New Breeding Techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 are revolutionizing plant breeding and food production. Experts believe that the social debate about these technologies could be similar to those on green genetic engineering: emotional and highly controversial. Future debate about Genome Editing could benefit from a better understanding of the GMO (genetically modified organism) controversy. Against this background, this paper (a) presents results of a content analysis of position papers criticizing green genetic engineering in Germany. In particular, (b) it focuses on the (...) controversy as a place where normative concepts of nature are debated and become visible. Hence, the study complements existing interpretations by showing that the emerging concepts are more diverse than the familiar reductionist breakdown of the debate into anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric conceptions suggests. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins argues both that Darwin's theory made a God-as-the-designer-of-species redundant, and also that the problem of evil provides overwhelming evidence against God's existence. But Michael Ruse suspects Dawkins may be too hasty….

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Susan JamesRichard A. WatsonSusan James. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii + 318. Cloth, $35.00.Susan James shows how during the seventeenth century philosophers moved from the three souls of Aristotle and the tripartite soul of Thomas Aquinas in which passions and reasons compete for the attention of the will, (...) to a Cartesian view of man as a single soul in union with the body who wills under the influence of both passions and reasons, to a Hobbesian view that the soul is the body and that the bodily motions we call reasons and passions are desires; acts of will are merely the deciding desires in deterministic causal sequences of the material motions of the body that constitute desires. This sets up the contemporary view that, motions are caused by desires and beliefs, leaving behind the difficulties of integrating with one another Aristotelian souls, Thomistic faculties, and Cartesian mind and body. James conceives of this evolution as one of unification of mental and bodily powers, and of integration of the active and passive powers of the mind. This concourse also represents a development from theories meant to explain to theories calculated for control and finally to theories facilitating therapy. Aristotle and Thomas adapted their ontologies to perceived differences in powers and faculties, while Descartes and Hobbes worked toward an ideal of unity of science and nature. The Christian Descartes brought together all the substances and powers of nature under a single extended matter divided into parts by the single force of motion, but he excepted the human soul with its power of will to alter the course of nature. The atheist Hobbes simply dispensed with supernatural [End Page 168] mental substance and occult power of will in order to integrate the whole of nature (including sensing and reasoning) under a cause and effect sequence of moving material bodies in which the last desire in a sequence of human bodily motions is designated as an act of will.James intends her book “as a contribution to the reinstatement of the emotions within philosophy, to the… opinion that we need to take account of our emotional life if we are to understand… moral motivation and growth, the springs of action (rational and otherwise), and the nature of reasoning” (22). She agrees that the sharp division between ideas and passions or emotions is properly abolished to be replaced by the view that all ideas have an emotional component, and all passions an ideational component. This fits with the parallel development of the notion that all sensible perceptions are propositional, and the somewhat less widespread notion that all concepts have a sensible component.But did this development result in a view of passions and ideas, learning and knowing, thinking and action, that is more true to nature than Aristotelian ontology? It is very hard to answer this question, and despite her sympathies with the notion that all human thought is both conceptual and emotional, James does not try. The reason we don’t know lies under the surface of the movement from Aristotle to Hobbes (i.e., to Daniel Dennett) like a monster in the deep. The monster is the monotheistic God, the perfection and unity of which underlies the Western drive to a unitary view of nature including man. The possibility that this God could be a deceiver, and so all our sensations and ideas might not represent the real world, set up Cartesianism and modern hypothetico-deductive science. But lurking throughout James’ book is a more palpable dreadnought, a demoness, the woman Eve. The female is responsible for the Fall of Man, and thus the fear and suspicion of women that suffuses patriarchic Christianity, and is expressed openly by such philosophers as Malebranche. Bodily passions and emotions (particularly the concupiscent ones) are nasty, evil, irrational, overpowering; to wit, they are feminine. They are not to be trusted, and must be subdued. So while still driven by ideals of monotheism, Descartes and Hobbes do move beyond the dogmatic Christian association of the emotions with female treachery. Even so... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kings and Gods as Ecological Agents:From Reciprocity to Unilateralism in the Management of Natural ResourcesSimon Simonse (bio)1. IntroductionThe questions this article addresses are as follows: do non-Western societies have a qualitatively better, more balanced relationship with nature than modern Western societies? Can the difference between the two be described in terms of an opposition between a reciprocal and an exploitative relationship? What difference does the Judeo-Christian tradition make (...) in shaping the modern relationship with nature?To answer these questions I will give brief descriptions of the way in which three cultural traditions have structured the relationship between man and nature: societies that are ruled by sacred kings, societies where power over nature is attributed to divinities, and the Old Testament tradition. As cases of sacred kinship, I present ethnographic material taken from my anthropological fieldwork among the Lulubo, Lokoya, and Lotuho peoples from the East Bank of the Nile in Southern Sudan. I will use the term "Eastern Nilotic" as shorthand for this complex of peoples. For the societies where divinities play the central role, I take the Western Nilotic Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot living in the flood plains of the Nile north of the kingship societies.In comparing these three traditions my point of departure is René Girard's analysis of culture as a mechanism to resolve conflict by directing the aggression of the members of society onto a victim and so achieving a new consensus. We shall see that in the kingship societies what we call natural phenomena play an integral part in culturally staging the scapegoat mechanism. They are the stage of human rivalries and their resolution. Among the polytheistic Western Nilotes they are the instrument through which the gods make their power felt and demand attention from humans. In the Old Testament, natural phenomena remain the domain of God's power. Humans should not try to interfere. Their mission is to combat human evil as defined in Mosaic law. [End Page 31]2. Kings as Ecological AgentsThe survival of the communities of the Lokoya and Lulubo on the East Bank of the Nile who traditionally live in well-fortified village-polities, counting in the precolonial period between 1500 and 2500 inhabitants, is dependent on forces that are unpredictable (Simonse 1992). As agriculturists they are dependent on regular rains. However, the rains in their area are erratic and localized. As a result there is always a risk that the harvest may fail. The soil is of varying quality, giving varying yields in different places. The birth rate is another major concern. It determines the security of the community in its relationship to neighboring, frequently hostile, communities. There is the concern for epidemics, crop-eating insects and birds, and root-eating worms. Violent winds may destroy the crop, and lions and leopards may kill humans and cattle. A concern of a different order is the extent of the effectiveness of weapons, spears, and bows and arrows, in assuring security.When adversity affects the community, the first question asked by those affected is that regarding its cause. Frequently the cause is a breach of the social rules: an act of violence and a failure to perform or properly perform a ritual of purification necessitated by the violence. It may also be unconscious resentment on the part of a person or group that feels excluded from benefits enjoyed by others. It may be the cry of a neglected relative. It may be incest. It may be an attack by outsiders.Among the Lulubo and Lokoya, responsibility for the various aspects of the natural environment that can be critical for community survival is allocated to the different clans. In the case of a crisis (drought, infertility) the clan associated with the problem is the target of investigations. The main investigation strategy is to check, one by one, the quarrels in which members of that clan have been involved. When a conflict has been identified, a solution is suggested by way of reconciliation or restitution. Of particular interest are attempts to provoke the responsible clan official. If a settlement of the dispute fails to bring the required result, there will be more rounds of investigation... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Biblical Literalism Miracles Design Morality Original Sin Natural Evil Contingency Conclusion References Further Reading.

