C.S. Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" [NA] has always baffled its readers. Its publishing editor needed to ask, "[W]hat, then, precisely, is your neglected argument?", and EP 2's editors observe that "[t]his is one of Peirce's most enigmatic writings". First-time readers will likely concur with the underwhelmed theologian who told Michael Raposa that NA "ought to remain neglected". Early Peirce scholars did neglect the essay, regarding it as an "anomalous sideshow to Peirce's more important concern with (...) the logic and methodology of science". No longer ignored, NA continues to bewilder: "N.... (shrink)

This essay employs Charles Peirce’s triadic semiotics in order to develop a biosemiotic theory of life that is capable of illuminating the function of information in living systems. Specifically, I argue that the relationship between biological information structures , selecting environments, and the adapted bodily processes of living organisms is aptly modelled by the irreducibly triadic relationship between Peirce’s sign, object, and interpretant, respectively. In each instance of information-based semiosis, the information structure is a complex informational sign that represents the (...) informational object ; and the bodily, behavioral, mental, or intellectual processes that are organized by the informational sign to more or less accurately interpret the present environment constitute a complex informational interpretant—a living, interpreting organism. The essay begins by discussing the precise sense in which this biosemiotic theory is based upon Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory. Next, the theory is developed at length in relation to genetic information structures. Finally, I present a brief outline of how the theory applies to neural and linguistic information structures. The essay concludes with a reflection upon the anti-reductionist implications of the theory. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce claimed that the pragmatic method of clarifying ideas is "nothing but a particular application of an older logical rule, 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'"1 While Jesus spoke about discriminating between true and false religious teachers, Peirce was concerned with clarifying our intellectual concepts. Peirce's pragmatism asserts that we clearly understand the meaning of a concept if we can state the potentially practical and empirical consequences that would follow from the truth of a proposition involving that (...) concept. Robert C. Neville's semiotic and pragmatic theory of religious truth unites Jesus's and Peirce's concerns, proposing that religious truth consists in an adaptedness or fit between... (shrink)

Ecstatic Naturalism is the discipline of theology which spirals distinctly out of the work of Robert S. Corrington. This chapter introduces the concept and Corrington’s philosophy, and proposes fruitful intersections for radical theology.

The central thesis of this essay is that the relation imagined to hold between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit corresponds quite closely with the triadic relationship that holds between object, sign, and interpretant, respectively, within C. S. Peirce’s conception of semiosis. Section 1 introduces Peirce’s conception of semiosis. Section 2 supports the main thesis through examination of descriptions of the Trinitarian relations in two classic Christian texts: The New Testament and The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Section 3 reviews (...) two alternative explanations of this surprising correlation: Andrew Robinson’s vestigia Trinitatis explanation and a naturalistic alternative. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic—his theory about signs, reference, interpretation, meaning, and communication—is applicable with illuminating results to innumerable processes of semeiosis or sign interpretation. Robert C. Neville is the first deep student of Peirce’s semeiotic to have systematically applied that theory to the analysis and theory of theological signs, interpretation, and truth—hereafter, theological semeiotic. The result is easily the deepest and richest theological semeiotic currently available. Being the best, it is also most worthy of critique. In this essay, I argue (...) that Neville misinterprets Peirce’s concept of an index, conceiving an index in terms of the interpreter-object rather than... (shrink)

From the swirling stars above, to the end-directed design of life below, to the perceptions and emotions that color the world within—as more and more phenomena prove susceptible to scientific description, explanation, prediction, and control, the naturalistic metainduction grows increasingly plausible: perhaps nature is self-enclosed, so that everything that makes a difference within the world is itself part of the world; perhaps there are no disembodied agents—neither ghosts nor gods—whose actions influence our shared day-to-day world. Because neither the expansion of (...) science’s adequacy nor the concomitant pressure toward philosophical naturalism show signs of abating, the recent emergence of religious naturalism.. (shrink)

