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Identity arguments for the existence of god offer an intriguing blend of conceptual and existential claims. As it happens, this sort of blend has been probed for more than a century in metaethics, ever since G.E. Moore formulated the Open Question Argument (OQA) against metaethical naturalism. Moore envisaged naturalism as offering identity claims between good and natural properties. His central worry was that such identity claims should render certain questions closed and hence meaningless. However, he contended that speakers competent with the respective concepts would find these questions meaningful, thereby indicating the failure of the identity claim in question, and of all such identity claims. The history of this issue in metaethics provides an important perspective on the prospects of devising cogent, rhetorically successful versions of identity arguments for the existence of god. Both the conceptual and existential premises of such arguments involve conceptual nuances that metaethicists have studied. Overall, the history of the OQA provides reason to think that rationally compelling versions of identity arguments for the existence of god are very unlikely to be constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March and September of 1711, in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland's last witch trials took place. Eighteen-year-old educated gentlewoman Mary Dunbar accused eight Presbyterian women and one man from Islandmagee and the surrounding areas of using witchcraft to attack her in spectral or spirit form and to summon demons to possess her body. The women were tried on 31 March 1711 at the Spring Session of Carrickfergus County Assize Court. Despite pleading not guilty, they were convicted under the 1586 Irish Witchcraft Act and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and four stints in the pillory. Unlike most demonically-possessed persons, the incarceration of the convicted witches did not improve Dunbar's health. Dunbar now claimed that William Sellor, husband and father to two of the convicted women, had begun bewitching her. William was convicted of witchcraft at the Summer Assizes in September 1711. Mary Dunbar however had died a few weeks earlier, just after the first trial, turning William's original offence into a capital crime for which he was probably executed: he was thus one of a possible two people executed in Ireland under a witchcraft Act. The story of the trial is told in Andrew Sneddon's book Possessed by the Devil: The Real History of The Islandmagee Witches and Ireland's Only Mass Witchcraft Trial (History Press, 2013). Along with Victoria McCollum, Sneddon now heads the Islandmagee Witches 1711 Project (w1711.org). The following discussion outlines the origins, aims and outputs of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton formulate two objections to moral sensibility theories in their overview of twentieth-century moral theory, 'Toward Fin de siecle Ethics: Some Trends.' Instead of using the work of sensibility theorists John McDowell and David Wiggins to address these objections, I turn to H. A. Prichard and P. F. Strawson. The reason fur doing so is that the objections misunderstand the importance of the idea of the autonomy of the moral domain. Prichard and Strawson have provided important defenses of this idea that are independent of moral sensibility theories. Hence their work provides independent grounds for answering the two objections. Particularly important is the loosely a posteriori way they make their arguments.

Wayne Fenske's attempted defense of non-cognitivist moral philosophy is discussed. Topics include a posteriori internalism and externalism, the intuitions of moral practitioners, and the implication of empirical work.

Two forms of causalism are discussed, a restricted form and a broader causal theory of action. Donald Davidson's 'Actions, Reasons, and Causes' supports only the restricted version, while the broader approach, though more prevalent, is flawed.