The research is devoted to the ethical views of Vladimir Monomakh, reflected in the “Teaching” of the Grand Duke. The author’s reflections concerning such fundamental moral categories as good and evil, virtue and vice, the meaning of life and death, free will, duty, happiness are considered and analyzed. A partial continuity of the Grand Duke’s views concerning the relationship to the categories of good and evil, as well as virtue and vice, with the Byzantine Christian tradition, in particular with regard (...) to the “theory of three small deeds”, which is based on the theory of repentance of John Chrysostom, and the theory of “asceticism in the world”, based on the writings of Basil the Great. It is revealed that the ethical views of the Grand Duke do not fit into the strict paradigm of Christian medieval philosophy and theology. In this regard, the author of the article draws attention to the syncretic nature of the worldview of the author of the “Teaching”, expressed in a kind of worldview combining Christian and pre-Christian beliefs. In this vein, the specific understanding of the problems of the meaning of life, death, happiness by Vladimir Monomakh is analyzed, which is revealed when considering the peculiar attitude of the author of the “Teaching” to the sacred rites of prayer and burial. The author’s views on the category of duty in the universal and state terms, as well as the principles of practical behavior, are studied. According to the results of the research, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that the work of the Grand Duke is an ethical “micro-treatise”, the ideological content of which fully reflects the moral concept of the existence of the ancient Rus-sian man. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, is crucial (...) for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 199-203 [Access article in PDF] Lived Time and to Live Time Christian Kupke Keywords time, dimensional time, temporality, dialectics, subjectivity In this paper, I argue that a phenomenological description of temporality is a description of what it is to "live" time, that is, to live time in its three-dimensional aspects: past, future, and present. And it is suggested that this dimensional time can (...) be analyzed on two different levels: on a microstructural level that is part of the subject–object relationship (cognitive–intentional time), and on a macrostructural level that is part of the subject–subject relationship (intersubjective time). In a close reading of Martin Wyllie's paper "Lived Time and Psychopathology" (2005) some implications and consequences of these suggestions are discussed. Conceptual Problems: Personal and Intersubjective Time One of Martin Wyllie's main theses is that to accurately describe suffering one may have to use a conceptual framework of a bipartite structure that includes the embodied temporal subject on the one hand and the temporal world on the other. It is this what the author calls a "dialectical relationship" between the time of the individual person called "personal time" and the time of the world called "world time" or "intersubjective time" (Wyllie 2005, 173).But then Martin Wyllie also deals with another model, another conceptual framework that follows a different logic and that—in contrast to the dualistic model—is usually associated with dialectics: the tripartite structure of past, future, and present. "Now in lived time", Wyllie claims, "is a unity of the past, present, and future, and is more than simply a succession because the immediate 'no-more', 'present', and 'yet-to-come' are ordinarily never sharply separated" (Wyllie 2005, 174).I want first to discuss the conceptual problems that come along with Martin Wyllie's use of these models. It seems to me that the author is dealing with the complexity of the relationship between these models by means of a double strategy: to conceptualize world time as intersubjective time (a), and to focus the analysis on the external, dualistic model of personal and intersubjective time (b).(a) "World time" may be differentiated at least into three categories: physical and cosmological time; natural and biological time; and social or sociocultural time. But the question is: how are these (quasi-) objective time matrices realized (and perhaps even "constituted") by the individual subject? To answer this question it is, also in my view, a good strategy for a psychopathology of time to concentrate on intersubjective [End Page 199] time, for, as Martin Wyllie states, there is indeed no doubt that "the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world" (Wyllie 2005, 177).But what I think might be a severe problem with this focal point of the analysis is the tendency to identify the world exclusively with an intersubjective world. That the embodied human subject is always already in an intersubjective world does not mean that the subject's whole world is nothing more than an intersubjective world. Those temporal processes that are, for instance, necessary to "read"—in an intersubjective world—Martin Wyllie's text and to "write" a comment on it (as I do now) are part of at least a double temporal structure.First, reading and writing are formal processes of an integration of cognitive and intentional activities that are the transcendental basis of any intelligible discussion of semantic questions, namely, to recognize signs, retentionally and protentionally, as integral parts of higher temporal units to enable the subject to understand what is read or written. Without such retentional and protentional acts, as they were generally described by Husserl, any text would be a mere accumulation of signs without any formal or logical order.But, second, reading and writing are also informal processes of an integration of those intersubjective activities that result in an intelligible discussion of semantic questions. Here it is necessary to remember what was read or written, by Martin Wyllie, myself, and others (an intersubjective remembrance that is essential for the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, is crucial (...) for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa MonasticismChristian P. B. HaskettIdentity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism. By Martin A. Mills. