Emanuel Kant proposed an ethical theory dubbed "The Categorical Imperative".
This theory suggests that an action is moral if and only if you would want the personal rule that led you to preform this act to become universal to all humans.
1785
The international law states that it is legal to kill any enemy soldier regardless of function or rank.
Even if that soldier is not a combatant or is on leave. Killing civilians is forbidden even if they are actively involve in the military effort.
2010
Peter Van Inwagen.
Presented a famous challenge to free will. If we assume that evrything has a cause (that is, we accept Determinism), it means our current actions also has causes in the past - and these causes has other causes that occurred prior to them. We can easily see that this goes ad nauseam until we reach causes which occured before we were born. This means that our current actions are dictated by factors beyond our control, meaning we have no free will to act.
1975
John Mackie.
Tried to define causation in terms of sufficient and necessary conditions, but he tried to do so without appealing to complex metaphysical entities (such as Lewsi's possible worlds).
To do so, Mackie introduced the term "INUS Conditions". Event A is a cause of Event B if A is an INUS condition for B: A is an "Insufficient yet Necessary" condition for some other "Unnecessary yet Sufficient" condition for B.
In simpler words: If A was a necessary part of another event C (C could not occur without A), and C is sufficient to bring upon B (C is enough to bring upon B, but B could occur in other ways as well), then A is a cause of B.
1965
David Lewis.
Was a prominent analytic philosopher. One of his most influential ideas revolved around the concept of possible worlds.
Lewis believed there is an infinite number of possible worlds, each different from our own to different degrees. An important feature of these possible worlds is that we can compare them based on their relative distance from our real world.
This feature was the basis for many of Lewis's theories - for example, Lewis believed that event A is a cause of event B if and only if, in the closest possible world where A didn't occur, B didn't occur either.
1986
Determinism.
Is a philosophical view according to which evrything has a reason. More precisely, Determinism is commited to two propositions, as phrased by Peter Van Inwagen:
1. For any moment in time, we can write a list of facts that describe precisely that moment and only it.
2. If A is a proposition that describes one moment in time, and L is the propostion that describes the laws of nature, A and L together entail all other descriptions of points in time.
#1 tells us that each moment in time is different and can be described. #2 tells us that if we know everything about one point in time and all the laws of nature, we can deduce what happened before and after that point.
1975
John Stuart Mill.
advocated strongly for the preserving of individual rights and called for limitations to the power and authority of the state over the indiv
2016
