Augustine’s thoughts on human salvation not only influenced early Protestant theology but also dominated the conceptualisation of the missio Dei from the perspective of the 1952 Willingen Conference. His doctrine of synergism arguably only manifested much later in the conception of the missio Dei, which anticipated human obedience or active participation in the mission to attain the goal of human salvation. The idea of synergism in this regard, or in the context of the missio Dei, is that while salvation remains (...) an unmerited gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ, God prescribes human cooperative involvement in its attainment. In this way people do not become unresponsive recipients of God’s grace, but active and willing participants in a mission of salvation. With this in mind, this article examined the available literature on the topic of synergism in order to provide further insights into the conceptualisation of the missio Dei. The account of Noah in Genesis 5:32–10:1 and the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20 were used to redefine the doctrine of synergism or its relevance in the context of the missio Dei. Contribution: This article recalled the doctrine of synergism in order to enrich the complex understanding of the missio Dei, essentially adding new knowledge in the field of missiology. (shrink)

The Christian image of God rightly goes back to the Bible as the only source of revelation. According to the creation account in the book of Genesis, God is primarily seen as the creator of heaven, Earth and humankind. Following this understanding, the International Mission Conference (IMC) in Willingen in 1952 expanded the scope of mission beyond the ecclesiastical sphere and anchored it in the doctrine of the Triadic God. In other words, the Willingen Conference correctly classified the Triadic God (...) as the only source of mission in the world. However, the question remains as to what a person’s mandate is in relation to the missio Dei. Based on a literature review, this article introduces missio hominum as a framework that encompasses human participation in missio Dei. Selectively, the extraordinary personalities of Noah, Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul in the Bible are examined in order to validate the framework of the missio hominum as derived from the missio Dei. By its very nature, this article warrants further exploration of human involvement in the work of the missio Dei, in order to consolidate the missio hominum as an important framework for aligning human efforts with the work and ultimate goal of the missio Dei.Contribution: The contribution of this article is to deepen the reflection on the relationship between the Triadic God and human beings on the one hand and human temporal participation in the eternal economy of the missio Dei on the other. In doing so, it provides missio scholars and theologians with new insights that encompass the human mission in relation to the missio Dei. (shrink)

The doctrine of pactum salutis has in the past sparked serious theological debate and has often been rejected because of its contradictions with Reformed orthodoxy. Among other early church fathers and theologians, the pactum salutis is found in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. This doctrine is closely related to, or possibly overlaps with, the doctrine of predestination, as both involve the belief that God has already determined the object of his salvation. It has been (...) criticised for, among other things, its denial or insufficiency of Trinitarian understanding and its pro-Subordinationist character. The refutation of this doctrine may be warranted, particularly when viewed in the light of contemporary missiology, particularly the Missio Dei perceptions that arose from the 1952 IMC conference in Willingen. As there is little or no research examining the rationality of the pactum salutis on the basis of or in the light of the Missio Dei, this article draws on the available missiological literature to refute its coherence, relevance and authenticity. Contribution: This article made a significant missiological contribution to the field of Christian theology, analysing the validity of pactum salutis against Reformed orthodoxy and consequently rejecting it as incompatible with the objectives of Missio Dei. (shrink)

Academic data show little evidence that the concept of the missio hominum was ever explored beyond its context as developed by Nico Smith. There is little to no research that has conceptualised this phenomenon in light of imago Dei and the role it should play in fulfilling missio Dei’s mandate. It uses the relational nature of the Union of the Divine Trinity derived in imago Dei to conceptualise the idea of the missio hominum in the broader context of missio Dei. (...) It aims to examine the role of missio hominum in fulfilling the objectives and scope of missio Dei. Missio Dei here means the mission of God, which uses human relationships as an instrument to achieve the eternal goal of missio Dei. Nico Smith’s account is used here to support the need for missio hominum within the broader understanding of missio Dei. This research is a first step towards a deeper understanding of the missio hominum in service to missio Christos and missio spiritus and the collective participation of missio ecclesiae towards the goal of missio Dei. The academic focus on missio hominum from Smith’s perspective is lacking or neglected by missiology scholars.Contribution: This article, therefore, presents overarching research areas in missiology, which are important for the overall and further understanding of missio Dei. It uses literature research as a method to gain knowledge about missio hominum. (shrink)

