The question is raised, what is going on when there is a tendency for something to happen, but it does not happen. A conspicuous case is that in which there is an equilibrium between opposing forces. One answer, given, for example, by Anscombe and Geach, Harre, and Bhaskar, is that such tendencies are in a sense real, though not manifest. The other answer, given, for example, by Braithwaite and Mackie, is that statements of tendencies are conditional statements about what is (...) manifest but ones in which some antecedents are not specified. The first of these answers is criticized and the second defended. (shrink)

At the present time there is an increasing tendency to regard the application of the social sciences to practical affairs as in some way objectionable, and needing to be replaced by a form of social practice which has a different kind of cognitive backing. This criticism seems to me to embody various confusions and misrepresentations. My aim in what follows is to bring these to light. The objectionable form of social practice is often called social technology, and the desirable form (...) 'praxis'. Though 'praxis' is merely a German word for 'practice', taken from the Greek, it has been adopted by various writers, among whom Jurgen Habermas is a conspicuous example, for a more specialized use, for which precedent is said to be found in Aristotle. I wish to show not only that this precedent is questionable, but that the whole distinction between technology and praxis in the social sphere is without foundation. (shrink)

When we ask whether something exists, we expect a yes or no answer, not a further query about what kind of existence, how much of it, whether we mean existence for you or existence for me, or whether we are asking about some property which it might have. In this book, this simple requirement is defended and pursued into its various and sometimes surprising implications. In the course of this pursuit, such questions arise as `Do appearances exist?' `Do unknowable things (...) exist?' `Do past and future exist?' `Does God necessarily exist?' This novel and non-technical approach to important philosophical questions will be of interest to senior students of philosophy and, indeed, to all general readers with philosophical interests. (shrink)

The question I wish to raise in this article is whether there is any limit in principle to the prediction of social events. I am not concerned with the practical possibility of such predictions, most of which no doubt will never be made.