Michael Tooley

“Masturbation and the Problem of Irrational and Immoral Sexual Activity” by Michael Tooley Tooley argues that aside from sex that aims at reproduction, most human sexual activity is both irrational and immoral, since it is dangerous, and equal or greater pleasure can be achieved by sex that is, truly, completely safe. Tooley then asks what must be done to arrive at a rational approach to human sexuality, and here he argues that it must be shown, first, that so-called ‘safe sex’ is anything but. Second, the ‘no safe sex’ army needs to be challenged to say what is unsafe about masturbation, either mutual or do-it-yourself. Finally, irrational views of sexuality are frequently derived from the teachings of the so-called ‘great religions’, especially Judaism and Christianity, and the irrationality of those approaches to sex needs to be clearly demonstrated.

Why is the American policy debate not focused more intensely on the relative merits or demerits of our current approach to drugs and of possible alternatives to it? The lack of discussion of this issue is rather striking, given that America has the most serious drug problem in the world, that alternatives to a prohibitionist approach are under serious consideration in other countries, and that the grounds for reconsidering our current approach are, I shall argue, so weighty. One consideration that tells against our present approach to drugs is that prohibition simply does not work. For we have, after all, been pursuing this approach in the case of heroin since the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, and what has been the outcome? We have the worst heroin problem in the world. Moreover, our brief experiment in banning the consumption of what is undoubtedly our most harmful drug, alcohol, during Prohibition, turned out to be an utter failure. A second consideration, often noted is the striking difference in our treatment of drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, on the one hand, and drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and LSD, on the other. This difference is so familiar that it may no longer seem strange. If so, it is worth asking the following question. If you were on a desert island, with a plentiful supply of both tobacco plants and opium poppies, and you knew that your son or daughter was going to wind up addicted either to nicotine or to heroin, which would you prefer? If your choice is nicotine you have chosen a drug that, according to the testimony of most heroin addicts, is the more addictive of the two drugs. In addition, given access to heroin that has not been combined with dangerous chemicals, your son or daughter could be a lifelong addict without suffering serious organ damage. But a lifelong addiction to tobacco is often, of course, a very different story. In this article, then, I consider in detail perhaps the two most important reasons for reconsidering our current drug policy: first, the difficulty of providing any adequate justification for the restrictions that prohibitive laws place on people's liberty, and secondly, the enormous social and personal cost associated with a prohibitionist approach.

Basic Questions The following are among the basic questions discussed in this essay: (1) What is the concept of a person? (2) What properties make something a person? (3) Is personhood a matter of degree? (4) Is potential personhood morally significant? (5) Is species membership morally significant? (6) Why is the concept of a person important? Important Arguments The important arguments that are examined include the following: (1) Counterexample arguments: (a) Whole brain death and upper brain death. (b) Brain transplants. (c) Currently irreparable damage versus impossibility of resuscitation. (2) The reprogramming argument. (3) The generalized potentialities argument. (4) Potentialities and comas: active versus passive. (5) Anti-speciesism and the common sense generality of the concept of a person: deities, angels, disembodied souls, extraterrestrials. Important Positions Among the important positions considered are the following: (1) Consciousness is sufficient for personhood. (2) Self-consciousness is necessary for personhood. (3) The capacity for thought is necessary for personhood. (4) Moral agency is necessary for personhood.

Abstract – “Evil, Problem of” The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief The idea that at least some of the evil present in the world constitutes a problem for belief in the existence of God is both an ancient idea going back at least to job – and presumably beyond – and the very natural one. Whether evil is, however, a decisive objection to the existence of God has remained unclear, as various formulations of the argument from evil that initially seemed plausible have proven problematic. This entry is concerned, accordingly, with how the argument from evil should be formulated, and with the various ways in which theists can respond to the argument. My discussion falls into the following sections: (1) Different ways of formulating an argument for evil. (2) Types of responses to the argument from evil: Refutations, Defenses, and Theodicies (3) Total Refutations. (4) Defenses. (5) Theodicies. (6) Inductive logic and the evidential argument from evil.