A brain-computer interface technology that can decode the neural signals associated with attempted but unarticulated speech could offer a future efficient means of communication for people with severe motor impairments. Recent demonstrations have validated this approach. Here we assume that it will be possible in future to decode imagined (i.e., attempted but unarticulated) speech in people with severe motor impairments, and we consider the characteristics that could maximize the social utility of a BCI for communication. As a social interaction, communication (...) involves the needs and goals of both speaker and listener, particularly in contexts that have significant potential consequences. We explore three high-consequence legal situations in which neurally-decoded speech could have implications:Testimony, where decoded speech is used as evidence;Consent and Capacity, where it may be used as a means of agency and participation such as consent to medical treatment; andHarm, where such communications may be networked or may cause harm to others. We then illustrate how design choices might impact the social and legal acceptability of these technologies. (shrink)

This paper revisits Richard Price’s Review of the Principal Questions in Morals. Price was a defender of rationalism about ethics and he anticipated many views and arguments that became influential as the metaethical and ethical debates evolved over the later centuries. The paper explores and assesses Price’s arguments in favour of rationalism and against sentimentalism, with a view to how they bear on the modern metaethical debate.

Liar-like paradoxes are typically arguments that, by using very intuitive resources of natural language, end up in contradiction. Consistent solutions to those paradoxes usually have difficulties either because they restrict the expressive power of the language, or else because they fall prey to extended versions of the paradox. Dialetheists, like Graham Priest, propose that we should take the Liar at face value and accept the contradictory conclusion as true. A logical treatment of such contradictions is also put forward, with the (...) Logic of Paradox, which should account for the manifestations of the Liar. In this paper we shall argue that such a formal approach, as advanced by Priest, is unsatisfactory. In order to make contradictions acceptable, Priest has to distinguish between two kinds of contradictions, internal and external, corresponding, respectively, to the conclusions of the simple and of the extended Liar. Given that, we argue that while the natural interpretation of LP was intended to account for true and false sentences, dealing with internal contradictions, it lacks the resources to tame external contradictions. Also, the negation sign of LP is unable to represent internal contradictions adequately, precisely because of its allowance of sentences that may be true and false. As a result, the formal account suffers from severe limitations, which make it unable to represent the contradiction obtained in the conclusion of each of the paradoxes. (shrink)

Is the procreation asymmetry intuitively supported? According to a recent article in this journal, an experimental study suggests the opposite. Dean Spears (2020) claims that nearly three-quarters of participants report that there is a reason to create a person just because that person’s life would be happy. In reply, I argue that various confounding factors render the study internally invalid. More generally, I show how one might come to adopt the procreation asymmetry for the wrong reasons by misinterpreting one’s intuitions.

This article considers how legislators should respond to evidence that identifies a common and widely accepted parental practice as a potential source of harm to children, using domestic exposure to environmental tobacco smoke as a test case. It is claimed that children are parties to the Harm Principle, and that the State has an obligation to protect children from exposure to harm. Parental prerogative is limited by the need to avoid harming children. That said, there is considerable uncertainty about what (...) is harmful to children. Several sources of uncertainty, both empirical and conceptual, are explored, in order to demonstrate the complexity of the task legislators face. Seven considerations that are relevant to decisions about legislation of harmful parental practices are outlined, and these considerations are then employed to assess the case in favour of legislating to prohibit the exposure of children to environmental tobacco smoke in domestic settings. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Hans Jonas has reflected on the notion of the human soul and on the concept of man being created in God’s image. A careful analysis of his writings reveals that (approximately) from 1968 he changed his perspective on these topics. Before this year, Jonas used some Gnostic myths to speak about the image of man in relation to God and was concerned that referring to the immortality of the human soul or to the notion of (...) imago Dei could lead to dualistic or pseudo-Gnostic interpretations of the natural world. From 1968 (when Jonas published an article for an American Jewish journal) he started to underline the importance of the Judeo-Christian notion of imago Dei (from the book of Genesis) for his ethical project. Subsequently, he used this concept (derived from the Bible rather than from Gnostic texts) in support of his ethical approach to show the special role that God assigned to humanity to act as a steward of His creation. This article presents the development of Jonas’s contributions on these issues over time, their importance in relation to his ethical project and how he was influenced in the development of his perspective on this subject. (shrink)

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.

A classic of phenomenology and existentialism and arguably Jonas's greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy -- ...

