The author, a practicing psychologist, argues that empathy among persons is at once a creative act and the ground of ethics and psychological therapy. An analysis of group therapy with alcoholics is given as an example of personal psychology at work, but it is recognized that further effort is needed to strengthen or modify the central thesis.--R. B.

This book prepares readers for the challenges of studying philosophy and writing philosophical essays. This classic textbook, in print for over thirty years, addresses such foundational topics as discerning philosophical questions, the purpose of philosophy, and the practice of doing philosophy.

This article provides a conversation analytic description of a previously unstudied conversational action: ‘articulating the unsaid’ via and-prefaced formulations of other people’s talk. Contributing to the extant research on formulations and on interactional functions of discourse markers, the article shows that and-prefaced formulations accomplish a distinct conversational action that has the following features: these formulations are assertions about the addressee’s domain of knowledge that perform a repair operation in the form of a request for confirmation; they articulate a ‘missing’ element (...) of the addressee’s preceding talk ; what is being formulated is claimably inferable from the prior talk; moreover, such formulations extend the addressee’s course of action on his/her behalf. The article describes compositional and sequential features of and-prefaced formulations and how they shape interactional trajectories of in-progress courses of action. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This special issue of AVANT is all about Cognitive Innovation. It is not about CogNovo, the interdisciplinary and international doctoral training programme that produced three different Off the Lip events. It is not about Off the Lip 2017, the novel symposium format we developed to collaboratively create a publication resulting in this special issue of AVANT. It is not about the seemingly heterogeneous collection of papers that follow this preface. Collaborative Approaches to Cognitive Innovation required something else, something we (...) are starting to capture in the four GIFT principles. While this special issue is not solely about CogNovo, Off the Lip events, or the content of the following submissions, all these aforementioned elements were necessary to shape our current understanding of Cognitive Innovation, the very process which led to numerous publications, exhibitions, and events during the past three years. In a sense, all of our previous endeavours have culminated in this collection of 26 distinct pieces of work, yet we hope and believe that this special issue also marks a beginning. Let us explain. [...]. (shrink)

Ce livre est la version remaniée d'une thèse dont l'Auteure est désormais maître de conférence à l'EPHE et travaille également à l'Institut Européen en Sciences des Religions récemment fondé sur la recommandation de Régis Debray. Isabelle Saint-Martin évoque un monde en voie de disparition, celui des images pieuses qui ont contribué à la formation religieuse des chrétiens de la génération de nos grands et arrière-grands-parents. Publié pour la première fois vers le milieu des années 1880 et c..

It is difficult to imagine mathematics without its symbolic language. It is especially difficult to imagine doing mathematics without using mathematical notation. Nevertheless, that is how mathematics was done for most of human history. It was only at the end of the sixteenth century that mathematicians began to develop systems of mathematical symbols . It is startling to consider how rapidly mathematical notation evolved. Viète is usually taken to have initiated this development with his Isagoge of 1591, and a recognisably (...) modern symbol system was available by the 1630s . In little more than a generation, mathematicians went from writing mathematics in natural language to manipulating symbols much as we do today. The manipulation of symbols became both a source of new mathematics and a mode of mathematical argument. This required profound conceptual changes in both mathematics and philosophy; antique conceptions of number, proof, language, and mathematics had to be replaced or at least suspended. Thus, the development of mathematical symbolism was sufficiently rapid and profound to justify the word ‘revolution’.Moreover, what began as a technical innovation in mathematics soon took on a wider philosophical significance. The last line of Viète's introduction reads ‘To solve every problem’. Viète presumably meant that his algebra would solve every mathematical problem . However, two generations after Descartes, the teenage Leibniz articulated the characteristically modern dream of a general algebra of thought . In this ‘universal characteristic’, conceptual errors would …. (shrink)

ANDREW BARKER, Scientific Method in Ptolemy's Harmonics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. viii+281 pp. $70. ISBN 0‐521‐55372‐5. The quotation is taken from the preface of the treatise,...

