Religion is the most fundamental, comprehensive of all human activities. It tries to make sense out of not simply one or other aspect of human life, but of all aspects of human experience. At the core of every civilization lies its religion, which both reflects and shapes it. Thus, if we wish to understand human life in general and our specific culture and history, we need to understand religion. What is religion? As this comprehensive work shows, religion is an explanation (...) of the ultimate meaning of life and how to live accordingly, based on a notion of the Transcendent. Normally it contains the four "C's": Creed, Code, Cult, Community-structure. This volume looks at the ways we humans have developed to study religion. It also examines the new age in human consciousness that is now drawing. It also examines the new age in human consciousness that is now dawning: The Age of Global Dialogue, a radically new consciousness that shifts the ways we understand everything in life, including religion. This global dialogical way of understanding life does not lead to one global religion, but it does lead toward a consciously acknowledged common set of ethical principles, a Global Ethic. The book looks at these two movements -- the Age of Global Dialogue and inchoative Global Ethic -- in order to help readers understand what is going on around them, so they may make informed, intelligent decisions about the meaning of life and how to live it. (shrink)

Provides an important step in the emerging movement toward global dialogue and peace. It is the belief of the book's contributors that human culture has entered a new age of Global Dialogue in response to increased inter-penetration of the world's cultures. In our emerging global village, guidance is needed, for as we have painfully seen, our century is not only the century of world culture, it is also the century of world wars, world famines, and worldwide environmental destruction. In this (...) inspiring arid challenging book, Prof. Leonard Swidler presents the next stage in the Global Ethic Movement. For All Life includes Professor Swidler's draft of a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic, followed by responses from religious scholars representing Christian. Buddhist. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, African, Chinese, and Baha'i traditions. (shrink)

The Global Ethic is the set of basic principles of right and wrong which in fact are found in all the major, and not so major, religions and ethical systems of the world, past and present. It does not go beyond the existing commonalities. However, this de facto existing broad basic agreement on ethical principles, unfortunately, is largely unknown by most religious and ethical persons. If they were aware of this commonality, that would provide a broad basis for serious dialogue (...) and collaboration among the adherents of all the religions and ethical systems of the world. Lacking that awareness, far too often different religions and ethical systems foster destructive, rather than constructive, relations. Hence, it is vital to foster a conscious knowledge of the de facto existing Global Ethic. The Movement for a Global Ethic - drafting of a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic and promoting knowledge and practice - was launched in 1991. Where did the idea of a movement for a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic come from? New ideas, new movements, don't just appear out of thin air. When "integrating" forces pointing toward something "new" gradually gather below the conscious level, they slowly reach a critical point, and then suddenly a "new" idea will "precipitate," like the "quality of mercy, which droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath." Thus, it also happened with the Movement for a Global Ethic. In this book, Dr. Leonard Swidler and 11 colleagues propose their perspectives on the Global Ethic from the vantage points of various religions. (shrink)

Humans tend to group themselves in communities with similar understandings of the meaning of life and how to act accordingly. For the most part, in past history such large communities, called cultures or civilizations, have tended on the one hand to live unto themselves, and on the other to dominate and, if possible, absorb the other cultures they encountered. For example, Christendom, Islam, China.

In his article «A Vision for the Third Millennium, ‘The Age of Global Dialogue’: Dialogue or Death», Swidler attempts to show that humankind is in a crucial transition from a stage where monologue is the chief characteristic of rela- tions, to one where dialogue is the chief characteristic. Because of technological advances, dialogue is both more possible than ever before and also more necessary than ever before. The change from monologue to dialogue is a change from a way of (...) interacting modeled on confronta- tion to one modeled on listening. The change is being caused by a number of important parallel shifts, such as an increased awareness of the tenacity of knowledge and the shrinking of the world to a «global community». But while Swidler characterizes the change from monologue to dialogue as «the most fundamental, most radical and utterly transformative of the key elements of the newly emerging paradigm,» he warns that this change is not a guaranteed event. With the great technological advances that make dialogue more possible than ever come new opportunities for technological abuses. Therefore, he warns, we are faced with two choices: dialogue or death. (shrink)

A clash of civilizations has been perennial in human history, and today it is again taking the form of a more than thousand year old clash: The West and Islam. However, I want to argue that humanity now has the tools to transform that clash to cooperation, and not just occasionally, as in a few times and places in the past, dependent on the temporary benignity of a well-placed leader.

