Avoiding whinges from various and potentially conflicting stakeholders is a major challenge for sustainable development and for the identification of sustainability scenarios or policies for biodiversity and ecosystem services. It turns out that independently complying with whinge thresholds and constraints of these stakeholders is not sufficient because dynamic ecological-economic interactions and uncertainties occur. Thus more demanding no whinge standards are needed. In this paper, we first argue that these new boundaries can be endogenously exhibited with the mathematical concepts of viability (...) kernel and viable controls. Second, it is shown how these no whinge kernels have components, such as harvesting of resources, that should remain within safe corridor while some other components, in particular biodiversity, have only lower conservation limits. Thus, using radar charts, we show how this no whinge kernels can take the shape of a tree that we name viability tree. These trees of viability capture the idea that the unbounded renewal potential of biodiversity combined with a bounded use of the different ecosystem services are crucial ingredients for the sustainability of socio-ecosystems and the design of no whinge policies reconciling the different stakeholders involved. (shrink)

The present paper discusses the claim that value-free science is impossible. After applauding the observation of Colombo et al. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7: 743–763, that this is at least to a considerable extent a psychological question, and should therefore be studied using the methods of psychological science, the studies performed by these authors were examined and unfortunately found seriously wanting in various respects. Beyond the merits or demerits of that particular piece of work, the discussion lead to a (...) conclusion likely relevant to the entire discussion about the alleged impossibility of value-free science: Showing the impossibility of value-free science would entail at least a) defining what the term science is intended to cover, b) providing high level evidence that few if any scientists in the relevant area are immune to non-epistemic influences, c) that these influences meaningfully bias the results of science, d) that there is no way to correct for these influences, and e) explain why – unlike epistemic appraisal in science – the epistemic appraisal of this argument can be trusted. (shrink)

The present paper discusses the claim that value-free science is impossible. After applauding the observation of Colombo et al. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7: 743–763, that this is at least to a considerable extent a psychological question, and should therefore be studied using the methods of psychological science, the studies performed by these authors were examined and unfortunately found seriously wanting in various respects. Beyond the merits or demerits of that particular piece of work, the discussion lead to a (...) conclusion likely relevant to the entire discussion about the alleged impossibility of value-free science: Showing the impossibility of value-free science would entail at least a) defining what the term science is intended to cover, b) providing high level evidence that few if any scientists in the relevant area are immune to non-epistemic influences, c) that these influences meaningfully bias the results of science, d) that there is no way to correct for these influences, and e) explain why – unlike epistemic appraisal in science – the epistemic appraisal of this argument can be trusted. (shrink)

During the past fifty years, a dispute over the nature of historical discourse has taken place with the narrativist approach, arguing for the dominance of narration in history, on the one hand, and professional historians defending historiography's will to tell the truth, on the other. Paul Ricoeur entered the discussion with his work Time and Narrative where he offered an inventive response. According to him, both narration and scientific explication are essential to historical discourse. To support his statement, he introduces (...) terms such as ‘a third time,‘ ‘a quasi-narration’ or ‘a historical consciousness.’ Thus, he shifts attention from narration to time. These terms can prove their usefulness when interpreting historical works. In the rest of the article, we aim to carry out such an interpretation on the example of Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama. In a Ricœurian perspective, Schama's book reveals its deep time significance. (shrink)

La controverse et le débat sur la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl et l’ontologie fondamentale de Heidegger sont devenus un thème central des révisions philosophiques, en grande partie et d’abord grâce aux efforts de philosophes tels que Ludwig Landgrebe, Eugen Fink et Roman Ingarden. Jan Patočka, lui aussi, a apporté une contribution importante au débat, qui n’est malheureusement pas toujours reconnue. Il présente une analyse fondamentale de la phénoménologie asubjective selon laquelle les philosophies de Husserl et de Heidegger n’ont pas entièrement (...) réussi à surmonter le cartésianisme et selon laquelle ces dernières n’ont pas donné les mêmes réponses à la question du fondement dernier de l’apparition de l’apparaissant. L’auteur de cet essai examine leurs contradictions de manière assez détaillée. Plus précisément, il vise à démontrer l’importance des critiques de Patočka pour comprendre sa doctrine non cartésienne de la phénoménologie asubjective, qui s’est en fait formée en opposition aux apparentes insuffisances tant de Husserl que de Heidegger. Le lecteur peut maintenant voir en détail comment Patočka lui-même cherche à y remédier dans sa pensée ultérieure et comment on peut échapper au péril du subjectivisme. Avec ces considérations en arrière-plan, cet exposé présente la phénoménologie asubjective comme une méthodologie philosophique viable et pertinente. (shrink)

Studie over de leer van de Duitse filosoof (1804-1872).

