There have been and continue to be disagreements about how to consider the traditional square of opposition and the traditional inferences of obversion, conversion, contraposition and inversion from the perspective of contemporary quantificational logic. Philosophers have made many different attempts to save traditional inferences that are invalid when they involve empty classes. I survey some of these attempts and argue that the only satisfactory way of saving all the traditional inferences is to make the existential assumption that both the subject (...) and predicate classes and their complement classes are non-empty for all the propositions we admit. I briefly indicate the room for continued controversy over how properly to interpret Aristotle?s statements regarding these inferences, but find some plausibility in the views of Manley Thompson and A.N.Prior that Aristotle had in mind a particular arrangement of existential import unfamiliar to most contemporary logicians. (shrink)

There have been and continue to be disagreements about how to consider the traditional square of opposition and the traditional inferences of obversion, conversion, contraposition and inversion from the perspective of contemporary quantificational logic. Philosophers have made many different attempts to save traditional inferences that are invalid when they involve empty classes. I survey some of these attempts and argue that the only satisfactory way of saving all the traditional inferences is to make the existential assumption that both the subject (...) and predicate classes and their complement classes are non-empty for all the propositions we admit. I briefly indicate the room for continued controversy over how properly to interpret Aristotle's statements regarding these inferences, but find some plausibility in the views of Manley Thompson and A.N.Prior that Aristotle had in mind a particular arrangement of existential import unfamiliar to most contemporary logicians. (shrink)

What connexion is there between factual statements concerning God or man and moral judgments? That is the question which occasions this paper. Not long ago moral philosophers were wont to say that there is a logical gap between the two sorts of utterance to which I have just referred: that nothing follows in terms of moral value from a statement of fact, no ‘ought’ from any ‘is’. They recognised only one restriction on what may be said in terms of ‘ought’ (...) by what has been said in terms of ‘is’, namely that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. It is manifest nonsense to say that anyone ought to do what he cannot do. But, this apart, they thought it possible without contradiction or anomaly to hold any conceivable factual belief and at the same time subscribe to any conceivable moral judgment. They would have held that it makes perfectly good sense to say, for example, ‘This is God’s will but it ought not to be done’ or ‘Men are not pigs but a good man will live like a pig’. Bizarre such judgments may be, they would have said, but nonsensical they are not. They conceived it to be their main business, as moral philosophers, to erect warning notices along the edge of the is-ought gap so that contemporary moralists would not fall headlong into it as so many of their predecessors, in less enlightened ages, had done. (shrink)

At the beginning of his book, Principles of Christian Theology, John Macquarrie says that theology ‘implicitly claims to have its place in the total intellectual endeavour of mankind’. The question I want to discuss is this: in what terms, if any, can that claim be justified?

I want to put forward a certain view of the logical foundation of religious belief. It is, in a sentence, the view that religious belief is constituted by the concept of god. This view will be discussed under three headings. First, I shall explain as clearly as I can what I mean by it. Secondly, I shall indicate what seem to me to be interesting parallels, both with regard to universes of discourse in general and to religious belief in particular, (...) between my idea of a constitutive concept and Wittgenstein's ideas of a fundamental proposition and a religious ‘picture’. Thirdly, I shall try to substantiate the view I take of the logical foundation of religious belief by rebutting three conceivable objections to it: namely, that it rests on an illegitimate craving for generality, that it is at variance with common usage, and that it consigns religious belief to an intellectual ghetto. (shrink)

W D Hudson; Learning to be Rational, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 39–56, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1977.

W D Hudson; Educating, Socialising and Indoctrination: a reply to Tasos Kazepides, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 16.

W D Hudson; Educating, Socialising and Indoctrination: a reply to Tasos Kazepides, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 16.

Did Wittgenstein think that language-games have presuppositions? He sometimes speaks as if he thought that they do, at other times as though he thought that they do not. For examples, in On Certainty 110, after pointing out that the business of giving grounds for what we say has to come to an end sometime, he remarks, ‘but the end is not an ungrounded presupposition’; whereas, in 115, after warning us that if we try to doubt everything we shall not get (...) as far as doubting anything, he gives as his reason ‘the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty’. It is of some importance for a correct understanding of Wittgenstein to clear up this apparent contradiction. (shrink)

The fact of evil has worried theists for a long time. The earliest clear statement of this worry is perhaps to be found in the book of Habbakuk: (i, 13). More precisely formulated, it comes to this: if God is good and omnipotent, why evil ? From his goodness it would follow necessarily that he does not will evil and from his omnipotence that he could prevent it; why then should it occur? Theists have attempted to escape from this dilemma (...) by means of an argument which turns on the claim that human beings are, to some degree at any rate, free to choose and act as they will. They are free to do good or evil; frequently they choose the latter and that is why evils, or at least many of them, occur. This human freedom, however, is a necessary condition of personality and, as such, a great good; so it is perfectly consistent with the goodness of God that he should will it. But what of his omnipotence? The point of the argument is that God has to allow those evils which result from men making evil choices, and this certainlylooks, at first blush, like a limitation of his power. But, we are assured,it is not really a limitation because all it amounts to is that God cannot do the logically impossible, viz., make beings who, at one and the same time, are both free to do what they will and pre-determined to do good.To deny that God can do the logically impossible, of course, is not to den his omnipotence; it is merely to point out that there are some things which it would not make sense to say that he had done. (shrink)

W D Hudson; Educating, Socialising and Indoctrination: a reply to Tasos Kazepides, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 16.

