What is a natural kind? As we shall see, the concept of a natural kind has a long history. Many of the interesting doctrines can be detected in Aristotle, were revived by Locke and Leibniz, and have again become fashionable in recent years. Equally there has been agreement about certain paradigm examples: the kinds oak, stickleback and gold are natural kinds, and the kinds table, nation and banknote are not. Sadly agreement does not extend much further. It is impossible to (...) discover a single consistent doctrine in the literature, and different discussions focus on different doctrines without writers or readers being aware of the fact. In this paper I shall attempt to find a defensible distinction between natural and non-natural kinds. (shrink)

‘… and he arranged it all. It's done me the world of good, I can tell you. And that's why I said that yesterday was both yesterday and two years ago.’‘Well, it still sounds nonsense to me. I told you H. G. Wells would do you no good.’.

First published in 1997, this volume originated from an article published in Ratio and reapproaches Aristotle in an attempt to define what counts as an irrational action, along with a general account of irrationality based on a large number of specific examples. It begins with Aristotle, and never leaves him far behind. Contemplating akrasia, will, self-knowledge and commensurability, the author demonstrates that we must allow for the possibility of breakdown in cases where someone may fail to do the rational action (...) through weakness of will and that to make sense of akrasia we must be ready to allow for distinct cases. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of akrasia is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. First, his account of the problem is coloured by a number of unattractive assumptions and preoccupations; second, his central claim, that akrasia involves a temporary displacement of knowledge, deals at best with only a small number of cases; third, he is wrong to suppose that the akrates is typically someone overwhelmed by passion. We need to follow Davidson in recognising that the central problem consists in a failure to convert (...) intention into action. Any solution must involve a recognition that we are dealing with a range of very different kinds of case, which demand different kinds of treatment. For example sometimes agents are overtaken by passion; sometimes they coolly and calmly do the wrong thing; sometimes they are insincere; sometimes they are suffering from a weakness of will; sometimes they are guilty of some kind of self deception; and sometimes they may have difficulty in comparing the goods and evils available. (shrink)

1. There is an important argument which can be traced back to Kant's second and third Critiques , and which has been defended by a number of distinguished modern philosophers.1 It goes as follows. Moral judgments are universalizable; that is, I am logically committed to making the same moral judgment about all relevantly similar cases. If I refuse to make the same moral judgment about two relevantly similar cases, then either I believe that they are relevantly different, or I have (...) changed my moral views between examining the first case and examining the second, or I am simply irrational and not a proper subject for discussion. In contrast, however, aesthetic judgments are not universalizable; works of art are necessarily unique. If I say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing or successful or important or striking or whatever, I am not committed to making the same judgment about any relevantly similar work. Occasionally no doubt I might make the same judgment about a relevantly similar work, but I am in no way logically committed to doing so. Indeed in certain cases—the cases which are the topic of this paper—I am logically committed to making an entirely different aesthetic judgment of a relevantly similar work. Since works of art are necessarily unique, copies, fakes, forgeries, pastiches and ‘works in the style of …’, however plausible, however skilful, however close to the original, can never have the same aesthetic merit. Even if my Athena print of a Canaletto were qualitatively identical with the original, it could not have the same aesthetic merit. Even if a modern symphony reproduced perfectly the style of Mozart and even if it were in general of comparable musical quality, it could not have the same aesthetic merit as the forty-one originals. (shrink)

My purpose in what follows is not so much to defend the basic principle of utilitarianism as to indicate the form of it which seems most promising as a basic moral and political position. I shall take the principle of utility as offering a criterion for two different sorts of evaluation: first, the merits of acts of government, social policies, and social institutions, and secondly, the ultimate moral evaluation of the actions of individuals. I do not take it as implying (...) that the individual should live his life on the basis of constant evaluations of this sort. For there are different levels of decision making each with its appropriate criteria. For example, we each inevitably make many of our decisions from the point of view of our own personal self-fulfilment and this cannot regularly take a directly utilitarian form, nor should the utilitarian want it to do so. His claim is at most that we should sometimes review our life from the point of view of a kind of impersonal moral truth of a universalistic utilitarian character. (shrink)