Qu'Éclane soit le siège de l'évêché de Julien est un fait bien établi. Mais quelle était sa patrie d'origine? Cet article résume un certain nombre de suggestions faites au cours des derniers siècles et jette un oeil neuf sur les sources. Prenant en considération aussi bien le domaine des textes que ceux de l'histoire, de la géographie ou de l'ethnologie, l'auteur arrive à la conclusion qu'Éclane fut non seulement le siège de l'évêché de Julien mais également son lieu de naissance.

Cet article présente une vue d'ensemble de l'histoire de la recherche sur la structure et le sujet de «De vera religione», ainsi que de nouvelles suggestions.

Since its development about 15 years ago, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become the leading research tool for mapping brain activity. The technique works by detecting the levels of oxygen in the blood, point by point, throughout the brain. In other words, it relies on a surrogate signal, resulting from changes in oxygenation, blood volume and flow, and does not directly measure neural activity. Although a relationship between changes in brain activity and blood flow has long been speculated, indirectly (...) examined and suggested and surely anticipated and expected, the neural basis of the fMRI signal was only recently demonstrated directly in experiments using combined imaging and intracortical recordings. In the present paper, we discuss the results obtained from such combined experiments. We also discuss our current knowledge of the extracellularly measured signals of the neural processes that they represent and of the structural and functional neurovascular coupling, which links such processes with the hemodynamic changes that offer the surrogate signal that we use to map brain activity. We conclude by considering applications of invasive MRI, including injections of paramagnetic tracers for the study of connectivity in the living animal and simultaneous imaging and electrical microstimulation. D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

It is well known that Maimonides rejects the Kalam argument for the existence of God because it assumes the temporal creation of the world, a premise for which he says there is no “cogent demonstration (burhan qat'i) except among those who do not know the difference between demonstration, dialectics, and sophistic argument.”Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), I:71:180. All references are to this translation; parenthetic in-text references are to part, chapter, (...) and page. By contrast, he claims to establish belief in the existence of God “through a demonstrative method as to which there is no disagreement in any respect” (I:71:182). Taken at his word, Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of the deity, like Aquinas’s five ways, have traditionally been read as models of medieval natural theology: of the power of human reason to independently establish revealed truth. In recent years, however, the same demonstrations have assumed a second kind of significance. For scholars, like myself, who argue that Maimonides holds severe views about the limitations of human knowledge of divine science and metaphysics, these demonstrations are the strongest conceivable counterevidence.The locus classicus for this view is Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I Twersky, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), I:82–109. See also his “Les Limites de la Métaphysique selon Al-Farabi, ibn Bajja et Maimonide; Sources et Antitheses de ces Doctrines chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et Chez Themistius,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13 (1981): 211–25; “Dieu et L’Etre Selon Maimonide: Exégese d’Exode 3,14 et doctrine connexe,” in Celui qui est: Interprétations juives et chrétiennes d’Exode 3, 14, ed. A. de Libera et E. Zum Brunn (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf [Collection “Patrimoines”], 1986), 15–24; and “The Relation between Maimonides’ Halakhic and non-Halakhic Works,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed., S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987). Pines concludes, on the basis of the limitations of the intellect with respect to knowledge of metaphysics, that Maimonides, like Kant, gives priority to the practical over the theoretical. For arguments drawing different ‘skeptical’ conclusions, see my “Maimonides in the Skeptical Tradition,” ms.; “Maimonides on the Growth of Knowledge and the Limitations of the Intellect,” to appear in Tony Levy, ed., Maimonide: Traditions philosophiques et scientifiques médievales arabe, hébraique, latine; “Logical Syntax as a Key to a Secret of the Guide of the Perplexed,” (in Heb.), Iyyun 38 (1989): 137–66; “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed., H. Levine and R. Cohen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), pp. 173–226; and The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (forthcoming). If Maimonides really held that humans cannot apprehend metaphysical truths about the deity, how could he have demonstrated (or even thought he could demonstrate) the existence of God? If he does demonstrate it, then humans evidently do have knowledge of metaphysics. As one distinguished scholar has recently protested, it is nothing less than “perverse” to interpret Maimonides as “meaning that the existence of God is unknowable when he in fact prides himself on having demonstrated the existence of God in four different ways.”Herbert A. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–1993): 49–103, 86. See also Alfred L. Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson, and Allan Arkush (Amsterdam: Harwood Publishers, 1998), pp. 63–97, 70. (shrink)