The structure of this paper is as follows. First, I start off by briefly explaining the concepts of pro-theism and anti-theism, and by distinguishing both between personal and impersonal versions of those views, and also between a more modest and a less modest claim connected with the impersonal version of pro-theism. I then introduce a distinction that is itself quite trivial, namely, that between pro-theism (and anti-theism), on the one hand, and pro-monotheism (and anti-monotheism), on the other, where the latter are defined in terms of the deity of some particular religion. The triviality notwithstanding, I shall argue at various points in the subsequent discussion that even the best discussions of the pro-theism versus anti-theism issue are vitiated to some extent by a failure to keep that distinction clearly in mind. Next, I consider how the pro-theism versus anti-theism question is related to the theism versus atheism question. These questions are often thought to be quite independent of each other, but I shall argue that that is not so. In particular, I shall argue that these two issues are neither logically nor evidentially independent of one another. The rest of the essay is then devoted to discussing the strength of the case for pro-theism, and there my basic claims are as follows. First, the case for the impersonal pro-theistic thesis––the thesis that, all things considered, the existence of God is better than the non-existence of God––is very strong relative to facts about which there is no dispute. Second, and contrary to the views of many philosophers, there is no respect in which the world is better if God does not exist than if God exists. Third, the case for the personal pro-theistic view that it is better for every person if God exists than it is if God does not exist is also very strong. Fourth, however, it is not clear that these pro-theistic conclusions remain justified if one thinks that one can take one’s evidence as including not just facts about which there is no dispute, but also the proposition that God exists, and I shall argue that if one does assume that theism is true, the support that can otherwise be offered for some pro-theistic claims is seriously weakened, perhaps even to the point where those claims can no longer be sustained. My general conclusion, accordingly, might be put as follows: While there is no significant anti-theistic thesis that can be sustained if one is an atheist, some pro-theistic theses may become problematic if one is a theist.

This is a German translation of "Abortion and Infanticide" from Philosophy & Public Affairs 2/1, 1972, 37–65, with a new added Postscript (1989). This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess in order to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong.

This is a Portuguese translation of Jeffrey J. Jordan (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: The Key Thinkers. London and New York: Continuum. pp. 159-86 (2011). Abstract 1.1 The Concept of Evil The problem of evil, in the sense relevant here, concerns the question of the reasonableness of believing in the existence of a deity with certain characteristics. In most discussions, the deity is God, understood as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person. But the problem of evil also arises, as Hume saw very clearly, for deities that are less than all-powerful, less than all-knowing, and less than morally perfect. What is the relevant concept of evil, in this context? Here it is useful to distinguish between axiological concepts and deontological ones. First, there are judgments about whether certain states of affairs make the world better or worse, whether those states are good or bad, desirable or undesirable. Such normative concepts – of good and bad, or desirable and undesirable, states of affairs – are axiological concepts. Secondly, there are judgments about the rightness and wrongness of actions, about what one morally ought or ought not do, of what one’s duty is, of whether a certain action violates someone rights, and these concepts – of the rightness and wrongness of actions, of duties, of the rights of individuals, of what one should or should not do – are deontological concepts. Given this distinction, should the problem of evil be understood axiologically or deontologically? Often, and I think most commonly in this context, evils are equated with states of affairs that, all things considered, are bad or undesirable: they are states of affairs that make the world a worse place. But one can also interpret the problem of evil in a deontological fashion, equating evils with states of affairs that a person should have prevented, if he could have done so. Elsewhere (2008, 105-6), I have argued that the deontological interpretation is preferable. But for present purposes, either interpretation will be fine. 1.2 Evil and the Reasonableness of Belief in the Existence of God That many things in the world – tsunamis, earthquakes, the suffering of non-human animals and innocent children, human actions such as the carrying out of the Holocaust – certainly appear to be evil is not a controversial matter. But whether such things are really evils, all things considered, is disputed. Assume, however, that the world does continue genuine evils, and not merely apparent ones. How, then does the existence of such evils bear upon the reasonableness of belief in the existence of God? First, the existence of evils can be used to show that certain arguments for the existence of God cannot establish that conclusion, or even render it probable. For some arguments, of course, one need not appeal to evil to make that point. If someone argues for the existence of a first cause, or an unmoved mover, or a necessary being having its necessity of itself, and then claims that this is what everyone understands by the term “God”, one can point out that no reason has been offered for thinking that the entity in question is even a person, let alone omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. By contrast, with the type of argument that Hume was concerned with when he discussed the problem of evil – namely, arguments from the existence of order in the world to the existence of a designer, or intelligent cause of that order – one does have a type of argument that, if sound, shows that there is a person who, even if not omnipotent and omniscient, is at least extremely powerful and very knowledgeable. But such arguments do not support for conclusions about the moral character of such a person, and so it is at this point that the existence of evils becomes crucial. For in providing a reason for holding that the one is not justified in attributing even moral goodness to such a being, let alone moral perfection, it supports the conclusion that that argument in question cannot be a successful argument for the existence of God. The existence of evils, then, can serve to block arguments for the existence of God. But a second, and very familiar possibility, is that the existence of evils can also provide the basis of arguments against the existence of God. A very important distinction here is between deductive, or logical incompatibility, versions of the argument from evil, and inductive, or evidential, or probabilistic versions of the argument. According to the former, there are facts about the existence of evils in the world that are logically incompatible with the existence of God. Thus, some have held that the mere existence of any evil whatsoever is incompatible with the existence of God; others, that that certain types of evil – such as natural evils – are incompatible with the existence of God; and others, that it is the amount of evil in the world, or the fact that some people suffer horrendous evils, that logically precludes the existence of God. Inductive (or evidential, or probabilistic) versions of the argument from evil, by contrast, do not claim that there are facts about the evils in the world that are logically incompatible with the existence of God. The claim is rather that there are facts about the evils found in the world that render the existence of God at the very least unlikely, and perhaps extremely so. 1.3 Hume’s Use of the Existence of Evils The preceding discussion suggests two very different ways in which Hume might be employing the existence of evils. First, he might be appealing to the existence of evils simply to undercut certain arguments for the existence of God. In particular, he might be appealing to evils to show that, whatever the merits of the argument from order to design may be, it can nether establish, nor render probable, the existence of a morally good deity. Secondly, Hume might be advancing a version of the argument from evil, and that in turn could take the form either of an argument that claims that facts about evil are logically incompatible with the existence of God, or of an argument that claims, more modestly, that the apparent evils found in the world render the existence of God unlikely.