This volume is in the nature of a perspective on these and related Indian thoughts. Wherever necessary and possible, a brief overview of the concerned ideas in the other culture-areas has been given to facilitate a comparative understanding, besides a chapter on Modern Perspective on the Physical World. Relevant original passages in Sanskrit under References, an extensive bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, and a glossary of technical words have been included in this volume. It is hoped that these (...) will stimulate interested readers towards further intensive studies. Contents include: Preface, General Introduction, An Overview, Unitary Conceptions, Five Elements, Substance, Qualities and Motion, Atomism, Epistemology: Its Ultimate Aim, Space and Time, Heat, Light and Sound, Weights and Measures, Modern Perspective on the Physical World, Appendices, Abbreviations, Glossary, General Bibliography. (shrink)

Today Shaftesbury is studied chiefly because he was a pivotal figure in English ethics; the publication of his Characteristics marked the turn from the primacy of abstract rational principles, in Cambridge Platonism, to the psychologically-based ethics of the "moral sense" school. Grean presents Shaftesbury more broadly, as expressing the basic faith of the Enlightenment, which still underlies the liberal democratic culture of the West. Shaftesbury maintains "that society, right and wrong was founded in Nature, and that Nature had a meaning (...) and was herself, that is to say in her wits, well governed and administered by one simple and perfect intelligence." According to Grean, the motif of "enthusiasm" distinguishes Shaftesbury from his contemporaries; thus the main goal of this study is to understand all the ramifications of the doctrine. In the early chapter entitled "Enthusiasm," we are given Shaftesbury's description of it as a psychological phenomenon, a powerful experience "which occurs when the mind receives or creates ideas or images too big for it to contain." Windelband generalizes the phenomenon into an "enthusiasm" for the true, good, and beautiful which lives out all the peculiar power of man by the elevation of his soul above itself to more universal values. Grean tells us that "enthusiasm" is central to Shaftesbury's account of how we respond to beauty, how we make and are made by the good, how we know the truths of morals which are "patterns of meaningful possibilities... intended not merely to describe but to transform reality." In the early pages of Part I, the historical detail and comments on secondary literature, although very readable, are tangential to the philosophic argument and delay our coming to grips with the author's thesis. Soon, however, in chapters on religion, virtue, and creative form, Grean's mastery of Shaftesbury's holistic philosophy forcefully comes across. We are shown that it is dynamic, unified, and not antirational, and here the reader can derive a characterization of "enthusiasm" sufficiently broad for Grean's purposes. The doctrine means that human nature is capable of ultimate commitment, creative intuition, spontaneity, and disinterested love; further, "enthusiasm" is involved in the method of philosophy and the method of writing. Like Plato, Shaftesbury believed that external beauty can lead us to inner beauty. His philosophy is gracefully written, and Grean points out the relation of style and substance in his subject, while writing readably himself. As a study of Shaftesbury, for whom true philosophy could not be restricted to abstract theory but must form a whole with its practical application, this book is sympathetic in manner as well as in its conclusions. Notes, index, selected bibliography and historical preface provide aids to further study.--M. B. M. (shrink)