Is there a pro tanto moral reason to create a life merely because it would be good for the person living it? Proponents of the procreation asymmetry claim there is not. Defending this controversial no reason claim, some have suggested that it is well in line with other phenomena in the moral realm: there is no reason to give a promise merely because one would keep it, and there is no reason to procreate merely to increase the extent of justice (...) in the world. Allegedly, some analogs extend so far as to support a unified theory of the no reason claim and the nonidentity thesis, that is, the view that of two persons leading lives of positive wellbeing, there is a reason to create the person with higher wellbeing. I dismantle the proposed analogs and show that they fail to meet various desiderata. Moreover, I refute Johann Frick's argument that the no reason claim follows from the assumption that reasons of beneficence are reasons to act for the sake of people. By criticizing attractive defenses for the no reason claim, I weaken its plausibility. (shrink)

According to the received view, philosophy of action took a justified turn towards causalism because anti-causalists failed the causalist challenge about efficacious reasons. This paper contests that view by examining the ways in which Georg Henrik von Wright responded to causalism in his later philosophy. First, von Wright attacked the subjectivism of causalism by arguing for an objectivist view that construes reasons not as subjective mental states but as external facts of the agent's situation. Second, von Wright fundamentally disagreed with (...) the view of philosophical inquiry that underpinned causalism. For von Wright, the task of philosophy was conceptual: to explicate what one is looking for when one is looking for the real reasons for action. In contrast, for causalists the task was ontological: to determine what kind of item in the world the real reason for action is. Examining von Wright's account contributes to contemporary assessments of the metaphilosophical dimension of the reasons/causes debate. (shrink)

Recognizing yourself in literature cannot only help you to get a clearer grasp of what you already think and feel. It can also deeply unsettle your vision of yourself. This article examines a hitherto neglected mechanism to this effect: learning by way of seeing yourself in others’ blindness. I show that In Search of Lost Time epitomizes this phenomenon. Confronting characters oblivious to their old age makes the protagonist realize that he, too, has aged without noticing it, and invites readers (...) to analogous insights. The paper contributes to the discussion on how you can learn from literature and adds a twist to Proust’s claim that the purpose of literature is that readers recognize themselves in it. (shrink)

A classic of phenomenology and existentialism and arguably Jonas's greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy -- an existential interpretation of biological facts laid out in support of Jonas ...

In times of the coronavirus, complying with public health policies is essential to save lives. Understanding the factors that influence compliance with social distancing measures is therefore an urgent issue. The present research investigated the role of political and social trust for social distancing using a variety of methods. In Study 1, conducted with a sample from the United Kingdom in the midst of the virus outbreak, neither political nor social trust had main associations with self-reported social distancing tendencies. However, (...) both factors interacted such that social trust was associated with lower social distancing tendencies among participants with low levels of political trust. In Study 2, using an experimental longitudinal design and again conducted with a sample collected from the UK during the first wave of the pandemic, social distancing practices increased over time, independent of an experimental manipulation of political trust. Moreover, while the interaction between political and social trust from the first study could not be conceptually replicated, social trust was positively related to social distancing intentions. Moving from the individual to the country level and assessing actual behavior at both the first and second wave of the pandemic, in Study 3, country-level political trust was related to less social distancing during the first wave. Social trust was related to a higher growth rate of infections. Against the background of these inconsistent findings, we discuss the potential positive and unexpected negative effects of social trust for social distancing. (shrink)

Nietzsche's Philosophy of Education makes the case that Nietzsche's ​philosophy has ​significant import for the theory and contemporary practice of education, arguing that ​some of ​Nietzsche​'s most important ​ideas ​have been misunderstood by ​previous ​interpreters. ​In ​providing novel reinterpretations of ​Nietzsche's ​ethical theory, political​ philosophy​ and philosophical anthropology ​and outlining concrete ways in which ​these ideas can enrich teaching and learning in modern democratic schools, the book sets itself apart​ from previous works on Nietzsche​. This is one of the first (...) ​extended engagements with Nietzsche's philosophy ​which attempts to determine his true legacy for democratic education. ​In its engagement with both the vast secondary literature on Nietzsche's philosophy and the educational implications of his philosophical vision, this book makes a unique contribution to both the philosophy of education and Nietzsche scholarship. In addition, its ​development of four concrete pedagogi​cal approaches from Nietzsche's educational ideas ​makes the book a potentially helpful guide to meeting the practical challenges of ​contemporary teaching. This book will be of great interest to Nietzsche scholars, researchers in the philosophy of education and ​​students studying educational foundations. (shrink)

