Hans-Johann Glock

Both opponents and proponents of Singer's right to speak about euthanasia have concentrated on the tenability of his claims. They have ignored the question of what legitimate grounds there are for suppressing academic discussion, and have failed to take into account the discussion of freedom of speech in recent legal theory. To do this is the aim of my paper. Section I claims that Singer's position is immoral. Section 2 turns to the question of whether it is protected by freedom of speech, irrespective of its merits. I reject two lines of defence for Singer's opponents, that they had no opportunity to present their case, and the Kantian idea of the primacy of practical reason. Section 3 turns to a defence from legal theory. It argues that Singer's views do not pose the kind of threat to other legal and moral values which would license a suspension of his freedom of expression. I conclude that it is illegitimate to silence Singer, since he does not deny the right to live of his disabled opponents, but legitimate to protest against him, since he denies that some of their lives are worth living, in disregard of their own preferences.

  There are three main positions on animalthought: lingualism denies that non-linguistic animalshave any thoughts; mentalism maintains that theirthoughts differ from ours only in degree, due totheir different perceptual inputs; an intermediateposition, occupied by common sense and Wittgenstein,maintains that animals can have thoughts of a simplekind. This paper argues in favor of an intermediateposition. It considers the most important arguments infavor of lingualism, namely those inspired byDavidson: the argument from the intensional nature ofthought (Section 1); the idea that thoughts involveconcepts (Sections 2–3); the argument from the holisticnature of thought (Section 4); and the claim that beliefrequires the concept of belief (Sections 5–6). The lastargument (which Davidson favors) is uncompelling, butthe first three shed valuable light on the extent towhich thought requires language. However, none of themprecludes animals from having simple thoughts. Even ifone adopts the kind of third-person perspective onthought Davidson shares with Wittgenstein, the resultis a version of the intermediate position, albeit oneenriched by Davidson''s insights concerningintensionality, concepts and holism (Section 7). We canonly ascribe simple thoughts to animals, and even thatascription is incongruous in that the rich idiom weemploy has conceptual connections that go beyond thephenomena to which it is applied

The paper is a reply to the accusation ("Philosophical Quarterly", 44, 1994) that my The Indispensability of Translation' ("Philosophical Quartrely", 43, 1993) misrepresents Davidson's account of radical interpretation. It defends my claim that Davidson assimilates everyday understanding to the interpretation of an alien language, and discusses the ways in which he identifies interpretation with translation. I admit that Davidson has recently acknowledged first person authority concerning speaker's meaning, but show that this is a change of his views. Davidson's position is inconsistent both diachronically and synchronically. One cannot subscribe to most of Quine's paradoxes and still do semantic business as usual

My paper reflects on the debate about reasons for action and action explanations between Wittgensteinian teleological approaches and causalist theories inspired by Davidson. After a brief discussion of similarities and differences in the philosophy of language, I sketch the prehistory and history of the controversy. I show that the conflict between Wittgenstein and Davidson revolves neither around revisionism nor around naturalism. Even in the philosophy of mind and action, Davidson is not as remote from Wittgenstein and his followers as is commonly assumed: there are numerous points of contact of both a biographical and a substantive kind. The real conflict concerns the difference between Davidson’s official subjectivist approach to reasons for action, according to which they are mental states of believing and desiring (or their onsets) on the one hand, and an objectivist approach, according to which reasons for action are what is believed or desired, non-mental facts or states of affairs

This unique study brings together for the first time two of the most important philosophers of this century. Never before have these two thinkers been compared - and commentators' opinions on their relationship differ greatly. Are the views of Wittgenstein and Quine on method and the nature of philosophy comparable or radically opposed? Does Wittgenstein's concept of language engender that of Quine, or threaten its philosophical foundations? An understanding of the similarities and differences between the thought of Wittgenstein and of Quine is essential if we are to have a full picture of contemporary philosophy. This collection of essays offers diverse and original ways in which to view their relationship

According to a venerable tradition in philosophy and linguistics, expressions have meaning through being subject to conventions or rules. This claim has become a central topic of contemporary philosophy of language and mind in the wake of Wittgenstein and Kripke, largely because the normativity of meaning is regarded as a serious challenge to naturalism. One reaction to this challenge is to deny that the normativity of meaning is genuine. While there are ‘semantic principles’ specifying conditions for the correct application of expressions, these are either not genuinely normative or they are not in fact constitutive of meaning. But this dilemma can be defused if one distinguishes different dimensions of semantic normativity and pays attention to different types of mistakes that can afflict linguistic behavior. In particular, one needs to keep apart norms of truth and norms of meaning, regulative, and constitutive rules, and to appreciate the normative dimensions of the notion of correctness. The final section discusses the role of communally shared rules or conventions for language, in particular the age-old problem of circularity: how could such conventions be essential to language, given that the latter appears prerequisite for establishing and communicating conventions in the first place.

This article explores the connections between analytic philosophy and applied ethics — both historical and substantive. Historically speaking, applied ethics is a child of analytic philosophy. It arose as the result of two factors in the 1960s: the re-emergence of normative ethics on the one hand, and urgent social and political challenges on the other. But is there a significant substantive link between applied ethics and analytic philosophy? I argue that applied ethics inherited important ‘analytic’ ideals such as clarity and argumentative rigour. At the same time these ideals are not the exclusive preserve of analytic philosophy and applied ethics. Moreover, they are under threat from various trends within applied ethics. In this context I rebut the allegation that the anti-revisionist reliance on pre-theoretical moral judgements (aka ‘intuitions’) is less rational than their revisionist dismissal. The article ends with a plea for an analytic approach within applied ethics

This essay argues that non-linguistic animals qualify not just for externalist notions of rationality (maximizing biological fitness or utility), but also for internal ones. They can act for reasons in several senses: their behaviour is subject to intentional explanations, they can act in the light of reasons - provided that the latter are conceived as objective facts rather than subjective mental states - and they can deliberate. Finally, even if they could not, it would still be misguided to maintain that animals are capable only of (mechanical) behaviour, not of (intentional) action

Do animals have minds? We have known at least since Aristotle that humans constitute one species of animal. And some benighted contemporaries apart, we also know that most humans have minds. To have any bite, therefore, the question must be restricted to non-human animals, to which I shall henceforth refer simply as "animals." I shall further assume that animals are bereft of linguistic faculties. So, do some animals have minds comparable to those of humans? As regards that question, there are two basic stances. Differentialists maintain that there are categorical differences separating us from animals; assimilationists hold that the differences are merely quantitative and gradual (see Brandom 2000, pp. 2–3). This paper only deals with one kind of mental phenomenon, namely intentional states such as believing, desiring, and intending. I shall also refer to these as having thoughts or thinking rather than as "propositional attitudes," since that terminology is misguided. My primary target is a variant of differentialism, namely lingualism. It maintains that animals lack intentional states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, since, on a priori conceptual grounds, the latter require language. The term "language" is here confined to public languages, notably natural languages, and excludes inner symbolisms such as the language of thought postulated by many cognitive scientists.