Basic questions in the philosophy of causation fall into two main areas, and this essay offers an overview of the questions that arise in those areas. First, there are central metaphysical questions concerning the nature of causation, such as the following. What are causal laws? What is it for two states of affairs to be causal related? Which are primary--causal relations between states of affairs, or causal laws? How are causal facts related to non-causal facts? How can one explain the formal properties of causation--such as irreflexivity, asymmetry, and transitivity? What is the ground of the direction of causation? Second, there are issues concerning the epistemology of causation. Can causal relations be directly observed? How can the existence of causal laws be established? What statistical methods can be used to confirm causal hypotheses, and how can those methods be justified? One of the basic conclusions will be that an investigation into the epistemology of causation cannot proceed in isolation from consideration of the metaphysics of causation, and if it turns out that a reductionist view of causation is untenable, then one needs to employ a realist account that connects causation to probability, and then arrive at fundamental postulates that can be justified on the basis of such an account.

In this paper, I focus upon two aspects of Adolf Grünbaum's discussion of space and time. First, I consider Grünbaum's rejection of intrinsic metrics in favor of extrinsic metrics, both in the case of space, and also in the case of time. Here I argue for the following three claims: (1) The idea of an extrinsic metric is open to very strong objections, both in the case of space, and in the case of time; (2) By contrast, there is no serious objection to the idea of an intrinsic metric, either in the case of space, or in the case of time; (3) There are good reasons for postulating an intrinsic metric, both in the case of space, and in the case of time. Secondly, I also consider Grünbaum's account of the nature of time, and here I argue for the following theses: (1) The argument that Grünbaum offers against accounts of the nature of time that postulate mind-independent tensed facts does not show that such accounts are unsound; (2) Grünbaum's claim that all tensed facts are mind-dependent is open to a serious objection; (3) Grünbaum's proposal that conceptualized awareness is an essential constituent of mind-dependent tensed facts is also very problematic.

I argue that the most familiar forms of presentism can be seen, upon reflection, to involve two very different claims. Most arguments against such forms of presentism are directed against one of those claims, and I think that the arguments in question, properly formulated, are sound. In this paper, however, I want to set out an argument directed against the second claim, and to consider the prospects for that type of argument. My discussion is organized as follows. In section 1, I describe four different forms that presentism can take, which I refer to as extreme presentism, austere, reductive presentism, tensed-facts presentism, and ersatzer presentism. Of these four forms of presentism, only the last two are popular today. In section 2, I briefly describe the more important types of objections that are standardly advanced against presentism. Then, in section 3, I argue that the dispute between presentists other than extreme presentists, on the one hand, and non-presentists, on the other, is very different from the dispute between, say, theists and atheists, and that this difference has important implications with regard to the types of objection that can be directed against presentism. Finally, in section 4, I set out the alternative line of argument against presentism that arises out of that difference.

