The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within makebelieve games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological commitments, we have to ferret out all traces of nonliterality in our assertions; if there is no sensible project of doing that, there is no sensible project of Quinean ontology.Not that I would undertake to limit my use of the words 'attribute' and 'relation' to contexts that are excused by the possibility of such paraphrase... consider how I have persisted in my vernacular use of 'meaning', 'idea', and the like, long after casting doubt on their supposed objects. True, the use of a term can sometimes be reconciled with rejection of its objects; but I go on using the terms without even sketching any such reconciliation. 1 Quine, Word and Object

Occasions of Identity is an exploration of timeless philosophical issues about persistence, change, time, and sameness. The author offers a critical survey of various rival views about the nature of identity and change, and puts forward his own original theory in the face of the prevailing orthodoxy. He argues that it is coherent and helpful to suppose that things can be identical at one time, but distinct at another — in other words, that there are genuine occasional identities. The author then defends this view against objections, demonstrates how it can solve puzzles about persistence dating back to the ancient Greeks, and investigates the metaphysical consequences of rejecting the necessity and eternity of identities.

In this challenging study, André Gallois proposes and defends a thesis about the character of our knowledge of our own intentional states. Taking up issues at the centre of attention in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology, he examines accounts of self-knowledge by such philosophers as Donald Davidson, Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright, and advances his own view that, without relying on observation, we are able justifiably to attribute to ourselves propositional attitudes, such as belief, that we consciously hold. His study will be of wide interest to philosophers concerned with questions about self-knowledge.

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