In this article I argue — drawing on texts of May Sarton and my own research —that old age is often difficult, particularly for women. They have to become dependent and have to survive changes, separation and losses. It can become extremely difficult to maintain a positive sense of self. A network of friends and an image of God in which unconditional love, nearness and togetherness prevail may help older women to live with dignity till the end.

How can hope, love and faith stay alive when dementia enters a home? In this article I shall look especially at the spouse or partner who shares an abode with a person with dementia. Most of the authors in this field, also John Swinton who is perhaps the best known author whose books are written from a theological perspective, focus on care in institutions, that means care by professionals. A partner living with a dementia patient has two main roles: as (...) partner and caregiver. Night and day a partner is witness to the ongoing deterioration of her or his beloved partner, without being a professional. This article is founded not only on literature about dementia patients, but also on the experiences of several partners, as well as my own experiences as a partner. The question we all ask is: 'From where does our strength come?' I argue that what is said in the literature on the subject of dementia patients does not help the partners, because it lays a heavy burden on them, who are already suffering from feelings of grief and guilt. I do not agree with John Swinton's idea that God created dementia. Looking for different ways of thinking about God and faith to survive with hope and love, I turn to the exegesis of the creation stories by Ellen van Wolde. These give the opportunity to take the evil of the situation of the deterioration of the personality of a patient with dementia seriously, and at the same time grant the possibility to turn the grief and guilt feelings into strength to fight evil, together with a God whose empathy and love stays with a partner in her or his loneliness and grief. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The decay of master narratives showcases a distrust of universals, while deepening particularity seems to promise nothing but further dissolution. For Jason Josephson-Storm, these are dead ends. He wants to offer a path forward, which he terms metamodernism. This is the first full-length work to line up the various critiques of disciplinary master-categories (religion, science, art, etc.) and trace their affinities and shared conceptual roots. It (...) suggests that if these critiques are granted, they tell us something fundamental about the mechanisms through which concepts and social categories are produced and maintained. They suggest that the social world should be seen in terms of a "process social ontology" with temporary zones of stability called "social kinds." This amounts to a new theory of society and a new methodology for research in the human sciences. The work also broadens to fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting not skepticism but zeteticism--a stance directed toward humble, emancipatory knowledge. Valuing this form of knowledge allows postmodernism to be channeled into a critical virtue ethics directed toward multi-species. (shrink)

Hans Skjervheim har hatt stor betydning for norsk åndsliv og offentlig ordskifte. Han hadde en unik evne til å vise hvordan tidløse filosofiske problemstillinger ikke bare angår fagfilosofer, men også er til stede i den politiske debatt og i hverdagens små og store utfordringer. Mange forbinder nok Skjervheim særlig med ±positivismestriden? på 1960- og 1970-tallet. Denne antologien viser bredden i virksomheten hans, og at mange av Skjervheims tekster har noe betydelig å si om også vår egen tids utfordringer - blant (...) annet om tiltroen til vitenskapen, filosofiens rolle, forvitringen av den liberale orden, økologisk krise, algoritmestyrte sosiale medier, ±fake news? og identitetspolitikk. Forfatterne er en blanding av en eldre garde, som skrev og virket samtidig med Skjervheim, og en yngre garde bestående av toneangivende fagpersoner fra ulike fagområder i dag. De tar alle for seg en eller flere sentrale tekster av Skjervheim og leser dem inn i samtidige problemstillinger. Disse nylesningene aktualiserer og bruker av Skjervheims filosofiske og litterære arv, men peker også på blindflekker og svakheter i hans tenkning - helt i tråd med slik Skjervheim ønsket å bli lest. (shrink)

This essay investigates Jean-Paul Sartre's reaction to the Holocaust. While Sartre dealt frequently with Jewish themes, he did not explicitly address the question of why the Holocaust occurred or whether and how Western culture would be different in a post-Holocaust world. I claim that although Sartre never addressed the Shoah directly, his Marxist Existentialism provides valuable resources for understanding modern antisemitism. In his major postwar writings he developed the concepts of political engagement, authenticity and responsibility for systematic social harms. Sartre's (...) importance in Holocaust studies is defended against the claim that Existentialism lacks the theoretical resources to grasp modern, systematic evil. Sartre's approach is briefly compared with that of other Western Marxist like Adorno. (shrink)

