Condorcet has often been thought of as a dreamer, and a mathematician without much influence on social thought. I shall argue here that Condorcet’s “Jury Theorem” had an influence on Madison, in the crucial Federal decision of 1787. There are two possible avenues of influence—one through Franklin, who was a close friend of Condorcet in Paris in 1776–1785, and one through Jefferson, who also kne...

La pregunta por el carácter de la “verdadera losofía” ocupa un lugar central en investigación filosófica David Hume. El presente artículo se propone abordar Conclusión del libro I Tratado naturaleza humana, sección decisiva para responder a dicho interrogante. En ella autor narra, manera dramática, crisis suscitada confrontación su ciencia humana con los argumentos escépticos, narrativa que int...

David Hume and Adam Smith are usually, and understandably, seen as developing very similar sentimentalist accounts of moral thought and practice. Hume’s views are better known, not least because Smith’s work on moral sentiments fell in the shadow of his tremendously influential Wealth of Nations. This shadowing is unfortunate, both because Smith’s work on moral sentiments is deeply insightful a...

Subjectivism in Ethics Take any action allowʹd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. . . You can never find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, toward this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ʹtis ...

Doubts about a maxim like Hume’s have a variety of historical sources. Some date back as far as Descartes’s claim that, since he can conceive himself in a purely mental condition, his essence is only to think. “How does it follow,” Arnauld asks, “from the fact that he is aware of nothing else belonging to his essence, that nothing else does in fact belong to it?” Others are as recent as the dis...

HYMAN and Mencher (1943) first reported the occurrence of phaeochromocytomas in more than one member of a single family. A familial incidence of these tumours has since been observed in at least seventeen apparently unrelated families (see Carman and Brashear, 1960 for earlier references; Smits and Huizinga, 1961; Cushman, 1962; Grunstein and Finkelstein, 1962; Tisherman, Gregg and Danowski, 19...