Containing ten original essays by leading philosophers and scholars of religion, this volume is an important resource for anyone interested in the complex, evolving relationship between pragmatism and philosophical naturalism, especially as this bears upon the study and practice of religion. Matthew Bagger's general introduction and his introductions to each section are important contributions in their own right, providing the historical and contextual background needed to weave the volume's disparate essays into a coherent whole. After briefly summarizing each essay, this (...) review provides a critical response to the eclipse of "representationalism" announced in the volume's subtitle.Part 1 explores the naturalisms... (shrink)

The Dimensions of Spirituality Inventory (DSI) is a 50-item quantitative assessment of spirituality. Whereas “spirituality” has seemed to some to be too vague for research purposes, the DSI follows earlier qualitative research in showing that usage of the word points to an intelligible conceptual structure. Instead of defining spirituality and then operationalizing it, as most extant instruments do, the DSI defines and operationalizes 21 relatively uncontroversial elemental components of spirituality, so the overall interpretation of spirituality can only emerge after factor (...) analysis. Just as an alphabet flexibly expresses words and sentences, so the 21 DSI dimensions permit the discovery of latent constructs corresponding to cultural packages of spirituality at the present time. The DSI avoids culturally parochial formulations of items, thanks to intense multidisciplinary engagement among social scientists, scholars of religion, and psychologists of religion, and thus is suitable for cross-cultural application. This paper reports on a study based on a participant pool recruited for ExploringMyReligion.org, in part from Prolific (N = 820, after culling unreliable responses). The DSI is interpreted and validated in relation to several other relevant measures, and the factor analysis is strongly resonant with prior qualitative studies. The psychometric properties of the DSI make it usable as an overall spirituality scale as well as a sensitive inventory of types and configurations of spirituality. (shrink)

J. Caleb Clanton’s excellent new book is a must read for scholars studying the “classical” American philosophical tradition and for philosophers of religion more generally. In each of the six main chapters, Clanton reconstructs and assesses an argument in the philosophy of religion made by one philosophers that belong to the classic American tradition. Clanton’s approach is analytical and precise but not overly technical. His careful reconstructions of each argument constitute an invaluable scholarly contribution, and his insightful criticisms of each (...) argument warrant the close attention of his philosophical peers. Clearly, Clanton’s book is the fruit of long hours spent “thinking with” the... (shrink)