Written for the people shearing the same reality, the same mental world of Modernity, this paper starts from the premise that we, as human beings, are not always consciously aware of the world we live in, of its constantly changing characteristics or attributes. It has already been demonstrated that our knowledge is contextual and limited. Thus, in order to accurately depict at least some of the attributes of Modernity, and consequently, to observe the major paradigm shift towards an age of (...) dialogue, entailed by this expending-modernity, it became necessary to describe the values promoted by Modernity. In this paper we aim at discussing notions such as freedom, critical-thinking, history and the increasing need to be in dialogue with those who think differently from us, values which guide us mentally and determine our actions through Modernity. (shrink)

El autor se pregunta por el sentido de la religión en nuestro mundo, en la Modernidad. Nuestro mundo —el moderno— se caracteriza por la libertad en el núcleo del ser humano, la razón crítica como el árbitro de lo que hay que afirmar o no, y la historia, el proceso, el dinamismo visto en el corazón de la vida humana y la sociedad. Pero, más que nada, la Modernidad mundializada siente una creciente necesidad de estar en diálogo con quienes piensan (...) de modo diferente a nosotros. Esta necesidad de diálogo nos interpela agudamente cuando, como en el caso de la religión, el diálogo debe versar sobre cuestiones cruciales en la comprensión que el ser humano tiene de sí mismo y de su entorno. (shrink)

Full freedom of religion did not come into existence until the end of the 18th century, and authentic dialogue only in the 20th century. All civilizations had at their heart a religion which shaped and reflected that civilization; all problems had to be resolved within the thought-struc- tures of the dominant state-enforced religion. Those thought limitations sooner or later prevented arriving at the necessary solutions, and thus led to the decline of every civilization – except Christendom-Become-West- ern Civilization-Becoming-Global Civilization, which (...) has exponentially surpassed all previous civilizations. The separation of religion from the power of the state has al- lowed the “infinite” spirit of humanity (“Image of God”) to continually resolve the always new problems. Dia- logue, meaning being open to learn from the “other,” moves Globalization from destruction toward construc- tion. (shrink)

Leonard Swidler, Dupa absolut. Viitorul dialogic al reflectiei religioase Ed. Limes, Cluj, 2003.

Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

Since Mueller’s 1958 article calling Hegelian dialectics a “legend,” it has been fashionable to deny that Hegel used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. But in truth, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit has 28 dialectics hidden on four outline levels, and The Philosophy of History has 10 more on three outline levels. In Phenomenology’s macrodialectic, Hegel’s nonsupernatural Spirit–all reality, everything in the universe, including man and artificial objects–advances from unconscious + union (thesis) to conscious + separation (antithesis) to a synthesis of conscious (from the antithesis) (...) + union (from the thesis). Previous interpretations of Phenomenology have missed this dialectic: they have assumed that Spirit’s journey begins with consciousness, whereas the journey actually begins in the primordial state of nature, before man arrives and provides Spirit with its Mind (the collective mind of man). Mind then misperceives itself as a multitude of separate alien “objects”–things other than itself. The macrodialectic and all other dialectics are based on Christianity’s Johannine separation-and-return mythology; all Hegelian dialectics separate from a concept in the thesis, going to that something’s opposite (antithesis), and then return to the thesis concept. Thus, in Hegel’s master-and-slave dialectic (God = master, man = slave), man advances from potential + freedom to actual + bondage (religiosity) to actual + freedom (atheism). Only Marx and Tillich understood Hegelian dialectics. Marx’s basic dialectic (one of four) saw history separating from and returning to Communism, going from communal ownership + poverty (primitive communism, or gens) to private ownership + wealth (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) to communal ownership + wealth (final communism). Tillich’s basic dialectic (one of many) separates from and returns to God, advancing from Yes to God + Yes to supernaturalism (theism) to No to God + No to supernaturalism (atheism) to Yes to God + No to supernaturalism (humanism: humanity is the nonsupernatural “God above the God of theism”). (shrink)