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 404 + xxi pp. with 12 black and white plates.In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a type of teaching called a dmar khrid, a "red instruction," wherein the lama brings students through (...) a teaching as a physician might dissect a corpse, pointing out and explaining the various parts and organs and their places and functions. In Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism, Martin Mills has done very much the same thing, with the exception that the body he examines is still very much alive, and emerges, to my eyes at least, as a new and wholly vital entity. Mills exposes the subcutaneous and sanguine body of Tibetan Buddhism, the bones and muscles that make up its structure, the blood that flows through it, and the organs that keep it alive, in "a plain and open manner," just as in a dmar khrid.1 The value of such a presentation truly cannot be overstated. An attempt to catalog the contents of each chapter would be both impossible and counterproductive, as the wealth of theoretical material and ethnographic detail is a large part of what makes this book so powerful. Instead, I will identify several topics, several of the vital organs alluded to, that are either not commonly noticed in the academic study of Buddhism, or that are given fresh perspective by Mills's anthropological and sociological methodology, and that are so crucial to understanding how it is that Buddhism lives in a typical Himalayan village. The latter portion of this review explains why I place such high value on this book and its potential place in Buddhist-Christian studies.Identity, Ritual and State is an ethnography of Kumbum Monastery in Lingshed, Ladakh (the eastern half of the Kashmir valley, located in Jammu and Kashmir, India), but its concerns are much more far-reaching than a single remote Himalayan village. The central question of the work is "how we are to understand the nature of religious authority in Tibetan Buddhist monasticism" (p. xiii), although it might more properly be the religious authority of Tibetan [End Page 187] Buddhist monastics. This answer is worked out in three overlapping areas of analysis: local ritual activity, ecclesiastical structure of the monastery, and the ritual foundations of Tibetan political thought (p. xvii).Mills convincingly asserts that there is a framework within which Buddhism happens in the Himalayas. The starting point of this framework is birth itself, which establishes the embodied person. The very physicality of personhood has several implications. First, the body is embedded in a very specific local space and place, and personhood is thus not only embodied, but also chthonic—intimately bound up with the earth or soil onto which it is born. At birth, persons are injected into a complex matrix of relations between people and various spirits, such as household gods and protectors, nāga, and itinerant demons. For example, Lingshed is divided into seven subterritories, each under the jurisdiction of a local deity whose physical abode and reign are well known to all in the village.2 These deities are associated with features of the local geography, and they regulate and influence local agricultural and social production, so birth in one area or another signifies a relation with the deity presiding over it. The land itself is imbued with a notion of personhood and agency. The human body is also the repository for pollution (sgrib), which comes about as a result of violating the established hierarchy of space and place and from bringing about changes to the local matrix of embodied persons. Both bodily pollution concerns and the need for proper relations with local spirit numina mandate definite, ongoing ritual attention. Rituals are occasioned in response to births, deaths, spirit possession, unintentional pollution of places or household objects, and movements within the monastic ecclesiastical structure, or happen regularly according to an astrologically and agriculturally influenced calendar.Rituals are performed by monks not only because they are trained specialists, but because... (shrink)

Reinforcement learning systems usually assume that a value function is defined over all states that can immediately give the value of a particular state or action. These values are used by a selection mechanism to decide which action to take. In contrast, when humans and animals make decisions, they collect evidence for different alternatives over time and take action only when sufficient evidence has been accumulated. We have previously developed a model of memory processing that includes semantic, episodic and working (...) memory in a comprehensive architecture. Here, we describe how this memory mechanism can support decision making when the alternatives cannot be evaluated based on immediate sensory information alone. Instead we first imagine, and then evaluate a possible future that will result from choosing one of the alternatives. Here we present an extended model that can be used as a model for decision making that depends on accumulating evidence over time, whether that information comes from the sequential attention to different sensory properties or from internal simulation of the consequences of making a particular choice. We show how the new model explains both simple immediate choices, choices that depend on multiple sensory factors and complicated selections between alternatives that require forward looking simulations based on episodic and semantic memory structures. In this framework, vicarious trial and error is explained as an internal simulation that accumulates evidence for a particular choice. We argue that a system like this forms the “missing link” between more traditional ideas of semantic and episodic memory, and the associative nature of reinforcement learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Justice Not GreedRichard A. HoehnJustice Not Greed Edited by Pamela Brubaker and Rogate Mshana Geneva: WCC Publications, 2010. 224 pp. $14.00The World Council of Churches (WCC) Advisory Group on Economic Matters (AGEM) advises the WCC and congregations on global economic issues. AGEM members from diverse backgrounds produced the papers in this volume. The introduction is by Rogate Mshana, WCC director for Peace, Justice, and Creation. Samuel Kobia, general (...) secretary of the WCC from 2004–9, introduces the rationale and role of AGEM in the global financial crisis. The book ends with a statement on just finance and the economy of life, adopted by the WCC Central Committee in September 2009. Justice Not Greed will be most useful in settings where there is interest in the intersection of ethics, the economic crisis, and Christianity in relation to the global economy, as well as among those who wish to follow the WCC. As expected [End Page 208] of conference papers, there is not a systematic development of an argument but overlapping ethical and economic analyses. All, however, are opposed to the status quo because of its manifest injustice, especially the impact on poor people.If one were to impose a thematic development, it might go something like this, allowing for individual differences among the authors. Decolonization has resulted in a lopsided, Western, capitalist economic system predicated on greed (Jan Pronk), described by other authors as a beast or a cancer (vivid but unhelpful metaphors since the crisis was caused by humans, not nature). The world lacks appropriate international structures. We need new global institutions, a new global financial architecture that is predicated on, or at least takes into account, justice. Congregations, the ecumenical movement, and the WCC could play a significant role in helping the United Nations move toward such a system.Several authors hope that the global crisis will provide a