In September of 1965 G. H. von Wright discovered in Vienna a hitherto unknown notebook written in pencil by Wittgenstein. The first part contains an early, but essentially complete version of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Since it contains the dedication to David H. Pinsent who died May 8, 1918, von Wright dates its composition just before the final composition of the Tractatus in the summer of 1918. This is confirmed by the remaining portion of the manuscript which contains additions and further (...) elucidations to the Prototractatus plus a Preface, all of which are found, virtually unchanged, in the final version of the Tractatus. This edition contains a quite readable facsimile of the entire manuscript, an edition of the text of the Prototractatus that indicates its differences from the final text and a translation en regard by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. A lengthy introduction by von Wright on the publication history of the Tractatus and a concluding set of Tables indicating parallel passages between the Tractatus and Prototractatus as well as those portions of each work which have nothing corresponding in the other, complete the volume. In view of the fact that Wittgenstein on his last visit to Vienna before his death ordered that the several notebooks which still existed from the time of germination of the Tractatus be destroyed, one might ask just what contribution this expensive edition of the Prototractatus may be expected to make to our understanding of Wittgenstein's thought. Unlike the 1914-1916 Notebooks, which by some happy accident escaped the destruct order, the Prototractatus does not seem to differ in any significant substantive way from the final printed version. This is to be expected if von Wright's dating of the work is correct. Hence, while the historian of literature may be delighted with the present text, the student of philosophy may find it disappointing. What does make the present volume of value, however, is von Wright's historical introduction with its reproduction of many of Wittgenstein's letters to various prospective publishers. Of especial interest in this connection is Wittgenstein's illuminating comment to Ludwig von Ficker of Innsbruck, editor of Der Brenner, that "the book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which... will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts; the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it. And for that reason, unless I am very much mistaken, the book will say a great deal that you yourself want to say. Only perhaps you won't see that it is said in the book." This would seem to confirm Anscombe's interpretation of Tractatus 6.52 rather than Ayer's and that of the Vienna Circle.--A. B. W. (shrink)

That "The Classics of Western Spirituality" should regard the man Dante hailed as "beyond the human in contemplation," and St. Bonaventure believed to be the medieval rival of the greatest patristic contemplative worthy of a special volume is not surprising. Richard of St. Victor’s masterful analysis of the ascent of the mind to God in contemplative prayer and meditation, emphasizing the individual’s relationship to other individuals as the paradigm of how the Three Divine Persons are related in their inner life (...) of love, is at the same time of psychological interest for anyone attempting to identify and classify the various mystical states medieval philosophers felt were necessary to characterize their spiritual growth. Since the bulk of the present translation is devoted to Richard’s two major attempts to systematize the discipline needed to attain contemplation, known more generally as Benjamin Minor and Benjamin Major, one might wonder why the work is being reviewed in the present journal. But while the major interest of this volume will undoubtedly be for those interested in ascetic theology, for the influence of Richard on subsequent writers from St. Bonaventure to St. Teresa of Avila is profound, nevertheless the relatively short third portion of the work is of sufficient philosophical importance to merit at least a brief note, namely bk. 3 of The Trinity. One would hardly expect a work of this sort to come from the pen of a mystic, for what Richard sets out to do is nothing short of a purely rational or metaphysical analysis of the "Athanasian Creed," which was recited almost daily by the Canons of the Abbey of St. Victor during the twelfth century. Because the inner nature and life of the Trinity, unlike creation or the salvation history of God’s intervention in the affairs of man, is a necessary consequence of what medieval thinkers believed God to be, rather than what he chose to do, Richard was convinced that with sufficient ingenuity one could theorize fruitfully as to why God must possess the various attributes we believe him to have and which are set forth in the aforesaid "creed," which stresses both the unity of God, the divine nature and all the divine attributes, while continually reminding its confessor of the trinity of "persons." In the Anselmian tradition of "faith seeking understanding" Richard seeks "necessary reasons" why God should not only be one but three. Most medieval thinkers have considered the trinitarian character of the divine nature to be the most profound of all the mysteries of the Christian faith. While reason may at best refute objections to a trinity of persons in one divine nature, it can hardly be expected to provide positive support for the doctrine. Richard, on the contrary, believed that St. Anselm had found the key to the "divine processions" in the fact that God is perfect love, with all that this implies. It is obvious the experience of "love" as an interpersonal sharing of the deepest kind, something St. Paul enjoined upon the Christians of the "Church of Corinth," is a far cry from what Sartre seemed to have reached in writing L'etre et néant or what that term connotes to our age, but it is not unknown to contemporary psychologists. Duns Scotus described the "perfect lover" in a Richardian sense as "Perfecte diligens vult dilectum condiligi!" It is especially in bk. 3 of The Trinity that Richard argues that a personal nature that is "summum bonum" must contain more than one person, and need contain no more than three. For the philosopher of religion interested in Richard’s metaphysical analysis of the Godhead, it would be profitable to preface the reading of Zinn’s fine translation of bk. 3 with the selections from bk. 1.—A.B.W. (shrink)

