Ernest Sosa

Naturalism rejects a sui generis and fundamental realm of the evaluative or normative. Thought and talk about the good and the right must hence be understood without appeal to any such evaluative or normative concepts or properties. In Sections I and II, we see noncognitivism step forward with its account of evaluative and normative language as fundamentally optative or prescriptive. Prescriptivism falls afoul of several problems. Prominent among them below is the “problem of prima facie reasons”: the problem, namely that prescriptions do not properly capture the character of defeasibility of the prima facie, featured by nearly all our moral convictions. We find in Section II that, ironically, emotivism, with its emphasis on optative rather than prescriptive language, though historically more primitive, is yet better attuned to that crucial prima facie aspect of the normative and the evaluative. But even emotivism still faces serious difficulties that beset noncognitivism generally, such as the problem of embedding in subordinate clauses, and the problem of normative fallibility. That takes us up to Section III.

A tercentenary conference of March, 1985, drew to Newport, Rhode Island, nearly all the most distinguished Berkeley scholars now active. The conference was organized by the International Berkeley Society, with the support of several institutions and many people. This volume represents a selection of the lead papers deliv ered at that conference, most now revised. The Cartesian marriage of Mind and Body has proved an uneasy union. Each side has claimed supremacy and usurped the rights of the other. In anglophone philosophy Body has lately had it all pretty much its own way, most dramatically in the Disappearance Theory of Mind, whose varieties vary in appeal and sophistication, but uniformly shock sensibili ties. Only recently has Mind reasserted itself, yet the voices of support are already a swelling chorus. "Welcome," Berkeley would respond, since "... all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth... have not a subsis tence without a mind... ". In fairness, Berkeley does playa Disappearance trick of his own - with Matter now into the hat. But his act is far subtler than any brute denial of the obvious, and seeks rather to explain than bluntly to reject. Perhaps we are today better prepared to appreciate his insights.

This paper was written for a panel session, in which I was asked to represent an analytic perspective. On reflection I found that there is no such thing, however, and that what best unifies the analytic traditions is not even a set of questions, much less a set of answers, but only agreement on certain standards of clarity and argumentation, and an interest in dialectic and debate. Certain issues have long dominated the analytic agenda, it is true, and I see no better way to represent an analytic perspective than to enter into a bit of dialectic and debate on one of these, in a way that I hope will be clear and cogent.

Mackie, J. L. Causes and conditions.--Taylor, R. The metaphysics of causation.--Scriven, M. Defects of the necessary condition analysis of causation.--Kim, J. Causes and events: Mackie on causation.--Anscombe, G. E. M. Causality and determination.--Davidson, D. Causal relations.--Wright, G. H. von. On the logic and epistemology of the causal relation.--Ducasse, C. J. On the nature and the observability of the causal relation.--Sellars, W. S. Counterfactuals.--Chisholm, R. M. Law statements and counterfactual inference.--Rescher, N. Belief-contravening suppositions and the problem of contrary-to-fact conditionals.--Stalnaker, R. A theory of conditionals.--Lewis, D. Causation.--Kim, J. Causes and counterfactuals

Belief is considered a kind of performance, which attains one level of success if it is true (or accurate), a second level if competent (or adroit), and a third if true because competent (or apt). Knowledge on one level (the animal level) is apt belief. The epistemic normativity constitutive of such knowledge is thus a kind of performance normativity. A problem is posed for this account by the fact that suspension of belief seems to fall under the same sort of epistemic normativity as does belief itself, yet to suspend is of course precisely not to perform, certainly not with the aim of truth. The paper takes up this problem, and proposes a solution that distinguishes levels of performance norrmativity, including a first order where execution competence is in play, and a second order where the performer must assess the risks attendant on issuing a first-order performance. This imports a level of reflective knowledge that ascends above the animal level.

According to Moore, his argument meets three conditions for being a proof: first, the premiss is different from the conclusion; second, he knows the premiss to be the case; and, third, the conclusion follows deductively.2 Further conditions may be required, but he evidently thinks his proof would satisfy these as well. As Moore is well aware, many philosophers will feel he has not given “...any satisfactory proof of the point in question."3 Some, he believes, will want the premiss itself proved. But he has..