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

In his 2001 article ‘Teaching to Lie and Obey: Nietzsche on Education’, Stefan Ramaekers defends Nietzsche’s concept of perspectivism against the charge that it is relativistic. He argues that perspectivism is not relativistic because it denies the dichotomy between the ‘true’ world and the ‘seeming’ world, a dichotomy central to claims to relativism. While Ramaekers’ article is correct in denying relativistic interpretations of perspectivism it does not go far enough in this direction. In fact, the way Ramaekers makes his case (...) may actually encourage the charge of relativism, especially when it comes to his appropriation of perspectivism for education. This article proposes to pick up where Ramaekers left off. It will argue that Nietzsche’s denial of the opposition between the ‘true’ world and the ‘seeming’ world opens up the possibility for the reestablishment of truth, albeit in a modified form. After examining Nietzsche’s modified ‘realist’ epistemology, the paper will explore the implications of it for his philosophy of education. It will be argued that Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is founded on his concept of perspectivism in so far as he demands that students be rigorously inculcated into a pedagogical framework that teaches students to discriminate between ‘true’ and ‘false’ perspectives. This framework is essential for the development of an intellectually robust and life-affirming culture. (shrink)

This paper considers and argues against old and recent readings of Hume according to which his account of moral judgement is non-cognitivist. In previous discussions of this topic, crucial metaethical distinctions-between sentimentalism and non-cognitivism and between psychological and semantic non-cognitivism-are often blurred. The paper aims to remedy this and argues that making the appropriate metaethical distinctions undermines alleged support for non-cognitivist interpretations of Hume. The paper focuses in particular on Hume's so-called 'motivation argument' and argues that it is a poor (...) basis for non-cognitivist interpretations. While there is textual support for attributing to Hume what may be called 'modally weak' motivational internalism, there is no solid textual support for attributing to him either psychological or semantic non-cognitivism. The paper also challenges briefly some further alleged support for non-cognitivist interpretations. It concludes by offering some positive evidence against such interpretations, namely that Hume appears to hold that there are moral beliefs and moral knowledge. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt, who was Hans Jonas’s lifelong friend, always stressed the importance and rarity of the independent thinker. The independent thinker is the thinker who has the imagination to break new ground, who does not follow current fashions, and has the courage to pursue thought trains wherever they may lead. Her model was Lessing, but she might have considered Hans Jonas to be an outstanding twentieth century exemplar of the independent thinker. Although Hans Jonas was a student (...) of both Heidegger and Bultmann in the 1920’s, he did not become a disciple of anyone. Both of these teachers encouraged him to pursue his research into the history of Gnosticism. Jonas’s path-breaking achievement can be compared with what Gershom Scholem did for the study of the Kabbalah. For Jonas literally created a new field of research in the history of religions. His study of Gnosticism became one of those rare twentieth century landmarks that opened up our understanding of Gnosticism and revealed its powerful subterranean influence throughout the history of the West. The first volume of Jonas’s study, Gnosis und spätantiker Geist was published in Germany in 1934 only after he fled from Nazi Germany and decided to emigrate to Palestine. If Jonas had never published anything else he would be known today as the major twentieth-century scholar of Gnosticism.. But Jonas was much more than an original scholar. He was a creative thinker—and he remained one until his death in 1993, shortly before his ninetieth birthday. During the Second World War, he fought in the famous Jewish Brigade of the British army. It was during this period, when he faced death all around him on the battlefield, that the phenomenon of life in all its ramifications became his central philosophical preoccupation. Jonas had been compelled to suspend his scholarly research during the war years, but he never suspended his independent thinking. He felt it was his obligation to fight the Nazis, but his dream was to return to his true vocation—philosophical speculation. After fighting in the Israeli War of Independence, he accepted a fellowship at McGill University in Canada in 1949, and eventually accepted a position at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in 1955. The line of inquiry that he began when he was able to return to philosophical study resulted in the publication of The Phenomenon of Life. Jonas’s project was to understand what is distinctive about living organisms, and the emergence and consequences of life in the cosmos. But in order to do this, Jonas had to engage in a systematic radical critique of the dualisms of matter and mind, body and soul, which have dominated and shaped so much of modern thought. From Jonas’s perspective, even those philosophers who had rejected dualism were still tainted by the misguided ontology of dualism. The variety of monisms that arose in reaction to dualism tended to move to the extremes of materialism or idealism. Neither of these extremes is adequate for illuminating what is distinctive about bios. In German idealism there was a failure to do justice to the needs and character of the lived body. And in the varieties of “reductive materialism” that have been—and continue to be—so fashionable in twentieth century there is also a failure to appreciate what is distinctive about dynamic metabolic processes. To engage in a critique of dualism and its legacy, it was also necessary to rethink what can be learned from the biological sciences, and especially, the theory of evolution. Here we also witness the philosophical daring of Jonas. A dominant prejudice of the twentieth century has been that philosophy as a discipline has nothing significant to contribute to our understanding of biological processes. All that philosophy can do is to reflect on the methodological and epistemological status of the sciences because, presumably, the only legitimate source of knowledge about living organisms is what we learn from the natural sciences. Jonas argues that this prevailing prejudice has led to disastrous intellectual consequences. Of course, philosophers qua philosophers cannot and should not engage in “armchair” scientific speculation. Furthermore, they must be fully informed about the hypotheses and claims of the best biological research. But at the same time it is a philosophical endeavor to understand critically the meaning of what we learn from the sciences, and to develop an adequate philosophical account of the meaning of nature. Philosophers cannot and should not abandon this task. There is an important distinction to be drawn between the scientific achievements and the philosophical reflection on their meaning—a distinction that too frequently is forgotten or neglected. (shrink)

