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Alston, Searle, and Williamson advocate the restrictive model of assertion, according to which certain constitutive assertoric norms restrict which propositions one may assert. Sellars and Brandom advocate the dialectical model of assertion, which treats assertion as constituted by its role in the game of giving and asking for reasons. Sellars and Brandom develop a restrictive version of the dialectical model. I explore a non-restrictive version of the dialectical model. On such a view, constitutive assertoric norms constrain how one must react if an interlocutor challenges one’s assertion, but they do not constrain what one should assert in the first place. I argue that the non-restrictive dialectical perspective can accommodate various linguistic phenomena commonly taken to support the restrictive model.1

In the New Elucidation of 1755, Kant first put forward an argument for the existence of God from the concept of possibility, seeking to demonstrate that it is impossible to think of the non-existence of that which is the ground of the possibility of things.2 He developed this argument further as the only basis for a rigorously viable proof of God in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (OPB) of 1763. But when he came to write the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) in 1781, Kant had apparently discarded what he had previously referred to as the one possible proof, and did not include it in the critique of the proofs of God in the Transcendental Dialectic'. The proofs that he did subject to critique in the CPR were those that he had excluded in the OPB from the realm of possible proofs. Kant's own proof is of particular interest, because it represents an 'ontological' or 'ontotheological' argument which is distinct from that of Descartes, and which for Kant does not succumb to his critique of the Cartesian argument. As has been well attested, the subject of this proof evolved from the ens realissimum of Kant's so-called 4pre-critical' thought into the transcendental ideal of

James Van Cleve's Problems from Kant is the most up-to-date, challenging, and extensive study of the Critique of Pure Reason now available from a thoroughly analytic perspective. It covers most of the major topics in the theoretical core of Kant's main work and offers bold defenses of several syn thetic a priori claims. It also reinforces a growing interpretive trend that stresses limits in Kant's fabled critiques of rationalist claims, especially in the Dialectic. The arguments of Van Cleve's Kant point on balance (on purely theoretical grounds) toward "two worlds," ultimate simple entities, double affection, hardcore metaphysical realism on truth, and the thesis that only noumena are genuine substances (120); substantial souls and a necessary being are not asserted but classical proofs for them remain unrefuted. Problems from Kant is distinctive in the way that it combines the crisp and often extremely critical style of argumentation found in Jonathan Bennett's work (developed in the verificationist heyday of the 1960s) with a very helpful grasp of the much more metaphysical character of the leading trends in current systematic philosophy. Although the book defends a phenomenalist reading of Kant's transcendental idealism that is not far from Bennett's empiricist interpretation, it also stresses many points that derive mostly from a philosophical and interpretative sympathy for the rationalist tradition and a revival of modal considerations in the spirit of David Lewis and Alvin Plantinga (and against the likes of Putnam and Dummett). Since there is not enough room here to go into the many points on which I very much agree with the rationalist side of Van Cleve's reading,1 I will take this occasion to play the role of critic and concentrate on one of the few areas in

Julia Annas has written a monumental work that is in the best sense of the word, a "conversation" with ancient theories of morality. Indeed what we have in the Morality of Happiness is a sustained conversation with the various ancient schools on the nature of eudaimonia and the moral dimensions of the best life for humans. This is a work that takes the Hellenists seriously, and as such, gives us both a fresh way of assessing Aristotle in terms of the refinements that were to come later, as well as insights about the Hellenist foundation of many of our modern formulations. But the trajectory into modern morality is not Annas' primary aim. On the whole, for the duration of this book, we are immersed in the debate between the various schools themselves and in the richness of their own dialogue. To be sure, there are lessons to be learned for ourselves and our own way of doing moral theory. But these stand out primarily from the contrasts. So for example, Plato's Protagoras aside, Annas argues that notions of maximization and algorithmic procedures for arriving at right action are not to be found in ancient theory. A "problemsolving mechanism" for hard cases is simply not the ancient preoccupation, despite the fact that conflicts abound in the ancient world no less than in the modem era ( 443). Given the detail of the dialectical conversation, we might expect to find Annas' book a somewhat arcane commentary accessible only to scholars of the ancient world. Yet this is far from the case. While her ultimate aim is to immerse us in the issues that preoccupied the ancient ethical theorists, she does this always by showing how their theoretical positions wander back and forth from the intuitive, and how even in the most counter-intuitive of their moves, the ancient theoreticians themselves try to bring their theory back to some notion of common-sense. But while there is a strong sense in her exegesis of doing justice to the intuitions (tithenai ta phainomena, as Aristotle would put it), Annas wisely shows, that unreflected views are often divided against themselves (433), and that, as a result, there is no safe bedrock to be found here (435). Indeed, the spirit of her account is to show that the ancients, in taking up the central question, how ought I to live, were as Cicero says, "dragged in different directions." The philosophical accounts of happi

