Richard Taylor was born in Charlotte, Michigan on 5 November 1919. He received his A. B. from the University of illinois in 1941, his M. A. from Oberlin College in 1947, and his Ph. D. from Brown University in 1951. He has been William H. P. Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, Professor of Philosophy (Graduate Faculties) at Columbia University, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. He is the author of about fifty articles and of five (...) philosophical books. This volume consists of essays presented to Richard Taylor on the occa sion of his sixtieth birthday. Some of the contributors have been Taylor'S students; some have been his colleagues; and all have been, and continue to be, his admirers. I have made several attempts to articulate what it is I (I would not presume to speak for anyone else) admire about Richard Taylor: (1) There is a particular 'flavor' to Taylor's philosophical writing and con versation that is wholly delightful. Like any other flavor, it can be tasted and enjoyed and remembered but never adequately described. (If there should be someone who has picked up this book who does not know what I mean, I recommend that he read the chapter on 'God' in Taylor's Metaphysics. ) (2) Taylor is a masterful dialectician. (shrink)

The so-called Direct Argument for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and causal determinism depends on a rule of inference called Rule A, a rule that says no one is even partly morally responsible for a necessary truth. While most philosophers think that Rule A is valid, Stephen Kearns has recently offered several alleged counterexamples to the rule. In the paper, I show that Kearns’ counterexamples are unsuccessful.

In recent work, W. Matthews Grant challenges the common assumption that if humans have libertarian free will, and the moral responsibility it affords, then it is impossible for God to cause what humans freely do. He does this by offering a “non-competitivist” model that he calls the “Dual Sources” account of divine and human causation. Although we find Grant’s Dual Sources model to be the most compelling of models on offer for non-competitivism, we argue that it fails to circumvent a (...) theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s direct argument for incompatibilism. In the paper, we motivate and deploy a theological take on the direct argument, and we contend that this theological rendition of the direct argument effectively dismantles Grant’s Dual Sources account of non-competitivism. (shrink)

One popular theodicy says that good can’t exist without evil, and so God must allow evil in order to allow good. Call this the counterpart theodicy. The counterpart theodicy relies on a metaphysical claim about existence—good cannot exist without evil. A second popular theodicy says that we would be unable to know/recognize/appreciate the good without evil, and so God is forced to allow evil in order to allow for such appreciation. Call this the appreciation theodicy. The appreciation theodicy relies on (...) an epistemological claim about recognition or appreciation—we are unable to know/recognize/appreciate good without evil (even if it is possible for good to exist without evil). Determining whether either of these theodicies is a success requires a careful discussion of whether either meets the conditions on a successful theodicy. I argue that both fail. (shrink)

Causal determinism is the view that all events in the universe are predetermined and that the laws of nature causally necessitate these events. In the debates on free will, there are two different positions called incompatibilism and compatibilism. Accordingly, compatibilist accounts claim that free will and causal determinism can be compatible and coexist. On the contrary, incompatibilist accounts defend that compatibilist accounts are problematic and claim that free will cannot exist in a universe where causal determinism holds. The main approach (...) that we will consider in this work will be the incompatibilist approach of the American philosopher Peter van Inwagen, which he defends in free will debates. The arguments put forward by Peter van Inwagen as the basis of incompatibilism can be summarized as the consequence argument and the Mind argument. The consequence argument, hypothetically takes into account a world in which causally deterministic and claiming that free will doesn't exist in such a world. Peter van Inwagen's Mind argument, on the other hand, claims that agent-causation cannot be sufficient for a definite possession of free will because a person who represents oneself as an agent in every event s/he is involved in, cannot be sure whether the consequences of these events are due to chance. In both arguments, Peter van Inwagen refers to philosophical moves that affirm incompatibilism is consistent for free will debate. Therefore in my dissertation, I argue that incompatibilism is actually a sufficient step towards solving the free will and causal determinism dilemma in a theoretical sense. This work also deals with Peter van Inwagen's views on philosophy of action and philosophy of religion in general. Additionally, in order to draw the relational framework between causal determinism and free will, the concepts of 'event', 'causal powers' and 'states of affairs' are used methodologically. Instead of just having an ethical discussion of free will, I took care to stay within the boundaries of the metaphysics of free will. (shrink)