There are various ways of attempting to defend an extreme liberal view on abortion, according to which a woman always has the right to control what happens inside her own body. First of all, there is the popular view that appeals to the idea that there is a fundamental, underived right that women have to control what occurs within their own bodies. Secondly, there is a related type of philosophical argument advanced by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her famous and oft-reprinted article “A Defense of Abortion” for the slightly weaker claim that while abortion is not always permissible, since, as she says near the end of her essay, it is impermissible in, and only in, the following circumstances: “There may well be cases where carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard w must not fall below.” Subsequently, Thomson’s type of argument was then developed and defended at much greater length by David Boonin in his very carefully argued book A Defense of Abortion, though Boonin does not discuss the case of the Minimally Decent Samaritan. I believe that there is a strong objection to the Thomson/Boonin approach to justifying abortion. It was set out in an article by Richard Langer, namely, in ‘Silverstein and the “Responsibility Objection”’, Social Theory and Practice 19/3. 345-58. Langer’s discussion is not, in general, very strong, but in a very important paragraph, on pages 351-2, Langer argues that if the responsibility objection to Thomson is unsound, then it follows that there will also be circumstances in which allowing one’s children to die, simply because one no longer wishes to care for them, will also be morally permissible. David Boonin replies to Langer’s objection in his A Defense of Abortion, but in discussing, on pages 182-3, Langer’s point about a parent’s responsibility to his or her children, Boonin relies upon a tacit consent argument that appears open to decisive objections. It seems to me, then, that the only possibility for a successful defense of an extreme liberal view concerning the justification of abortion will have to involve setting out a plausible account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and I think that the right answer is that neo-Lockean persons, and only neo-Lockean persons, have a right to continued existence. This leaves one with the scientific question of when developing humans become neo-Lockean persons. The answer to that question is perhaps still not firmly settled, although the extensive research that I carried out back in the 1970s seemed to me to support the conclusion that it is not until sometime that humans acquire the capacity for thought, a capacity that is necessary if a developing human is to be a neo-Lockean person. The upshot is that if one defends an extreme liberal view on abortion in the only way that seems to be satisfactory – that is, by setting out an account of what it is that gives something a right to life, and arguing that humans before birth do not have the relevant property, one must also address the question of infanticide, and that to fail to do so is intellectually unacceptable.

Among the questions that any adequate account of the nature of causation must answer, the following are especially crucial. First, how are causal states affairs – including both causal laws and causal relations between events, – related to noncausal states and affairs? Second, which are more basic – causal laws or causal relations? Third, how should the direction of causation be defined? Since David Hume’s time, reductionist answers have held sway, and philosophers have generally maintained that all causal relations between events are logically supervenient upon causal laws and noncausal states affairs, that causal laws are supervenient upon noncausal facts, and that the direction of causation is definable in noncausal terms. Since the 1970s, however, anti-reductionists have challenged all of these reductionist claims. Among the reductionist views that are examined are, first, reductionist views that attempt to analyze causation in terms of nomological relations; second, counterfactual approaches to causation; and third, probabilistic approaches. Realist approaches to causation are then described, and the issue of singularist approaches to causation and causal laws, and of reductionism and the direction of causation are then considered.

In this entry, the central issues are these: 1. Is the concept of causation basic and unanalyzable, or, on the contrary, does it stand in need of analysis? 2. If it does need to be analyzed, how can this be done? Many different answers have been offered to these questions. But the various approaches can be divided up into four general types, which I shall refer to as direct realism, Humean reductionism, non-Humean reductionism, and indirect, or theoretical-term, realism. This fourfold division, in turn, rests upon the following three distinctions: first, that between reductionism and realism; second, that between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and, third, that between states that are immediately observable and those that are not. Given those distinctions, I shall discuss what can be said for and against the four general approaches to causation mentioned above.

