In his struggle to vindicate the religious enterprise from the charge that it is unfalsifiable and meaningless, McKinnon reduces both science and religion to distorted caricatures, ignores the centrality of the problems of evil, anguish, absurdity, and the egocentric predicament for religion, and asserts that religion and science are fundamentally one and the same. He builds his thesis on a distinction between "assertional," "self-instructional," and "ontological-linguistic" intentionality of utterances. By equivocating about whether these usages are logically independent, McKinnon holds that, (...) as "self-instructional," utterances are outside the positivist's arena. He presses the noteworthy point--that utterances sometimes are intended to report an existential stance--in such a way as to divert attention from the vast differences between religious and scientific methods and subject matter. Not content with leaving religious utterances restricted to mere reporting, McKinnon builds a case for bypassing positivistic attack under the other two usages by trading on a supposed incommensurability between particulars and universals. E.g., he holds that "God is love" must be indeterminate and unfalsifiable since both nouns are universals and since God is incomprehensible. And so it goes, a battle between straw men on a shifting field of honor for a prize of dubious worth. Notwithstanding, this is a thought provoking treatment of a difficult topic.--M. D. P. (shrink)

This collection of reprinted social philosophy broadly surveys and introduces problems and positions vis-à-vis the concept of right. Using the tools of ordinary language analysis, M. MacDonald evaluates the attempts of other writers to resolve the tensions between civil and moral responsibility. H. L. A. Hart argues that "... if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right." His laudatory deductive exercise and categorization of rights suggests no leads for answering the (...) hypothetical he poses. While MacDonald and Hart raise no gut issues, G. Vlastos gives a common sense analysis of the main stream of classical debate, couching his inquiry in terms of conflicts between collective and distributive justice. His article both includes the scope and surpasses the stopping points of the earlier selections. Through leading to a philosophical discussion of the workings of the denial of human rights within the segregationist position, R. Wasserstrom unmasks the practical stakes involved in what the others leave as an academic problem. H. Morris's witty analysis of a hypothetical "right to be punished" lays bare the fact that social institutions embody some concept of right, duty, and obligation. He leaves the reader with the unanswered but clearly indicated question of which concept of right does one want society to sanction. Also included are: J. Locke's The Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapters two and five; J. Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies; The Virginia Declaration of Rights ; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens ; Universal Declaration of Human Rights ; and a portion of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S.A.--M. D. P. (shrink)