David Hume and Simone de Beauvoir agree that human beings have a great deal of control over their moral and political lives, which is well captured in Hume's assertion that "mankind is an inventive species". But Hume argues that the most important thing needed to settle our social lives and determine justice is the agreement on rules of property, while Beauvoir thinks that the rules of property will never be enough to establish the best life, but rather that we (...) should be focusing on freedom. In this article we reconstruct Hume's argument for property, then develop a Beauvoirian critique of Hume that brings out the weakness of any theory of property that does not prevent inequalities of property from interfering with freedom. And then we give the last word to a Humean response to Beauvoir that would insist that there can be no freedom but only violence without rules of property, which she ignores. Both thinkers appeal to humanity as an overriding goal, and perhaps that is the way to reconcile the two: we need both property and freedom to achieve our humanity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. NuttJ. David MoserThomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2021), ix + 422 pp.This volume is a collection of papers presented at the "Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology" conference at (...) the Aquinas Center of Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida, in February 2020. Dozens of papers were presented at the conference; this volume contains many of the plenary papers and the two keynote addresses given by Bruce Marshall and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.The title, especially the term "crisis," has multiple meanings in the essays. On the one hand, some of them address the crisis in contemporary Christology. For example, Michael Dauphinais draws on Aquinas's theology of participation to pose what he sees as a better alternative to Richard Rohr's The Universal Christ. As Dauphinais shows, Rohr's popular Christology conflates Incarnation and creation as one and the same reality. Through careful exegesis of Aquinas's Commentary on John, Dauphinais argues that the Incarnation must be distinct as a unique act of God, and thus decidedly not the same as creation (253). On the other hand, as J. Augustine DiNoia observes in his foreword, the term "crisis" comes from the Greek krisis, or "judgment" (ix). Christ's judgment of all human beings emerges as a persistent theme in the volume. So Andrew Hofer's introduction explores Aquinas's teaching on Christ's judgment of teachers of the faith, noting the implications for theologians who hold the office of teacher. Marshall's and Daria Spezzano's essays are powerful accounts of Christ's role as judge. Both diagnose contemporary crises of faith over which we will be judged and remind us that the Lord Jesus judges to save those who love him. These essays read almost like sermons, and they deserve careful attention when [End Page 1435] Christ's judgment seems irrelevant in an age when God can only be thought to be winsome and nice.Some of the essays contribute to ongoing Thomistic scholarly debates. The vexed question of how to understand the esse secundarium in article 4 of Aquinas's De unione verbi incarnati receives two essays: one by Roger Nutt and the other by Steven A. Long. Nutt argues that Aquinas did not reverse his teaching on the single esse of Christ in the De unione. He observes that Aquinas uses the terms principale and secundarium to manifest "the ultimate unity of composite realities," and thus secundarium esse is not "second esse" in the order of being (87). Like Nutt, Long argues that Aquinas is consistent in his position on Christ's singular esse. He invokes a wide array of interpretive and metaphysical arguments in a mere nine pages. Though they do not resolve the problem (at least in my view: how could an esse distinct from another esse be numerically the same esse, as they would have to be for Christ to have one esse?), they are useful contributions to the ongoing interpretation of Aquinas on this point.Similarly, Christ's human knowledge in Aquinas's theology and Catholic doctrine gets two essays. White expands on prior work on this topic and argues that Christ maintained consciousness of his filial identity prior to the resurrection. As usual, he does careful work deploying the insights of Catholic doctrine in conversation with biblical studies. Simon Francis Gaine expands on his argument in Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God by arguing that a divine person does not need to have the beatific vision to be incarnate. He contrasts metaphysical necessity with soteriological necessity; Christ needed to have the beatific vision to give it to us, but he did not need it as a necessary consequence of being incarnate. It would be interesting to see Gaine and other Thomists interact with John Duns Scotus's argument that Christ could be incarnate without the beatific vision, or highest possible grace (Ordinatio III, d. 13). Scotus, in my... (shrink)

Moral behaviour, based on social norms, is commonly regarded as a hallmark of humans. Hitherto, humans are perceived to be the only species possessing social norms and to engage in moral behaviour. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting their presence in chimpanzees, but systematic studies are lacking. Here, we examine the evolution of human social norms and their underlying psychological mechanisms. For this, we distinguish between conventions, cultural social norms and universal social norms. We aim at exploring whether chimpanzees possess evolutionary (...) precursors of universal social norms seen in humans. Chimpanzees exhibit important preconditions for their presence and enforcement: tolerant societies, well-developed social-cognitive skills and empathetic competence. Here, we develop a theoretical framework for recognizing different functional levels of social norms and distinguish them from mere statistical behavioural regularities. Quasi social norms are found where animals behave functionally moral without having moral emotions. In proto social norms, moral emotions might be present but cannot be collectivized due to the absence of a uniquely human psychological trait, i.e. shared intentionality. Human social norms, whether they are universal or cultural, involve moral emotions and are collectivized. We will discuss behaviours in chimpanzees that represent potential evolutionary precursors of human universal social norms, with special focus on social interactions involving infants. We argue that chimpanzee infants occupy a special status within their communities and propose that tolerance towards them might represent a proto social norm. Finally, we discuss possible ways to test this theoretical framework. (shrink)