A well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal, or both. I argue that according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have (...) are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves. (shrink)

The article raises the question what is the content of Frege’s infamous notion of Bedeutung? It is claimed that the so–called standard interpretation of this notion – Bedeutung as referential relation between a name and an object – was developed and established evaluating Frege’s ideas in philosophy of language in isolation from his logicist ideas. However, precisely his logicist concerns have motivated Frege’s interest in semantic issues. A broader consideration of Frege’s works reveals an internalist and rationalist notion of meaning, (...) that is based on the context principle, and that should not be reduced to mere reference. The question of the meaning of subsentential components, for Frege, is closely related to the question of the meaning of the whole sentence, that is, the meaning of sub–sentential components should be construed as secondary with regard to the meaning of the whole sentence. (shrink)

The article analyzes arguments, made by John J. Mearsheimer and others, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was largely caused by Western policy. It finds that these arguments rely on a partially false and incomplete reading of history. To do so, the article identifies a range of premises that are both foundational to Mearsheimer’s claims and based on implied or explicit historical interpretations. This includes the varying policies of Ukraine toward NATO and the EU as well as the (...) changing Russian perceptions thereof; the political upheavals in Ukraine in early 2014 that were immediately succeeded by the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass; and the supposed absence of Russian ‘imperialism’ toward Ukraine prior to 2014. Finding that these interpretations do not hold up in light of relevant and available data, the article qualifies and contextualizes the validity of Mearsheimer’s arguments, points to superior ones, and highlights the need for case-specific expertise when using explanatory theory to make sense of politically salient ongoing events. (shrink)

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather (...) than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to study the interrelatedness of rationality, virtue, and practical wisdom in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by offering a critical interpretation of the bipartition of the soul presented in Chap. 13 of the first book. Aristotle relies on the partition of the soul into a rational and a non-rational part when he distinguishes between ethical and intellectual virtues. The paper will question the adequacy of these divisions and show that Aristotle himself casts doubt on them while (...) leaving open the possibility of understanding the soul in an alternative way which will prove to fit better with his own exposition of deliberate choice and the integration of virtuous action and practical wisdom. (shrink)

Trevor Teitel (2017) has recently argued that combining the assumption that modality reduces to essence with the assumption that possibly some objects contingently exist leads to problems if one wishes to uphold that the logic of metaphysical modality is S5. In this paper I will argue that there is a way for the essentialist to evade the problem described by Teitel. The proposed solution crucially involves the assumption that some propositions possibly fail to exist. I will show how this assumption (...) affords a motivated contingentist response to Teitel’s argument. (shrink)

