In this paper Matthew J. Knauff examines one of the four primary epistemic paradoxes set forth by Jonathan Kvanvig—the surprise examination paradox. He begins by offering a statement of the paradox, after which he considers a solution proposed by W.V.O. Quine. Knauff argues that Quine’s solution to the paradox must, for a number of reasons, be rejected. Finally, he offers aresolution to the paradox by means of his own approach.

In this paper Graham Rhys Griffiths discusses Catherine Wilson’s assertion that many contemporary moral philosophers, their professed aims notwithstanding, ultimately provide justifications for the affluent lifestyles of citizens of developed nations. Though Wilson believes that these theorists, of whom she cites Susan Wolf and Thomas Nagel as examples, raise important points regarding the value of our personal commitments and their role in enabling us to live good lives, she suggests that they diminish the real requirements of a more impartial morality. Griffiths argues that this claim, as Wilson applies it to Nagel, is unfair. First, Griffiths shows how Nagel’s relaxation of an impartial morality’s requirements constitutes not a justification of our current lifestyles, but a dispensation due to our weaknesses. Second, he argues that Nagel does not go as far as Wilson herself in accepting the centrality of personal commitments to our lives. Finally, Griffiths argues that Nagel’s emphasis on institutions that alleviate gross inequalities gives a practical approach to creating a world in which we can all live up to the demands morality makes on us.

As Wong relates, the cognitive impression was the Stoic criterion of truth. The Academic skeptics challenged this criterion in a series of arguments throughout the long history of debate between the Stoics and the Academics. In response to each Academic attack, the Stoics modified their criterion in an attempt to preserve for themselves the possibility of knowledge. In the end, the cognitive impression could not withstand the attack. The reason for this, Wong argues, is not due to the irresistibility of the Academics’ arguments, but rather due to the Stoics’ over-modification of their criterion. Wong argues that a version of the cognitive impression without these weakening modifications is a successful criterion of truth.

What happens to our notion of political obligation when right is divorced from moral considerations? When one says that an individual’s claim to her property is a right that ought not to be abridged, on what kind of nonmoral principle can one rely? According to Matthew Sean Pines, Fichte believes that he can ground such a normative prescription on a theory of natural right, deriving a set of strict political principles from a necessary metaphysical conception of a rational being. It is the main task of this paper to work through this difficult deduction, assess its validity, and discuss the general implications of its result. What is said here concerning Fichte’s specific proposal for an objective theory of natural—as opposed to moral—right bears broader significance for the fundamental problem of the nature and source of obligation in the political world.

A significant amount of research has been dedicated to reconciling paradoxes that arise when English conditionals (“If P, then Q”) are interpreted as bearing the same semantic relation as material implication in first order logic. For example, the statement “if it rained yesterday, then it didn’t rain hard”, by the rule of contraposition, should be logically equivalent to “if it rained hard yesterday, then it didn’t rain”. Clearly, this would be a false utterance in English. Paradoxes similar to these have led a number of theorists to conclude that English conditionals are not truth-functional. Some have attempted to explain the semantics of conditionals in terms of situational contexts. Mark Alan Wilson examines a recent attempt by Christopher Gauker to explain the semantics of conditionals. Gauker redefines the notion of the context of an utterance and uses it to replace the notion of logical validity with contextual assertibility. Wilson argues that Gauker’s notion of contextual assertibility generates at least two major problems: first, it fails on its own criteria, and second, it licenses intuitively unacceptable utterances. Further, Wilson suggests that the only way Gauker's theory might avoid these problems would be to reduce it to a mere restatement of an earlier theory of conditionals, that of Nelson Goodman.

Stephen Darwall is the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. [Editor’s note: since this interview was conducted, Darwall has been named the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. The University of Michigan has designated him the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor Emeritus.] His research has centered on the foundations and history of ethics and moral theory, and he is the author of several important works in these areas, including: Impartial Reason (1983), The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought': 1640-1740 (1995), Philosophical Ethics (1988), Welfare and Rational Care (2002), and The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (2006). This interview was conducted by Matthew Noah Smith, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, whose work focuses on political theory and the philosophy of law.

Nathan Salmon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1984. His research focuses on the philosophy of language and metaphysics, but he has written in many other areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of logic. He is perhaps best known for his work on direct reference theory and modality. In addition to numerous papers, Salmon has written several books: Reference and Essence (1981, 2005 with new appendices); Frege’s Puzzle (1986, 1991); Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers Volume I (2006); Content, Cognition, and Communication: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (2007). Together with Scott Soames, Salmon co-edited Propositions and Attitudes in 1988. This interview was conducted for the Yale Philosophy Review by Leslie F. Wolf, a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University.