L'érudition de Kilian McDonnell. o.s.b., un moine/prêtre bénédictin, a eu une grande influence sur le Pentecostalisme au niveau international et sur le renouveau charismatique dans les grandes Eglises grâce à l'attention anthropologique, psychologique et théologique que McDonnell apporte à sa recherche pentecostale, à sa direction dans le Dialogue International Classique Pentecostiste - Catholique-Romain, et à son rôle comme rédacteur de documents nationaux et internationaux. Il comprend les forces socio-culturelles à l'oeuvre dans le développement du Pentecostalisme, et contribua à déraciner une (...) image psychologique publique négative des Pentecostalistes. En théologie McDonnell fait justice à la densité christologique de la pneumatologie et en même temps insiste, en vertu d'une dynamique trinitaire, que l'Esprit n'est pas un partenaire mineur, mais égal au Fils, et aussi important que le Fils dans le plan de la rédemption. Par ses propositions trinitaires à la Société des Etudes Pentecostalistes il contribue à la réconciliation des Pentecostalistes Trinitaires et «de l'Unité», une division majeure dans le Pentecostalisme classique. Sa Confession des péchés de Mars 2000 apporte la guérison de vieilles blessures nécessaire pour le développement d'une compréhension oecuménique. Cette Confession des péchés peut marquer une phase nouvelle dans les rapports entre Pentecistalistes et catholiques. La force de McDonnell est essentiellement celle. (shrink)

“This is a book about politics.” (XV) Bereits der erste Satz des Vorwortes gibt die Zielrichtung vor. Der an der University of California in Santa Barbara lehrende Althistoriker Harold A. Drake (D.) hat es sich auf mehr als 600 Seiten – der Verfasser spricht bescheiden von “a sketch” (XVII) – zum Ziel gesetzt, die facettenreiche Gestalt des spätantiken römischen Kaisers Konstantin (306–337) und seine Religionspolitik primär aus der Perspektive des begabten, auf einen umfassenden gesellschaftlichen Konsens hinarbeitenden Politikers zu beschreiben.

This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry -- explanation, phenomenology, and nosology -- and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis. An introduction by Kenneth S. Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation, from the difficulties in describing complex behavior to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section, contributors discuss experience, including the complex and vexing issue of how self-agency and (...) free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book's contributors. Contributors: John Campbell, Ph.D.; Thomas Fuchs, M.D., Ph.D.; Shaun Gallagher, Ph.D.; Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D.; Sandra D. Mitchell, Ph.D.; Dominic P. Murphy, Ph.D.; Josef Parnas, M.D., Dr.Med.Sci.; Louis A. Sass, Ph.D.; Kenneth F. Schaffner, M.D., Ph.D.; James F. Woodward, Ph.D.; Peter Zachar, Ph.D. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconsider Barthes’s theory of textuality, as presented in his The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes’s approach is based on the rejection of the “referential” or “realistic” theories of literary text: the Barthesian pleasure is drawn from the texture of the text itself rather that from its alleged referential character. In this sense, the author’s suggestion is to return to the notion of representation rejected by Barthes, even though this representation should not be identical (...) with the reference in the classical sense of the word. The notion of “weak representation”, suggested by the author, does not mean a return to a naïve conception of realism. It rather implies that the referent would be a fantasmatic rather than “realistic” entity. The notions of representation and reference are exemplified by the interpretation of Richardson’s Clarissa and Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles. (shrink)

