“The A2 is Light,” Schelling explains to us in the Presentation of My System of Philosophy. Is such a statement meaningful, so that its truth value can be asked? Is it an empirical statement, which can be tested and possibly confirmed through observations? Or is it a synthetic a priori judgment independent of observations? Such questions are not easy to answer, and they are related to the logical status of Schelling’s theory as a whole. That such questions became important stems (...) from the peculiarity of the philosophical systems that were developed in Jena after 1800. They were called “systems of absolute idealism,” but it is not clear what this means. These systems include not only Schelling’s but also Hegel’s and Krause’s. In the following, some commonalities, as well as specific particularities, of these systems will be examined in more detail from the standpoint of methodology. (shrink)

The short paper is a reply to a review of the author’s book HANDELN UND VERURSACHEN (Frankfurt am Main 2000). The reviewer, Peter Rohs, has focused upon the issues of causation, laws of nature and free will. Both Rohs and the author are libertarians, but they disagree on a number of metaphysical issues. The author maintains that causation is a relation between changes, i. e. time-consuming events, not between instantaneous states. Against Davidson’s “principle of the nomological character of causality”, he (...) holds that no exceptionless generalizations subsuming cause-effect pairs exist. He defends a singularist version of the counterfactual analysis of event causality instead. This analysis has application to both physical and mental events, so that no special kind of mental causation needs to be assumed. The paper is divided into five sections: (1) The skeptical view of laws of nature, (2) Causal relata, (3) Churchland’s law of action, (4) Counterfactual conditionals and knowledge of regularities, (5) Freedom and determinism. The debate is continued in a later issue of the same journal. (shrink)

I discuss two accounts of rational religious faith that have recently been proposed by Peter Rohs and Volker Gerhardt, respectively, and critically explore the relations between (i) faith and knowledge and (ii) faith and hope. I argue that, if faith essentially involves some form of eschatological hope, then a theory of rational faith will have to include an analysis of rational hope.

Pemanfaatan sel punca embrionik (Embryonic Stem Cells/ESCs) telah menjadi isu global dalam bidang bioteknologi modern yang selalu memicu perdebatan mendalam dari berbagai ilmuwan, filosof, agamawan, ahli hukum dan praktisi politik. Penelitian ini membahas gambaran umum dan manfaat sel punca embrionik, serta menganalisisnya berdasarkan pandangan hukum Islam. Metode yang digunakan adalah studi pustaka multidisiplin dari teks-teks ilmu medis, etika dan hukum Islam. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa meskipun masih terdapat perbedaan pandangan dari para ahli hukum Islam tentang kapan awal mula kehidupan, (...) namun ahli hukum Islam secara tegas membedakan antara “kehidupan aktual (actual life)” dan “kehidupan potensial (potential life)”. Kedua jenis kehidupan ini dibedakan oleh waktu peniupan roh pada manusia. Sehingga melalui pandangan ini dapat disimpulkan bahwa pemanfaatan sel punca embrionik dalam pengembangan bioteknologi dapat dibenarkan karena pengertian manusia pada tahap embrio dipahami sebagai manusia “potensial”, sebatas jasad yang belum memiliki roh, dan belum dapat dikatakan sebagai manusia “aktual” yang memiliki kehidupan “aktual” bersama roh dan jasad. (shrink)

The short paper continues a debate on free will, causation and laws of nature between the author and the German philosopher Peter Rohs (opened in a previous issue of the same journal). Both Keil and Rohs are libertarians, but they disagree on a number of metaphysical issues. Keil maintains that causation is a relation between changes, i.e. time-consuming events, not between instantaneous states. Against Davidson’s “principle of the nomological character of causality”, Keil holds that no exceptionless laws subsuming cause-effect pairs (...) exist. He further claims that the primary task of a philosophical theory of causality is to give truth conditions for uncontroversial instances of singular causal statements. This is an exercise in descriptive metaphysics. Causality’s place in advanced physics, by contrast, remains precarious. The paper closes with the incompatibilist claim that deterministic causality, unlike real-world causality, cannot be reconciled with free will. (shrink)