James O. Young

This book is an exploration of “affective attachment,” which Singer describes as “the part of affective life which is pertinent to the phenomenon of attachment.” Affective attachment includes sex, love, and compassion. It is difficult to summarize Singer’s views on this topic. Singer sees the book as a systematic exploration of affective attachment, “a single unfolding of speculative thought.” At the same time he allows that he finds “that our affective being is so mercurial that touching on it at a single point quickly precipitates volatile excursions that often rebound in unforeseeable directions”. Whether or not Singer is right, his many excursions give the book more of the character of a philosophical commonplace book than a systematic treatise. A short review cannot do justice to all of the rich detail of this book and is bound to make it seem more systematic than it is.

In the wake of Locke’s Essay, empiricists faced the challenge of giving an empiricist account of the origins of moral knowledge. Locke did not rise to this challenge and relied on revelation as the source of moral knowledge. Other empiricists, including Hume and Hutcheson, opted for either emotivism or subjectivism. Clarke and others opted for rationalism and non-naturalism. In contrast, Catharine Cockburn’s meta-ethics combined Locke’s empiricism with naturalism. She held that moral good is natural good and that natural good is known just as any other matters of natural fact are known: empirically. Cockburn’s position was unusual for its time, and the full originality and appeal of her meta-ethical position have not been fully appreciated.

An answer is provided to the question of the conditions under which sentences are true. Realists claim that reality provides the truth conditions of sentences. Realism is rejected. An anti-realist position according to which truth is relative to the theories of linguistic communities is adopted. A sentence is true if and only if warranted by theories held to be correct by a community. ;Many of the standard objections to anti-realism and relativist positions are considered and refuted. Anti-realism is not self-refuting. The discovery that a sentence is warranted and yet false does not refute the theory that truth is warrant in a theory; such a discovery presupposes tacit appeal to some other theory. Realism is not required for the explanation of cognitive success. ;Following Michael Dummett, the question of what speakers know when they understand a sentence is posed. Speakers understand a sentence when they are able to apply to it the concepts of truth and falsity. Dummett's empiricist account of the conditions under which the concepts of truth and falsity are applied to sentences is rejected. These conditions are provided by the theories, not the experiences, which would warrant sentences. It is shown that all that speakers can know when they understand a sentence is that it is true if some theory, which warrants it, is correct. The concepts of truth and falsity are, therefore, applied to sentences on the basis of a knowledge of the theories which would warrant them. Theories, not reality, provide the truth conditions of sentences