Toward the end of his classic treatise An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen offers a modal argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason which he argues shows that the principle “collapses all modal distinctions.” In this paper, a critical flaw in this argument is shown to lie in van Inwagen’s beginning assumption that there is such a thing as the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. This is shown to follow from Cantor’s theorem and a property of conjunction (...) with respect to contingent propositions. Given the failure of this assumption, van Inwagen’s argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason cannot succeed, at least not without the addition of some remarkable and previously unacknowledged qualifications. (shrink)

Cadaveric donation comprises organ donation—that is, taking organs from brain dead people, as well as tissue donation, meaning taking tissues from brain dead as well as heart dead people. The organ transplant procedure from brain dead patients is beyond the scope of the pathologist, as it is done by surgeons in the operating theatre. In a broader sense, however, pathologists are involved in cadaveric tissue donation as well as taking tissues from cadavers for diagnostic procedures within the framework of the (...) autopsy , and to gather material for research and training students and pathology residents . For cadaveric tissue donation, different ethical and practical issues must be considered, which we will try to review in this paper from the perspective of the pathologist.CADAVERIC TISSUE SAMPLING FOR TRANSPLANTATION PURPOSESSeveral tissues can be taken from “true” cadavers that may still be used for transplantation such as skin, corneas, tendons, bone. This is usually done in collaboration with the pathologist, who is in most countries responsible for the body after the death of the patient in the hospital. All these tissues can be harvested several hours after death, as they undergo only slow degradation. In The Netherlands, as dictated by law, patients must actively have given permission for donation during life by registering with the Transplantation Register. Since this procedure was implemented, the number of organs available for donation has not increased but decreased somewhat, while the number of tissues has increased. A great obstacle to the increase in the number of donations is that only 37% of the population is registered …. (shrink)

The article offers an extensive interpretation of Human All Too Human I, 114: “The non-Greek element in Christianity”. The origin of this section goes back to 1875 when Nietzsche was preparing a course on “The Religion of the Greek”. It is pointed out that for Nietzsche the opposition as such and in general is much more important than this specific opposition between Greek and Christian religion or culture. Christianity is in Nietzsche's writings almost always presented in some sort of opposition, (...) but there are many different oppositions in which it appears. The nature of the opposition which is so highly valued by Nietzsche, is described as agon, and is shown to be very different from the metaphysical opposition as criticized by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil § 2. Nietzsche attempts to put Christianity back into an agonistic relation with Greek culture. But whereas Greek culture recognizes the principle of the agon, it is denied and condemned in Christianity. Greek culture shows the agon to be a principle of measure. Christianity turns out to be a religion of excessiveness. (shrink)

I discuss van inwagen's "first formal argument" for the incompatibility of causal determinism and freedom to do otherwise. I distinguish different interpretations of the important notion, "s can render p false." I argue that on none of these interpretations is the argument clearly sound. I point to gaps in the argument, Although I do not claim that it is unsound.

Peter van Inwagen ’s argument for incompatibilism uses a sentential operator, “N”, which can be read as “No one has any choice about the fact that....” I show that, given van Inwagen ’s understanding of the notion of having a choice, the argument is invalid. However, a different interpretation of “N” can be given, such that the argument is clearly valid, the premises remain highly plausible, and the conclusion implies that free will is incompatible with determinism.

