It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal analogy between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation.

2013 Reprint of 1931 edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-1930) was a British mathematician who also made significant and precocious contributions in philosophy and economics before his death at the age of 26. He was a close friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and was instrumental in translating Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" into English, and in persuading Wittgenstein to return to philosophy and to Cambridge. This volume collects Ramsey's most important papers. Contents: The foundations of mathematics.--Mathematical logic.--On a problem of formal logic.--Universals.--Note on the preceding paper.--Facts and propositions.--Truth and probability.--Further considerations.--Last papers.