The free will defense against the problem of evil has been attacked on the grounds that god could have, without impairing human freedom, acted so that much of the moral evil that has occurred in human life would have been avoided. according to this criticism, he could have done so by creating human beings with a disposition to do what is right. in this article i argue that this criticism is mistaken. i argue that precisely the amount of moral evil (...) that has occurred in human history could have occurred even if human beings originally had the strongest possible disposition to do what is right that is compatible with their being free. (shrink)

In their attempt to develop a nonanthropocentric ethic, many biocentric philosophers have been content to argue for the expansion of the moral community to include natural entities. In doing so, theyhave implicitly accepted the idea that the conceptions of moral duties developed by anthropocentric philosophers to describe the moral relationships that hold between humans can be directly applied to the human/nature relationship. To make this expansion plausible, they have had to argue that natural entities have traits that are similar to (...) the morally relevant traits of human beings. Not only are these arguments often unconvincing, but it seems implausible that thesame moral concepts and principles that govern human relationships also should govern human/nonhuman relationships. Many nonanthropocentric ethics, I argue, are (mistakenly) anthropomorphic.To go beyond this relationship I recommend the development of a nonanthropomorphic biocentric ethic. (edited). (shrink)

An obituary notice outlining the main aspects of Charles Hartshorne's life, career, and thought.

"This is a timely collection of important papers.

My purposes in this paper are to explain the constitutive-regulative distinction as set out by Kant in the Dialectic and Methodology, and to note its reappearance in contemporary philosophy.

In the aftermath of emotivism and behaviourism, cognitivist theories of emotion became current in both philosophy and psychology. These theories, though varied, have in common that emotions require propositional attitudes such as beliefs or evaluations. Accordingly, cognitivist theories characterize emotions themselves with features of such attitudes, including syntax, semantic meaning, and justifiability.