral and legal ideas, Hägerström thought he could bring out the sources, the defects—and even, in a way, the strength—of metaphysical thinking.

It is quite commonly held nowadays that universalizability is a purely formal feature of moral terms, or perhaps of moral rules.To say that something is good, it is asserted, implies (in some sense of “implies”) that anything else with the same (relevant) characteristics is also good; to say that Jones ought to do X is to commit oneself to saying that, in the same circumstances, Smith ought to do X. In pointing this out, it is suggested, one is not oneself taking up a moral position, or laying down a particular moral rule, but simply making it clear what a moral utterance is. The principle ofuniversalizability is thus a principle of meta-ethics, not of morality itself. That moral judgments are universalizable, Hare tells us, is an analytic statement: “analytic by virtue of the meaning of the word moral”.

In their rare comments on Existentialism, contemporary British philosophers, with a few notable exceptions, frequently ridicule the use of “nothing” by such writers as Sartre and Heidegger. And when it is discovered that these writers maintain that the contemplation of nothingness gives rise to anguish, this ridicule is expressed even more strongly. What may be taken as a typical example of this tendency are Professor Ayer's remarks in his Horizon articles on Sartre. (Horizon, Vol. XII, 1945, pp. 12–26 and 101–10.) A characteristic quotation runs as follows: “In particular, Sartre's reasoning on the subject of le néant seems to me exactly on a par with that of the King in Alice through the Looking-Glass … The point is that words like ‘nothing” and ‘nobody” are not used as the names of something insubstantial and mysterious; they are not used to name anything at all”; (p. 18).

It has in recent years been argued, by Professors Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, that God could have created men wholly good. For, causal determinism being compatible with free will, men could have been made in such a way that, without loss of freedom, they would never have fallen (and would never fall) into sin. This if true would constitute a weighty anti-theistic argument. And yet intuitively it seems unconvincing. I wish here to uncover the roots of this intuitive suspicion.

In a philosophical paper the point one wishes to make should be stated at the very outset. And in dealing with a problem which is as controversial as religion, the bias should be confessed before any points are made. I want to conform at once to both these requirements. I want to discuss beliefs, ordinary beliefs but mainly religious ones, for the expression of which, oddly enough, we use the same word. “Belief” and “Faith” are admittedly different in English, but many languages possess only one word for these and further I shall try to show that even in English the difference is not very great and that they have, if not the same, at least a very similar logical grammar. The point of my argument is that beliefs can be discussed rationally and that they should be so discussed. Religious arguments have been going on for a very long time, and I find it incredible that people of immense intellectual qualities, who devoted their time and energy to these discussions, have been working under a simple delusion, not understanding the very nature of the thing they were doing.