This article is about Islamism as a challenge for contemporary liberal democracies. Islamism is portrayed as an ideology that favors one specific religion as supreme and that is a threat to freedom of speech. The author makes a plea for distinguishing a. the religion of Islam, b. Muslims as a group, and c. the political ideology of Islamism. Regarding the dangers of Islamism, some sociological research about the convictions of Muslims is discussed and the most recent case from the European (...) Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg—E.S. v. Austria —is analysed, which renders all criticism of Islam and Islamism difficult, if not impossible. (shrink)

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

_The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism_ shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech.

A widespread complaint about humanism is that it is ‘too optimistic’. It is a nice and open attitude towards life but as a philosophy it cannot be taken seriously. This chapter shows that although people pay lip service to religion as the foundation of morals, in fact it is morals that are increasingly seen as the basis of religion. There is a strange psychological process at work: on the one hand people repeatedly state that morals are in need of a (...) religious foundation and in particular that our moral culture is deeply rooted in Christianity but on the other hand religion is increasingly interpreted according to moral standards. Many people who are de facto following autonomous or non‐religious ethics proclaim to derive ‘inspiration’ from religion or be following the dictates of religion. Contemporary morals are much less theologically driven or religiously founded than many people proclaim. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Alpha Privative Atheism and Liberal Concepts of God Atheism as an Unpopular Position A Definition of Atheism Motives for Atheism Atheist Values Spiritual Excellences and the Liberal Decalogue Agnosticism The History of Agnosticism Huxley and Russell Pascal's Wager Pascal's Insight Atheism or Non‐Theism?

This chapter contains sections titled: Mill on Liberty Khomeini v. Rushdie Fukuyama Giving Up on the Arab World The Limits of Free Speech The Deontological and Utilitarian Justifications for Free Speech Clifford on the Duty to Critique Freedom of Speech and Philosophers on the Index Intolerance not Restricted to Islam Giniewski v. France Freethought under Fire People Are not Being Insulted for Having a Religion Racism without Race Social Criticism not Identical with the Urge to Provoke Flemming Rose on Why (...) He Published the Danish Cartoons The Theory of Evolution: Too Controversial to Defend? Is There Another Way to Discover the Truth than by Free Discussion? (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments.

This chapter contains sections titled: Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles' Creed “Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe?” What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism Divine Command Theories Abraham and Isaac The Story of Abraham in the Qur'an The Story of Jephtha Adherents of Divine Command Theory Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics Kierkegaard and Mill Kohlberg and Moral Education Religious and Secular Ethics Worship Kant's Struggle with Moral Autonomy (...) and Free Speech Kant's Legacy in Nineteenth‐Century German Theology Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics Armstrong's Plea for Liberal Interpretation A New Way to Look at the “Sacredness” of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books Violating the Integrity of the Text Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam “Secularization‐Resistant”? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “Écrasez l'Infâme” Religion and Evil Religious Violence Father and Daughter How to Discover a Relationship between Religion and Violence Ramadan v. Hirsi Ali Religion “per se” Textual Relativism Can Translation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Can Interpretation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Why Are “Moderates” so Reluctant to Criticize Religion? The Bible on Apostasy Biblical Terrorism: The Story of Phinehas Biblical Violence and Modern Legal Practice The Book of History Some Objections.

The author distinguishes between two types of criticism of Islamism: ‘liberal Islam’ and ‘secular Islam’. The meaning and consequences of this difference in approach is analyzed with reference to the work of Chadortt Djavann, Irshad Manji, Mina Ahadi and Taslima Nasreen. The difference of approach is especially relevant in the way one looks at ‘interpretation’. This will be illustrated by analyzing a discussion between Tariq Ramadan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

This article is about the religious roots of violence, in particular religious terrorism. The author argues that there is a great reluctance to study this relationship. This is unfortunate because only on the basis of a realistic estimate of the facts can a successful counterterrorist strategy be developed. One of the problems with religious violence is that holy scriptures, in some passages, exhort believers to violent acts. In combination with a theory of ethics that is known as “divine command morality” (...) this is problematic. Even if the holy book contains only a small percentage of passages invoking violence they pose a problem if the whole book is considered to be holy and the word of God. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay, some of the strategies atheists use to claim undeserved privileges for their position are analyzed. In particular, the connection between evidentialism and the idea that atheism is the natural starting position (“presumption of atheism”, Anthony Flew) is discussed. In addition, the extent to which the elimination of agnosticism as the third option between theism and atheism contributes to the discursive privilege of atheism is examined (with Paul Cliteur). In the second part, (...) evidentialism is reconstructed as a context-dependent theory of justification and the (A) theism problem is situated in the context of action instead of the context of knowledge. This avoids one-sided distribution of the burden of justification, especially the atheistic attempt to to burden the theist with the full burden of justification and at the same time to free the atheist from all burdens of justification. In this way, the discourse on the (a) theism problem can be reconstructed without assigning undeserved privileges. (shrink)