Part of the appeal of the biological approach to personal identity is that it does not have to countenance spatially coincident entities. But if the termination thesis is correct and the organism ceases to exist at death, then it appears that the corpse is a dead body that earlier was a living body and distinct from but spatially coincident with the organism. If the organism is identified with the body, then the unwelcome spatial coincidence could perhaps be avoided. It is (...) argued that such an identification would be a mistake. A living organism has a different part/whole relationship and persistence conditions than the alleged body. A case will be made that the concept ‘human body’ is a conceptual mess, vague in an unprincipled manner, and that an eliminativist stance towards dead bodies is the appropriate response. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Die Welt liegt in Scherben, so heisst es. Und sich mit einer Welt anzufreunden, die sich der Anfreundung entzieht, scheint paradox. Christina Thürmer-Rohr kreist in ihren Essays zu Feminismus, Pluralität, Dialog, Aussenseitertum, Vergänglichkeit und zum politischen Denken Hannah Arendts um den Widerstreit zwischen dem Heimatlichen und dem Unheimlichen - und um die Fiktionen vom »heilen« Geschlecht. Sie widerspricht dabei der Annahme, Fremdheit sei das Andere der Freundschaft, Freundschaft das Andere der Fremdheit. So entsteht eine Karte, auf der man sich (...) hin- und herbewegen kann, denn die Nachbarschaft der einzelnen Texte eröffnet Türen zu Lesarten, die nicht in den gewohnten Spuren bleiben, und führt zu unerledigten Fragen, die keine Ruhe lassen." --Back cover. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 36 Heft: 2 Seiten: 392-402.

As a continuation of the work of the third author in [5], we make further observations on the features of Galois cohomology in the general model theoretic context. We make explicit the connection between forms of definable groups and first cohomology sets with coefficients in a suitable automorphism group. We then use a method of twisting cohomology (inspired by Serre’s algebraic twisting) to describe arbitrary fibres in cohomology sequences—yielding a useful “finiteness” result on cohomology sets. Applied to the special case (...) of differential fields and Kolchin’s constrained cohomology, we complete results from [3] by proving that the first constrained cohomology set of a differential algebraic group over a bounded, differentially large, field is countable. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Many Western philosophers are poorly informed about the issues involved in nonduality, since this topic is usually associated with various kinds of absolute idealism in the West, or mystical traditions in the East. Increasingly, however, this topic is finding its way into Western philosophical debates. In this "scholarly but leisurely and very readable" (Spectrum Review) analysis of the philosophies of nondualism of (Hindu) Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, and Taoism, Loy extracts what he calls "a core doctrine" of nonduality of seer and (...) seen from these three worldviews and then applies the doctrine in various ways, including a critique of Derrida's deconstructionism. (shrink)

In this classic work David Bohm, writing clearly and without technical jargon, develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole.

It’s not clear what supervaluationists should say about propositional content. Does a vague sentence, e.g., ‘Harry is bald’, express one proposition, or a barrage of propositions, or none at all? Or is the matter indeterminate? The supervaluationist canon is not decisive on the issue; authoritative passages can be cited in favor of each of the proposals just mentioned. Furthermore, some detractors have argued that supervaluationism is incapable of providing any coherent account of propositional content. This paper considers each of the (...) proposals for how many propositions are expressed by a vague sentence: none, some, all, or it’s indeterminate. Most of these proposals turn out to be unworkable in the metalanguage. I conclude that orthodox supervaluationists—those who identify truth with supertruth—must either relax the standard requirement that propositions be bivalent, or else alter the standard relation between sentences and propositions in which a sentence inherits its truth-conditions from the proposition it expresses. The best option going forward for the orthodox supervaluationist is perhaps the most surprising—amend the requirement that propositions be bivalent. I argue that propositions having supervaluational truth-conditions are best suited to fill the propositional roles in the semantic theory of a vague language. These propositions admit of truth-value gaps, and gappy propositions are controversial, but I argue that they earn their keep. (shrink)

Religion, science, and naturalism -- Perception and religious experience -- Panexperientialism, freedom, and the mind-body relation -- Naturalistic, dipolar theism -- Natural theology based on naturalistic theism -- Evolution, evil, and eschatology -- The two ultimates and the religions -- Religion, morality, and civilization -- Religious language and truth -- Religious knowledge and common sense.

