This is an investigation into the fundamental connections between the referential use of language and our rich human experience. All types of experience — perceptual, practical, scientific, literary, esthetic, ludic, ... — are tightly unified into one total experience by the structure of reference to real or possible items. Singular reference is essential for locating ourselves in our own corner of the world. General reference, by means of quantifiers, is our main tool in ascertaining the accessible patterns of the world. Both are primitive and mutually irreducible. (Often this has been denied.) The unity of total experience is constructed through the biographical unity of a person, and the sociological unity of the communications across a community. This unity of experience is wrought out by an underlying unitary system of reference. We need, therefore, a comprehensive theory of individuation, existence, predication, and truth. One such a theory is Guise Theory.

1. Sensa and propositional experience. 2. An option between propositions and properties (as objects or contents of sensory experience). 3. The property option and adverbialism. 4. Sensa as images, images as intentionalia. 5. Do we refer directly to sensa? 6. Focusing and the supervenience of images and our reference to them: a question raised. 7. Internal and external properties of images and characters. Strict vistas introduced. 8. A correction on strict vistas. 9. Focusing and experience: the question answered. 10. Conclusion.

Two connected themes have been at the core of the old perplexity regarding thinking and speaking about non-existent objects. One involves a question of reference. Can we refer to non-existent objects without, thereby, recognizing, in some sense, non-existent entities as objects of reference? The other involves a question about existence. Is existence a property representable by a predicate in a logically adequate symbohsm? It is argued (1) that existence is not to be construed as an attribute represented by a predicate, (2) that nonnaming names introduce problems, not solutions to problems, (3) that purported properties such as self-identical are specious, and (4) that the Russell property is also seen to be specious by our consideration of predication.

The general claim of the present paper is that there may be a very large variety of ways of thinking quite different from one another, not actually in violation of formal canons of consistency, that may vary historically, from community to community or even from context to context. In particular it is argued that, given the present state of theorizing in cognitive science, it is unlikely that any defensible version of the Representational Theory of Mind could preclude a strong or emergent form of concept learning. An argument is presented showing that a Nativist reading of the theory is either undermined by the implications of its own assumptions or is formulably defective with respect to them in a way that may be impossible to remedy — or can only be secured by the fiat of denying this novel sort of concept learning. To account for the puzzles discussed in the paper a new approach to the analysis of thinking is suggested taking as its basis Wittgenstein's notion of 'forms of life' instead of the models favored in current conceptions of cognitive science.

Over the past fifteen years or so the distinction between de diclo and de re modality has been revived and pressed into service in a number of areas of philosophy. In "Plantinga on the De Dicto/De Re Distinction" it is argued that one prominent argument/persuasion advanced for making the distinction in the first place is unsound. The argument for making the distinction attempts to elicit rational acceptance of it by clearly illustrating it with a proposition that is false when modal-fied de dicto, true when modalfied de re. However, i f the example (and ones like it) is critically scrutinized, and the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions carefully adhered to, doubt can be cast on whether our intuitions regarding the case are really, at base, intuitions about a different and distinct form of modality, de re modality.

It is argued that a pure coherence theory of epistemic empirical justification fails to avoid an isolation objection according to which empirical justification has been divorced from one's total empirical evidence. Also, it is shown that several recent efforts to meet this objection either are outright failures or are irrelevant inasmuch as they diverge from epistemic coherentism. The overall moral is that we should look beyond coherentism for an adequate theory of epistemic empirical justification.

It is widely held that oblique contexts and indexical terms present difficulties to Frege's theory of sense. The aim of the present paper is to show that a simple device involving no revision of Frege's semantic doctrine resolves all the alleged difficulties. A simple extension of Frege's notation is proposed which makes it possible to translate oblique contexts into the concept script.

The following topics are touched upon: the nature of categorial frameworks; the failure of transcendental deductions; the difference between immanent and transcendent metaphysics; a distinction between dependent and independent particulars; the role of idealization in scientific thinking; the logic of inexact concepts; the place of modal logic in immanent metaphysics; the problem of logical relevance; the role of metaphysics in mathemathical thinking; the development of mathematical concepts; the relation be ween exhibition- and replacement-analysis; the logical structure of practical thinking; the possibility of rational argument on moral issues.

Conservative criticisms of egalitarianism are examined. Entitlement and desert based accounts of justice are assessed. Nisbet's, Nozick's and Flew's accounts, as paradigms of conservative views, are criticized and liberal egalitarian and radical egalitarian accounts of justice, in their responses to conservatism, are contrasted and a defense is provided for radical egalitarianism. A secure place for entitlements is found within an egalitarian frame work. Liberty and equality are shown to be so reciprocally related that one cannot flourish without the other and socialism and egalitarianism are shown not to be enemies of liberty. Personal property remains intact under socialism but private productive property does not. But the non-existence of the latter is perfectly compatible with the existence of the full range of basic liberties. Following a coherentist methodology respect for entitlements, for liberty and a commitment to equality are shown to be in reflective equilibrium.