Festschriften may have gone out of style, but not out of print. The desire to pay tribute to an important thinker remains strong and no one has found a more suitable vehicle. Hence the present volume in honor of Max Fisch, who retired recently from the University of Illinois after a long and distinguished career in the academic world, which began in 1926. The volume consists of fourteen essays by former graduate students of Fisch, as well as two short pieces (...) by Fisch himself, a biographical sketch by Max Harold Fisch, a preface by D. W. Gotshalk, a chronological bibliography of Fisch's writings, and a list of theses directed by Fisch from 1947 to 1968 at the University of Illinois. The essays cover such diverse philosophers as Aristotle, Hartshorne, Merleau-Ponty, Agassiz, Harvey, Hegel, and Peirce and range from subjects like Freedom and the Justification of Morality to Logic, Frequency Theory of Probability, Language and the Self--and even beyond, to subjects such as The Origin of the Species and a Taoist Treatise on the Nourishment of Life. Curiously, despite Fisch's pioneer work in bringing Vico to the attention of American readers, none of the essays center on Vichian thought; nor do any of the theses listed in the back of the book take Vico as the subject of the dissertation.--H. B. (shrink)

This volume is a welcome, exciting, and unusually informative addition to what now seems a definite trend toward introducing Latin-American philosophers to the English-reading world. The preface contains a brief review of milestones in this development, which the interested reader will find handy as reference. The principal features common to post-revolutionary Latin-American intellectual history are very present in Lipp's examination of Argentine thought; namely, the dedication to some principle of activism, the search for an authentic national character, a national (...) ethos fashioned in the crucible of European traditions and the specific conditions confronting the new nations, the linkage of philosophy to the economic, social, and political conditions of the time and the rejection of abstract speculative philosophy as inconsistent with, and alien to, the needs of the struggling young societies. Lipp's chosen area is the study of twentieth-century Argentine intellectual development as seen through the prewar period of positivism, the postwar reaction against positivism, and the contemporary period. Each period is studied by examining the work of an outstanding Argentine philosopher: positivism and naturalism through Jose Ingenieros, the ethics of human freedom and personalism through Alejandro Korn, and transcendentalist anthropology through the works of Francisco Romero. There is something fresh and appealing in the philosophical expressions of these youthful, undeveloped, or under-developed societies which should find responsive echoes among student youth in this country. Ingenieros' book, The Mediocre Man, inspired generations of Latin-American students to revolt and reform the universities and their respective societies. Korn's strongly ethical views led him to sympathize openly with student revolt and to oppose the divorcing of philosophy from historic reality. Romero put his life where his philosophy was and went to jail for his opposition to Peron. Romero's dream of a humanized transformation of society and Korn's view of man as a "rebellious animal" who strives for human freedom through rebellion and creativity are but two sparks of the book's vitality that recommend it to the English-speaking reader.--H. B. (shrink)

This is an undergraduate text which limits itself to consideration of metaphysics from the standpoint of the essence and existence of being. Insight into the notion of being is sought by analogy in the transcendental notions of the "one," the "true," the "good," and the "beautiful." Each chapter is followed by a summary, a set of exercises and a select bibliography. The book does not quite live up to the promise in the preface to incorporate or parry the contributions (...) of modern philosophers to metaphysics. The main effort of the book is to explain classical metaphysics in classical terms with only limited contemporary reactions. The most glaring omission is the lack of reference to Whitehead, whose criticism of classical metaphysics is itself a classic in the realm of contemporary metaphysics.--H. B. (shrink)