Wat is een weerbare democratie? Hoe gaan we om met krachten die zich niet aan de regels van onze rechtsstaat houden? 00Steeds meer politieke partijen stellen ongrondwettelijke maatregelen voor, radicale groeperingen trachten door terreur anderen hun wil op te leggen, buitenlandse regimes pogen in onze democratie te interveniëren en lidstaten van de EU nemen wetten aan die de democratie allesbehalve bevorderen. 'De strijd om de democratie' behandelt in het licht van deze ontwikkelingen het vraagstuk van de 'weerbare democratie'. In hoeverre (...) zijn ondemocratische maatregelen geoorloofd om de democratie te beschermen? In deze actuele bundel laten vooraanstaande denkers als Afshin Ellian, Bastiaan Rijpkema, Paul Cliteur, Gelijn Molier en Dirk Verhofstadt hun licht schijnen over deze meer dan urgente vraag. (shrink)

How can people live together peacefully, especially in a multicultural, multi-religious society? We should find a minimum level of consensus which is needed to live peacefully together in an open society and a moral language to communicate with each other. Dutch philosopher Paul Cliteur published his book Moral Esperanto in 2007 in which he argues that it is important that people can communicate with each other in a moral and political language which is in principle understandable to everybody; (...) in contrast with religious discourse which only makes sense to believers. Cliteur makes the analogy of Esperanto, the artificial language proposed to be the lingua franca, and emphasizes the need for a universal moral language. (shrink)

Het Leids-Haags Allegorieënlexicon toont nieuwe perspectieven op de maatschappelijke werkelijkheid met een actuele duiding van vijftig kernthema’s uit de wetenschap. De auteurs zijn de duale promovendi en hun promotores van Leiden University Dual PhD Centre The Hague. Ze worden daarbij geïnspireerd door de metafoor van de grot van Plato: Waar ben ik? Waar sta ik? Welk beeld zie ik? Hoe kan ik dat begrijpen? Er ontstaan beeldende voorstellingen van begrippen waarin op zoek wordt gegaan naar de centrale gedachten die ten (...) grondslag liggen aan die begrippen. Zo wordt de veranderende wereld waargenomen met het besef dat we nooit kunnen weten of we de gehele werkelijkheid kunnen zien of begrijpen. De waarneming is afhankelijk van de zichtpositie die de waarnemer inneemt. Zo ontstaan verbeeldingen van waarnemingen van ons menselijk bestaan. Zoals: assimilatie, creativiteit, gender, kunstenaarschap, magistraat, participatie, regels, tragedie en verzorgingsstaat. Eerst wordt actuele literatuur besproken. Daarna volgt discussie. Tenslotte neemt de auteur positie in. Met bijdragen van promotores Wilfried Admiraal, Ingrid van Biezen, Hans Borgman, Paul Cliteur, Jaap van den Herik, Rikki Holtmaat, Willem Otterspeer, Jos Raadschelders, Robert Tijssen, Wim Willems en promovendi. (shrink)

John Rawls wordt algemeen beschouwd als een van de meest invloedrijke filosofen van de voorbije eeuw. In zijn befaamde boek 'A Theory of Justice' uit 1971 staat het principe van de rechtvaardigheid centraal dat hij beschouwt als de belangrijkste maatschappelijke waarde in de samenleving. Mensen zijn fundamenteel gelijkwaardig. Daarom is het voor Rawls evident dat een ethisch systeem zich richt tot iedereen. Natuurlijk beseft hij dat mensen niet gelijk zijn of beter gezegd, niet over dezelfde begaafdheden beschikken noch over dezelfde (...) startposities. Waar het bij hem op aan komt is de onvrijwillige achterstanden, dus achterstanden die niet gebaseerd zijn op vrijwillige keuze, weg te werken. De denktank Liberales organiseerde tussen 2012 en 2016 vijf John Rawlslezingen. Ze werden gehouden door schrijver en oud-politicus Jan Terlouw, en de hoogleraren Frank Vandenbroucke, Paul Cliteur, Philippe Van Parijs en Patrick Loobuyck. De inleidingen werden gegeven door de Liberales-kernleden Daniël Boomsma, Claude Nijs, Kasper Ossenblok, Andreas Tirez en Dirk Verhofstadt. 0Het doel van deze lezingen was om het gedachtegoed van Rawls bekend te maken bij een breder publiek en te toetsen aan de hedendaagse politieke, sociaaleconomische en maatschappelijke omstandigheden. In dit boek zijn de John Rawlslezingen en de inleidingen gebundeld. (shrink)