L'article thématise la tension entre la compréhension d'une « Écriture sainte » et une philosophie critique « éclairée » dont la position est, au premier chef, représentée par Kant. Pour lui, l' interprétation de l' Écriture obéit uniquement au strict paradigme herméneutique. Il part du fait que l'homme, un être qui n'est pas purement rationnel, mais qui est simultanément raisonnable et soumis aux sens, est moralement obligé de saisir positivement les commandements éthiques fondés dans la raison comme des commandements divins. (...) Pour ce faire, il est « au mieux » préférable d'avoir une Écriture « sainte ». Son caractère « sacré » signifie que son texte reste, face à toute interprétation par une raison finie, ouvert à d'autres interprétations de sorte qu'aucune ne peut se dire définitive. Cela vaut tout particulièrement pour certains passages de l' Écriture qui sont difficiles voire impossibles à comprendre dans l'esprit et l'horizon d'une époque donnée. L'épisode de la tour de Babel et celui du bon Samaritain servent ici d'exemples. Der Aufsatz hat die Spannung zwischen einer kritischen, « aufgeklärten » Philosophie und dem Verstehen einer « Heiligen Schrift » zum Thema. Für die Position kritischen Philosophie steht in erster Linie die Philosophie Kants. Für ihn ist die Schriftauslegung immer noch das hermeneutischen Paradigma schlechthin. Er geht davon aus, daß der Mensch, als ein Wesen, das nicht rein vernünftig, sondern als Vernunftwesen zugleich Sinnenwesen ist, moralisch verpflichtet sei, die in reiner Vernunft begründeten Gebote der Moral positiv als göttliche Gebote aufzufassen. Dazu habe man « am besten » eine « heilige » Schrift. Ihre « Heiligkeit » bedeutet, daβ ihr Text gegenüber jeder Auslegung durch endliche Vernunft stehenbleibt für andere Auslegungen, so daβ keine Interpretation sich als endgültig verstehen kann. Das gilt besonders für Passagen der Schrift, die aus dem Geist und dem Horizont einer bestimmten Zeit schwer oder gar nicht zu verstehen sind. Als Beispiele dienen vor allem die Schriftstellen vom Turmbau zu Babel und vom barmherzigen Samariter. (shrink)

T. 1. Der Wirklichkeitsbegriff.--T. 2. Die Religion: Kierkegaard gegen Marx.--T. 3. Die Konsequenzen aus der Marx-Kierkegaard-Parallele.

Les conciles, qui font partie de la vie de l’Eglise depuis les temps les plus anciens, sont fortement marqués par leur contexte culturel respectif, de sorte que l’institution a subi, au fil des siècles, nombre de changements extérieurs. Malgré cela, une même essence est reconnaissable. Ainsi, pour tous les conciles, il s’agit d’établir et de constater un consensus tant en matière de discipline ecclésiastique que dans les questions de foi. C’est en ce sens que les anciens conciles entendaient être le (...) lieu d’émergence d’un double consensus, horizontal et vertical. Malgré les aléas de l’histoire, qui malmenèrent souvent cet idéal consensuel, les conciles veulent avoir en commun avec l’Eglise leur caractère à la fois divin et humain.Councils, which have been part of the Church’s life since the earliest times, have been strongly marked by their respective cultural contexts, which has resulted in a number of exterior changes in the institution over the centuries. In spite of this, the same essence is recognizable. Thus, the point for all the councils has been to establish and state a consensus concerning ecclesiastical discipline, as well as questions of faith. It is in this sense that the early councils were understood as being the place where a twofold consensus – horizontal and vertical – would emerge. Despite the accidents of history, which often made it difficult to achieve this consensual ideal, the councils have sought to share with the Church their divine and human character. (shrink)

