«L'homme peut-il vivre et se faire vivre sans autre institution que celle de la parole? peut-il se faire dans la communication quotidienne et les discours régulateurs de la distribution des moyens de survie, peut-il se faire tel qu'il n'ait plus besoin de la ‘sagesse’ de normes étrangères à lui-même»? Cette question, posée au sein d'une pragmatique de la parole qui se veut indissociablement une pragmatique de la vie, définit une attitude délibérément opposée à une «construction» affective, cognitive et régulative de l'homme inconsciemment ou consciemment réglée sur le modèle d'une construction scientifique et technique du monde.

Is there a problem about justifying deduction? Why shouldn't there be? There is, after all, a direct analogue of Hume's dilemma for induction which applies, presumably with equal force, to deduction: We cannot justify deduction inductively since it would be far too weak to say, what such a justification could at best say, that usually when the premisses of a valid deductive argument are true, then the conclusion is true as well. But neither can we justify deduction deductively, because such ajustification would be circular. This much, it seems to me, is enough to think the issue worth raising. But if there is a genuine concern here, it is safe to say that few philosophers have paused long to worry about it. One of the reasons for this is that with the exception of Sextus Empiricus, J.S. Mill and a few others, philosophers have not been willing to entertain the notion that there is, or even that there could be, anything drastically wrong with deductive reasoning.

In part II of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Cleanthes maintains that the similarities between the works of nature and those of human contrivance, namely, the presence of means to ends relations and a coherence of parts, are sufficient to enable us to reason analogically to the conclusion that the cause of the design of the world resembles human intelligence. Philo objects to this on a number of grounds. The basis of his objections is to be found in his claim that the world does not bear a 'specific resemblance' to machines of human contrivance, i.e., there are not enough similarities between the world and machines to enable us to classify the world as a machine of a certain type, and therefore we are unable to proceed analogically to a similarity in the causes of the design of the world and machines. According to Philo, without such a specific resemblance, to establish the origin of the design of the world from intelligence requires seeing God and his product constantly conjoined (Hume's official account of how we learn what causes what); since we have never seen ‘worlds formed under our eyes’ we are unable to rule out alternative principles of design – both those whose effects we have observed on earth, and others whose influence is not found within the world itself. In short, Philo's criticisms of Cleanthes' argument show that he has misgivings about the evidence which the argument utilizes: he holds that more is needed besides the mere presence of means to ends relations and a coherence of parts before we are justified in postulating intelligence as the cause of design.

A very material question has been started concerning abstract or general ideas, whether they be general or particular in the mind's conception of them. A great philosopher [Dr. Berkeley] has disputed the receiv'd opinion in this particular, and has asserted, that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. As I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters, I shall here endeavour to confirm it by some arguments, which I hope will put it beyond all doubt and controversy.

En 1903, Bertrand Russell publie The Principles of Mathematics, ouvrage qu'il présente dans la préface comme le premier de deux tomes consacrés à une impressionnante entreprise de fondement des mathématiques. Cet ambitieux projet comportait, en fait, deux objectifs distincts qui, selon l'auteur, étaient complémentaires. L'un d'eux, qui était le but ultime, était de montrer «que toutes les mathématiques pures ont exclusivement à voir avec des concepts définissables en termes d'un très petit nombre de concepts logiques fondamentaux et que toutes ses propositions sont déductibles d'un trés petit nombre de principes logiques fondamentaux (…)».

Errors and mistakes are of course common enough, and as often as not have unfortunate consequences. When we fail to do something we set out to do, we sometimes feel compelled to point to the errors and mistakes we have made, or sometimes less generously to the errors and mistakes others have made. For to be able to point to an error or mistake in this way is commonly thought to provide an explanation for what went wrong, and sometimes even to offer an excuse for it. In this paper I want to explore the significance of the terms ‘error’ and ‘mistake’ when we use them to talk about our failures. There are some good reasons for being interested in these matters. For some philosophers in the past have made much philosophical mileage out of our errors and mistakes, so much so that a whole breed of thinkers, sceptics, has come into being as a result. And I shall want to examine their attitude towards errors and mistakes, for it may turn out that the serious conclusions of the philosophical sceptic cannot rest upon the existence of either errors or mistakes, and as a result, are not so compelling as they might seem at first sight. In fact, I shall argue that our common experiences of error and mistake cannot support the weight that the sceptic places upon them. I also briefly look at the connection between error and mistake as I interpret them, and philosophical determinism. I argue that the existence of errors and mistakes is incompatible with conventional determinist philosophy.