Dagfinn Føllesdal

Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate."

W.V. Quine (1908-) has played a crucial role in philosophy during the second half of the 20th century. These five volumes contain the most essential of the more than 2000 articles written about Quine's work. Chosen for their clarity and brevity, they cover both basic ideas as well as objections to Quine's work. These articles are a valuable resource for students and scholars; many have been previously available only in hard-to-find sources, and in addition, some have been written or translated expressly for this collection. Available individually or by volume: * Vol. 1: General, Reviews, and Analytic/Synthetic 424 pp: [0-8153-3738-8] * Vol. 2: Naturalism and Ethics 408 pp: [0-8153-3739-6] * Vol.3: Indeterminacy of Translation 416 pp: [0-8153-3740-X] * Vol. 4: Ontology 432 pp: [0-8153-3741-8] * Vol. 5: Logic 432 pp: [0-8153-3742-6].

Much of Essler''s work has been devoted to bringing science andphilosophy together for the purpose of conceptual clarification. Oneparticularly interesting area for such cooperation between science andphilosophy has been relativity theory. In this paper I will consider oneinstance of such interplay: the transformation that our notions of rotationand rigidity have undergone in general relativity and what this process canteach us. I will start by saying a little about the physics of the situation andthen go on to some philosophical observations about meaning and theory.

The article is a comparative critical discussion of the views of Brentano and Husserl on intentional objects and on perception. Brentano's views on intentional objects are first discussed, with special attention to the problems connected with the status of the intentional objects. It is then argued that Husserl overcomes these problems by help of his notion of noema. Similarly, in the case of perception, Brentano's notion of physical phenomena is argued to be less satisfactory than Husserl's notion of hyle, whose role in Husserl's theory of perception is briefly sketched.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have been studied, commented upon and praised for more than 2000 years. What made their work so excellent? And what has made the philosophy produced by so many great philosophers after them insightful, inspiring and well worth studying? Their arguments. Arguments give insights, they help us see how “all weaves into one whole” to speak with Goethe, they “give unity to what was previously dispersed.” It is this “weaving together of what was dispersed” which is the core of arguments.This leads to a very inclusive notion of philosophy, where some of the finest works of art are philosophical. However, this openness to a wide variety of approaches to philosophy does not make all philosophy good philosophy. There are numerous kinds of weaknesses. Three examples are given, that illustrate the following three rules for good scholarship: (1) give proper credit, (2) familiarize yourself with fields outside philosophy that are pertinent to the problems you work on, (3) pay attention to work that has been done by others, especially when this work points to difficulties that you have not considered. These are trivial weaknesses, which should be spotted by editors and referees. Once they have been eliminated, we can concentrate on the arguments. It is the quality of arguments that distinguishes good philosophy from bad, and arguments come in many forms. We philosophers have a special responsibility for developing in ourselves and in others an ability to construct good arguments and to distinguish good arguments from bad ones. This is what Plato and Aristotle did, and it is a special challenge in our time when opinions more and more are shaped by mass media and not by arguments. We must teach good argumentation, and we must practice what we teach in our own philosophical work.

An appraisal of the current status of the modalities and of quine's arguments against them. The author accepts "quine's thesis," that one cannot quantify into referentially opaque contexts, And argues that nobody has succeeded in making sense of such quantification. However, It is shown that modal constructions, Being constructions on general terms and sentences, Can be referentially transparent and extensionally opaque and that consequently the collapse of modal distinctions warned against by quine in "word and object" can be avoided. This combination of referential transparency and extensional opacity is just what quine means by essentialism, And the author therefore agrees with quine that quantified modal logic commits one to essentialism