Spanish readers are fortunate in having a publishing house which is committed to reproduce in Spanish the complete works of Georg Lukács. The complete edition will consist of twenty-four, or more, volumes, of which ten are already in print, covering mainly Lukács works on esthetics and literary criticism. The Hegel volume was originally published in German in 1948. The main draft was written as early as the fall of 1938, but the outbreak of World War II delayed publication. Lukács at (...) that time was in the Soviet Union where, following Stalin's lead, Hegel was characterized as an apologist for the Prussian feudal opposition to the French revolution. Considering the winning of the war as more important than provoking a controversy over Hegel, Lukács put his manuscript aside for the duration. In The Young Hegel, Lukács settles his account with Hegel, much as Marx and Engels in The German Ideology--with one significant difference. The objective of Marx and Engels was the abolition of Hegelianism. Their polemic, therefore, was directed against Hegel and the neo-Hegelians. Lukács, on the other hand, sought the restoration of the Hegelian dimension of Marxism, and, while accepting the Marxian critique of Hegelianism, directed his attack against the detractors of Hegel--against the Stalin line within Marxism and against those like Dilthey and Kierkegaard outside of Marxism who transformed Hegel into an "irrationalist." Lukács is consequently much more positive in his treatment of Hegel than Marx and Engels. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukács emphasized the necessity of understanding Hegel in order to properly understand Marx. In The Young Hegel, the emphasis is on the dialectical opposite--Hegel is understood through the eyes of Marx, through the critique of Marx and through a Marxian interpretation by Lukács. Lukács' unique contribution in the present work is the detailed study of the close union of philosophy and economics in the genesis of Hegel's thought. Indeed, the original subtitle of the German edition reads: Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie. The Spanish edition has a two-and-a-half page preface, written specially for it by Lukács in 1963, in which he states his conviction of the importance in the thought of Hegel and other great philosophers of concern with economic problems, both from the standpoint of economic theory and actual economic conditions. An English edition has been promised by Merlin Press in London, but no date of publication has yet been announced.--H. B. (shrink)

At long last, this seminal work is available in English. Originally published in German in 1923, it became almost immediately a center of interest and stormy controversy in both Marxist and non-Marxist circles. With the passage of time, the controversy has abated somewhat, the interest has heightened, and Lukács has become recognized generally as one of the most influential and creative Marxists of the post-World War I world. The tour de force in History and Class Consciousness is its insistence on (...) the indissoluble link between Hegel and Marx and on the centrality of the concept of alienation in Marx's thought--an insistence which was dramatically verified nine years later with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and again in 1939 with the appearance of Marx's Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Of perhaps more lasting value are the dazzling expositions on the nature and role of class consciousness, on the open-endedness of history, on the dialectical method as the essence of authentic and orthodox marxism, on the concept of totality, and on fetishism and reification as the inevitable consequences of commodity production relations. Lukács might have rested his laurels on these features of the book and basked in the glory of their popularity. Instead, he chose to emphasize the negative features which he feared might lead the unwary reader down an un-Marxist or anti-Marxist path. Accordingly, he refused to permit republication or translation and those who wanted to read the work had to resort to mimeographed or photographic reproductions, or "pirate" editions. Despite these difficulties, the book managed to circulate widely among serious Marxists and students of Marxism and to exercise an influence which continues to this day. Both critics and admirers of Lukács considered his ban on the book to be "tactical" and his criticisms of it to be tongue-in-cheek, or opportunistic. But when Lukács finally authorized a new edition in 1967 and wrote a new preface for it, there could no longer be any doubt that he truly believed that the book contained grievous failings and that it was these failings which accounted for the book's popularity. Being still in transition from Hegel to Marx, Lukács had not succeeded in wholly reconstructing Hegel along revolutionary materialist lines, as Marx himself had succeeded in doing. In particular, Lukács had succumbed to the identical subject-object relation, which distorted his view of the relationship of man to nature, destroyed the basis for a solid Marxist ontology in which work mediated between man and nature, and disrupted the unity of theory and practice. From the standpoint of Marxism, Lukács' criticisms are unassailable, but this, by no means, entails that his evaluation of the book as a whole has to be accepted. It remains an impressive attempt, during a revolutionary period, to select those elements in Marxism which serve as effective theoretical tools to guide the revolution along a truly socialist path.--H. B. (shrink)