The ARXMLIV corpus is a remarkable collection of text containing scientific mathematical discourse. With more than half a million documents, it is an ambitious target for large scale linguistic and semantic analysis, requiring a generalized and distributed approach. In this paper we implement an architecture which solves and automates the issues of knowledge representation and knowledge management, providing an abstraction layer for distributed development of semantic analysis tools. Furthermore, we enable document interaction and visualization and present current implementations of semantic (...) tools and follow-up applications using this architecture. We identify five different stages, or purposes, which such architecture needs to address, encapsulating each in an independent module. These stages are determined by the different properties of the document formats used, as well as the state of processing and linguistic enrichment introduced so far. We discuss the need of migration between XML representations and the challenges it would pose on our system, revealing the benefits and trade-off of each format we employ. In the heart of the architecture lies the Semantic Blackboard module. The Semantic Blackboard comprises a system based on a centralized RDF database which can facilitate distributed corpus analysis of arbitrary applications, or analysis modules. This is achieved by providing a document abstraction layer and a mechanism for storing, reusing and communicating results via RDF stand-off annotations deposited in the central database. Achieving a properly encapsulated and automated pipeline from the input corpus document to a semantically enriched output in a state-of-the-art representation is the task of the Preprocessing, Semantic Result and Output Generation modules. Each of them addresses the task of format migration and enhances the document for further semantic enrichment or aggregation. The fifth module, targeting Visualization and Feedback, enables user interaction and display of different stages of processing.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 178-181 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus. Edited by Perry Schmidt-Leukel with Gerhard Koberlin and Thomas Josef Gotz, OSB. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2001. 179 pp. The papers collected here represent a significant step forward in European scholarship on Buddhist-Christian relations. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel remarks in his helpful introduction, they are an experiment in correlating auto-interpretation and hetero-interpretation, introspection and extrospection.Each of the (...) first three sections—on China/Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe—begins with a historical study. Iso Kern clears up some misconceptions about the Jesuits' approach to mission work in China, stating that they did in fact preach Jesus crucified (37) and the doctrine of Atonement (41) in the face of a grave danger that Christianity would simply be absorbed into Buddhism (33). Whereas Buddhism had no specifically religious clash with the state, Christianity did, and this was eventually sealed by martyrdom in both China and Japan. Introducing part 2, Heinz Murmel gives a sober reassessment of the vehement controversies between a certain segment of Buddhism and a certain type of Christianity in Ceylon. Only the high-caste highland nikayas were protected by the British (63); the more popular, rural Buddhists of the lowlands felt excluded and threatened and gave rise to what became known as "Protestant Buddhism." The "great debates" between bitterly anti-Christian monks and Protestant clergymen were not as important as the records may suggest, and even the fiery Anagarika Dharmapala later disclosed that he felt great devotion to Jesus. Finally, Frank Usarski reviews the heated debates between ill-informed Christians and overaggressive Buddhist converts such as Karl B. Seidenstucker as Buddhism established itself in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. The History of Religions school seemed to suggest that Christianity was culturally inferior to Buddhism, which was allegedly proved by Christian attitudes to [End Page 178] vegetarianism and the general anti-intellectualism of Christianity. Christianity was inauthentic, derivative, "Buddhism in Jewish garments" (120).Yet even Seidenstucker, the renegade Protestant, converted to Catholicism toward the end of his life.Each historical contribution is followed by an essay on the contemporary situation in the three regions, and these vary greatly in substance. Shizuteru Ueda offers a profound meditation on the significance of Keiji Nishitani for Buddhist approaches to Christianity. If Nietzsche posed the fundamental question of "life without why " (44-45), the thought of Meister Eckhart contains the answer (curiously, Ueda insists that this answer must be European, because Europe "determines the world" [47]). The "ground" on which we stand, interpreted as Nishida's "place (basho) of nothingness," is "ground-less." This is not nihilism but the overcoming of nihilism by nihilism, the shûnyatâ of shûnyatâ (46). Jesus as the Christ is the God/man and therefore the mediator, the absolute in history (53). He occupies the "place" (basho) of infinite openness, unconditioned ultimacy (55). He is thus unique, but not universal: the ultimate "for me" is not necessary "for the whole of mankind" (56). The actual encounter between Buddhist and Christian absolutes takes place in silence.Santikaro Bhikkhu, the friend and translator of Buddhadâsa Bhikkhu in the last eight years of his life, tells how his mentor gradually overcame his initial suspicion ofChristianity, perhaps because he was not confronted with colonial oppression as Dharmapala was in Ceylon. Distinguishing between "people language" and " dhamma language," he eventually arrived at a certain equivalence between the Christian God and Buddhist dhamma understood as a nonpersonal, nondual transcendent that is nevertheless not outside nature (85, 90). What Jesus the Teacher of Wisdom offers in the Sermon on the Mount, if practiced, is sufficient for salvation (93). In the perspective of dhamma language, however, the God of Christian convention is conditioned, and Jesus as Son of God cannot be unique. Though inconclusive and sometimes obscure because of Buddhadâsa's indifferent grasp of English, this is surely an astonishing journey for one who tried to understand each tradition, including his own, from the sources. It brought him fierce criticism from fellow Buddhists, however, who branded him a... (shrink)

