ABSTRACT: Critics have charged that there are gaps in the logic of Kant’s derivation of the formula of universal law. Here I defend that derivation against these charges, partly by emphasizing a neglected teleological principle that Kant alluded to in his argument, and partly by clarifying what he meant by actions’ “conformity to universal law.” He meant that actions conform to universal law just when their maxims can belong to a unified system of principles. An analogy with objects’ conformity to universal law in nature helps show how Kant was correct in deriving the formula of universal law from the premises of his argument.

ABSTRACT: There is an intuitive distinction between knowing someone in a detached manner — impersonally — and knowing someone in a more intimate fashion — personally. The latter seems to involve the specially active participation of the person known in a way that the former does not. In this paper I present a novel, communication account of knowing someone personally that successfully explains this participation. The account also illuminates the propositional and testimonial character of the personal knowledge of persons, the conditions of limited transferability to which such knowledge is subject, and its distinctly meaningful role in everyday life. I conclude by considering a worry about self-knowledge that arises on the communication account.

RÉSUMÉ : Il existe une distinction entre connaître quelqu’un de manière détachée, de façon impersonnelle, et connaître quelqu’un de façon plus intime, de façon personnelle. Cette dernière relation, au contraire de la première, semble impliquer la participation particulièrement active de la personne connue. Dans ce texte, je présente une nouvelle analyse de la connaissance intime de quelqu’un qui est fondée sur la communication et explique de manière satisfaisante une telle participation. Cette analyse éclaire aussi la nature propositionnelle et testimoniale de la connaissance intime des personnes, les limites de la transférabilité d’une telle connaissance et son rôle significatif unique dans la vie quotidienne. Je conclus en examinant un problème touchant la connaissance de soi qui surgit dans l’approche communicationnelle.

In this paper, I argue a position that has almost never been held: that Leibniz was a materialist. At the conclusion of my article, I consider whether the difficulty of reconciling Leibniz’s materialism with other texts where he appears to be an idealist is best explained by Glenn Hartz’s idea of “theory pluralism,” concluding that there is instead a Leibnizian idea of “theory reconciliation” which does a better job.

ABSTRACT: I argue that mathematical norms are real. Semantic norms, including mathematical norms for adding, are governed by social practices of undertaking and attributing meaning, and this fact has obscured the objectivity of norms from view. However, a conception of human normativity that takes as its starting point that humans are part of the world undercuts the misconception that our practices are not sufficient to ground real meaning.

Since Hume, some philosophers deny that conscious thinking requires the existence of a thinking subject. This claim is well illustrated by Lichtenberg’s remark according to which Descartes could not pretend to have established the certainty of “I think” but only that of “Thinking is going on” (Es denkt). Bernard Williams has argued that the claim that there can be thinking without a thinking subject is incoherent. My purpose, in this paper, is to suggest an interpretation of that claim which overcomes the problem raised by Williams.

A common argument for relativism invokes the appearance of faultless disagreement. I contend that the appearance is possible only under conditions that disqualify it as evidence: gross ignorance or irrationality, or else a prior commitment to an especially crude and implausible form of relativism.

Edmund Husserl strongly emphasized the importance of reduction to his phenomenology. For his followers, however, it has proved a formidable task to specify exactly how this intricate accomplishment that opens up the possibility for phenomenological research is to be performed. In this article, we study different approaches to gaining access to reduction and conclude by suggesting that we should read Husserliana itself as a set of accomplished reductions. In other words, our task is to pinpoint chapters where the movement of reduction takes place. As an example of such a reading, I will point out events that come about in Husserl’s Idea of Phenomenology.