Volume 24, Issue 1

A conceptual analysis of the problem of induction suggests that the difficulty of justifying probabilistic reasoning depends on a mistaken comparison between deductive and inductive inference. Inductive reasoning is accordingly thought to stand in need of special justification because it does not measure up to the standard of conditional absolute certainty guaranteed by deductive validity. When comparison is made, however, it appears that deductive reasoning is subject to a counterpart argument that is just as threatening to the justification of deductive as to inductive inference. Trying to explain induction in such a way that it satisfies a special justificatory requirement in contrast with deduction is therefore not the way to justify induction. An alternative approach is sought in a style of justification developed by Aristotle for the law of noncontradiction and by Kant for the conclusions of transcendental reasoning that with variations can be used to justify both deduction and induction. This strategy upholds a principle when the principle must be presupposed even to raise doubts about the principle's justification.

Davidson famously contended that all actions are movements of the agent's body. It has been objected, however, that Davidson's view is incompatible with his own definition of primitive actions. This paper argues that this objection is based on an incorrect reading of Davidson's argument. I will show that by reading "movements", in "all actions are bodily movements", transitively, Davidson's definition of primitive actions ceases to conflict with his thesis that all actions are bodily movements.

Suppose that you travel back in time to talk to your younger self in order to tell her that she (you) should have done some things in her (your) life differently. Of course, you will not be able to make this plan work, we know that from the many versions of `the grandfather paradox' that populate the philosophical literature about time travel. What will be my centre of interest in this paper is the conversation between you and . . . you - i.e. the older you that travelled back in time and the younger you, when you first meet. As we shall see, given this situation, endurantists will have to endorse a strange consequence of their view: you will turn out to be a universal while your properties will turn out to be particulars.