In the debate volume, ’Knowledge of God’, co-authored with Alvin Plantinga, I argued that there is an inductively sound version of the argument from evil, and recently, several popular books criticizing religious belief have appeared, often focusing on that issue of the existence of God. In the present essay I argue, however, that to help ordinary people think more critically about religious beliefs, it is better to focus on beliefs associated with specific religions, such as Christianity. I then go on to look briefly at Jesus, and I offer reasons for concluding that Jesus was neither wise nor morally admirable

The question of the moral status of infanticide in the case of normal human infants is very important, both theoretically and practically. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact that intuitions differ very greatly on this moral question, so that one needs to search for arguments in support of fundamental moral principles that can provide the ground for a sound and comprehensive account of the morality of killing. Its practical significance, on the other hand, lies in its connection with the very important, and closely related ethical question of whether it is morally permissible to kill severely defective infants. A variety of arguments have been offered in support of the view that all human infants have a right to life. One familiar argument, for example, claims that all humans have immaterial, rational souls, and that this is what gives something a right to life. A second important argument is that human infants have a future like ours, and that it is this that gives something a right to life. A third argument is that human infants, even though it appears that they have not acquired the capacities for thought and rationality, will come to have those capacities, and it is these potentialities that give them a right to life Philosophers working in ethics, however, have set out objections to these and other arguments, so the focus of this article will be to consider what conclusions seem most plausible in the light of those arguments and objections to them.

In this essay, I set out my responses. to the following five questions that had been posed: 1. What initially drew you to theorizing about science and religion? 2. Do you think science and religion are compatible when it comes to understanding cosmology (the origin of the universe), biology (the origin of life and of the human species), ethics, and/or the human mind (minds, brains, souls, and free will) 3. Some theorists maintain that science and religion occupy non-overlapping magisteria—i.e., that science and religion each have a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority, and these two domains do not overlap. Do you agree? 4. What do you consider to be your own most important contribution(s) to theorizing about science and religion? 5. What are the most important open questions, problems, or challenges confronting the relationship between science and religion, and what are the prospects for progress? My responses to four of the questions were quite brief, with about three-quarters of what I said devoted to the second question, where I talked about cosmology, biology, psychology and the human mind, and ethics, and where I argued that in all of those areas there are very serious incompatibilities between science and/or philosophy on the one hand and Christianity on the other.

This is a Japanese translation of "Abortion and Infanticide" from Philosophy & Public Affairs 2/1, 1972, 37–65. This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess in order to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong.

Speciesism is the view that the species to which an individual belongs can be morally significant in itself, either because there are basic moral principles that involve reference to some particular species - such as Homo sapiens - or because there are basic moral principles that involve the general concept of belonging to a species. In this paper I argue that speciesism is false, and that basic moral principles, rather than being formulated in terms of biological categories, should be formulated instead in terms of psychological properties and relations.

Many people hold that there is an important moral distinction between passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Thus, while the AMA maintains that people have a right quote to die with dignity, quote so that it is morally permissible for a doctor to allow someone to die if that person wants to and is suffering from an incurable illness causing pain that cannot be sufficiently alleviated, the MA is unwilling to countenance active euthanasia for a person who is in similar straits, but who has the misfortune not to be suffering from an illness that will result in a speedy death. A similar distinction with respect to infanticide has become a commonplace of medical thinking and practice. If an infant is a mongoloid or a microcephalic, and happens also to have some other defect requiring corrective surgery if the infant is to live, many doctors and hospitals believe that the parents have the right to decide whether the surgery will be performed, and thus whether the infant will survive. But if the child does not have any other defect, it is believed that the parents do not have the right to terminate its life. The rationale underlying these distinctions between active and passive euthanasia, and between active and passive infanticide, is the same: the idea that there is a crucial moral difference between intentionally killing and intentionally letting die. This idea is admittedly very common. But I believe that it can be shown to reflect either confused thinking or a moral point of view unrelated to the interests of individuals.