We attempt to quantify and qualify the preferences of consumers for beef with a number of environmental and food quality attributes. Our goal is to evaluate the viability of a proposed food co-operative based in the Wood River watershed of southern Saskatchewan, Canada. The food co-operative was designed to provide a price premium to producers who adopted alternative management practices. In addition, the study evaluated the acceptance of a proposed food co-operative by consumer that had environmental interests as compared to (...) the general population. Conjoint analysis was used to determine the trade-off and relative value of beef with the following production and purchasing characteristics: (a) use of hormones, antibiotics and vaccination in production; (b) method of obtaining the beef including monthly or yearly purchase contracts or a local market; (c) price relative to beef purchased from the local grocery store; and (d) impact on the river ecosystem. Consumers from environmental groups had stronger environmental and food quality preferences than individuals from the general population. However, consumers from both groups expressed a willingness to pay higher prices for food that had these attributes. It was uncertain whether the magnitude of the premium, in combination with a desire not to enter a long-term purchasing commitment, would be large enough to encourage farmers to adopt the alternative management. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eighth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesSt. Ottilien, Germany, 11–15 June 2009John D’Arcy MayWith a higher proportion of Buddhist participants from Europe, Asia, and the United States than ever before, the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies at its 2009 conference in the Benedictine Archabbey of St. Ottilien near Munich addressed the question of authority, both spiritual and temporal, in the two traditions. There seems to have been (...) little comparative study of this topic, and there were many surprises as the speakers were confronted with aspects they had not been aware of in their own traditions and in those of others.The conference began with intercultural music that drew on Christian and Buddhist themes. After this, Brother Josef Götz spoke about the Benedictine Archabbey of St. Ottilien, stressing its longstanding and enriching participation in intermonastic dialogue. Elizabeth Harris, the incoming president of the network, then introduced the theme. She pointed to contemporary literature in English that represented the crisis in authority in the West and stressed that this was compounded by the awareness that some of those with power to enforce authority in the world did not possess legitimacy. She then raised a series of questions connected with the different forms of authority to be discussed at the conference—from the balance between external and internal authority to the struggle with institutional authority for equality between men and women. She hoped for three outcomes from the conference: that participants would be able to explore what their own tradition said about authority; that they would give wisdom to each other on the theme, Buddhist to Christian and Christian to Buddhist; and that all would reflect on how they represented themselves to the wider society, both to those searching for religious authority and those rejecting all authority.Following up this theme of a contemporary crisis of authority, Rita Gross said that Buddhists, in the spirit of the teaching on impermanence (P. anicca), need to take seriously the historicity of their different traditions in order to develop a nonsectarian history of Buddhism that acknowledges the authenticity of the foundational Buddhism [End Page 189] of the first four hundred years. The Kālāmasutta (AN.I.188 –193), one of the discourses in the Pāli canon, which was cited again and again in the course of the discussion, urges the Buddhist to assess the trustworthiness of teachers and their teaching, but criteria such as “what the wise would accept” or whether a text is accepted by the saṅgha (community) raise the problem of determining what constitutes wisdom and the authenticity of a text, as noted by Shenpen Hookham and Zhiru Shi. Rita Gross remarked on the irony that many Western Buddhists, despite their rationalistic education, abandon critical discernment and prefer myths to history. This is regrettable, as Western Buddhists have their own contributions to make to the further development of Buddhism.Kajsa Ahlstrand, referring to the World Values Survey, pointed to changing attitudes toward obedience, disobedience, and rebellion. Disobedience is now seen as praiseworthy, whereas obedience could be harmful to one’s mental health. Obedience in this “new key” emphasizes rights over duties. One can thus identify varieties of Christianity that are “hard” or “soft,” “strong” or “mild,” in various combinations, which she illustrated using different cheeses (thereby causing some puzzlement among the Asian participants!). We were left with the question whether there is an unchanging essence of eternal truth in either tradition, which is beyond historical change and sociological conditioning, and the realization that both obedience and disobedience can go terribly wrong. As Rita Gross concluded, it is our attachment that is the problem, not the things we are attached to.Spiritual authority is central to both Buddhism and Christianity, but it can take very different forms. Shenpen Hookham maintained that for Buddhists spiritual authority resides in enlightened people, whether monastic or lay, and is the result of realization rather than learning. The visible monastic saṅgha merely “represents” the ariyasaṅgha (noble community) of the truly enlightened (though this was later contested). The authority to teach derives directly from the teacher’s spiritual attainments or his or her status as the... (shrink)

This paper examines the Stanford typed dependencies representation, which was designed to provide a straightforward description of grammatical relations for any user who could benefit from automatic text understanding. For such purposes, we argue that dependency schemes must follow a simple design and provide semantically contentful information, as well as offer an automatic procedure to extract the relations. We consider the underlying design principles of the Stanford scheme from this perspective, and compare it to the GR and PARC representations. Finally, (...) we address the question of the suitability of the Stanford scheme for parser evaluation. (shrink)

A decade before his turn towards transcendental idealism Kant penned the substance of his critique of rational theology in the third section of "The Only Possible Basis of Proof for a Demonstration of God's Existence" in 1762. This fact itself warrants an investigation of the relation between this earlier work and the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Josef Schmucker, long a leading scholar of Kant's precritical writings, promises such a book as a sequel but the present (...) undertaking is a superb analysis of the first two sections of the Beweisgrund, after a brief consideration of Kant's Nova Dilucidatio of 1755. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)