moment when such a change might become possible (e.g., Alexander Cobham’s “Blood-Stained Silver Lining”). Pamela K. Brubaker, Kim Yong-Bock, Roel Aalbersberg, Rienzie Perera, and Geevarghese Mor Coorilos examine questions related to the Bible, ethics, theology, a culture of “enough for all” (Musa Panti Filibus), the church as moral community, the ecumenical movement, and principles for an alternative economic system. Mariana Issa Zureikat argues for “econo-morals,” applying moral values to economic analyses. Thomas H. Kang advocates the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Marcos Arruda suggests an economy of world solidarity with the “gross happiness index” as a standard for measuring progress. While most chapters include economic analysis, John Dillon wades into some nitty-gritty causes of the current financial crisis, with a positive nod toward the (never adopted) Keynes plan for the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. Marie-Aimee Tourres lays out impacts on the developing world, as does Xiao Lian from a Chinese perspective. Most of these authors argue for such global solutions as a global reserve system and a global tax system.Justice Not Greed presents thoughtful, sometimes passionate papers that could form a basis for lively discussion. Yet real-world solutions often come down to the practice of democracy and political will. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the ecumenical movement possesses the will or the means to effect change because local organizing for political change is not a high priority at any level. [End Page 209]Richard A. HoehnChrist the Servant Lutheran ChurchCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Table of contentsI1 Proceedings of the 4th World Conference on Research IntegrityConcurrent Sessions:1. Countries' systems and policies to foster research integrityCS01.1 Second time around: Implementing and embedding a review of responsible conduct of research policy and practice in an Australian research-intensive universitySusan Patricia O'BrienCS01.2 Measures to promote research integrity in a university: the case of an Asian universityDanny Chan, Frederick Leung2. Examples of research integrity education programmes in different countriesCS02.1 Development of a state-run “cyber education program of research ethics” in (...) KoreaEun Jung Ko, Jin Sun Kwak, TaeHwan Gwon, Ji Min Lee, Min-Ho LeeCS02.3 Responsible conduct of research teachers’ training courses in Germany: keeping on drilling through hard boards for more RCR teachersHelga Nolte, Michael Gommel, Gerlinde Sponholz3. The research environment and policies to encourage research integrityCS03.1 Challenges and best practices in research integrity: bridging the gap between policy and practiceYordanka Krastev, Yamini Sandiran, Julia Connell, Nicky SolomonCS03.2 The Slovenian initiative for better research: from national activities to global reflectionsUrsa Opara Krasovec, Renata SribarCS03.3 Organizational climate assessments to support research integrity: background of the Survey of Organizational Research Climate and the experience with its use at Michigan State UniversityBrian C. Martinson, Carol R. Thrush, C.K. Gunsalus4. Expressions of concern and retractionsCS04.1 Proposed guidelines for retraction notices and their disseminationIvan Oransky, Adam MarcusCS04.2 Watching retractions: analysis of process and practice, with data from the Wiley retraction archivesChris Graf, Verity Warne, Edward Wates, Sue JoshuaCS04.3 An exploratory content analysis of Expressions of ConcernMiguel RoigCS04.4 An ethics researcher in the retraction processMichael Mumford5. Funders' role in fostering research integrityCS05.1 The Fonds de Recherche du Québec’s institutional rules on the responsible conduct of research: introspection in the funding agency activitiesMylène Deschênes, Catherine Olivier, Raphaëlle Dupras-LeducCS05.2 U.S. Public Health Service funds in an international setting: research integrity and complianceZoë Hammatt, Raju Tamot, Robin Parker, Cynthia Ricard, Loc Nguyen-Khoa, Sandra TitusCS05.3 Analyzing decision making of funders of public research as a case of information asymmetryKarsten Klint JensenCS05.4 Research integrity management: Empirical investigation of academia versus industrySimon Godecharle, Ben Nemery, Kris Dierickx5A: Education: For whom, how, and what?CS05A.1 Research integrity or responsible conduct of research? What do we aim for?Mickey Gjerris, Maud Marion Laird Eriksen, Jeppe Berggren HoejCS05A.2 Teaching and learning about RCR at the same time: a report on Epigeum’s RCR poll questions and other assessment activitiesNicholas H. SteneckCS05A.4 Minding the gap in research ethics education: strategies to assess and improve research competencies in community health workers/promoteresCamille Nebeker, Michael Kalichman, Elizabeth Mejia Booen, Blanca Azucena Pacheco, Rebeca Espinosa Giacinto, Sheila Castaneda6. Country examples of research reward systems and integrityCS06.1 Improving systems to promote responsible research in the Chinese Academy of SciencesDing Li, Qiong Chen, Guoli Zhu, Zhonghe SunCS06.4 Exploring the perception of research integrity amongst public health researchers in IndiaParthasarathi Ganguly, Barna Ganguly7. Education and guidance on research integrity: country differencesCS07.1 From integrity to unity: how research integrity guidance differs across universities in Europe.Noémie Aubert Bonn, Kris Dierickx, Simon GodecharleCS07.2 Can education and training develop research integrity? The spirit of the UNESCO 1974 recommendation and its updatingDaniele Bourcier, Jacques Bordé, Michèle LeducCS07.3 The education and implementation mechanisms of research ethics in Taiwan's higher education: an experience in Chinese web-based curriculum development for responsible conduct of researchChien Chou, Sophia Jui-An PanCS07.4 Educating principal investigators in Swiss research institutions: present and future perspectivesLouis Xaver Tiefenauer8. Measuring and rewarding research productivityCS08.1 Altimpact: how research integrity underpins research impactDaniel Barr, Paul TaylorCS08.2 Publication incentives: just reward or misdirection of funds?Lyn Margaret HornCS08.3 Why Socrates never charged a fee: factors contributing to challenges for research integrity and publication ethicsDeborah Poff9. Plagiarism and falsification: Behaviour and detectionCS09.1 Personality traits predict attitude towards plagiarism of self and others in biomedicine: plagiarism, yes we can?Martina Mavrinac, Gordana Brumini, Mladen PetrovečkiCS09.2 Investigating the concept of and attitudes toward plagiarism for science teachers in Brazil: any challenges for research integrity and policy?Christiane Coelho Santos, Sonia VasconcelosCS09.3 What have we learnt?: The CrossCheck Service from CrossRefRachael LammeyCS09.4 High p-values as a sign of data fabrication/falsificationChris Hartgerink, Marcel van Assen, Jelte Wicherts10. Codes for research integrity and collaborationsCS10.1 Research integrity in cross-border cooperation: a Nordic exampleHanne Silje