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The article develops the thesis that spiritual objectivity constitutes an independent class of phenomena besides the physical and the mental. The concept of spiritual objectivity presents a solution for the mediation between the bodily and the conscious by further developing the insight of critical monism that individual action can neither be subsumed under the phenomena of the bodily outer world nor under the phenomena of the mental inner world. Referring to Gottlob Frege's thesis that what distinguishes a thought from other phenomena is its capability of being true, the article develops the argument that the thought in its spiritual objectivity should be distinguished from the psychic inner world of ideas as well as from the physical exterior world of material objects. The possibility of rational recognition is dependent upon this genuinely spiritual mediation of inner and outer world, and its objective truth must be distinguished from the constitutive subjectivity of psychic phenomena. This specified concept of the spiritual is not intended to enlarge the substance dualism between the bodily and the mental once again but makes it possible to determine the in itself differentiated unity of the bodily and the mental, namely as spiritual unity of body and mind.

In this paper I discuss the contemporary philosophical attack against moral theory with Martha Nussbaum's article ‘Why Practice needs Ethical Theory’ (Oxford University Press, 2000) as a point of departure. The attack which Nussbaum discusses is related to an overly restrictive idea of moral theory, according to which the task of moral theory is to produce decision procedures for moral questions. Although the critique against decision procedures in ethics is motivated, there is a risk of loosing valuable insights if a generally anti-theoretical approach is adopted. If moral theory is understood as partial, pluralist and preliminary theoretical thinking and writing about ethical questions, there will be no need to abandon theory. I discuss two defenses of moral theory; first Nussbaum's idea of moral theory as a tool for driving out prejudice, and second, an idea of moral theory as a way of systematically exploring our disparate moral intuitions. Both of these build on a pluralist conception of ethical theory.

This paper identifies an overdetermination problem faced by the nonreductive dispositional property account of disposition ascriptions. Two possible responses to the problem are evaluated and both are shown to have serious drawbacks. Finally it is noted that the traditional conditional analysis of disposition ascriptions escapes the original difficulty.

This paper tackles the famous predicament known as the Cartesian Circle. This notorious problem can be understood as manifesting an ancient dilemma—the diallelus, or the problem of the criterion. Now, the problem of the criterion can be approached from either particularistic or methodistic standpoint. In a nutshell, a particularist accepts instances of knowledge prior to criteria of knowledge, and the methodist goes the other way around. In this paper Descartes's struggle with the problem receives a particularistic reading. Using James Van Cleve's and Jaakko Hintikka's thoughts as my main leverage, I argue that the particularist Descartes can reach knowledge without circularity. However, problems will remain and I shall bring out those that to me seem most pressing.

In this paper I will discuss the concept “limit-situation” as it is developed in Karl Jaspers' early writings, especially his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and Philosophie, and explore how this concept could be understood in a broader way. After a discussion of the concepts of “limit” and “situation” I will discuss Jaspers' heritage from Kant and Kierkegaard, in whose works the concepts of antinomy and paradox are central. Antinomy is worked out in Jaspers' thinking as single limit-situations in which the human being understands her finitude and openness. It is through these single limit-situations that her world-view is shaped. Through a discussion of Jaspers' communication theory and his understanding of the mystics, I will extend the concept of limit-situation from the single limit-situations. I will argue that the limit-situation should be understood, not only as a concept marking the limits of the human situation, but as a way of exploring the human situation as limit.

The epistemology of abstract objects is a somewhat neglected topic in contemporary philosophy. I argue that a satisfactory account of our capacity for knowing abstract objects must consist in more than formal requirements. It must also comprise an investigation of the nature of the relevant processes of belief formation, notably the mental process known as intuition. A promising approach is what I call “constructionism” (not to be confused with antirealist forms of constructivism), the main ideas of which can be found in Kant, Peirce, Husserl and contemporary cognitive scientists like Laird-Johnson and Kosslyn. According to constructionism, we come to know complex abstract objects by carrying out processes of mental construction or performing mental experiments on the contents of lower-order mental acts. I discuss the strengths and limitations of the theory and suggest some possible further developments.

In the following I briefly set out Devitt's (Realism and Truth, Princeton University press, 1997) definition of entity realism and compare it to Hackings (1983) definition. I then set out the pessimistic induction argument as suggested by Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences, Routledge & K. Paul, 1978). I present an argument developed by Bertolet (Dialectica vol. 42: 59–71, 1988) to the effect that Devitt's abductive defence of realism fails. In the light of its failure, Devitt offers the ability of his definition of scientific realism to solve the pessimistic induction argument as a tactical advantage for his definition. I argue that Devitt's account is not adequately suited for defending realism when confronted with the pessimistic induction argument. I do this by setting out three problems for Devitt. In particular I argue that Devitt does not provide an adequate account of how to identify entities across theories across time. I argue that his proposed solution employing ‘partial reference’ of terms generates a new pessimistic induction, and that Devitt's position does not provide an adequate account of how to make sense of the progress of science.

Jacob Busch's, ‘Entity Realism Meets the Pessimistic Meta-Induction – The World is not Enough’ (2006) criticizes my discussion, in Realism and Truth (Devitt, Princeton University Press, 1997), of scientific realism in general and of the pessimistic meta-induction (PMI) in particular (1997). I start my response with a discussion of the problem of defining scientific realism. I then argue that Busch's criticisms contain two major mistakes. First, he is wrong to think that Bertolet showed my basic abductive argument for realism to be faulty. Second, in discussing PMI, Busch places the onus in the wrong place. It is up to the proponent of PMI to establish the truth of its premise and the soundness of its inference. I don't think that the proponent has accepted this onus. It is up to the realist to show only that the truth of the premise and the soundness of the inference have not been established. I claim to have accepted that onus.