Gave 42 19-26 yr. old insomniac Ss placebo pills to take a few min. before going to bed. Some Ss were told that the pills would cause arousal, and others were told that the pills would reduce arousal. As predicted, arousal Ss got to sleep more quickly than they had on nights without the pills, presumably because they attributed their arousal to the pills rather than to their emotions, and as a consequence were less emotional. Also as predicted, relaxation Ss (...) got to sleep less quickly than usual, presumably because they assumed that their emotions were unusually intense since their arousal level was high even after taking an arousal-reducing agent. Results have relevance for S. Schachter's theory of emotions and H. Kelley's attribution theory. Pragmatically, findings suggest the feasibility of a therapy based on reattribution of symptoms, and indicate that traditional suggestion effect practices should be modified. (shrink)

Both ‘philosophy’ and ‘the child’ are notions that seem to have an everlasting presence in our daily vocabulary. What is less common and perhaps lacking is any reflection on the relation between them, which is rarely a focus of the researcher’s attention. We believe that it is precisely this relation that is at stake in increasingly popular notions such as ‘philosophy for/with children’, or even in philosophy of education as such. In this article we will expand upon this claim by (...) exploring the meeting place(s) of both notions. An extensive elaboration of this relation would need not only more space than the average journal article offers, but also much more extensive research. Both ‘philosophy’ and ‘the child’—if we were to do justice to the wealth these terms offer—should each form separately the object of further research, in order to be able to pick the fruits of their shared household. We will bypass a labyrinthine study of this sort, however, and instead offer some thoughts on the cross-section of both these terms, seeking as it were what could be philosophical about the child, and where philosophy becomes childish. We hope that the reader would be so kind as to step into this brief, and somewhat associative, reasoning and find something of value in this wordplay, knowing that the more extensive treatise that the interconnection of these two realities demands is to be found elsewhere. The authors, for their part, are writing in the conviction that less can sometimes be more. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous categories—such as religion, science, and art—has collapsed under the weight of postmodern critiques, calling into question the possibility of progress and even the value of knowledge. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm aims to radicalize and move beyond these deconstructive projects to offer a path forward for the humanities and social sciences using a new model for theory he calls metamodernism. Metamodernism works (...) through the postmodern critiques and uncovers the mechanisms that produce and maintain concepts and social categories. In so doing, Storm provides a new, radical account of society’s ever-changing nature—what he calls a “Process Social Ontology”—and its materialization in temporary zones of stability or “social kinds.” Storm then formulates a fresh approach to philosophy of language by looking beyond the typical theorizing that focuses solely on human language production, showing us instead how our own sign-making is actually on a continuum with animal and plant communication. Storm also considers fundamental issues of the relationship between knowledge and value, promoting a turn toward humble, emancipatory knowledge that recognizes the existence of multiple modes of the real. Metamodernism is a revolutionary manifesto for research in the human sciences that offers a new way through postmodern skepticism to envision a more inclusive future of theory in which new forms of both progress and knowledge can be realized. (shrink)

Why is there a 'hard problem' of consciousness? Why do we seem unable to grasp intuitively that physical brain processes can be identical to experiences? Here I comment on the 'meta-problem' (Chalmers, 2018), based on previous ideas (Storm, 2014; 2018). In short: humans may be 'inborn dualists' ('neuroscepticism'), because evolution gave us two (types of) brain systems (or functional modes): one (Sp) for understanding relatively simple physical phenomena, and another (Sm) specialized for mental phenomena. Because Sp cannot deal with the (...) immense complexity of the brain processes underlying consciousness, it represents them as fundamentally different from nonmental physical phenomena (dualist intuition), using 'simulations' to produce 'Sm-type understanding'/predictions that seems radically different from 'Sp-type understanding'. (By analogy, different sensory modalities, handled by distinct brain systems, evoke qualitatively different experiences.) Brain systems for Sp representations of our brain processes never evolved, because they would be useless. When lacking a single 'template' matching different aspects of reality (objective vs. subjective = simulated), complementary 'models' are needed ('neuro-complementarity'), like the wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. Thus, it seems plausible that Sp and Sm evolved because they were needed to cope with different challenges, and that 'problem intuitions' are side effects of these useful but different brain systems. (shrink)