HaugeCS10.3 Research integrity, research misconduct, and the National Science Foundation's requirement for the responsible conduct of researchAaron MankaCS10.4 A code of conduct for international scientific cooperation: human rights and research integrity in scientific collaborations with international academic and industry partnersRaffael Iturrizaga11. Countries' efforts to establish mentoring and networksCS11.1 ENRIO : a network facilitating common approaches on research integrity in EuropeNicole FoegerCS11.2 Helping junior investigators develop in a resource-limited country: a mentoring program in PeruA. Roxana Lescano, Claudio Lanata, Gissella Vasquez, Leguia Mariana, Marita Silva, Mathew Kasper, Claudia Montero, Daniel Bausch, Andres G LescanoCS11.3 Netherlands Research Integrity Network: the first six monthsFenneke Blom, Lex BouterCS11.4 A South African framework for research ethics and integrity for researchers, postgraduate students, research managers and administratorsLaetus OK Lategan12. Training and education in research integrity at an early career stageCS12.1 Research integrity in curricula for medical studentsGustavo Fitas ManaiaCS12.2 Team-based learning for training in the responsible conduct of research supports ethical decision-makingWayne T. McCormack, William L. Allen, Shane Connelly, Joshua Crites, Jeffrey Engler, Victoria Freedman, Cynthia W. Garvan, Paul Haidet, Joel Hockensmith, William McElroy, Erik Sander, Rebecca Volpe, Michael F. VerderameCS12.4 Research integrity and career prospects of junior researchersSnezana Krstic13. Systems and research environments in institutionsCS13.1 Implementing systems in research institutions to improve quality and reduce riskLouise HandyCS13.2 Creating an institutional environment that supports research integrityDebra Schaller-DemersCS13.3 Ethics and Integrity Development Grants: a mechanism to foster cultures of ethics and integrityPaul Taylor, Daniel BarrCS13.4 A culture of integrity at KU LeuvenInge Lerouge, Gerard Cielen, Liliane Schoofs14. Peer review and its role in research integrityCS14.1 Peer review research across disciplines: transdomain action in the European Cooperation in Science and Technology “New Frontiers of Peer Review ”Ana Marusic, Flaminio SquazzoniCS14.2 Using blinding to reduce bias in peer reviewDavid VauxCS14.3 How to intensify the role of reviewers to promote research integrityKhalid Al-Wazzan, Ibrahim AlorainyCS14.4 Credit where credit’s due: professionalizing and rewarding the role of peer reviewerChris Graf, Verity Warne15. Research ethics and oversight for research integrity: Does it work?CS15.1 The psychology of decision-making in research ethics governance structures: a theory of bounded rationalityNolan O'Brien, Suzanne Guerin, Philip DoddCS15.2 Investigator irregularities: iniquity, ignorance or incompetence?Frank Wells, Catherine BlewettCS15.3 Academic plagiarismFredric M. Litto16. Research integrity in EuropeCS16.1 Whose responsibility is it anyway?: A comparative analysis of core concepts and practice at European research-intensive universities to identify and develop good practices in research integrityItziar De Lecuona, Erika Löfstrom, Katrien MaesCS16.2 Research integrity guidance in European research universitiesKris Dierickx, Noémie Bonn, Simon GodecharleCS16.3 Research Integrity: processes and initiatives in Science Europe member organisationsTony Peatfield, Olivier Boehme, Science Europe Working Group on Research IntegrityCS16.4 Promoting research integrity in Italy: the experience of the Research Ethics and Bioethics Advisory Committee of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Cinzia Caporale, Daniele Fanelli17. Training programs for research integrity at different levels of experience and seniorityCS17.1 Meaningful ways to incorporate research integrity and the responsible conduct of research into undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and faculty training programsJohn Carfora, Eric Strauss, William LynnCS17.2 "Recognize, respond, champion": Developing a one-day interactive workshop to increase confidence in research integrity issuesDieter De Bruyn, Bracke Nele, Katrien De Gelder, Stefanie Van der BurghtCS17.4 “Train the trainer” on cultural challenges imposed by international research integrity conversations: lessons from a projectJosé Roberto Lapa e Silva, Sonia M. R. Vasconcelos18. Research and societal responsibilityCS18.1 Promoting the societal responsibility of research as an integral part of research integrityHelene IngierdCS18.2 Social responsibility as an ethical imperative for scientists: research, education and service to societyMark FrankelCS18.3 The intertwined nature of social responsibility and hope in scienceDaniel Vasgird, Stephanie BirdCS18.4 Common barriers that impede our ability to create a culture of trustworthiness in the research communityMark Yarborough19. Publication ethicsCS19.1 The authors' forum: A proposed tool to improve practices of journal editors and promote a responsible research environmentIbrahim Alorainy, Khalid Al-WazzanCS19.2 Quantifying research integrity and its impact with text analyticsHarold GarnerCS19.3 A closer look at authorship and publication ethics of multi- and interdisciplinary teamsLisa Campo-Engelstein, Zubin Master, Elise Smith, David Resnik, Bryn Williams-JonesCS19.4 Invisibility of duplicate publications in biomedicineMario Malicki, Ana Utrobicic, Ana Marusic20. The causes of bad and wasteful research: What can we do?CS20.1 From countries to individuals: unravelling the causes of bias and misconduct with multilevel meta-meta-analysisDaniele Fanelli, John PA IoannidisCS20.2 Reducing research waste by integrating systems of oversight and regulationGerben ter Riet, Tom Walley, Lex Marius BouterCS20.3 What are the determinants of selective reporting?: The example of palliative care for non-cancer conditionsJenny van der Steen, Lex BouterCS20.4 Perceptions of plagiarism, self-plagiarism and redundancy in research: preliminary results from a national survey of Brazilian PhDsSonia Vasconcelos, Martha Sorenson, Francisco Prosdocimi, Hatisaburo Masuda, Edson Watanabe, José Carlos Pinto, Marisa Palácios, José Lapa e Silva, Jacqueline Leta, Adalberto Vieyra, André Pinto, Mauricio Sant’Ana, Rosemary Shinkai21. Are there country-specific elements of misconduct?CS21.1 The battle with plagiarism in Russian science: latest developmentsBoris YudinCS21.2 Researchers between ethics and misconduct: A French survey on social representations of misconduct and ethical standards within the scientific communityEtienne Vergès, Anne-Sophie Brun-Wauthier, Géraldine VialCS21.3 Experience from different ways of dealing with research misconduct and promoting research integrity in some Nordic countriesTorkild VintherCS21.4 Are there specifics in German research misconduct and the ways to cope with it?Volker Bähr, Charité22. Research integrity teaching programmes and their challengesCS22.1 Faculty mentors and research integrityMichael Kalichman, Dena PlemmonsCS22.2 Training the next generation of scientists to use