Mark Lovas

In a recent article in this journal Professor Tibor Machan defends advertising from those who find that it is???anything but honorable???. According to Machan advertising is not merely honorable, but also natural, a virtual paradigm of cooperative behavior, and an essential component of human well-being.???If human life is a value, advertising is a value. It is a positive good.??? Machan concedes that sometimes people exposed to advertising make foolish choices, but that is explained by their lack of prudence, not any fault of advertisers. He also appeals to our sense of fair play: advertisers are like us??? people trying to earn a living, and even issues a veritable cri de coeur : Who among us hasn't tried to promote a book we've written?

Mark Lovas asks to what extent are we all morally blind — and morally wanton? There are other sound reasons to destroy the Social Security system. It is based upon principles that are deeply offensive to the moral values of the political leadership … Social Security is based on the idea that it is a community responsibility to ensure that the disabled widow on the other side of town has food to eat, or that the child across the street should be able to go to a decent school. Such evil ideas have to be driven from the mind. … According to right thinking, it isn't my fault if the widow married the wrong person or if the child's parents made bad investment decisions, so why should I contribute a few cents to a public fund to take care of them?

I present a new interpretation of Plato's discussion of false belief in the Theaetetus. I suggest that Plato is reducing to absurdity a certain view of knowledge. The view being criticized must appeal to the simplicity of the objects of knowledge. I suggest that such a picture of knowledge is present in earlier dialogues. I depart from previous commentators in my view of the nature and importance of the epistemological view in question. Not only is Plato engaging in a bit of self-criticism, but his criticism has broader application. I suggest that certain features of Fregean accounts of thought seem to be open to Plato's line of argument. Recent commentators have assumed the correctness of such accounts, and gone on to criticize Plato from within their perspective. On my view they are guilty of serious misunderstanding of Plato. Plato's rejection of simples in epistemology has application to Fregean models of thought. I also suggest how this discussion paves the way for Plato's conception of dialectic in later dialogues

In a recent article in this journal Professor Tibor Machan defends advertising from those who find that it is ‘anything but honorable’. According to Machan advertising is not merely honorable, but also natural, a virtual paradigm of cooperative behavior, and an essential component of human well-being. ‘If human life is a value, advertising is a value. It is a positive good.’ Machan concedes that sometimes people exposed to advertising make foolish choices, but that is explained by their lack of prudence, not any fault of advertisers. He also appeals to our sense of fair play: advertisers are like us – people trying to earn a living, and even issues a veritable cri de coeur: Who among us hasn't tried to promote a book we've written?

We can shed new light upon Jonathan Dancy's moral particularism if we frame it in terms of Daniel Andler's recent discussion of the epistemological problem of context. Andler helps us in two specific ways. First, we can see that Dancy's work is highlighting the problem context raises for moral knowledge. This makes some criticisms of Dancy seem off the mark. Secondly, Andler's approach also helps us understand why Dancy seems reticent to provide more epistemological details. Nonetheless, the paper closes with a suggestion about the possibility of a particularist account of moral knowledge more detailed than anything Dancy has provided

Schifferś \'meaning-intention\' problem is aimed at \'hidden-indexical\' theories of belief ascription. Without defending such theories the author raises several questions about the assumptions behind Schifferś objection. Perhaps hidden-indexical theories don\'t tell us enough about how we can refer to modes of presentation, but Schifferś skepticism about our ability to know modes of presentation is unwarranted. The author sketches an account of the role of modes of presentation in ordinary psychological talk which is designed to answer Schifferś skeptical worries