Comment: This translation contains a correction of an argument in the original English edition, a correction that was subsequently made in the 1999 English Paperback edition, The correction is described below in the final paragraph. Differences in language can seriously restrict one's access to, and knowledge of, the philosophical work that's being done in other countries, and before the publication in 1997 of my book Time, Tense, and Causation, I was not aware of the depth of interest, in Italy, in analytical philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular. Since that time, however, I've had the opportunity of talking to, and corresponding with, Italian philosophers who are currently working very intensely on problems in the philosophy of time. I very much enjoyed those discussions, and so I'm very pleased indeed that my book has now been translated into Italian. The introduction to the book will provide readers with quite a detailed overview of my approach to the philosophy of time, and of the main theses that I am defending. But perhaps it will be helpful here if I try to sketch, very briefly, the big picture. The central issue in the philosophy of time concerns the choice between tensed and tenseless accounts of the nature of time – or, as I prefer to express it, between dynamic and static conceptions of reality. According to tensed (or dynamic) accounts, there are significant ontological differences between the past, the present, and the future – either because the world contains intrinsic tensed properties of passiveness, presentness, and futurity, or else because the past, the present, and the future are not all equally real. In contrast, according to tenseless (or static) views of the nature of time, there are no intrinsic tensed properties, and the past, the present, and the future are all equally real. In this book, I defend a dynamic view of time dash specifically, one according to which, while the past and the present are now real, the future is not. This view has, of course, a very long history, with a version of it having been defended by Aristotle in his famous discussion of the sea battle tomorrow, in which he argued that, although it is now true – indeed necessarily so – that either there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there will not be one, it is not now true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, and not now true that there will not be one. Only when tomorrow comes will the world contain states of affairs that make one of these propositions true, and the other false. But while this general view of the nature of time has a very long and distinguished history – and also seems, intuitively, quite appealing – it has become clear, especially in this century, that it is exposed to very strong objections – objections moreover, that come not merely from philosophy, but also from contemporary physics, and especially from Einstein's special theory of relativity. One of the main challenges accordingly, for any defense of a tensed or dynamic view of time, is to show that those objections can be answered. In grappling with those objections, however, one thing that emerged very clearly was that some theses that defenders of tensed approaches to time have traditionally viewed as absolutely essential must be abandoned as unsound. The result is that. I was led to a view of the nature of time that is, in many respects, intermediate between tenseless views of time and traditional tensed approaches. In particular, advocates of traditional tensed views almost always maintain that the simplest temporal facts are themselves inherently tensed: they consist of facts such as, for example, that is certain apple is now red. But I maintain that, on the contrary, the simplest temporal facts, rather than being intrinsically tensed, are facts to the effect, for example, that a certain apple is now red at time t. On this fundamental issue, then, I agree with those who accept a tenseless or static view of time, since they too hold that the simplest tensed facts ¬– and indeed all tensed facts – are not tensed facts. How, then, does my approach to the nature time differ from a tenseless or static approach? The answer is that I also maintain that, although basic tensed facts are not inherently tensed, the world is nevertheless a dynamic one, since every present moment is a point at which things come into existence. Events, therefore, are not merely actual or nonactual – as is maintained by advocates of tenseless approaches to time. Rather an event is actual as of some time, and not actual as of other times. One needs, therefore, a temporally indexed notion of actuality, according to which an event is not actual until the time at which it occurs, and given that notion, one can explain, in a straightforward fashion, what it is for events to lie in the past, the present, and the future, and in the way that entails that the past and the present are real, but the future is not. One task, as I have said, is to show that the many objections that have been advanced against dynamic conceptions of the world dash by philosophers – such as McTaggart, Quine, Smart, Putnam, and Mellor – can be answered. But even if, as I claim, this can be done, one is still left, of course, with the question of what positive reason there is, if any, for accepting a tensed or dynamic view of the world. The argument that I develop in response to this question centers upon the concept of causation, and here I argue, first, that there are decisive objections to reductionist approaches to causation; secondly, that it is possible to set out a very plausible realistic account of the nature of causation; and, thirdly, that the crucial postulates that are involved in that account can only be satisfied in a dynamic world – indeed only in a dynamic world in which the past and the present are real, but the future is not. This way of defending the view that our world is a dynamic one also has implications for some other issues – in particular, issues connected with the subtle and very difficult metaphysical question of the relation between time and causation. Thus, after setting out the above argument, I attempt to show that if causation can exist only in a dynamic world, then one can both demonstrate that backward causation is logically impossible and defend the view that the direction of time is to be defined in terms of the direction of causation, rather than vice versa. Finally, a comment on the text. It involves one major change from the original English edition – namely in sections 4. 6.2 and 4.7. The change in those sections involves the crucial part in my argument both for the claim that our world is one where the past and present are real, but the future is not, and for the claim that backward causation is logically impossible. It was pointed out to me by Kenji Murota, a graduate student of philosophy at Keio University, that there was a problem in my original formulation of that argument. I'm grateful to him for his incisive criticism, and I'm pleased that I've had the opportunity of correcting that argument in the present edition.