Mainstream climate economics takes global warming seriously, but perplexingly concludes that the optimal economic policy is to almost do nothing about it. This conclusion can be traced to just a few “normative” assumptions, over which there exists fundamental disagreement amongst economists. This paper explores two axes of this disagreement. The first axis measures faith in the invisible hand to adjust the natural thermostat. The second axis expresses differences in views on the efficiency and equity implications of climate action. The two (...) axes combined lead to a classification of conflicting approaches in climate economics. The variety of approaches does not imply a post-modern “anything goes”, as the contradictions between climate and capitalism cannot be wished away. (shrink)

William Storm reinterprets the concept of the tragic as both a fundamental human condition and an aesthetic process in dramatic art. He proposes an original theoretical relation between a generative and consistent tragic ground and complex characterization patterns. For Storm, it is the dismemberment of character, not the death, that is the signature mark of tragic drama. Basing his theory in the sparagmos, the dismembering rite associated with Dionysus, Storm identifies a rending tendency that transcends the ancient Greek setting and (...) can be recognized transhistorically. The dramatic character in any era who suffers the tragic fate must do so in the manner of the ancient god of theater: the depicted self is torn apart, figuratively if not literally, psychologically if not physically. Storm argues that a newly objectified concept of the tragic can prove more useful critically and diagnostically than the traditional and more subjective tragic "vision." Further, he develops a theory of the tragic field, a model for the connective and cumulative activity that brings about the distinctive Dionysian effect upon character. His theory is supported with case studies from Agamemnon and Iphigenia in Aulis, King Lear, and The Seagull. Storm's examination of the dramatic form of tragedy and the existential questions it raises is sensitive to both their universal relevance and their historical particularity. (shrink)

Logic is traditionally considered to be a purely syntactic discipline, at least in principle. However, prof. David Isles has shown that this ideal is not yet met in traditional logic. Semantic residue is present in the assumption that the domain of a variable should be fixed in advance of a derivation, and also in the notion that a numerical notation must refer to a number rather than be considered a mathematical object in and of itself. Based on his work, the (...) central question of this thesis is what kind of logic, if any, results from removing this semantic residue from traditional logic.We differ from traditional logic in two significant ways. The first is that the assumption that a numerical notation must refer to a number is denied. Numerical notations are considered as mathematical objects in their own right, related to each other by means of rewrite rules. The traditional notion of reference is then replaced by the notion of reduction (by means of the rewrite rules) to a normal form. Two numerical notations that reduce to the same normal form would traditionally be considered identical, as they would refer to the same number, and hence they would be interchangeable salva veritate. In the new system, called Buridan-Volpin (BV), the numerical notations themselves are the elements of the domains of variables, and two numerical notations that reduce to the same normal form need not be interchangeable salva veritate, except when they are syntactically identical (i.e., have the same Gödel number).The second is that we do away with the assumption that the domains of variables need to be fixed in advance of a derivation. Instead we focus on what is needed to guarantee preservation of truth in every step of a derivation. These conditions on the domains of the variables, accumulated in the course of a derivation, are combined in a reference grammar. Whereas traditionally a derivation is considered valid when the conclusion follows from the premisses by way of the derivation rules (and possibly axioms), in the BV system a derivation must meet the extra condition that no inconsistency occurs within the reference grammar. For if the reference grammar were to give rise to inconsistency (i.e., it would be impossible to assign domains to all the variables without breaking at least one of the conditions placed on them in the reference grammar), there is no longer a guarantee that truth has been preserved in every step of the derivation, and hence the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the derivation.In Chapter 2 the BV system is introduced in some formal detail. Chapter 3 gives some examples of derivations, notably totality of addition, multiplication and exponentiation, as well as a lemma needed for the proof of Euclid’s Theorem. These examples, taken from prof. Isles’ First-Order Reasoning and Primitive Recursive Natural Number Notations, show that there is a real proof-theoretical difference between traditional logic and the BV system. Here we also find the first major point of departure between myself and prof. Isles, centered on the notion of inheritance of conditions in the reference grammar by way of lemmata. These different points of view are best illustrated in the sections on the totality of exponentiation and on Euclid’s Lemma: prof. Isles maintains that the proof of totality of exponentiation is not BV valid, while I maintain that it is. But I do agree with him that the traditional proof of Euclid’s Lemma is not BV valid. Chapter 6 also expands the arguments for my choice in this matter.Now that it has been shown that there is a difference between traditional logic and BV, the properties of BV need to be examined. In Chapter 4 we give a proof of Cut-elimination for BV minus induction and the subformula property for BV, which allows us to prove the consistency of BV minus induction. We also expand on the reasons for excluding induction. In Chapter 5 we consider in detail the proof of a finite analog to the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem given by prof. Isles in his article with the same title. He proves that under certain conditions it is always possible, given the existence of a (possibly uncountable) model for a derivation, to give a finite model for this derivation. The system he considers deviates from BV as considered in this thesis in two significant ways: it does not contain the induction rule and the domains contain numbers instead of numerical notations. We then go on to show that it is possible to extend the result to include induction, in the sense that the existence of a possibly uncountable model for a derivation guarantees the existence of a model that is at most countable. We also consider the complications that arise from taking numerical expressions instead of numbers as the elements of domains.Finally, in Chapter 6 we consider the philosophical consequences of the BV system, informed by the formal results from the previous chapters. In particular we discuss the relation between reduction and reference, the status of reference grammars, the notion of induction and its function within BV, and some brief considerations on the consequences of the BV system for the discussion regarding nominalism and realism with regard to mathematical objects. The object of the chapter is twofold. On the one hand applying the formal results to philosophical questions, on the other hand arguing that BV is not just a theoretically acceptable alternative to traditional logic, but is in fact deserving of further development and research into its properties. The latter will probably appeal most to those of a nominalist and/or finitist bent.Abstract prepared by Harrie de Swart and Sven Storms.E-mail:[email protected]:https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/files/6170 1294/Storms_The_Buridan_Volpin_04_05_2022.pdf. (shrink)