Eli Hirsch's attempt to reconstruct my "fundamental argument for the Denial" is a serious and careful piece of work. And yet it seems to me to get my views on ontology and language almost entirely wrong. How can this be? I think the explanation must in the end be philosophical: Hirsch and I have such different ideas about ontology and language that it is very hard for him to understand me. And, I would add, it is very hard for me to understand him. Let me assure any reader who detects a note of exasperation in what follows that this exasperation is directed at myself and my apparent inability to make my views clear to a philosopher I respect. I want to consider the numbered propositions that make up Hirsch's attempt to reconstruct my argument-especially the first three. These misrepresent my views, and the misrepresentation is not a simple one: there is not just one thing to get straightened out. There is a well-known joke whose punch line goes more or less as follows: "You have the story wrong. It isn't Moskovitz, it's Boskovitz; and it isn't timber, it's furs; and it isn't 20,000 rubles, it's 60,000 rubles; and he didn't make it, he lost it." In a similar vein, I want to say that Hirsch has the story wrong: it isn't existence, it's composition; and it isn't "concept of," it's "general theory about when it occurs"; and it isn't people engaged in the ordinary business of life, it's philosophers; and it isn't arbitrariness, it's inconsistency with the "ten constraints"-plus incapacity to withstand dialectical pressure. I will proceed to elaborate on these statements. (i) I employ the same concept of existence as most analytical philosophers: Quine's. That is, I take 'Fs exist' to be equivalent to 'the number of Fs is 1 or more'. And, like all Quineans, I believe this to be the ordinary concept of existence, the one employed in science and pure mathematics and everyday life; in short I believe this to be the concept of existence. In my view, those who say that tables and stars and apples exist and I, who deny the existence of these things, are employing exactly the same concept of existence-unless they happen to be Meinongians or something of that sort. We simply disagree about what exists. We disagree about what exists because

Can values be derived from facts? Is it possible to effect a valid inferential transition from factual premisses to an evaluative conclusion? This issue is well worth the considerable philosophical toil and struggle that has been expended on it over the years.' For large and substantial philosophical positions are at stake with this apparently small scale and somewhat technical-seeming question. As Hume remarked (Treatise, Bk. III, Pt. I, Sect. I), a person who makes mistakes in factual matters is at worst stupid or incompetent, but a person who is mistaken in evaluative matters e. g. who prizes what properly deserves to be disdained would for this very reason be deemed perverse and wicked. But if evaluations could be derived from facts, so that erroneous evaluations would be mere mistakes in inquiry and information-processing, then this line of differentiation would be breached. Mistakes in evaluation would be more to be pitied than censured, and the ethical aspect of evaluation would become unraveled. Moreover, the issue of a fact-to-values transit confronts us with a philosophical dialectic in which the following doctrines are in circulation

A graduate school professor of mine once wrote on the margin of one of my papers that while it wasgood, it was filled with "dialectical conceits." By this, he meant clever remarks that tended to focus attention on myself as the author rather than on the subject-matter. (He was right, incidentally). I cannot help getting this feeling whenever I read Hume's twelfth Dialogue. Part of my purpose in writing this paper is to expose and share with you some of what I take to be Hume's dialectical conceits, in that part of his work. But I must confess at the outset that there is a problem about making this accusation. For, as far as I can tell, no one has ever remarked on the presence of these conceits in Hume. This means either that Hume did a poor job of focusing attention on himself a distinct possibility, in view of what he relates concerning Treatise in "My Own Life" or else that my hypothesis is wrong. I shall try to show that there is a third possibility before my paper is done, but I must not get ahead of my own story. Accordingly, I shall divide my narrative into three parts. Part I will detail the conceits themselves. Part II will offer an explanation of their presence. Part III will attempt to account for their neglect.

