There is a decided consensus that Kantian ethics yields an absolutist case against torture – that torture is morally wrong and absolutely so. I argue that while there is a Kantian case against torture, Kantian ethics does not clearly entail absolutism about torture. I consider several arguments for a Kantian absolutist position concerning torture and explain why none are sound. I close by clarifying just what the Kantian case against torture is. My contention is that while Kantian ethics does not support a variety of moral absolutism about torture, it does suggest a strong version of legal absolutism.

Because of the communicative function of propositions, Logic is a moral science about what ought to be said. The association with morality derives from the connection between Logic and Truth, and the social value of speaking the truth. Propositions are used rather than mentioned sentences, and so are not the platonically abstract objects they have often been taken to be. Instead they are social objects formed by a community's employment of language. So it is the public use of sentences that settles what they mean, and thereby their logic. The matter has a particular relevance to Graham Priest's non-classical views.

The demands of morality ought to be intelligible. However they are not always readily intelligible. Thus it is easy to see why we need good sense and courage, and why we should seek to live at peace with our neighbours. But moral necessity is not always that transparent. Furthermore the intelligibility we seek is perhaps not always of this kind. This paper illustrates these difficulties by considering certain basic and unshakable convictions we share about homicide and sexuality, two topics we tend to think badly about. And it explores a significant similarity in the moral philosophies of Anscombe and Kant.

The role of hypothetical acts, as opposed to actual acts, has been neglected in understanding the nature of what is required by the Respect for Persons formulation of the Categorical Imperative in concrete moral relations between persons. This had led to a failure to understand fully the way and the extent to which the Categorical Imperative may be present in all such relations with others as encapsulated in an appropriate attitude towards others that may refer to hypothetical acts, as well as actual acts. The result is an underestimation of the direct relevance and moral efficacy of the Categorical Imperative.

Polemics are a sort of critique typically suffused with inimical emotions and passions. But how are these emotions and passions to be construed? Neither authorial expression nor actual arousal properly account for their role in polemics. Rather, the polemicist must stage an unequal battle between a polemical self and the polemical target vis-à-vis an anticipated audience, skilfully handling, through his or her words, the emotions ascribed to each of them.

I dispute a widespread contrast between the sciences and the humanities that undervalues the latter compared to the former. This contrast assumes that science is more valuable than the humanities because it is more useful, an assumption I reject on the grounds that (a) science is not more useful than the humanities and (b) the value of usefulness, being instrumental, depends on the non-instrumental value of what it's usefulness for. I conclude that science is not made more valuable than the humanities either by its instrumental or by its non-instrumental value.

David Lewis's Principal Principle (PP) states that our credence in a single case follows from the general probability of all such cases. Against this stands the Challenge Argument (CA) – to show that the inference is justified. Recent (1) law-to-chance, (2) Bayesian, and (3) propensity theories of probability take up the challenge – but, I argue, fall short. Rather, we should understand (4) propensity via Aristotle's analysis of spontaneity (5) and probabilistic reasoning via the Anti-PP and (6) the practice of bundling one offs, where (7) forced bad-odds one offs illuminate how extensive a role luck plays in our lives.

This article concerns arguments for the impossibility of contact action and, subsequently, the use of force fields to render intelligible apparent cases of contact action. I argue that instead of unraveling the mystery of contact action, fields only deepen the mystery. Further, I show that there is a confusion underlying arguments for the impossibility of contact and present an analysis of contact, based upon Körner's treatment of empirical continuity, which restores intelligibility to apparent cases of contact action.

Philosophical development of Leibniz's view that time is merely earlier–later order is necessary because neither Leibniz nor modern followers sufficiently answered the Newtonian charge that order does not give quantity. Logically, order is transitive, quantity, as in distance, is not. Quantity, as well as order, is naturally assumed in Newton's absolute time, so that to declare the mere relative order sufficient is to have to show how quantity can arise for it. The modern theory of the continuum, perfectly applicable to Newton's absolute, does not show this but assumes quantity. The development given here shows how interval, instant and simultaneity can be logically developed from Leibniz's insight.