A teoria pedagógica comporta muitos fenômenos que o educador deve compreender e levar em consideração, dentre eles, a crise. Alguns educadores exercem dignamente o seu ofício. Mesmo diante das situações mais adversas, eles podem ser considerados resilientes. Resiliência é o nome dado à capacidade concreta das pessoas de não só superarem situações críticas, mas também de utilizá-las em seus processos de desenvolvimento pessoal. Os estudos sobre o tema se propõem a enfatizar a promoção de processos educativos que facilitem ou tornem (...) as pessoas mais resistentes e maduras para enfrentar as dificuldades que ocorrem em sua vida. A inclusão da espiritualidade como um fator de favorecimento da resiliência parece ser o de desafiar o futuro numa perspectiva de superação, considerando as adversidades como obstáculos que poderão favorecer o amadurecimento pessoal, através da ampliação da visão de mundo e do estabelecimento de novas formas de equilíbrio. Acredita-se que um professor resiliente poderá mais facilmente manter-se firme em sua tarefa de educar, transcendendo as questões meramente pedagógicas, buscando desenvolver a integralidade na prática formativa, sobretudo porque possui mais possibilidades de vivenciar a sua própria multidimensionalidade. Este texto tem como finalidade estudar a importância da espiritualidade no favorecimento de uma postura resiliente no educador. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), begründete nicht nur die moderne Logik, sondern auch die Sprachphilosophie. Er erweiterte die funktionale Analyse der Sätze zu einer Systematik des gesamten sprachlichen Bedeutens und Ausdrucks, indem er zwischen den Zeichen selbst, dem Sinn und der Bedeutung der Zeichen unterschied. Dieser Band versammelt Kommentare und Analysen zu den drei klassischen Aufsätzen Funktion und Begriff (1891), Über Sinn und Bedeutung und Über Begriff und Gegenstand (beide 1892). Er verschafft dadurch einen fundierten Überblick sowohl zu den Kernproblemen wie auch (...) den Hintergründen von Freges bis heute kontrovers diskutiertem Ansatz. Dabei wird die enge Verzahntheit zwischen dem logischen Hintergrund und Freges logizistischem Anliegen einerseits und den Vorschlägen zur Deutung einer ganzen Reihe von sprachlichen Erscheinungen erkennbar. Dazu gehören Fragen nach dem Wesen von Begriff und Gegenstand bzw. Prädikaten und Eigennamen als den Grundelementen jeder Aussage überhaupt – aber auch Erläuterungen zu indirekter Rede und fiktionalem Diskurs. Der vorliegende Band bietet dazu informierte Kommentare und Analysen. (shrink)

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what (...) happens once this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions. (shrink)

Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse. Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the (...) possibilities of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places. Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism. (shrink)

Frege ist bekannt für seinen Versuch, die Arithmetik aus der Logik herzuleiten. Doch welcher Begriff von Logik liegt diesem Projekt zugrunde? Wenn Logik die Grundlage der Arithmetik ist und die Arithmetik über Inhalte verfestigt, so muss die Logik selbst eine Wissenschaft mit eigenen Inhalten sein. Die Autorin zeigt, wie Frege logische Zeichen zu eigenständigen Begriffen aufwertet und dadurch eine inhaltliche Logikkonzeption überhaupt erst ermöglicht. In einem weiteren Schritt wird ein Kriterium vorgestellt, mit dessen Hilfe Frege logische Inhalte von den Inhalten (...) anderer Wissenschaften abgrenzt. Dabei wird jedoch deutlich, dass Frege bis in die 1890er Jahre braucht, um sich vollständig vom Kantischen Diktum zu lösen, die Logik sei nur ein negativer Probierstein der Wahrheit. Die Suche nach dem Grund, der Frege zu einer inhaltlichen Konzeption von Logik zwang, führt in die Geometriegeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Vor ihrem Hintergrund werden schließlich die Anfangsparagraphen der Grundlagen der Arithmetik in einem neuen Licht interpretiert. (shrink)

Thus, Meyers provides a valuable account, not only of current medical attitudes, but also of relevant case and statute law as it stands at present.