Let intentionalism be the view that what proposition is expressed in context by a sentence containing indexicals depends on the speaker’s intentions. It has recently been argued that intentionalism makes communicative success mysterious and that there are counterexamples to the intentionalist view in the form of cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct interpretation. In this paper, I argue that these objections can be met, once we acknowledge that we may distinguish what determines the correct interpretation (...) from the evidence that is available to the audience, as well as from the standards by which we judge whether or not a given interpretation is reasonable. With these distinctions in place, we see that intentionalism does not render communicative success mysterious, and that cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct one can easily be accommodated. The distinction is also useful in treating the Humpty Dumpty problem for intentionalism, since it turns out that this can be treated as an extreme special case of mismatch. (shrink)

The present paper addresses Molnar’s problem :72–86, 2000): that of finding positive truthmakers for negative truths. The proposed solution, called, is to hold truth and falsity to be primitive and positive features of propositions and to take every literal negative truth to be made true by the falsity of the atomic proposition that it embeds. The solution is shown to be compatible with Maximalism, Necessitarianism and with the Entailment Thesis, as well as with most if not all possible variants of (...) truthmaking theory. Other advantages of are noted: it doesn’t require the inclusion of exotic objects in one’s ontology; it doesn’t require any revision of one’s logic or of one’s theory of modality. The solution also allows one to eschew negative facts, tropes and properties while providing a definition of negativity for certain literal propositions. The paper ends by rebutting several objections that may be levelled against. (shrink)

This book both consummates and demonstrates the basic thrust of Jonas's thought: the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics, the reality of values at the ...

We discuss the idea that superpositions in quantum mechanics may involve contradictions or contradictory properties. A state of superposition such as the one comprised in the famous Schrödinger’s cat, for instance, is sometimes said to attribute contradictory properties to the cat: being dead and alive at the same time. If that were the case, we would be facing a revolution in logic and science, since we would have one of our greatest scientific achievements showing that real contradictions exist.We analyze that (...) claim by employing the traditional square of opposition.We suggest that it is difficult to make sense of the idea of contradiction in the case of quantum superpositions. From a metaphysical point of view the suggestion also faces obstacles, and we present some of them. (shrink)

In recent years modal syllogistic provided by 14th century logician John Buridan has attracted increasing attention of historians of medieval logic. The widespread use of quantified modal logic with the apparatus of possible worlds semantics in current analytic philosophy has encouraged the investigation of the relation of Buridan’s theory of modality with the modern developments of symbolic modal logic. We focus on the semantics of and the inferential relations among the propositions that underlie Buridan’s theory of modal syllogism. First, we (...) review all inferences between propositions of necessity, possibility, contingency, and non-contingency, with or without quod est locution, that are valid in Buridan’s semantics, and offer a comprehensive diagrammatic representation that includes them all. We then ask the question if there is a way to model those results in first order modal logic. Three ways of formalizing Buridan’s propositions in quantified modal logic are considered. Comparison of inferences between the quantified formulas and Buridan’s propositions reveals that, when supplied with a suitable formalization, Buridan’s semantics of categorical statements and immediate inferences among them can be fully captured by the quantified modal system T. (shrink)

Many teachers in teacher education programs are cursorily introduced to Dewey's ‘epochmaking’ ideas on interest and effort through discussions based on the need for child‐centered pedagogies that utilize students' interests. Unfortunately, this strategy often tacitly encourages teachers to over‐rely on students' interests. In this paper, I recommend a way of introducing Dewey's conception of interest that avoids the common pitfall of over‐reliance on students' interests. I argue that if we focus on the changes Dewey made to the expression of his (...) philosophy during a seventeen‐year period, we can help illuminate the force of his theory while protecting against unfortunate misinterpretations. (shrink)

Should we understand the biological philosophy of Hans Jonas as a phenomenology for unveiling the phenomenon of life or as a kind of Hegelian metaphysics that presents life as a substantial principle? To answer that question, we need to deal first with the question of our access to other living beings and then with the problem of the spiritualization of the concept of evolution. This article will use an essay called “Organism and Freedom: An Essay in Philosophical Biology.”.

