The defence of ethical universalism can be grounded in assertion that discussion, if it is to be meaningful, assumes the validity of some minimal agreement in principles. If, however, it is a fundamental fact that the participators in the discussion of ethical questions are (at least potentially) all people, then the principles of that discussion will have universal validity. Hume’s Law, which in this study is examined in detail and precisely formulated, does not allow us to seek a generally valid basis for ethical discussion exclusively in the domain of factual assumptions. This means that the universal validity of some basic evaluative ethical principles must be recognised.
Partial compatibilism says that there are basically two kinds of freedom of the will: some free volitions cannot be determined, while others can. My methodological choice is to examine what as- sumptions will appear necessary if we want to take seriously—and make understandable—our ordinary moral life. Sometimes, typically when we feel guilty about a choice of ours, we are sure enough that we, at the considered moment, actually could have taken a different option. At other times, however, typically when we are aware of some unquestionable moral reasons for a certain choice, we may perceive our choice as voluntary and free in spite of the fact that it is, in the given situation, unthinkable for us to choose otherwise than we actually do (there are situations when responsible agents, because of their strong moral reasons/motives, cannot choose differently). The assumption that experiences of the first kind are not always mistaken excludes our world being deterministic. Yet free will and determinism go together in some of those possible worlds which contain only the second kind of free volitions. Partial compatibilism represents a ‘third way’ between standard compatibilism and incompatibilism, a way to solve that old dilemma.
The aim of this article is the modernisation of the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of mind by a comparison with the contemporary concept of mind. The mind has typically been conceived, in the philosophy of mind, as an area of private or „inner“ experience. In contrast to this the Aristotelian concept of the soul is the principle of life and the substantial form of the body. Soul is therefore a more complex term than „mind“: it includes all the vital powers (vegetative, sensory and rational). In debate with stronger and weaker theories of psycho-physical identity, the rational knowledge of universals, which are non-spatial objects, and which cannot therefore be detected by a material organ, can be used to support arguments in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. Rational knowledge is non-bodily, although reason requires the co-functioning of the so-called inner senses (for example, of the imagination). The inner senses, unlike reason, know only particulars and have a bodily organ: the brain. Interactions between reason and the body are a problem for the Cartesian dualist, but in the framework of the conception of the soul as a form of the body they can be explained.