principles of research quality assurance to improve data integrity and reliabilityRebecca Lynn Davies, Katrina LaubeCS22.3 Fostering research integrity in a culturally-diverse environmentCynthia Scheopner, John GallandCS22.4 Towards a standard retraction formHervé Maisonneuve, Evelyne Decullier23. Commercial research and integrityCS23.1 The will to commercialize: matters of concern in the cultural economy of return-on-investment researchBrian NobleCS23.2 Quality in drug discovery data reporting: a mission impossible?Anja Gilis, David J. Gallacher, Tom Lavrijssen, Malwitz David, Malini Dasgupta, Hans MolsCS23.3 Instituting a research integrity policy in the context of semi-private-sector funding: an example in the field of occupational health and safetyPaul-Emile Boileau24. The interface of publication ethics and institutional policiesCS24.1 The open access ethical paradox in an open government effortTony SavardCS24.2 How journals and institutions can work together to promote responsible conductEric MahCS24.3 Improving cooperation between journals and research institutions in research integrity casesElizabeth Wager, Sabine Kleinert25. Reproducibility of research and retractionsCS25.1 Promoting transparency in publications to reduce irreproducibilityVeronique Kiermer, Andrew Hufton, Melanie ClyneCS25.2 Retraction notices issued for publications by Latin American authors: what lessons can we learn?Sonia Vasconcelos, Renan Moritz Almeida, Aldo Fontes-Pereira, Fernanda Catelani, Karina RochaCS25.3 A preliminary report of the findings from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer biologyElizabeth Iorns, William Gunn26. Research integrity and specific country initiativesCS26.1 Promoting research integrity at CNRS, FranceMichèle Leduc, Lucienne LetellierCS26.2 In pursuit of compliance: is the tail wagging the dog?Cornelia MalherbeCS26.3 Newly established research integrity policies and practices: oversight systems of Japanese research universitiesTakehito Kamata27. Responsible conduct of research and country guidelinesCS27.1 Incentives or guidelines? Promoting responsible research communication through economic incentives or ethical guidelines?Vidar EnebakkCS27.3 Responsible conduct of research: a view from CanadaLynn PenrodCS27.4 The Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity: a national initiative to promote research integrity in DenmarkThomas Nørgaard, Charlotte Elverdam28. Behaviour, trust and honestyCS28.1 The reasons behind non-ethical behaviour in academiaYves FassinCS28.2 The psychological profile of the dishonest scholarCynthia FekkenCS28.3 Considering the implications of Dan Ariely’s keynote speech at the 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity in MontréalJamal Adam, Melissa S. AndersonCS28.4 Two large surveys on psychologists’ views on peer review and replicationJelte WichertsBrett Buttliere29. Reporting and publication bias and how to overcome itCS29.1 Data sharing: Experience at two open-access general medical journalsTrish GrovesCS29.2 Overcoming publication bias and selective reporting: completing the published recordDaniel ShanahanCS29.3 The EQUATOR Network: promoting responsible reporting of health research studiesIveta Simera, Shona Kirtley, Eleana Villanueva, Caroline Struthers, Angela MacCarthy, Douglas Altman30. The research environment and its implications for integrityCS30.1 Ranking of scientists: the Russian experienceElena GrebenshchikovaCS30.4 From cradle to grave: research integrity, research misconduct and cultural shiftsBronwyn Greene, Ted RohrPARTNER SYMPOSIAPartner Symposium AOrganized by EQUATOR Network, Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health ResearchP1 Can we trust the medical research literature?: Poor reporting and its consequencesIveta SimeraP2 What can BioMed Central do to improve published research?Daniel Shanahan, Stephanie HarrimanP3 What can a "traditional" journal do to improve published research?Trish GrovesP4 Promoting good reporting practice for reliable and usable research papers: EQUATOR Network, reporting guidelines and other initiativesCaroline StruthersPartner Symposium COrganized by ENRIO, the European Network of Research Integrity OfficersP5 Transparency and independence in research integrity investigations in EuropeKrista Varantola, Helga Nolte, Ursa Opara, Torkild Vinther, Elizabeth Wager, Thomas NørgaardPartner Symposium DOrganized by IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersRe-educating our author community: IEEE's approach to bibliometric manipulation, plagiarism, and other inappropriate practicesP6 Dealing with plagiarism in the connected world: An Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers perspectiveJon RokneP7 Should evaluation of raises, promotion, and research proposals be tied to bibliometric indictors? What the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is doing to answer this questionGianluca SettiP8 Recommended practices to ensure conference content qualityGordon MacPhersonPartner Symposium EOrganized by the Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science of ICSU, the International Council for ScienceResearch assessment and quality in science: perspectives from international science and policy organisationsP9 Challenges for science and the problems of assessing researchEllen HazelkornP10 Research assessment and science policy developmentCarthage SmithP11 Research integrity in South Africa: the value of procedures and processes to global positioningRobert H. McLaughlinP12 Rewards, careers and integrity: perspectives of young scientists from around the worldTatiana Duque MartinsPartner Symposium FOrganized by the Online Resource Center for Ethics Education in Engineering and Science / Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society of the National Academy of EngineeringP13 Research misconduct: conceptions and policy solutionsTetsuya Tanimoto, Nicholas Steneck, Daniele Fanelli, Ragnvald Kalleberg, Tajammul HusseinPartner Symposium HOrganized by ORI, the Office of Research Integrity; Universitas 21; and the Asia Pacific Research Integrity NetworkP14 International integrity networks: working together to ensure research integrityPing Sun, Ovid Tzeng, Krista Varantola, Susan ZimmermanPartner Symposium IOrganized by COPE, the Committee on Publication EthicsPublication without borders: Ethical challenges in a globalized worldP15 Authorship: credit and responsibility, including issues in large and interdisciplinary studiesRosemary ShinkaiPartner Symposium JOrganized by CITI, the Cooperative Institutional Training InitiativeExperiences on research integrity educational programs in Colombia, Costa Rica and PeruP16 Experiences in PeruRoxana LescanoP17 Experiences in Costa RicaElizabeth HeitmanP18 Experiences in ColumbiaMaria Andrea Rocio del Pilar Contreras NietoPoster Session B: Education, training, promotion and policyPT.01 The missing role of journal editors in promoting responsible researchIbrahim Alorainy, Khalid Al-WazzanPT.02 Honorary authorship in Taiwan: why and who should be in charge?Chien Chou, Sophia