Abstract This paper argues that in modern (agro)biotechnology, (un)naturalness as an argument contributed to a stalemate in public debate about innovative technologies. Naturalness in this is often placed opposite to human disruption. It also often serves as a label that shapes moral acceptance or rejection of agricultural innovative technologies. The cause of this lies in the use of nature as a closed, static reference to naturalness, while in fact “nature” is an open and dynamic concept with many different meanings. We (...) propose an approach for a dynamic framework that permits an integrative use of naturalness in debate, by connecting three sorts of meaning that return regularly in the arguments brought forward in debate; cultural, technological, and ecological. We present these as aspects of nature that are always present in the argument of naturalness. The approach proposes a dynamic relation between these aspects, formed by gradients of naturalness, which in turn are related to ethical concerns. In this way we come to an overview that makes it possible to give individual arguments a relative place and that does justice to the temporality of the concept of nature and the underlying ethical concerns stakeholders have in respect to innovation in agriculture. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9359-6 Authors P. F. Van Haperen, Wageningen University and Research Centre, META, Hollandseweg 1, 6707 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands B. Gremmen, Wageningen University and Research Centre, META, Hollandseweg 1, 6707 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands J. Jacobs, Wageningen University and Research Centre, META, Hollandseweg 1, 6707 KN Wageningen, The Netherlands Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

Isolated habitats, the consequence of the fragmentation process, are the object of external disturbance. This divides the patch area into two zones: interior and edge. The interior-to-edge ratio quantifies the potential disturbance impact. A method is presented to calculate a reference value for the interior-to-edge ratio, based upon the minimum edge for a given interior. The method is based on pixel geometry features and mathematical morphology. A corrected interior-to-edge ratio is defined using the reference value. The method is illustrated for (...) woodlot fragments in the Belgian Kempen region. (shrink)

This paper relates the origin, the principles and the evolution of the financial participation in HBK-Spaarbank. This participation in the capital is concretized by the cooperative company Personnel Cooperative HBK. Founded in 1979, this cooperative company which represents all workers of HBK-Spaarbank has now become a very significant shareholder. At present it owns 22.50% of the capital of the savings bank.

The most important method of the experiential sciences is the so-called scientific induction, viz. the method that starts from the observation of the particular and individual and tends to obtain abstractly-general or universal statements. This article explains that such a progression from the individual to the universal can only be accounted for if it can be considered as an application of some general intellectual insights. As to the main feature, this application can be made explicit by means of the following (...) deductive syllogism : Maior : Whatever happens with regularity in the material world happens of necessity, i.e. by virtue of the proper nature of things. Minor : Now an investigation of the data of experience shows that a phenomenon of species A is regularly connected with a phenomenon of species B. Conclusion : Therefore, a phenomenon of species A is necessarily connected with a phenomenon of species B. The minor of this syllogism gives the result of the empirical research and this way of acting has to be accounted for by a critical investigation of the general methods used by physical science, the so-called methods of Stuart Mill . The foundation of the maior is given in section 4. It appears that this principle presupposes the absolute validity of the law of causality and, moreover, the determinism of the material nature. A few remarks are added concerning regularity and probability. The various individual instances which are the starting-point of scientific research are supposed to be the representatives of a certain species. This amounts to the supposition that there is a certain species-individual-structure in the material things. This problem is treated in section 5. In order to arrive at a general statement about a certain kind of phenomena it will usually be necessary to combine experiential data obtained at different times and places and in different individual circumstances. Such a procedure is based upon the general presupposition that nature is uniform. This general presuppositions implies in particular two presuppositions concerning the irrelevancy of time and place. These questions are dealt with in section 6. Finally in section 8 a few remarks are added concerning character and value of the general conclusions obtained by scientific induction. (shrink)

It is argued that mass anomalies at the N≈Z line are associated with SU(4) isospin-spin symmetry. Drawing on these arguments, a Weizsäcker-type nuclear mass formula is investigated which has the eigenvalue of the quadratic Casimir operator of SU(4) as a Wigner term. This SU(4)-based mass formula yields a better agreement than the one with the usual Wigner term |N—Z|/A. In addition, the SU(4) eigenvalue expression adequately replaces the usual pairing term of the Weizsäcker formula giving a lower overall rms deviation (...) than the latter. (shrink)