Preface: what is just theory? -- Introduction: framing the common good -- Cultural turn 1. Inventing western metaphysics -- Why is Plato so upset at the poets, and what is western metaphysics? -- Reframing the republic : from the homeric to the platonic paideia -- Finding love (and writing) in all the wrong places : Plato's pharmacy and the double-edged sword of literacy in the Phaedrus -- Aristotle's natural classification of things : when dialectic trumps rhetoric and poetry gets (...) rescued -- Cultural turn 2. Rewriting western metaphysics : aesthetics and politics in the age of capital -- Rewriting western metaphysics for a revolutionary age -- The prelude to the revolution : the limits of literary freedom in a market society -- Women's rights, class wars, and the master-slave dialectic : signs of the rising countermovements -- The struggle between communality and hierarchy : lessons of the paris commune for the twenty-first century -- From God's great chain to nature's slow-motion evolution : reframing our regulative fictions -- Cultural turn 3. Surviving the sixth extinction and resolving the crisis of care -- Epilogue. (shrink)

More than a decade after Philip P. Wiener and Frederick H. Young edited the first volume of Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Moore and Robin have brought together a collection of essays which serves as a valuable supplement to that earlier publication. It is more than a supplement, however; it can stand on its own as a significant contribution to Peirce scholarship. Continuity with the first volume is achieved through new essays which analyze Peirce's theory of belief, (...) of habit, and of Scotistic realism—themes about which many of the earlier papers revolved. Novelty is achieved through increased emphasis on Peirce's logical and mathematical writings and on the influence of nineteenth century evolutionism upon Peirce's pragmaticism. The exploration of the latter motif in the three contributions of W. Donald Oliver, Rulon Wells, and Thomas A. Goudge is particularly noteworthy. In their Preface, Moore and Robin state that the most significant contribution of this new volume is the revelation of the extent to which Peirce was first a scientist and then a philosopher. This is a misleading characterization of the book. True, Victor F. Lenzen's "Charles S. Peirce As Astronomer" is an engaging piece. On the other hand, the bulk of the articles impress the reader with the originality and modernity of Peirce, the philosopher and Peirce, the logician. The most notable feature of this collection is the number of essays which draw parallels between dominant philosophical and logical themes found in Peirce's writings and major interests of mid-twentieth century philosophers. Impressive examples are: A. R. Turquette's "Peirce's Icons For Deductive Logic," Richard M. Martin's "On Acting On A Belief," Larry Holmes's "Prolegomena To Peirce's Philosophy Of Mind," and Richard J. Bernstein's "Peirce's Theory of Perception." In presenting the articles which constitute this volume the editors give evidence not only of the relevance of Peirce for the contemporary student of philosophy but also of the impetus which Peirce's thought has provided for creative philosophical analysis. An additional bonus for Peirce scholars are two bibliographies prepared by Max H. Fisch. One is a supplement to Arthur W. Burk's 1958 bibliography of works by C. S. Peirce. The other is a draft of a bibliography of works about C. S. Peirce.—B. G. R. (shrink)