Is the history of life a series of accidents or a drama scripted by selfish genes? Is there an “essential” human nature, determined at birth or in a distant evolutionary past? What should we conserve—species, ecosystems, or something else? -/- Informed answers to questions like these, critical to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, require both a knowledge of biology and a philosophical framework within which to make sense of its findings. In this accessible introduction to philosophy (...) of biology, Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths present both the science and the philosophical context necessary for a critical understanding of the most exciting debates shaping biology today. The authors, both of whom have published extensively in this field, describe the range of competing views—including their own—on these fascinating topics. -/- With its clear explanations of both biological and philosophical concepts, Sex and Death will appeal not only to undergraduates, but also to the many general readers eager to think critically about the science of life. (shrink)

Samuelson's text was first published in 1948, and it immediately became the authority for the principles of economics courses. The book continues to be the standard-bearer for principles courses, and this revision continues to be a clear, accurate, and interesting introduction to modern economics principles. Bill Nordhaus is now the primary author of this text, and he has revised the book to be as current and relevant as ever.

This book is relevant for anyone involved in the practice of psychology and the social sciences more broadly: researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners. It challenges the status quo with regards to the way that psychology is done, and it offers a unified solution that encompasses both theory and methodology.

In a town near mine, a small business owner used their changeable-letter sign to wage a public protest against a variety of restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike a great man...

This study investigated faculty attitudes towards student violations of academic integrity in Canada using a qualitative review of 17 universities’ academic integrity/dishonesty policies combined with a quantitative survey of faculty members’ (N = 412) attitudes and behaviours around academic integrity and dishonesty. Results showed that 53.1% of survey respondents see academic dishonesty as a worsening problem at their institutions. Generally, they believe their respective institutional policies are sound in principle but fail in application. Two of the major factors identified by (...) faculty as contributing to academic dishonesty are administrative. Many faculty members feel unsupported by their administration and are reluctant to formally report academic dishonesty due to the excessive burdens of dealing with paperwork and providing proof. Faculty members also cite unprepared students and international students who struggle with language issues and the Canadian academic context as major contributors to academic dishonesty. This study concludes with recommendations for educators and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Barrio, Tajer and Rosenblatt establish a correspondence between metainferences holding in the strict-tolerant logic of transparent truth ST+ and inferences holding in the logic of paradox LP+. They argue that LP+ is ST+’s external logic and they question whether ST+’s solution to the semantic paradoxes is fundamentally different from LP+’s. Here we establish that by parity of reasoning, ST+ can be related to LP+’s dual logic K3+. We clarify the distinction between internal and external logic and (...) argue that while ST+’s nonclassicality can be granted, its self-dual character does not tie it to LP+ more closely than to K3+. (shrink)

When the absence of an event causes some outcome, it is an instance of omissive causation. For instance, not eating lunch may cause you to be hungry. Recent psychological proposals concur that the mind represents causal relations, including omissive causal relations, through mental simulation, but they disagree on the form of that simulation. One theory states that people represent omissive causes as force vectors; another states that omissions are representations of contrasting counterfactual simulations; a third argues that people think about (...) omissions by representing sets of iconic possibilities – mental models – in a piecemeal fashion. In this paper, we tease apart the empirical predictions of the three theories and describe experiments that run counter to two of them. Experiments 1 and 2 show that reasoners can infer temporal relations from omissive causes – a pattern that contravenes the force theory. Experiment 3 asked participants to list the possibilities consistent with an omissive cause – it found that they tended to list particular privileged possibilities first, most often, and faster than alternative possibilities. The pattern is consistent with the model theory, but inconsistent with the contrast hypothesis. We marshal the evidence and explain why it helps to solve a long-standing debate about how the mind represents omissions. (shrink)

Ideas of love within religion are usually driven by one of two mythologies – either a personal God who commands love or a mystical God of ineffable love – but both are inadequate for motivating love of neighbour. The first tends towards legalism and the second offers no cognitive guidance. The situation is further complicated by there being different understandings of love of neighbour in the various Abrahamic religions, as exemplified in the approaches of two philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel (...) Levinas. A better approach is therefore to explore actual practices of love in everyday life, and to discover how love might be performed openly and creatively. One such practice is recognition of vulnerability, and this too is often driven by a mythology, in this case one marked by fear, and by a violence either imposed or avoided. One paradigmatic example is the vulnerability felt by speakers, especially women, in front of an audience. A turning from wilful ignorance of vulnerability and a turning to reliance on collective work, modelled on an awareness of mutual vulnerability and openness to the unknown, will help to change our philosophical and social imaginary. The dark myth of vulnerability can be transformed into finding opportunities in vulnerability for openness to affection and so to an enhancement of life. It is only from the perspective of this new imaginary, and from everyday practices of it, that the double love-command – love of God and love of neighbour – will function as any kind of common ground between religions. (shrink)

