Showing papers in "American Philosophical Quarterly in 1979"

The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism

Abstract: THIS paper is concerned with three interrelated questions. The first is : Is there an argument for atheism based on the existence of evil that may rationally justify someone in being an atheist? To this first question I give an affirmative answer and try to support that answer by setting forth a strong argument for atheism based on the existence of evil.1 The second question is: How can the theist best defend his position against the argument for atheism based on the existence of evil? In response to this question I try to describe what may be an adequate rational defense for theism against any argument for atheism based on the existence of evil. The final question is: What position should the informed atheist take concerning the rationality of theistic belief? Three different answers an atheist may give to this question serve to distinguish three varieties of atheism: unfriendly atheism, indifferent atheism, and friendly atheism. In the final part of the paper I discuss and defend the position of friendly atheism. Before we consider the argument from evil, we need to distinguish a narrow and a broad sense of the terms "theist," "atheist," and "agnostic." By a "theist" in the narrow sense I mean someone who believes in the existence of an omnipotent, omnis? cient, eternal, supremely good being who created the world. By a "theist" in the broad sense I mean someone who believes in the existence of some sort of divine being or divine reality. To be a theist in the narrow sense is also to be a theist in the broad sense, but one may be a theist in the broad sense?as was Paul Tillich?without believing that there is a supremely good, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal being who created the world. Similar distinctions must be made between a narrow and a broad sense of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic." To be an atheist in the broad sense is to deny the existence of any sort of divine being or divine reality. Tillich was not an atheist in the broad sense. But he was an atheist in the narrow sense, for he denied that there exists a divine being that is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly good. In this paper I will be using the terms "theism," "theist," "atheism," "atheist," "agnos? ticism," and "agnostic" in the narrow sense, not in the broad sense.

Psychopathy and Moral Understanding

Abstract: Critics of contemporary psychiatry argue that concepts of mental disorder are wrongly used to exclude from ordinary human rights and relationships people who are fully rational and responsible; that the pseudomedical terminology of disorder gives a spurious air of objectivity to our value judgements on those whose conduct we find unacceptable and disguises the fact that we are imposing on them our own moral and social values.1 Criticism has been fiercest of the concept of “psychopathy”: even critics who allow the concept of mental disorder to be legitimately extended beyond the narrow limits of the M’Naghten Rules dismiss “psychopathy” as a pseudomedical moral judgment.2 They argue that this “diagnosis,” based solely on the antisocial conduct it is meant to explain, is vacuously circular; that it marks only our disapproval of the conduct, not the medical discovery of its origin in a disordered condition of mind; that we cannot distinguish a disordered psychopath from a rational criminal or rebel.

Ii. collective actions and secondary actions

Abstract: I CONTEND that collectives can and do per? form actions. Nation-states wage wars, corpo? rations change their price schedules, and charitable organizations solicit funds. Even relatively unorga? nized and impermanent collectives perform actions. The Paris mob stormed the Bastille, for example. The large body of recent work in action theory contains little on the subject of collective action, despite the recent interest in issues connected with the attribution of moral responsibility and obli? gations to collectives. In what follows I attempt to provide an account of collective action, to relate this account to theories of the actions of persons, and to make suggestions for further study of the issues in moral philosophy. It is plain that collectives do not act independently of the actions of persons.1 Under certain circum? stances, the action of a person, or the actions of a number of persons, are "the basis for attributing" an action to a collective. For example, certain actions of a head of state may be the basis for attributing to his country the action of declaring war. In this paper, I consider the following question : What is the relation between the action of a person, or the actions of a number of persons, and the action of a collective when the former is the basis for attributing the latter action to the collective? Below, I define a relation which I call "the con? stitution relation," and I claim that this relation holds between the action of the collective and the action of the person in these cases. The action of the collective is "constituted" by the action of the person or the actions of the persons in question.2 I will also suggest that one can give a systematic account of the relations between many sorts of actions in terms of the constitution relation. If I am right, this relation is of general interest in the theory of action. I. Secondary Actions

Life and death as the arrival and departure of the psyche.

Abstract: AMONG theoretical questions of great practical import perhaps none is more significant, or more vexing, than the pair of questions, "When does human life begin?" and "When does human life end?" I propose to defend an answer to these perplexing questions that is perhaps as old as the questions themselves : the life of a human being begins when a human body is first invested with a soul or psyche, and it ends when that body is last invested with a soul or psyche. Since the Latin for "soul" or "psyche" is "anima," one could put this traditional view in the following, tautology-like formulation: a human being is animate so long as, and only as long as, the appropriate human body has an anima. Historically three further doctrines have been associated with the idea of life and death as the arrival

Existentialism and the Fear of Dying

Abstract: In this paper I shall present a fairly systematic “existentialist” view of human anxiety about death and human responses to that anxiety, based on the work of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre. My main purpose is constructive, rather than exegetical. What seems to me most distinctive and important about the work of these existentialist authors is their approach to the fear of dying—or at least the relevance of what they say to that subject, for sometimes, when they deal with other topics, what they say can (I shall attempt to show) be used to illuminate the nature of human responses to the fear of death. But I think that much of what these authors say about the fear of dying is inchoate, confusing, or incomplete, and requires supplementation, clarification, and systematization of the kind I shall be attempting to provide here.1