The paper argues against the assumption that citizens of industrialized countries bear responsibility for greenhouse emissions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An array of arguments for such a historic responsibility is refuted. The crucial role of the assumption of a liability for bona fide misappropriation in a state of nature (Lockean strict liability) is pointed out.

Kant distinguishes sharply between a juridical and an ethical assessment of lies. For the latter, his Doctrine of Virtue establishes the immorality of maxims of lying. However, not all acts of lying have to result from maxims of lying. It will be shown that Kant’s conception of moral weakness extends to lies caused by fear. A morally weak person need not have an immoral character or lose her dignity. Therefore, the inhuman implications of Kant’s strict prohibition of lying can be (...) considerably mitigated if the possibility of fear-induced lies is taken into account. If a person follows the modern planner’s motto failure is not an option and excludes lies from her plans of action, she can satisfy the demands of Kant’s doctrine of virtue even if fear causes her to lie under some circumstances. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that there are certain basic structural similarities between modern decision theory and medieval approaches to decision making under conditions of incertitude. Modern decision theory as well as its medieval ancestor distinguish between two kinds of incertitude for which there are different decision rules. Modern decision theory distinguishes between risk and uncertainty, whereas in medieval decision theory, the balance or imbalance of a "scale of reasons" correspond to different kinds of incertitude. In the case of uncertainty (...) or a balance of reasons, both paradigms favor risk-avoidance, which is no coincidence since there is a demonstrable historical link between modern and medieval rules of risk-avoidance. (shrink)

Direct doxastic voluntarism claims that human beings can voluntarily decide what to believe in exactly the same way as they decide to raise an arm. Aquinas is often regarded as a proponent of this doctrine, which is widely rejected by modern philosophers. Modern defenders of Aquinas try to show that he in fact accepted a less problematic indirect doxastic voluntarism. However, some early modern scholastics ascribed more than an indirect doxastic voluntarism to Aquinas. The present article discusses these scholastic interpretations (...) and argues that Aquinas held a direct voluntarism of passing or suspending judgment on probable propositions in addition to an indirect doxastic voluntarism. None of these voluntarisms amount to a form of direct doxastic voluntarism in the modern sense. (shrink)