French epistemology of mathematics — Cavailles, Lautman, Herbrand — took a critical position about the project for a theory of science stated by the Vienna Circle. The opportunity was provided by the International Congress of Philosophy of Science celebrated in Prague in 1936. The position taken by Cavailles and Lautmann was surprisingly close to that taken by Tarski's introduction of semantics and to Wittgenstein's Tractatus. More specifically, to those parts of the Tractatus that were disqualified by Carnap. This criticism will be a part of what would later constitute "mathematical philosophy".

For placing the contrast of certainty and uncertainty at the philosophical center, Descartes is charged with Michael Dummett with mistakenly subordinating the study of language and meaning to epistemology. But Dummett's knowledge-theoretic reading of the certainty/uncertainty duality is as erroneous as the tradition it inherits is long. The Cartesian demand for certainty and critique of uncertainty in mature writings like the Meditations has a definite semantic character. Cartesian uncertainty, construed aright, anticipates Dummett's putatively original idea of a non-reductive yet non-realist semantics for standard factual claims asserted on the basis of sense-evidence. There is an internal relation, in Descartes' philosophy, between a repudiation of uncertainty and a repudiation of a non-realist conception of the world.

Walther SCHWEIDLER: Wittgensteins Philosophiebegriff, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983. Susanne THIELE: Die Verwicklungen im Denken Wittgensteins, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983.

The philosophies of late Brentano and early Wittgenstein can be brought closer in two ways. One way discovers a surprising amount of part-whole theory in the Tractatus if we see states of affairs (not wholly wilfully) as thinglike rather than factlike. This throws up a modal analogue to Chisholm's entia successiva in the form of situations. The other way sees all propositions as truth-functions of existential propositions, supporting Brentano's view that existentials are primary, and incidentally yielding a reistic semantics for the Tractatus. I draw a quick moral, that we should beware of excessive simplicity in metaphysics, and apply it to Chisholm's views on part and whole.

Die Bewertung der Kopernikanischen Wende, die bei Brentano weder eindeutig positiv noch negativ ist, hat ihre Pointe darin, daß Brentano den Kopernikaner verteidigt, der die Sprache des alten ptolemäischen Weltbildes spricht, der also etwas anderes sagt als er denkt. Diese Ambiguität, die Brentano von Leibniz übernimmt, wird ontologisch verschärft: Universalien, Existenzprädikate, Negationen, Zeitbestimmungen und generell Fiktiva, die eigentlich nicht sind, können als "seiend" angesprochen werden, sofern man sie in eine reistische Ontologie übersetzt, deren Sprache (nomina concreto) dann kategorial exakt, aber lebensweltlich eher befremdlich ist. Hier liegen nicht geringe Probleme. Es scheint, daß sich eine kategorial exakte Rationalität der Erfahrung zwar dadurch retten läßt, daß man die Phänomene reistisch denkt. Aber es dürfte durchaus fraglich sein, ob auch die Phänomene gerettet sind, wenn der Philosoph — als Kopernikaner — sagt, was der denkt.

Einer der interessantesten der vielfältigen Versuche, die Ethik auf ein festes Fundament zu stellen, ist die Konzeption intrinsischer Werte, die Vorstellung, daß eine objektive Begründung der Ethik vermöge einer intuitiven Erkenntnis des inneren Werts der Dinge möglich sei. Doch diese Vorstellung, die in neuerer Zeit vor allem von Franz Brentano und G.E. Moore vertreten wurde und die heute in Roderick Chisholm ihren prominentesten Anhänger hat, ist nicht zielführend. Dies zu demonstrieren, ist das Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes. Zu diesem Zweck wird zunächst die Konzeption intrinsischer Werte anhand der Lehren Brentanos und Moores in aller Kürze skizziert. Daran anschließend wird erstens versucht, die Sinnhaftigkeit des Konzepts intrinsischer Werte überhaupt in Frage zu stellen. Darüber hinaus aber wird weiters gezeigt, daß selbst dann, wenn man intrinsische Werte entsprechend der von Brentano und Moore vertretenen Auffassung als gegeben annimmt, diese Annahme keine ausreichende Grundlage für eine befriedigende ethische Theorie bereitstellt.

The paper seeks to develop an account of indexical phenomena based on the highly general theory of structure and dependence set forth by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Husserl here defends an Aristotelian theory of meaning, viewing meanings as species or universals having as their instances certain sorts of concrete meaning acts. Indexical phenomena are seen to involve the combination of such acts of meaning with acts of perception, a thesis here developed in some detail and contrasted with accounts of indexicals suggested by Frege, Wittgenstein and by the later Husserl himself in his Ideas I. Implications are drawn also for our understanding of the categorial grammar sketched by Husserl in his 4th Logical Investigation, as also for our understanding of the nature of proper names and other candidate indexical expressions.

In this paper I hope to show that Geach misunderstands the nature of Plato's argument in the Euthyphro and more importantly the reasoning behind the dialectical strategy adopted by Socrates. Furthermore I shall argue that Geach's reading of the Euthyphro engenders serious difficulties, that stand in the way of understanding the manner in which Plato construes the problem of determining the nature of, and relationship between universal and particulars, which is of great significance because it is precisely this problem, in relation to piety, that is central to the Euthyphro. In the appendix I shall sketch the outline of an argument in order to justify the assumption that the theory of Forms is present in the Euthyphro.