In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that there are three broadly held misconceptions of Plato's philosophy that work against his relevance for contemporary moral education. The first is that he is an intellectualist who is concerned only with the cognitive aspect of moral development and does not sufficiently emphasize the affective and conative aspects; the second is that he is an elitist who believes that only philosopher-kings can attain true knowledge of virtue and it is they who should govern (...) society; the third is that he affirms the realm of the Forms as a literal metaphysical reality and believes that for individuals to attain virtue they must access this realm through contemplation. The goal of this essay is to correct these misconceptions. The rehabilitation of Plato's reputation may enable future researchers in moral education to discover in his philosophy new avenues for exploring how best to cultivate virtues in students. (shrink)

Sören Halldén’s logic of nonsense is one of the most well-known many-valued logics available in the literature. In this paper, we discuss Peter Woodruff’s as yet rather unexplored attempt to advance a version of such a logic built on the top of a constructive logical basis. We start by recalling the basics of Woodruff’s system and by bringing to light some of its notable features. We then go on to elaborate on some of the difficulties attached to it; on our (...) way to offer a possible solution to such difficulties, we discuss the relation between Woodruff’s system and two-dimensional semantics for many-valued logics, as developed by Hans Herzberger. (shrink)

This paper sets out to undermine the view that a commitment to the early modern conception of the mind as immortalized in Ryle’s metaphor of the (Cartesian) ghost in the machine and in Quine’s metaphor of the (Lockean) myth of the museum is required to articulate a defence of the sui generis character of humanistic explanations. These powerful metaphors have not only contributed to undermining the claim for methodological pluralism by caricaturizing the arguments for disunity in the sciences; they have (...) also, and more worryingly, planted red herrings that have diverted attention away from the genuine issues at stake. This paper is an exercise in removing these false clues to reveal what the claim for the autonomy of humanistic explanations really amounts to. (shrink)

Discussing Plato's views on knowledge, recollection, dialogue, and epiphany, this ambitious volume offers a systematic analysis of the ways that Platonic approaches to education can help students navigate today's increasingly complex moral environment. Though interest in Platonic education may have waned due to a perceived view of Platonic scholarship as wholly impractical, this volume addresses common misunderstandings of Plato's work and highlights the contemporary relevance of Plato's ideas to contemporary moral education. Building on philosophical interpretations, the book argues persuasively that (...) educators might employ Platonic themes and dialogue in the classroom. Split into two parts, the book looks first to contextualise Plato's theory of moral education within political, ethical, and educational frameworks. Equipped with this knowledge, part two then offers contemporary educators the strategies needed for implementing Plato's educational theory within the pluralistic, democratic classroom setting. A Platonic Theory of Moral Education will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of: ethics; Plato scholarship; moral psychology; educational foundations; and the philosophy of education. This book would also benefit graduate students and scholars in teacher education. Mark E. Jonas is Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, US. Yoshiaki Nakazawa is Assistant Professor of Education at University of Dallas, US. (shrink)

Parfit (2017) proposed a novel principle for outcome betterness in different people and different number choices. It is claimed to solve the Non-Identity Problem while avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion, and it shall do so in person-affecting rather than in impersonal terms. According to this Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle, one of two outcomes would be (i) in one way better if this outcome would together benefit people more, and (ii) in another way better if this outcome would benefit each person more. (...) I argue that a plausible construal of this principle has two features that make it vulnerable to objections. First, the most plausible interpretation of the second part of the principle turns out to incorporate an average function. Although this helps to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, it implausibly implies that it can be better to add further people with less bad but still miserable lives to populations consisting only of lives full of suffering. Second, the principle is not based on a comparative but on an intrinsic notion of benefit. This allows to solve the Non-Identity Problem, yet it accounts only for a weak sense of person-affecting rather than for the more substantive person-affecting intuition that it is morally significant that particular people are made better (or worse) off. Eventually, I highlight what we can, nevertheless, learn from Parfit’s idea of combining different ways in which outcomes might be better. (shrink)

While a great deal has been written on Plato's Lysis in philosophy and philology journals over the last thirty years, nothing has been published on Lysis in the major Anglo-American philosophy of education journals during that time. Nevertheless, this dialogue deserves attention from educators. In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that Lysis can serve as a model for educators who want to move their students beyond mere aporia, but also do not want to dictate answers to students. Although the (...) dialogue ends in Socrates's affirmation of aporia, his affirmation is actually meant to persuade his interlocutors to reflect on an epiphany they had previously experienced. In what follows, Jonas offers a close reading of relevant passages of Lysis, demonstrating the way that Socrates leads his interlocutors to an epiphany without forcing his answers upon them. (shrink)