Everyone knows what it is to feel a conflict between a ‘non-rational’ desire and reason, as e.g., when we want a second dish of ice cream but think it would be unwise to take it. In such cases we commonly think of our desires as unreasonable: they prompt us to perform some action contrary to our deliberations. Nevertheless, most of us assume that reason can move us: that simply recognizing an act as the most reasonable thing to do gives us (...) a motive to do it — even if in fact we do not perform that action. If we do not eat the second dish of ice cream we are disposed to think that we did not because we judged it unwise. If, on the other hand, we do eat the second dish, we are disposed to think we did because we were more strongly inclined toward eating than not eating, even though we were inclined toward refraining because we judged eating unwise. This is the position of the man on the street. It is the commonsensical notion of reason, motivation, and their relationship. (shrink)

W D Hudson; Learning to be Rational, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 39–56, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1977.

Pupils' notes of some lectures on religious belief which Wittgenstein gave in 1938 have recently been published, and what I have to say is set against the background of these lectures. My title may suggest that there is a distinctive and precise account of religious belief which can be extracted from them and stated clearly for consideration. But I do not think that this is so. It is evident from these lectures that, in the subject of religious belief, Wittgenstein's prodigious (...) capacity for puzzlement, in which Moore recognised the marks of genius, found full scope. But, at many points, it is not clear to me, at any rate, just how he is resolving – or would resolve – the puzzlement. So I am most certainly not setting myself up to explain ‘what Wittgenstein really meant’. However, like everything which we have from him, these lectures are fascinating, suggestive, provocative. And, at some hazard, I am going to offer a few observations on one or two of the points which he was, or appears to have been, making. (shrink)

This is a major work by one of the best-known philosophical writers, representing the culmination of some twenty-five years’ work on the possibility of giving a rational defence of the claims of the religious man, and specifically the theist, in the face of modern criticisms. Dr Ewing’s object has been to fulfil what seem to him the two most important tasks for the philosopher in at least the present age, namely, to see if it is still possible to give a (...) rational defence of a genuinely religious point of view, and to do the same thing for an objective ethics, a task he has attempted in other works, and continues here. The conclusions are that while there can be no question of strict, logical proof, an ethical theism can be defended rationally as an explanatory, metaphysical hypothesis and there are no grounds to reject as illusory the most fundamental intuitive convictions of religion. The book, originally published in 1973, included a new theory of the ultimate criterion of truth for hypotheses, a restatement of the case for a substantial self and for indeterminism, a fresh treatment of the moral and certain other arguments for God, some points in the discussion of the problem of evil and some speculations on time. (shrink)

TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATIONS OF HUME HAVE MISCONSTRUED HIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF PLEASURE, AND HOW PLEASURE IS DEPLOYED IN HIS VALUE THEORY. I RECTIFY THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS BY EXPLICATING THE ROLE WHICH PLEASURE PLAYS IN JUDGMENTS OF VALUE ON THE HUMEAN ANALYSIS. IT IS SHOWN THAT PLEASURE HAS ALL THE FEATURES THAT MAKE IT RELEVANT TO VALUE THEORY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, THAT HUME'S UNDERSTANDING OF PLEASURE IS MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED THAN HAS BEEN GENERALLY REALIZED, AND THAT HUME'S CONCEPTION OF (...) PLEASURE IS WELL-INTEGRATED WITH HIS VALUE THEORY. (shrink)

Pupils' notes of some lectures on religious belief which Wittgenstein gave in 1938 have recently been published, and what I have to say is set against the background of these lectures. My title may suggest that there is a distinctive and precise account of religious belief which can be extracted from them and stated clearly for consideration. But I do not think that this is so. It is evident from these lectures that, in the subject of religious belief, Wittgenstein's prodigious (...) capacity for puzzlement, in which Moore recognised the marks of genius, found full scope. But, at many points, it is not clear to me, at any rate, just how he is resolving – or would resolve – the puzzlement. So I am most certainly not setting myself up to explain ‘what Wittgenstein really meant’. However, like everything which we have from him, these lectures are fascinating, suggestive, provocative. And, at some hazard, I am going to offer a few observations on one or two of the points which he was, or appears to have been, making. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper we argue that Robert Kane’s theory of free will cannot accommodate the possibility of a sinless individual who faces morally significant choices because a sinless agent cannot voluntarily accord value to an immoral desire, and we argue that Kane’s theory requires this. Since the Jesus of the historic Christian tradition is held to be sinless, we think Christians should reject Kane’s theory because it seems irreconcilable with historic Christian Christology. We consider two objections to our argument (...) and argue that both fail. (shrink)