Nations’ and other international human rights documents. Notwithstanding the fact that nothing inCallan’s view renders it unfit as a cosmopolitan liberalism, Callan never addresses this need. Finally,there is also a need to work out a theory of institutional governance for compulsory educationalinstitutions in a just state. How ought power be divided among parents, teachers and professionalassociations, the academic elite of education schools, school officials, citizens generally, electedpolitical officials, the judiciary, municipalities, states, federal governments? To be sure, these arequestions of institutional design often set aside by philosophers, to be addressed only after morefundamental questions of principle have been resolved. And Callan does a remarkably good job oftaking on the fundamental questions of principle. Still, if we are to have a rational faith in thepossibility of a just and stable pluralist liberal democracy, and if Callan’s compulsory civic educationis necessary to such a possibility, then we need to be able to say in more detail than Callan has herehow the institutions delivering such an education are to be governed consistent with the moral core ofliberal democracy.

David A. Reidy University of Tennessee

Harman, Gilbert, Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1999, pp. viii + 291,$120.00 (cloth).

Gilbert Harman’s new book is a collection of previously published and loosely related essays on awide variety of topics, including epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind andphilosophy of logic. Some of these essays have been revised for this volume. The primary motivationfor many of these revisions, however, appears to be the reduction of repetition; anyone familiar withHarman’s work will find little to surprise them. The essays are grouped into four parts; the first onreasoning; the second on analyticity; the third on meaning; and the fourth on mind. This grouping is,however, rather artificial; for obvious reasons the essays in the second and third parts, in particular,could easily have been grouped together. Although these essays are independent of each other, somethemes are present in more than one of them.

The most striking and distinctive theme in the essays on reasoning is Harman’s claim that there isno such thing as deductive reasoning (27–32, 46, 90). But Harman’s exciting sounding denial of whatmost readers will remember learning in their first logic class is unpersuasive. The following passageis, I think, as close as he gets to an explicit argument for the view:

There is deductive logic but no such thing as deductive reasoning; given a deductive argument,one can always abandon a premise rather than accept the conclusion (46).

But the possibility of abandoning a premise, rather than accepting the conclusion is not peculiar todeductive arguments. One can abandon a premise rather than accept the conclusion of any argument,and the reasoning which leads one to do so may be deductive or otherwise, or so it seems.

If there is no such thing as deductive reasoning, what kinds of reasoning are there? In one essayHarman claims that all reasoning is inductive (32). More often, however, he distinguishes betweeninductive reasoning and practical reasoning:

There is inductive reasoning (perhaps better called theoretical reasoning) but no such thing asinductive logic. Again, there is practical reasoning, but no such thing as a practical logic (46)

It is not clear to me why Harman denies the existence of practical logic. It is still less clear why hedenies the existence of inductive logic. One would like to know what he thinks John Stuart Mill’sSystem of Logic or any of the contemporary textbooks purporting to be about inductive logic, arereally about.

The role of simplicity in inductive reasoning is discussed in most of the essays on reasoning. Likemany philosophers and scientists Harman takes it for granted that simplicity is a theoretical virtue(35–9, 75–92, 99–100). Unusually, however, he does not discuss simplicity as a criterion for choosingwhich hypotheses to accept. This is because, following Elliott Sober, he expresses doubts aboutwhether there is any such domain-independent kind of simplicity (76–7, 81). Instead he tries toidentify a kind of simplicity that distinguishes hypotheses that are taken seriously from those that arenot (35, 77, 81). He endorses a ‘computational’ theory, which takes the simpler theories to be thosewhich are easier to use to answer questions (38, 83–8). It is rather strange that Harman does not

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consider the possibility that just as there may be no domain-independent kind of simplicity whichcan be used to decide amongst hypotheses under active consideration, there may be no domain-independent kind of simplicity which determines which hypotheses will be given active considerationin the first place.

If there is a unifying theme to the second and third parts of the book, it is the rejection of theanalytic-synthetic distinction. It is not always clear, however, what this means for Harman.Sometimes he appears to mean simply that there is no such thing as analytic truth; for example, hefrequently compares the analytic-synthetic distinction to the distinction the people of Salem oncemade between witches and nonwitches (3, 127, 142, 181). Harman’s arguments for this position arelittle more than elaborations of arguments that most readers will be familiar with from the work ofQuine. Anyone who is not persuaded by Quine is unlikely to be persuaded by Harman.

Elsewhere Harman presents the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction in a quite differentway:

To reject the analytic-synthetic distinction is to hold that it is objectively indeterminate whichprinciples are true by virtue of meaning and which are substantive (149).

Harman does not explain what he means by ‘objective’ indeterminacy. Presumably he means onlythat the distinction is shifty and/or admits of borderline cases. It may well be both; like the distinctionbetween being bald and not being bald. But that does not mean, of course, that there is no distinctionto be made.

Harman uses the denial of analyticity to cast doubt on the prospects of ‘armchair metaphysics’,which seeks to analyse ‘know’, ‘good’, ‘refers’, etc. (138–143). Unfortunately he does not discussany such attempted analysis. Consequently his doubts appear to be based on little more than the fairlyobvious point that any such analysis could, for all we know, turn out to be wrong.

Furthermore Harman’s scepticism about conceptual analysis is hard to reconcile with thephilosophy of mind outlined in the last part of the book, in which he compares psychological eventsand states with biological organs:

Organs are defined by their function, not their shape or physical constitution. A heart is an organthat pumps a creature’s blood: it need not have any particular shape, nor does it have to be madefrom any particular material, as long as it serves that function. (237)

Harman does not explain how this differs from saying that truths about the function of the heart areanalytic, whereas truths about its shape or constitution are synthetic. Nor does he explain how theresulting analysis of mental states and events differs from the armchair metaphysics of which he issceptical.

There is also at least the appearance of inconsistency in Harman’s attitude to Quine’s doctrine ofthe indeterminacy of radical translation. In Essay Five (130–31) he seems to assume the truth of it;using it to cast doubt on intensional objects. In Essay Ten (149–50), however, he argues against it.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind, and it would be surprising, if essaysseparated by many years were completely consistent. But unfortunately Harman does not try toexplain how his thought has developed, and rarely explicitly acknowledges that his views havechanged. He could have made this a much better book by providing a more detailed introduction.

Given Harman’s significant influence in a number of areas, there is clearly some value in havingthese articles collected in a single volume. Nonetheless few of his most original and interestingdoctrines are convincingly defended. Some original and interesting speculation is engaged in,however; especially about the relation between theoretical and practical rationality, the nature ofintentions, the nature of language learning, and the role of coherence, and conservatism in theorychoice.

David Coady Rutgers University

Patten, Alan, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. xiii + 216, £30 (cloth).

This is one of the better books on Hegel. It addresses major ideas in his philosophy, and convincinglyshows that that there is something ‘living’ in Hegel’s approach to crucial contemporary issues ofpolitical freedom. Although he gets off to a slow start with a fairly pedestrian outline of how hisclaims fit into contemporary political philosophy, Patten presents in lucid prose an increasingly

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