sanction anything whose function is to penalize or reward. It is useful to distinguish between social sanctions, legal sanctions, internal sanctions, and religious sanctions. Social sanctions are extralegal pressures exerted upon the agent by others. For example, others might distrust us, ostracize us, or even physically attack us, if we behave in certain ways. Legal sanctions include corporal punishment, imprisonment, fines, withdrawal of the legal rights to run a business or to leave the area, and other penalties. Internal sanctions may include not only guilt feelings but also the sympathetic pleasures of helping others or the gratified conscience of doing right. Divine sanctions, if there are any, are rewards or punishments given to us by a god while we are alive or after we die. There are important philosophical questions concerning sanctions. Should law be defined as the rules the breaking of which elicits punishment by the state? Could there be a moral duty to behave in a given way if there were no social sanctions concerning such behavior? If not, then a conventionalist account of moral duty seems unavoidable. And, to what extent does the combined effect of external and internal sanctions make rational egoism (or prudence or self-interest) coincide with morality? B.W.H.