Needs, Values, Truth

This collection of essays passes to and fro between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of logic and language. Conspicious among the various problems attempted is the controversial question of cognitivism in ethics. From the many projects and themes that run through the essays the following emerge most prominently: the elucidation of the ideas of truth, objectivity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity; the scope and limits of the attribution of the status of plain truth among the judgements of morals, politics and aesthetics; the part played in the fixation of the sense of evaluative language by the antecedent possibility of agreement in judgements and in sentiments; the irreplaceability and irreducibility for practical or valuational thinking of such ideas as those of need, self and metaphysical freedom. The collection comprises ten pieces altogether, including a new postscript and three previously unpublished essays. Essays already published have been edited and revised, and in some cases extended.