Jui-An PanPT.03 Authorship and citation manipulation in academic researchEric Fong, Al WilhitePT.04 Open peer review of research submission at medical journals: experience at BMJ Open and The BMJTrish GrovesPT.05 Exercising authorship: claiming rewards, practicing integrityDésirée Motta-RothPT.07 Medical scientists' views on publication culture: a focus group studyJoeri Tijdink, Yvo SmuldersPoster Session B: Education, training, promotion and policyPT.09 Ethical challenges in post-graduate supervisionLaetus OK LateganPT.10 The effects of viable ethics instruction on international studentsMichael Mumford, Logan Steele, Logan Watts, James Johnson, Shane Connelly, Lee WilliamsPT.11 Does language reflect the quality of research?Gerben ter Riet, Sufia Amini, Lotty Hooft, Halil KilicogluPT.12 Integrity complaints as a strategic tool in policy decision conflictsJanneke van Seters, Herman Eijsackers, Fons Voragen, Akke van der Zijpp and Frans BromPoster Session C: Ethics and integrity intersectionsPT.14 Regulations of informed consent: university-supported research processes and pitfalls in implementationBadaruddin Abbasi, Naif Nasser AlmasoudPT.15 A review of equipoise as a requirement in clinical trialsAdri LabuschagnePT.16 The Research Ethics Library: online resource for research ethics educationJohanne Severinsen, Espen EnghPT.17 Research integrity: the view from King Abdulaziz City for Science and TechnologyDaham Ismail AlaniPT. 18 Meeting global challenges in high-impact publications and research integrity: the case of the Malaysian Palm Oil BoardHJ. Kamaruzaman JusoffPT.19 University faculty perceptions of research practices and misconductAnita Gordon, Helen C. HartonPoster Session D: International perspectivesPT.21 The Commission for Scientific Integrity as a response to research fraudDieter De Bruyn, Stefanie Van der BurghtPT. 22 Are notions of the responsible conduct of research associated with compliance with requirements for research on humans in different disciplinary traditions in Brazil?Karina de Albuquerque Rocha, Sonia Maria Ramos de VasconcelosPT.23 Creating an environment that promotes research integrity: an institutional model of Malawi Liverpool Welcome TrustLimbanazo MatandikaPT.24 How do science policies in Brazil influence user-engaged ecological research?Aline Carolina de Oliveira Machado Prata, Mark William NeffPoster Session E: Perspectives on misconductPT.26 What “causes” scientific misconduct?: Testing major hypotheses by comparing corrected and retracted papersDaniele Fanelli, Rodrigo Costas, Vincent LarivièrePT.27 Perception of academic plagiarism among dentistry studentsDouglas Leonardo Gomes Filho, Diego Oliveira GuedesPT. 28 a few bad apples?: Prevalence, patterns and attitudes towards scientific misconduct among doctoral students at a German university hospitalVolker Bähr, Niklas Keller, Markus Feufel, Nikolas OffenhauserPT. 29 Analysis of retraction notices published by BioMed CentralMaria K. Kowalczuk, Elizabeth C. MoylanPT.31 "He did it" doesn't work: data security, incidents and partnersKatie SpeanburgPoster Session F: Views from the disciplinesPT.32 Robust procedures: a key to generating quality results in drug discoveryMalini Dasgupta, Mariusz Lubomirski, Tom Lavrijssen, David Malwitz, David Gallacher, Anja GillisPT.33 Health promotion: criteria for the design and the integrity of a research projectMaria Betânia de Freitas Marques, Laressa Lima Amâncio, Raphaela Dias Fernandes, Oliveira Patrocínio, and Cláudia Maria Correia Borges RechPT.34 Integrity of academic work from the perspective of students graduating in pharmacy: a brief research studyMaria Betânia de Freitas Marques, Cláudia Maria Correia Borges Rech, Adriana Nascimento SousaPT.35 Research integrity promotion in the Epidemiology and Health Services, the journal of the Brazilian Unified Health SystemLeila Posenato GarciaPT.36 When are clinical trials registered? An analysis of prospective versus retrospective registration of clinical trials published in the BioMed Central series, UKStephanie Harriman, Jigisha PatelPT.37 Maximizing welfare while promoting innovation in drug developmentFarida LadaOther posters that will be displayed but not presented orally:PT.38 Geoethics and the debate on research integrity in geosciencesGiuseppe Di Capua, Silvia PeppoloniPT.39 Introducing the Professionalism and Integrity in Research Program James M. DuBois, John Chibnall, Jillon Van der WallPT.40 Validation of the professional decision-making in research measureJames M. DuBois, John Chibnall, Jillon Van der Wall, Raymond TaitPT.41 General guidelines for research ethicsJacob HolenPT. 42 A national forum for research ethicsAdele Flakke Johannessen, Torunn EllefsenPT.43 Evaluation of integrity in coursework: an approach from the perspective of the higher education professorClaudia Rech, Adriana Sousa, Maria Betânia de Freitas MarquesPT.44 Principles of geoethics and research integrity applied to the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water Column Observatory, a large-scale European environmental research infrastructureSilvia Peppoloni, Giuseppe Di Capua, Laura BeranzoliF1 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of fundersPaulo S.L. Beirão, Susan ZimmermanF2 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of countriesSabine Kleinert, Ana MarusicF3 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of institutionsMelissa S. Anderson, Lex Bouter. (shrink)

This paper will examine the problem of suffering as it arises from both moral and natural evil through a Christian philosophical and theological perspective. Suffering throughout our planet is pervasive. We all experience it in one form or another. In western culture, we are bombarded, through the media with the terrible tragedies that occur in our home country and abroad. Inevitably we ask ourselves, the following question, as Professor Ramon Martinez, probes into his book, Sin and Evil, “Why does (...) God permit suffering?” In order to address the question of suffering and its relation to the God of Christianity, we must understand what suffering is and how it affects humanity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 135-137 [Access article in PDF] The 2002 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Alice Keefe University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point "Religious Responses to Violence" was the theme for the program at the SBCS Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, on November 22-23, 2002. Speaking from Christian and Jewish perspectives, the presenters in Session I were Harold Kasimow, Professor Emeritus of Grinnell College; Elaine MacInnes, O.L.M.; Sarah (...) Pinnock of Trinity University; and Rebekah Miles from the Perkins School of Theology. Responding from a Buddhist perspective was Virginia Strauss of the Boston Research Center. Session II offered reflections on Buddhist responses to violence from Gene Reeves of the International Buddhist Congregation; Christopher Ives of Stonehill College; and John Makransky, professor of Religious Studies at