This chapter is an investigation of the morality of medical deportation, the practice of returning undocumented migrants, despite their ill health and/or injuries, to their countries of origin. In Sect. 16.1, I look more closely at the nature of medical deportation. In Sect. 16.2, I argue that understanding the morality of medical deportation requires nonideal theory. In Sect. 16.3, I outline contractualism as a nonideal theory. In Sect. 16.4, I apply contractualism to medical deportation and make the case that, first, (...) there are in principle some cases in which medical deportation is morally permissible but, second, the standards that must be met in cases of morally permissible medical deportation are very high. In Sect. 16.5, I consider stakeholders other than the patient and the medical care facility and examine the ways in which effects on them might render medical deportation morally impermissible. I conclude that real-world cases of morally permissible medical deportation are rare at best, and there is little prospect of this situation changing. (shrink)

The author offers perspectives that can assist healthcare managers in achieving the highest ethical standards as they face their roles as healthcare providers, employers, and community service organizations. He also examines how to comply with relevant laws and regulations, provide high quality patient care with limited resources, and more.

If a machine attains consciousness, how could we find out? In this paper, I make three related claims regarding positive tests of machine consciousness. All three claims center on the idea that an AI can be constructed “ad hoc”, that is, with the purpose of satisfying a particular test of consciousness while clearly not being conscious. First, a proposed test of machine consciousness can be legitimate, even if AI can be constructed ad hoc specifically to pass this test. This is (...) underscored by the observation that many, if not all, putative tests of machine consciousness can be passed by non-conscious machines via ad hoc means. Second, we can identify ad hoc AI by taking inspiration from the notion of an ad hoc hypothesis in philosophy of science. Third, given the first and the second claim, the most reliable tests of animal consciousness turn out to be valid and useful positive tests of machine consciousness as well. If a non-ad hoc AI exhibits clusters of cognitive capacities facilitated by consciousness in humans which can be selectively switched off by masking and if it reproduces human behavior in suitably designed double dissociation tasks, we should treat the AI as conscious. (shrink)

Analyzes the meaning expressed in music, the social and psychological sources of meaning, and the methods of musical communication This is a book meant for ...

Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: first, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems (...) capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful AI will be built. Fourth, because disempowering humanity is useful for a large range of misaligned goals, such AI will try to disempower humanity. If AI is capable of disempowering humanity and tries to disempower humanity by 2100, then humanity will be disempowered by 2100. This conclusion has immense moral and prudential significance. (shrink)

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Which artificial intelligence (AI) systems are agents? To answer this question, I propose a multidimensional account of agency. According to this account, a system's agency profile is jointly determined by its level of goal-directedness and autonomy as well as is abilities for directly impacting the surrounding world, long-term planning and acting for reasons. Rooted in extant theories of agency, this account enables fine-grained, nuanced comparative characterizations of artificial agency. I show that this account has multiple important virtues and is more (...) informative than alternatives. More speculatively, it may help to illuminate two important emerging questions in AI ethics: 1. Can agency contribute to the moral status of non-human beings, and how? 2. When and why might AI systems exhibit power-seeking behaviour and does this pose an existential risk to humanity? (shrink)

The science of animal consciousness investigates (i) which animal species are conscious (the distribution question) and (ii) how conscious experience differs in detail between species (the quality question). We propose a framework which clearly distinguishes both questions and tackles both of them. This two-tier account distinguishes consciousness along ten dimensions and suggests cognitive capacities which serve as distinct operationalizations for each dimension. The two-tier account achieves three valuable aims: First, it separates strong and weak indicators of the presence of consciousness. (...) Second, these indicators include not only different specific contents but also differences in the way particular contents are processed (by processes of learning, reasoning or abstraction). Third, evidence of consciousness from each dimension can be combined to derive the distinctive multi-dimensional consciousness profile of various species. Thus, the two-tier account shows how the kind of conscious experience of different species can be systematically compared. (shrink)

Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze.

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

The Postlude, written for this edition, looks back at the predictions made more than twenty-five years ago and speculates about what the coming decades may hold ...

Which animals have conscious experiences? Many different, diverse and unrelated behaviors and cognitive capacities have been proposed as tests of the presence of consciousness in an animal. It is unclear which of these tests, if any, are valid. To remedy this problem, I develop a list consisting of eight desiderata which can be used to assess putative tests of animal consciousness. These desiderata are based either on detailed analogies between consciousness-linked human behavior and non-human behavior, on theories of consciousness or (...) on methods from human consciousness science. If a test or set of tests satisfies more of these desiderata, passing it provides stronger evidence of consciousness. Moreover, one can design future tests of animal consciousness with the intention of satisfying these desiderata to ensure their evidential strength. (shrink)