Hugh J. McCann

This chapter discusses Audi's version of metaethical intuitionism, arguing that it faces significant objections. Without a basis for the theory's claims of self-evidence, it argues, moral intuitions can be charged with arbitrariness. Moreover, familiar problems concerning “queerness” and supervenience remain. This chapter proposes that moral intuitions are grounded in conative experiences of “felt obligation”. It then argues that his version of intuitionism preserves the virtues of Audi's approach—indeed sharing the spirit of Audi's theory—without succumbing to the skeptical problems.

This chapter is a critique of views that seek to resolve the problem of moral evil by holding that such evil is owing to exercises of human freedom that escape God's control as creator. It is argued that the three most common treatments of this kind are all unsatisfactory in that none of them provides sufficiently for God's omniscience and sovereignty. Boethian views preserve an omniscient God, but deprive him of any control over what exercises of creaturely freedom will occur. Openness theories deprive God of both omniscience and sovereignty. Finally, Molinist treatments largely fail to provide for either perfection, in that so‐called counterfactuals or subjunctives of freedom often lack grounding, and cannot be known by God prior to creation.

The implications of this example for the philosophy of action are, of course, important: at the very least, it casts serious doubt on the often heard view that the notion of volition is a mere invention of philosophers, having no use outside philosophical contexts. It is, then, worthy of study. But many recent philosophers have paid practically no attention to actual cases of paralysis. Instead, they have preferred to deal a priori with the possibility of a paralytic trying to perform a bodily movement, and to deal with it in such a way that the occurrence of acts of volition, to which they have theoretical objections, need not be admitted in the theory of action. I have undertaken a theoretical defense of volition elsewhere, so we shall deal little with such objections here. Instead, we shall focus on the subject of trying, and especially on attempts like that described above, which seem to me to have been badly misunderstood. It will be my contention that trying is generally present in intentional, overt action, that in cases of paralysis trying has substantially the same features it has in relatively uncontroversial cases, and that the attempts of paralytics constitute sound evidence that acts of volition occur typically when bodily movements are performed.

One of the principal preoccupations of action theory is with the role of intention in the production of action. It should be expected that this role would be important, since an item of behavior appears to count as action just when there is some respect in which it is intended by the agent. This being the case, an account of the function of intention should provide insight into how human action might differ from other sorts of events, what the foundations of human autonomy may be, etc. But the claim that intention plays an important role in action is implicitly opposed to another thesis held by many action theorists: that whenever she acts, an agent always follows her strongest motive or desire. If this is so, there may be no need for special states of intending, since these might just intervene between motive and action. Rather, it can be argued, intention conceived as an independent state should be gotten out of action theory, and its functional role imputed to the agent’s strongest desire. The tension between this reductivist view and views which credit intention with a distinctive functional role in the genesis of action is what I wish to explore in this paper. The first two sections are devoted to showing how the conflict arises. In sections III and IV I shall consider two ways of trying to resolve the conflict, neither of which seems to me adequate. Finally, I shall urge briefly that if the conflict cannot be resolved, we should favor a theory which maintains a nonreductive view of intention.

Libertarian accounts of free will face the objection that they are liable to leave our decisions and actions with no explanation whatever for their existence. To counter this objection some libertarians invoke a concept of agent causation, whereby agents are held to confer existence on their own decisions and actions. This chapter argues that, construed as operations of existence conferral, neither agent nor event causation can be given a coherent account. Rather, God’s action as primary cause is alone responsible for the existence of all that has being. The chapter argues further that God’s action as primary cause does not interfere with any legitimate condition of responsible free will.

Recent views on practical rationality harmonize well with a fundamentally Kantian conception of the foundations of morality. Rationality in practical thinking is not a matter of valid reasoning, or of foIlowing maximization principles. From an agent-centered perspective, it consists in observing certain standards of consistency. In themselves, these standards lack the force of duties, hence there can be no irresolvable conflict between rationality and morality. Furthermore, the Kantian test of universalization for maxims of action may be scen as adapting agent-centered standards of consistency to the task of specifying moral duties, so that objective rationality and morality are one and the same.

Based on views she draws from Anselm, Katherin Rogers mounts an extend­ed attack on my account of God’s relationship to human sin. Here I argue first that if Anselm’s view of the relationship in question is different from my own, then Rogers fails to locate any reason for thinking his account is correct. I argue further that Rogers fails to demonstrate her claim that my account of God’s relation to sin makes him a deceiver, that her criticisms of my theodicy of sin are misguided, and that she is mistaken in claiming a world in which God has full sovereignty over human willing is less safe for the repentant than I hold it to be.

I have defended the view that God’s complete sovereignty over the universe, which requires that he be creatively responsible for our decisions, is compatible with libertarian free will. William Rowe interprets me as holding that this is entirely owing to God’s being timelessly eternal, and argues that God’s decisions as creator would still be determining in a way that destroys freedom. His argument overlooks an important part of my view-an account of creation according to which God’s will as creator does not stand as an independent determining condition of our own. I try here to clarify that account, and to show that Rowe’s criticisms leave it untouched.

Libertarian treatments of free will face the objection that an uncaused human decision would lack full explanation, and hence violate the principle of sufficient reason. It is argued that this difficulty can be overcome if God, as creator, wills that I decide as I do, since my decision could then be explained in terms of his will, which must be for the best. It is further argued that this view does not make God the author of evil in any damaging sense. Neither does it impugn my freedom. God’s creative activity does not put in place any secondary causes that determine my decision; and his will does not stand as an independent determining condition either, since it is fully expressed in my decision alone

This book offers an extended argument that the existence of contingent things is grounded in and hence accounted for by a paradigm existent, which is none other than existence itself—in effect, the ipsum esse subsistens of traditional philosophical theology. Much of the focus is on the nature of contingent existence, which the author contends is a genuine determination of real individuals, though not a property in the usual sense. This implies rejection of a number of other accounts of individual existence, which are refuted in detail in the first five chapters. Chapter 2 argues that existence is not a first-level property of things that have it; in particular, it is not a property that divides a realm of Meinongian objects into those that exist and those that do not. Chapter 3 is directed against theories according to which an entity and its existence are one and the same. These are rejected on the ground that they must either misrepresent contingent things as necessarily existing or deny that contingent existence is anything at all, which violates our intuition that to say a contingent thing exists is to attribute something to it, even if not an ordinary property. Chapter 4 is dedicated to showing that contingent existence is not a second-order property—that is, a property of properties. General statements of existence may perhaps be understood as second-order statements about what properties are instantiated. Singular claims, however, cannot be understood in this way; for to treat a statement like “Socrates exists” as second order commits us in the end to haecceities, which the author rejects, as either violating the distinction between abstract and the particular, or committing us in turn to the identity of indiscernibles, which faces powerful objections. Finally, the view that individual existence is a matter of being contained by some relevant domain is rejected in chapter 5 because, among other reasons, it leads to the manifestly false result that the maximum world, which contains all other existents, does not itself exist.