My aim in this paper is to show how confusion and unclarity about reasons for action (reasons for doing) has led to serious error in ethics and the philosophy of action, and to try to set matters right. In Part I I set out what reasons for doing are, and try to make clear the distinction between reasons as justifying actions and reasons as motivating them. In Part II I try to show how, even in the ideal situation of successful and correct deliberation, a justifying reason is never identical with a motivating one, since they are two quite different sorts of thing. However a motivating reason and what one takes to be a justifying reason may be the same. In Part Ill I show how failing to make these distinctions leads to paradoxes and absurdities in the philosophy of action. It emerges that a related distinction must be made between wanting, valuing, and being valuable.

One of the intriguing features of the semantic theories proposed by Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz is that they attempt to provide a criterion for semantic anomaly. Ostensibly, the criterion would enable one to determine when a phrase is semantically absurd or incongruous even in cases where the phrase appears to be grammatically proper. For example, phrases such as ‘spinster insecticide’ and ‘female uncle’ would be marked as anomalous in the semantic theory even though they seem grammatically on a par with ‘gaseous insecticide’ and ‘unemployed uncle’.

Recently, however, a number of criticisms have been raised concerning the theoretical devices that Fodor and Katz supply for marking such anomalies. In this essay I want to examine these criticisms and suggest a modification of the theories which would answer the critics on this point and, at the same time, significantly enhance the explanatory power of the theories.

In this paper, I want to discuss the recent attempts by Professor John R. Searle to cast doubt on the traditional empiricist distinction between fact and value. Searle's first attack on this distinction was made in 1964 in his now classic article, “How to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’.” In that paper, he presented what he claimed to be a counter-example to the thesis that statements of fact may not entail statements of value. Searle's argument aroused much controversy and inspired many attempted refutations, but Searle apparently found none of these convincing, for a few years later he published a revised version of his paper as the last chapter of his book, Speech Acts. The new version includes his replies to many of the objections which had been made to his thesis up to that time. It also includes, in the main body of the book, a theory of language which is supposed to provide the theoretical underpinning explaining why his original paper presents a genuine counter-example to the position he is attacking. It is the Speech Acts version of Searle's thesis which I want to consider here.

Searle’s famous attempt at what might loosely be called deriving ought from is has received much critical attention; but the main lines of attack on his attempt have been (as Searle himself has shown) irrelevant, mistaken, or otherwise defective. I shall here offer an account of what, I feel, really centrally has gone wrong with his attempt. I shall use the version of the derivation attempt which is found in Searle’s book, Speech Acts.

The attempted derivation has, as its important steps, the following statements:

1. S uttered the words, “I hereby promise to perform A for you, H.”

2. S promised to perform A for H.

3. S placed himself under a (prima facie) obligation to perform A for H.

4. S is under a (prima facie) obligation to perform A for H.

5. S ought (prima facie) to do A for H.

It has been about 20 years since Austin offered to teach us some simple ways of talking. In view of the attention paid the balance of the Austin corpus, this offer has been greeted with a surprising silence. There are, perhaps, some reasons for this lack of response. First, of course, the article is a difficult one, tortuous and opaque. Second, I suspect that there is a general, though tacit, consensus that any insights of value in “How To Talk” have been absorbed or transcended (aufgehoben) by the later theorizing on speech acts incorporated in How To Do Things With Words. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is worth working through “How To Talk” if only to reveal the major internal inconsistency which it contains. Mistakes made by important philosophers are likely to be important mistakes. In addition, sorting through the ontology and epistemologies of Austin's analyses of asserting will equip us with some worthwhile distinctions which, while not Austin's, may help us unravel the multiplicity of linguistic performances with which he confronts us.

Since its inception, roughly sixteen years ago, the theory of the contingent identity of mental-states and brain-states has been argued on many fronts. I want here to examine and to try to meet one in particular of the objections raised in connection with this theory. The objection has been stated with especial force by Peter Herbst.

Over the past decade numerous philosophers have devoted considerable effort to explicating and defending the claim that narrative can be a satisfactory form of explanation. Much of this interest in narrative has taken the form of a reaction against the covering-law model of explanation-particularly against the claim that that model is applicable to history and to what W. B. Gallie has called “the genetic sciences.” What has been lacking from most of this discussion of narrative is any very clear indication of just what narrative is or any extended attempt to delineate its logical features. The philosophical yield of introducing the concept “narrative” into discussions of explanation has frequently appeared to be very small.

In a recent paper Michael Ruse has argued that the logical structure of explanations relating to the theory of evolution can be examined more helpfully by using the covering-law model than by using a narrative model of explanation.

In “Quine on Meaning and Existence, I,” Gilbert Harman makes the following exegetical claim about Quine's attitude towards the postulation of propositions:

• A. (1) Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift.

• (2) If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot lift the stone in question).

• (3) If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot create the stone in question).

• (4) Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

In a paper published in Analysis I tried to show (a) that any attempt to find something wrong with all arguments of the general form of A above, any attempt to resolve the “paradox,” must fail, (b) that the reason these attempts must fail is that at least some arguments of this form are essentially sound, and (c) that the only thing which makes these arguments seem paradoxical, their conclusion to the effect that God is not omnipotent, is, like at least some versions of the arguments to this conclusion, quite correct.

Some wag (was it Mark Twain?) reported the following story: Scholars have recently established that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not, after all, written by Homer. They were actually written by another author, of the same name.

The majority of current theories of naming and reference, including ones as divergent in other respects as those of Russell and Searle, would rule this story impossible. They would do so on roughly these grounds: the sense and reference (one or the other, or one through the other, depending on the theory) of the name ‘Homer’ is determined, given the absence of other reliable testimony, by the sole description: ‘Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey’. ‘Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey’ is therefore known a priori, hence necessarily true. There could not be another author of that name and claim to fame.

In lectures delivered at Princeton in the Winter of 1970, Saul Kripke offered a lucid alternative to such theories (which I shall lump together under the term ‘descriptivism’).