What roles do the faculties play in cognition? And what method(s) can be employed to acquire knowledge of that which is? These central questions of Western philosophy received early and influential answers in the works of Plato and Aristotle. For the former, knowledge is neither derived from nor even dependent upon sensation, which is in fact identified with the transient and many objects of belief. Instead, it is man's faculty of reason which enables him to use that one method of dialectic by means of which knowledge can be acquired of the Forms that underlie sensible things.' By contrast, Aristotle not only regards the faculties of reason, memory, and sensation as having decisive cognitive roles but also treats dialectic or topics as an essential pre-scientific examination of the existing range of beliefs or opinions on any issue. Only after this skillful activity has been engaged in must use be made of the variety of methods which are required for different scientific subject matters and which actually demonstrate one's knowledge of the essential causes of things.' Although Greek philosophy in general and Aristotle's in particular did not exclude the role of criticism in the assessment of what is claimed to be known, the standpoint of many modern philosophers in relation to this problem of whether claims to knowledge are justified or not can be summed up as an emphasis upon and call for criticism. For example, in conjunction with the Kant who discusses the roles of the active faculties of imagination, understanding, and reason in the production of knowledge

In a certain sense the fate of philosophy has been tragic. In antiquity the term "philosophy" meant true scientific knowledge, and we retained this sense of philosophy, on the whole, until the eighteenth century. But beginning then the special sciences, differentiating as independent disciplines, gradually took over areas of problems that had at one time been within the purview of their mother, philosophy, and with which the past glory and significance of dialectics was largely connected. In the course of the nineteenth and particularly the twentieth century, the special sciences attained vast successes in their development, a fact that has found concentrated expression in the current revolution in science and technology.

entities, were they thinking only that it would be more convenient . . . was there not a suggestion that their reason for renouncing them was that they did not believe in their existence?' ([I7], p. 148). Quine insinuates that there are no decisive rational argumentative or dialectical methods for choice of conceptual scheme, so we are 'thrown back on pragmatic conON WHAT THERE IS NOT I73 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.167 on Thu, 21 Jul 2016 04:26:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms because the criteria for what is said to exist are open to haggling, and are to some extent theory-dependent, that it is thought that what exists is also open to human negotiation, and is theory relative. What is theory relative is what theories assert to exist and, differently, are committed to the existence of, not what exists. (The confusion is like that, already noted, underlying applications of Occam's razor.) Of course, what exists, and what a theory maintains exists are connected, again through truth. If a theory is true and asserts that c's exist (or is committed to the existence of c's), then c's exist. 7 But truth cannot be here whittled down in the manner of pragmatism, to acceptability or the like, without correspondingly weakening the conclusion. Yet this is precisely what Quine, and many others, have tried to do. Quine divided the question 'What things or sorts of things exist?' into two questions: (i) What, according to a given theory, exists? (In Quinean terms: What are the ontological commitments of a given theory); (2z) Which theories have we a good reason to accept as true? (Chihara [zo]; according to Gochet [i], p. 142, 'this faithfully reports the views of

In a recent number of this journal, Professor Timo Airaksinen contributed an interesting discussion of "Problems in Hegel's Dialectic of Feeling.", There are several points, however, some fairly small and technical and others of a deeper, systematic nature, which need to be raised against Professor Airaksinen. In the first section I will discuss certain problems with his interpretation of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit in particular, and in the second section I will summarize the reasons why Airaksinen's basic approach leaves me deeply dissatisfied. In the third section I will propose another approach to the problems of the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, showing in the fourth section that this approach avoids the defects of Airaksinen's.

The section of Protagoras from 3 z8 D to 333 B presents a typical portrait of Socrates at work on his own unique form of dialectic. He has just indulged Protagoras' inclination to hold forth at considerable length (3zo C-3z8 A) on the propositions that "virtue" [aretej is teachable, and that some people, including Protagoras himself, are especially well-suited to teach it. Now, in characteristic fashion, Socrates begins to rein in his rather long-winded interlocutor by making a request for more "precision" [akribeia] on the subject-matter of Protagoras' remarks (a request of the sort that frequently signals the onset of an elenctic attack)'

"Somewhere in the second installment of his reminiscences of the South, Magister Ussing calls time 'the galloping ghost.' God knows if this is his own expression; in any case it is very descriptive. But the dialectical task here is simply to get to see the ghost, and to that extent time itself cannot be called a ghost, for the sophistry of time is precisely that one cannot see it." -S0ren Kierkegaard VIII' A 193 n.d., i847