People frequently entertain counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about alternative ways the world could have been. But the perceived plausibility of those counterfactual thoughts varies widely. The current article interfaces research in the philosophy and semantics of counterfactual statements with the psychology of mental simulations, and it explores the role of perceived similarity in judgments of counterfactual plausibility. We report results from seven studies (N = 6405) jointly supporting three interconnected claims. First, the perceived plausibility of a counterfactual event is (...) predicted by the perceived similarity between the possible world in which the imagined situation is thought to occur and the actual world. Second, when people attend to differences between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as less similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as less plausible. Lastly, when people attend to what is identical between imagined possible worlds and the actual world, they think of the imagined possible worlds as more similar to the actual world and tend to judge counterfactuals in such worlds as more plausible. We discuss these results in light of philosophical, semantic, and psychological theories of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

This article is a contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship addressing the presumption of innocence, especially interdisciplinary conversations between philosophers and jurists. Terminological confusion and methodological traps and errors notoriously beset academic literature addressing the presumption of innocence and related concepts, such as evidentiary presumptions, and the burden and standard of proof in criminal trials. This article is diagnostic, in the sense that its primary objective is to highlight the assumptions—in particular, the disciplinary assumptions—implicit in influential contributions to debates on the presumption (...) of innocence. It advocates a methodologically pluralistic approach, according to which definitions of the presumption of innocence are necessarily sensitive to purpose and method. These relationships and their implications are not always appreciated, and are seldom explicitly elucidated. Notably, philosophers routinely treat the presumption of innocence as epistemic, evidentiary or otherwise featuring directly in practical reasoning. This article identifies jurisprudential and practical reasons why legal scholars and practitioners concerned with criminal procedure and evidence should reject evidentiary interpretations of the presumption of innocence. By encouraging finer-grained engagement with the history and institutional details of common law procedural traditions, the article aims to show why legal scholars might think that philosophical approaches to the presumption of innocence are already methodologically-loaded and, for our purposes, address the wrong questions with deficient concepts. (shrink)

In Principles of Non-Philosophy, Laruelle develops the concepts and method of a more democratic form of thought where neither science nor philosophy is subjected to one another, but brought together in a more productive theoretical and practical relationship. While the potential importance of this project is clear, Laruelle remains famously difficult. Anthony Paul Smith provides an introduction and guide to the text that situates you amongst the figures and concepts Laruelle engaged with, provides a foothold for your own understanding (...) and, more importantly, potential use of the project of non-philosophy. (shrink)

Computer programs are generating artworks of astonishing novelty and aesthetic value. By the standard definition of creativity, these programs would count as being creative. But if you still hesitate to call a program creative, that's for good reason, we argue. It's because real creativity requires AGENTS who are responsible for what they make, and it's not at all clear that these programs are agents. -/- (The title was imposed by the editor. It was supposed to be called, "ARE COMPUTERS CREATIVE?").

Goldin thus begins the book by asking the basic question "What are we reading?" while also considering why it has been so rarely asked. Yet far from denigrating Chinese philosophy, he argues that liberating these texts from the mythic idea that they are the product of a single great mind only improves our understanding and appreciation. By no means does a text require single and undisputed authorship to be meaningful; nor is historicism the only legitimate interpretive stance. The first chapter (...) takes up a hallmark of Chinese philosophy that demands a Western reader's cognizance: its preference for non-deductive argumentation. Chinese philosophy is an art he demonstrates, more than it is a rigorous logical method. Then comes the core of the book, eight chapters devoted to the eight philosophical texts divided into three parts: Philosophy of Heaven, Philosophy of the Way, and Two Titans at the End of an Age.. (shrink)

This essay considers the question of conversion unto repentance, as an act of cognition and volition, by the separated soul in the post‐mortem state. It primarily explicates and interrogates Thomas Aquinas's various attempts to rule out this possibility for the damned. Since Thomas's arguments for such impossibility feature his commitment to the radical immateriality of the human soul—and, like it, the angelic spirit—the essay highlights the ontological and moral tensions within that account. The case is thus made for the ontological, (...) logical, and moral inconsistencies of his position, in pursuit of a more holistic anthropology across the soul's various states and a more rationally and coherent eschatology—namely, an affirmation of the irreducible mutability of the created soul on its way towards likeness to God, perhaps, if not certainly, towards universal salvation. (shrink)