Philosophy: Vol. 83, No. 1, January 2008.

A Metaphysics of Ordinary Things and Why We Need It, LYNNE RUDDER BAKER

Mainstream metaphysicians today take little ontological interest in the world as we interact with it. They interpret the variety of things in the world as variety only of concepts applied to things that are basically of the same sort--for example, sums of particles or temporal parts of particles. Baker challenges this approach by formulating and defending for a contrasting line of thought. Using what she calls 'the Constitution View,' she argues that ordinary things (like screwdrivers and walnuts) are as ontologically significant as particles. Baker further argues for why we need recourse to such ordinary things in our basic ontology.

Deconstructing the Laws of Logic, STEPHEN R. L. CLARK

Clark considers reasons for questioning 'the laws of logic' (identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, and negation), and suggests that these laws do not accord with everyday reality. Either they are rhetorical tools rather than absolute truths, or else Plato and his successors were right to think that they identify a reality distinct from the ordinary world of experience, and also from the ultimate source of reality.

An Aristotelian Critique of Situationism, KRISTJAN KRISTJANSSON

Aristotle says that no human achievement has the stability of activities that express virtue. Ethical situationists consider this claim to be refutable by empirical evidence. If that is true, not only Aristotelianism, but folk psychology, contemporary virtue ethics and character education have all been seriously infirmed. The aim of this paper is threefold: (1) to offer a systematic classification of the existing objections against situationism under four main headings: 'the methodological objection', 'the moral dilemma objection', 'the bullet-biting objection' and 'the anti-behaviouristic objection'; (2) to resuscitate a more powerful Aristotelian version of the 'anti-behaviouristic objection' than advanced by previous critics; and (3) to explore some of the implications of such resuscitation for our understanding of the salience of character and for future studies of its nature.

What Is an Attributive Adjective? MILES RIND and LAUREN TILLINGHAST

Peter Geach's distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjectives has become part of the technical apparatus of philosophers, but no satisfactory explanation of what an attributive adjective is has yet been provided. Geach's discussion suggests two different ways of understanding the notion. According to one, an adjective is attributive just in case predications of it in combination with a noun fail to behave in inferences like a logical conjunction of predications. According to the other, an adjective is attributive just in case it cannot be applied in a truth-value-yielding fashion unless combined with a noun. The latter way of understanding the notion yields both a more defensible version of Geach's arguments that 'good' and 'bad' are attributive and a more satisfactory explanation of attributivity.

The Linguistic View of a Priori Knowledge, M. GIAQUINTO

This paper presents considerations against the linguistic view of a priori knowledge. The paper has two parts. In the first part the author argues that problems about the individuation of lexical meanings provide evidence for a moderate indeterminacy, as distinct from the radical indeterminacy of meaning claimed by Quine, and that this undermines the idea of a priori knowledge based on knowledge of synonymies. In the second part of the paper Giaquinto argues against the idea that a priori knowledge not based on knowledge of synonymies can be explained in terms of implicit definitions.

Dawkins' Infinite Regress, ROGER MONTAGUE

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins gives, but runs together, two criticisms of the argument from design. One is evolutionary and scientific; the other is a philosophical infinite regress argument. Disentangling them makes Dawkins' views clearer. The regress relies on the premise that a designer must be more complex than the thing designed. Montague offers two comments about theists who might accept the regress, citing God's infinity. These comments defend Dawkins: but only by making him, when using his regress argument, an atheist who knows (if his "complexity" premise holds) that God cannot exist.

On the Reality of the Continuum Discussion Note: A Reply to Ormell, 'Russell's Moment of Candour', ANNE NEWSTEAD and JAMES FRANLIN