A central argument for the view that God's necessary omniscience [( Bgf p )] precludes freewill is unsound, because the necessity of the consequence is not the necessity of the consequent, and nor is Bgf true. God's belief in some particular proposition f about what I will do is not necessary, as I might do something that makes ~ f true. Fischer and Tognazzini claim that this counterargument argument assumes that I must freely do the something that makes f true. (...) But plainly it doesn't. All that it assumes is that I will do the something that makes f true. It makes no difference whether I do that thing unfreely, or "deterministicall". The argument does not assume the existence of a case of freewill in the face of divine foreknowledge, but instead considers the necessity of God's belief in some particular designated proposition f. The argument does not depend, as Fischer and Tognazzini suppose, on whether God's knowledge is a function of the facts (omniscience) or vice versa (infallibility). (shrink)

I defend the 'Repugnant' Conclusion that for any possible population of happy people, a population containing a sufficient number of people with lives barely worth living would be better. Four lines of argument converge on this conclusion, and the conclusion has a simple, natural theoretical explanation. The opposition to the Repugnant Conclusion rests on a bare appeal to intuition. This intuition is open to charges of being influenced by multiple distorting factors. Several theories of population ethics have been devised to (...) avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, but each generates even more counterintuitive consequences. The intuition opposing the Repugnant Conclusion is thus among the best candidates for an intuition that should be revised. (shrink)

Ethicists and economists commonly assume that if A is all things considered better than B, and B is all things considered better than C, then A is all things considered better than C. Call this principle Transitivity. Although it has great conceptual, intuitive, and empirical appeal, I argue against it. Larry S. Temkin explains how three types of ethical principle, which cannot be dismissed a priori, threaten Transitivity: (a) principles implying that in some cases different factors are relevant to comparing (...) A to C than to comparing A to B or B to C; (b) principles of limited scope; (c) principles implying that morally relevant differences in degree can amount to differences in kind. My counterexamples employ a principle of type (c): pleasures and pains enormously different in intensity differ in kind. Temkin has also endorsed this type of counterexample, using arguments based on earlier drafts of this paper. (shrink)

"This is an important book, and no one interested in issues which touch on the free will will want to ignore it."--Ethics. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, the author defends the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. He disputes the view that determinism is necessary for moral responsbility. Finding no good reason for accepting determinism, but believing moral responsiblity to be indubitable, he concludes that determinism should be rejected.

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

On Friday God knew everything, including f, a proposition about what Jones would do on Monday; we can write the time-indexed proposition that on Friday God believed f as Bgf. If Jones does not do the thing that makes f true, then the resulting state of affairs will be ∼f. So on Monday, before a certain time – ‘ t time’ – Jones has it in his power to bring it about that ∼f. It seems to follow that on Monday (...) Jones has it in his power to bring it about that on Friday God believed something false. Yet this is impossible, as Bgp ⊃ p . But if f is false – if Jones makes it so on Monday – then so is Bgf, and God is not infallible. So either Jones cannot not do the thing that makes f true, and he has no freewill, or God is not infallible. The traditional responses to this dilemma are subtle, time-honoured and, as I see it, almost completely unconvincing. According to Linda Zagzebski , there are five of them: the Ockhamist response that God’s Friday belief is a so-called ‘soft’ fact, itself a problematic notion; the confused Molinist claim that on Friday God has something called ‘middle knowledge’ , so that God knows what Jones would do, but does not will it or know what Jones would do if … ); and the more sensible but still perplexing solution of Boethius’s that God’s knowing is not in time, so that the time-indexed proposition Bgf is not true. (How does it help to move the knowing that is said to determine our actions from the past to the timeless? It seems to …. (shrink)