Le Thème de cet article est assez vaste : il s'agit de reconsidérer un des lieux communs de l'épistémologie historique des sciences du langage concernant les rapports de la logique et de la grammaire générale. Nous le restreindrons en étudiant seulement l'état auquel parvient cette dernière discipline dans l'œuvre de Nicolas Beauzée (1717–1789), collaborates important de l'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert ; sa Grammaire Générale (1767) constitue sans doute la perfection du genre inauguré par Port-Royal.

Nous Posons dans cet exposé les questions suivantes : Quels sont les problèmes qui ont porté Husserl à des considérations sémiotiques ? Comment le père de la phénoménologie a-t-il tenté d'y répondre ? Et quelle pourrait ètre la contribution husserlienne à la sémiotique contemporaine?

Les Œuvres respectives de Piaget et de Kuhn sont des études sur l'évolution d'un certain type de connaissance: la connaissance enfantine chez Piaget, la physique et la chimie chez Kuhn. Dans les deux cas, on essaie d'analyser les facteurs qui déterminent les changements des contenus de la connaissance, et les relations qui existent entre ces divers contenus successifs. Il nous semble qu'une comparaison de ces deux études révèle des convergences intéressantes pour la théorie de la connaissance.

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein maintains that “The world is all that is the case.” Some philosophers have seen an advantage in introducing into a formal language either a constant which will represent the world, or an operator, e.g., ‘Max’, such that (Max p) indicates that p gives a complete description of the actual world, of the world at some instant of time, or of a possible world. Such propositions are called world propositions, possible world propositions, or maximal propositions. For us, a maximal proposition is a possible world proposition; it gives a complete description of one way the world might be. A maximal proposition p is not logically false, and for any proposition q, either p entails q or p entails not-q.

I Shall offer a realist theory of perception which in an important sense is neither direct nor representational nor causal.

Let us say that we directly perceive something if perceiving it enables us to know of its existence without having evidence of its existence. In this sense, direct perception allows us to have “direct knowledge” of what we perceive. For example, I see after-images directly, since I can know of their existence without having visual evidence of their existence. I do not have to look at them with my eyes. Granted, I do need evidence in order to know that they are after-images; but not in order to know of their existence as colours or shapes. Also, I do have to see them in order to know that they exist. But this is not a condition of having evidence. It is only a condition of their existence, which in turn is a truth condition of my knowing.

An Old and continuing tendency amongst critics of Kant's thought on ethics has been to maintain that since the categorical imperative merely provides a formal condition for the rightness of actions – that the principle of the action be universalizable without contradiction – it is inadequate as a test for the rightness of actions. Such critics as Hegel, Mill, and recently, R.P. Wolff, have suggested the same fundamental objection to Kant's doctrine: the requirement that a maxim be universalizable is formally compatible with any action whatsoever being right.

Voluntary Abortion involves the preventable destruction of an unformed or partly formed human organism. It is disagreement about the moral significance of this fact which sustains the controversy over abortion. This disagreement derives from a dispute about the sanctity, or morally protected position, of the destroyed organism, which in turn results from conflicting opinions about the basis or criterion of sanctity rather than any uncertainty over how they may apply. The thesis of this paper is that this last disagreement about the criterion of moral sanctity cannot be settled by rational, i.e. non-circular, argument; and hence, that there is no rational method of resolving the controversy over the morality of abortion.

Recent defences of abortion on demand have located the morally relevant difference between normal adult human beings and non-viable fetuses in the possession of personhood by the former but not by the latter. It is, so the story goes, morally wrong to kill innocent human beings because they are persons, but non-viable fetuses, though they be biologically human, are nevertheless not persons and may therefore be killed without doing anything morally wrong.

The general anti-abortionist line is that abortion is wrong because it is the killing of innocent people. The main pro-abortionist response to this has been to deny that what is killed in an abortion is, properly speaking, a person. Killing these things merely prevents another person from being added to the world, just as would contraception, except at a later stage in the total process; abortion is not, therefore, any kind of murder, any deprivation of a person's life. Kelly and Schedler now raise an interesting new question about this: suppose we do not kill the fetus, but merely painlessly prevent it from developing? This process they call ‘tinkering’. And they infer, from an apparently reasonable reconstruction of this standard pro-abortionist argument that “5′, Therefore, any non-viable fetus may be tinkered with”, and they affirm, “Presumably 5′ is morally repugnant”, (p. 123) And from this, in turn, they eventually infer that abortion itself is morally wrong, the argument being that there is no relevant difference between abortion and tinkering. This is an interesting argument. It is a good one? I will argue that it is not.

In a recent critical notice Myles Brand dismisses my evolutionary argument against the identity theory on grounds that the counterfactual situation I claim it allows for and cannot explain not actually occurring could never, on that theory, arise.

It would not be surprising to find a philosopher deploying subjunctive conditionals in defence of a position or as part of an analysis of a concept. One might defend the view that events in the far past, or objects on the other side of the moon, are observable in principle by pointing out that if an observer had been present, or if an observer were on the other side of the moon, he would have made, or would make, certain observations. Similarly, someone might argue that a statement to the effect that there are mountains on the other side of the moon simply means “If there were an observer on the other side of the moon, he would have such and such experiences” (no doubt the claim would be that this subjunctive and many others gave the meaning of the original statement). In the same vein, one might argue that “x wants Φ” means “If such and such were the case, x would do A”.

A persistent and objectionable claim is that there are states of consciousness attainable wherein there is consciousness of consciousness per se through the absence or diminution of the ordinary objects of consciousness or awareness. The claim is made by phenomenologists, religious thinkers and mystics, and some psychologists.

Du chap, I, retenons deux points. Traitant des propositions (au sens abstrait), Quine montre pourquoi on ne peut pas parler du sens d'un énoncé isolé. En particulier les énoncés d'une théorie scientifique n'affrontent pas le tribunal des faits un par un (thèse dite de Quine-Duhem, cf. « Two Dogmas », 1953). Cela dispose de la notion d'énoncé analytique. Plus tard (dans Word and Object, 1960), Quine introduit une nuance : les énocnés observationnels sont vérifiables ou falsifiables en isolement. Dans la suite de ce chap. I, Quine traite des objets propositionnels, sujet qu'il approfondit dans l'essai 6 de Relativité Ontologique (en abrégé RO).

At the beginning of Process and Reality, as he engages in a preliminary discussion of the Category of the Ultimate, Whitehead makes a crucial statement: “The sole appeal is to intuition.” (P.R. 32). In like fashion he says in Adventures of Ideas: “All knowledge is derived from, and verified by, direct intuitive observation.” (A.I. 228) He makes laudatory reference to the “complete concreteness” of intuitive experience and the absence of “analytic divorce from the total environment.” (S.M.W. 94, 279)