In his preface to Hobbes: Morals and Politics, Raphael tells us his intention is to provide "a genuine introduction for the student starting from scratch." That ought not deter others more familiar with Hobbes from reading the book. Raphael’s analysis is well-informed, sometimes insightful, and certainly worth reading. In addition to its intention to serve as an introduction, the book is also a vehicle for a rather elaborate interpretation of Hobbes’s theory of obligation. The interpretation of its Raphael in (...) with the school of thought represented by Howard Warrender, F. S. McNeilly, et. al. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:META-ONTOLOGY AND META-FICTION by Denis E. B. Pollard Peter van inwagen's attempt to explain the nature of fiction makes use of Quine's program in meta-ontology.1 This program comprises four basic theses: (i) that being is the same as existence, (ii) that being is univocal, (iii) that this univocal sense is best captured, for the purposes of formalization, by die existential quantifier, and (iv) that deciding what to believe about (...) what there is comes to a decision about what theories we should accept. As the aim of formalization is explicitness, then theories should be rendered into canonicalese and their commitments identified through those sentences which are prefaced with the existential quantifier. For Inwagen, as for his mentor Quine, acceptance of theory expressed in this canonical form entails acceptance of the ontology expressed in those quantified sentences. Bringing these considerations to bear on fiction, Inwagen asks, "What are theories about fiction?" and replies that they are "theories that treat stories as having an internal structure" (p. 72). The upshot of this is that such theories contain sentences which, when formally rendered, revead commitments to fictional objects. It is further claimed that such sentences can be vehicles of objective truth. Thus Inwagen finds he cannot wholeheartedly dismiss Sarah Gamp as a nonentity. In this respect, his view contrasts with two contemporary accounts, the "reductivist" one which denies Sarah Gamp's existence and her possession of any properties whatever, and the more recent "Meinongian" view which would agree that Sarah Gamp does not exist, but would nonetheless strenuously maintain that she is a nurse, fat, old, and decidedly the worse for drink. Inwagen's Sarah is neither ofthese: pace both these positions, she exists all right, but with properties such as being a theoretical entity of criticism, being a satiric villainess, not being a woman, and not being fond of gin. Inwagen's attempt to steer what seems to be a middle course has yielded, if anything, a more counterintuitive result than either ofthe other views. What is die explanation for this? 244 Denis E. B. Pollard245 To begin with, it is important to note a distinction, which Inwagen himself accepts, between two kinds of sentences. Let us take the following elementary examples: (1) "Sarah Gamp is a nurse," and (2) "Sarah Gamp is a character in a nineteenth-century novel." With specimens like (1), Inwagen sides with the reductivist: such sentences asefalse, and are not about anything. But it is with examples like (2) that ontology becomes a real issue, since sentences of this kind belong to literary theory. Neither authors nor critics who make use of sentences of the first kind are committed to the existence of fictional entities. So far, so good. But what is it that compels such commitment in the second case? Inwagen is sceptical about reductivist analyses which seek to paraphrase such sentences in order to remove any "misleading" implications. Such paraphrases he would regard as at best "messy," and more seriously, unlikely to preserve intuitive meaning without appearing to say that there are fictional characters. Unfortunately, he brushes this aside as a "narrow technical issue" at the very point where rather more argument is needed. However, on the issue of preservation of intuitive meaning, it might well be argued that his contention is somewhat question-begging, suggesting a rather literal reading of (2) above as a straightforward predication superficially akin to (3) "McEnroe is a seeded player in this year's Wimbledon tournament." So by a strange alchemy, the expression "Sarah Gamp" in (2) is accorded a referential status denied to it in (1). It is at this point that the notion of"theoretical entity" is introduced to supply the need for a referent dictated by the Quinean program. Inwagen's Sarah Gamp, in this theoretical disguise, can now literally satisfy predicates like "... is a character in a nineteenth-century novel," but not predicates like "... is a nurse." The parallel being exploited here is that with scientific theory. An ideal gas can satisfy Boyle's Law, but cannot literally be ignited, put into containers, or have an offensive smell. But there is more than a suspicion of equivocation over the term... (shrink)