Résumé Depuis la publication en français du Léviathan de Carl Schmitt, l’antisémitisme du juriste a constitué, en France, le cœur des débats autour de la pensée du théoricien du politique. Dans cet article, l’auteur tente d’approcher l’aversion du penseur catholique à l’égard du judaïsme en privilégiant un angle bien particulier. Partant des phénomènes bibliques et des thèmes religieux présents dans les écrits du penseur allemand, cet article cherche à évaluer l’intuition d’après laquelle il existerait une affinité intellectuelle entre Schmitt et (...) Marcion ; intuition entendue çà et là, qui réclame un approfondissement spécifique. Pour ce faire, l’auteur formule l’hypothèse d’un « marcionisme théologico-politique » qu’il tente d’appliquer et de tester à travers l’entière trajectoire de l’œuvre de Schmitt. L’enjeu étant de savoir si, pour le juriste catholique, les implications théologiquement politiques du judaïsme seraient, oui ou non, radicalement incompatibles avec celles du christianisme. (shrink)

It is common to portray conservative and liberal Protestant denominations as “strong” and “weak” on the basis of indices such as church attendance. Alternatively, they can be regarded as qualitatively different cultural systems that coexist in a multiple-niche environment. We integrate these two perspectives with a study of American teenagers based on both one-time survey information and the experience sampling method (ESM), which records individual experience on a moment-by-moment basis. Conservative Protestant youth were found to be more satisfied, family-oriented, and (...) sociable than liberal Protestant youth, but also more dependent on their social environment, which is reflected in a deterioration of their mood when they are alone. Liberal Protestant youth appear to have internalized values that remain constant whether in the presence or absence of others. We relate these results to the social scientific literature on liberalism and conservatism and to evolutionary theory as a framework for explaining cultural systems as adaptations to multiple-niche environments. (shrink)

According to several recent polls, more than 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death. Of those, many adhere to their beliefs because of religious faith. Beyond religion, though, there is increasing scientific examination of life after death hypotheses. Both religious and secular believers are more frequently using empirical research to answer the key questions of how consciousness may transcend corporeal life and death. These essays from leading survival theoreticians scientifically assay the issues and evidence. Interdisciplinary in nature, it (...) covers diverse topics including the origins of life after death hypotheses; theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches to afterlife research; hallucination experiences; evidence for consciousness survival; birthmarks and previous-life memories; suicide; and spirit participation. Concluding chapters discuss the future of afterlife research and offer a new interpretation of consciousness survival. (shrink)