Georg Gasser

This article argues that the causal theory of action cannot explain conscious human action adequately. Interpreting actions as bodily movements caused by (mental) states internal to the agent does not do justice to the particular role of the agent herself as ‘performing’ or ‘bringing about’ the action in the light of specific reasons. The only thing one can say about actions being distinct from other bodily movements such as automatic physiological processes or reflexes will employ again the concept of action resp. of the agent doing something consciously. Therefore the thesis is defended that the concept of conscious action resp. human agency is a basic concept referring to the basic capacity of human persons to perform actions consciously. This capacity cannot be reduced to other phenomena within the agent such as mental states and causal mechanisms regulating and guiding human behaviour. If this view of human agency is correct, it sets a limit to attempts of naturalising the human person.

Eleonore Stump’s intensive work on theodicy culminates in her opus magnum Wandering in Darkness. Her explicit thesis with regard to the evidential problem of evil is: From the background of a Christian worldview even terrible sufferings can be conceived as a necessary and indispensable part of a healing process through which God guides human beings from their postlapsarian sinful state towards their ultimate end, communion with God and fellow human beings. Stump pursues this aim by the use of biblical narratives as a way of sharing interpersonal experiences between God and men. In this article I present the main steps of Stump’s argument. Then I discuss whether she is successful in her attempt to treat human suffering and the loss of one’s deepest desires as appropriately as she claims. Finally I outline the explanatory limits of this, and most probably, every theodicy by means of the concept of a worldview.

We take it for granted that a person persists over time: when we make plans, we assume that we will carry them out; when we punish someone for a crime, we assume that she is the same person as the one who committed it. Metaphysical questions underlying these assumptions point towards an area of deep existential and philosophical interest. In this volume, leading metaphysicians discuss key questions about personal identity, including 'What are we?', 'How do we persist?', and 'Which conditions guarantee our identity over time?' They discuss whether personal identity is 'complex', whereby it is analyzable in terms of simpler relations such as physical or psychological features, or whether it is 'simple', namely something that cannot be analyzed in terms of more fundamental relations. Their essays offer an innovative discussion of this topic and will be of interest to a wide readership in metaphysics.

This article is a contribution to what we might call „commonsense-ontology“. The aim is to defend the commonsensical distinction between living beings and artefacts on the basis of ontological arguments. The distinction between living beings and artefacts is increasingly difficult to draw because of new developments in biotechnology. For developing criteria of an acceptable distinction I defend the existence of artefacts first. Subsequently I discuss three criteria how we might sensibly distinguish between living beings and artefacts. These criteria are metabolism, active powers and the capacity to develop. In this context I rely on the ontological distinction between unity and whole.