David Cockburn

Winch's readings of Wittgenstein and Weil call for a significant rethinking of the relation between “metaphysics” and “ethics.” But there are confusions, perhaps to be found in all three of these writers, that we may slip into here. These are linked with the tendency to see idealist tendencies in Wittgenstein, and with his remark that giving grounds comes to an end, not in a kind of seeing on our part, but in our acting. The sense that we think we see in this suggestion is dependent on a distorted conception of “justification.” Getting clear about this involves coming to appreciate just how much of our nature as ethical beings is engaged when we do philosophy.

Contemporary philosophical debate in the philosophy of time draws on two, fairly distinct, sources: physics and philosophical logic. This paper focuses on the latter, and, in particular, on representatives of the dominant views: ‘tenseless’ (Frege) and ‘tensed’ (Prior). Their rival accounts of the sense of differently tensed talk are compared. It is argued that while they share preconceptions that might be questioned, Prior's appeal to relief that a pain is over may, properly understood, contribute to a philosophical understanding of time in a way that is largely precluded by widespread, and challengeable, ideas about the character of language and logic: ideas that fail properly to acknowledge the sense in which talk is in time.