Boston College and a Buddhist teacher, with a Christian response from Theodore Walker of Perkins School of Theology, noted for his work in Black theology.Opening Session I, Harold Kasimow explored Jewish responses to violence, which he finds similar in many ways to responses to violence in Mahayana Buddhism. Both traditions unequivocally condemn violence. Basic to Jewish reflection on violence is the great commandment that one shall love one's neighbor as oneself, along with the principle that all humans are created in the image of God; therefore, as Rabbi Akiva taught, whoever sheds blood diminishes God's presence in the world. But like Mahayana Buddhism, the Jewish tradition admits to rare cases where violence may be legitimately used in a spirit of compassion when the lives of others are at stake. On this point, Kasimow, himself a Holocaust survivor, cited Abraham Heschel, who said that "indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself." Heschel dreamed of a world rid of evil by human effort, and he suggested that interfaith dialogue serves as a step toward this goal as it works against the evil of demonizing the "other."Sarah Pinnock, who has written on the religious journeys of Holocaust survivors, explored the themes of memory, solidarity, hope, and mystical faith as compelling Christian modes of survival and resistance in the face of evil. Logic cannot solve the problem of evil, but through memory, suffering is not forgotten; through solidarity, we identify and join with the victimized in resistance to evil; and through hope, we find the energy for resistance. Mystical faith discovers divine transcendence in all things, while abandoning egotistical demands that God be the world's puppet master; [End Page 135] in mystical faith, Christians do not look for divine intervention, but for human beings to act for God against evil.Rebekah Miles, a Christian ethicist, offered a lucid outline of three distinct Christian approaches to violence: (1) absolute pacificism, which rejects the use of violence for any reason; (2) the "crusade" perspective, which justifies war when it can be construed as a conflict between good and evil and which calls for the total eradication of evil in the form of the enemy; and (3) the "just war" perspective, which stipulates precise criteria for instances when the use of violence may be justified and places restraints on any exercise of violence. In addition to this helpful overview, she engaged arguments (put forth by Rosemary Ruether, SharonWelch, and ReginaSchwartz) that there is something inherent in the nature of Western monotheism that serves to legitimate and encourage violence, and argued for divine transcendence as undergirding the effective power of the prophetic critique against all forms of idolatry and tyranny.The final Christian presenter was Elaine MacInnes, O.L.M., a Catholic nun and Zen master who is noted for her activist work in prison ministry in the Philippines and in Canada. She reminded us that even as violence brings suffering, it is at the same time a mystery in that it carries a redeeming potential to rid us of all that is false. It is the cultivation of silence that allows the sacred inner life to do its work.Responding from a Buddhist perspective, Virginia Strauss returned to the problem of the human desire for retributory justice and looked to Buddhism... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 559-560 [Access article in PDF] Elmar J. Kremer and Michael J. Latzer, editors. The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Pp. vi + 179. Cloth, $60.00. What can be added to classical defenses of the problem of evil? Did Voltairenotrelieve us from taking seriously the theodicies of early modern thinkers in Candide when Pangloss (...) avers that spectacles exist because noses were made to support them? Do we not rightfully regard Malebranche's ingenious appeal to God's simplicity and uniformity to explain malformed offspring as little more than a curiosity? Yet, the editors of this volume claim that the "theodicy problem was no mere idle puzzle of dogmatics, but a problem of immense social significance, a problem which cut to the heart of the philosophical and theological projects of the very best minds of the age" (5). Several essays in this volume bear out the editors' claim, and to a modern reader, show how the problem of evil was intricately woven into the philosophical ideas of early modern thought.The problem of evil is especially acute for many of the seventeenth-century authors surveyed in this volume who held that God is the total and efficient cause of the universe. God's constant involvement in physical events meant that defects, deformities, and natural disasters fell into the framework of the traditional problem of evil. Hence, physical evil became the preoccupation of natural philosophers and theologians alike. We learn that Leibniz, Malebranche, and Spinoza chose to limit God's will rather than His wisdom, whereas Descartes opted to limit God's wisdom. The odd man out is Bayle who crafted a third position that emphasized God's benevolence at the expense of His wisdom and will.The essays found in this volume are just a sampling of views in the period, but it is more than a good start. Freddoso's essay on Francisco Suarez sets the tone for the problem of explaining the causal origin of human evil. Freddoso shows how Suarez distinguished concurrent from original causes in order to credit God for His supreme causal role yet absolved Him of blame for the existence of moral defectiveness. Latzer, in his essay on Rene Descartes, perhaps overstates the case in attributing to Descartes a theodicy grander than that of Leibniz, but he draws on the Fourth Meditation account of error to provide a plausible and nuanced reconstruction of his views on evil.There are two essays on Baruch Spinoza. Hunter's essay lays out an argument for Spinoza as a radical Christian reformer touching on Spinoza's views on providence. Nadler notes in his essay that Spinoza ought to have rejected the whole question of theodicy as incoherent, but shows how the matter is a good deal more complicated. Nadler then introduces us to the Medieval Jewish tradition, from which Spinoza is said to have drawn his views leading to a denial of personal immortality. [End Page 559]Moreau's essay on Nicholas Malebranche is rich in historical context and philosophical interpretation. Malebranche is shown to be a critical and original thinker on the problem of evil. Moreau lauds Malebranche's philosophical and moral courage in his bold assertion that physical evil is not a negation but rather a real phenomenon requiring explanation.Larivière and Lennon argue that Bayle held a third position rarely seen in the period: that God's benevolence trumps considerations of both His wisdom and will. Bayle develops a "moral solution" to the problem of evil wherein God's benevolence requires that humans possess an autonomy of conscience whose exercise makes error and heresy morally possible and justifiable.The final three essays in the volume rightly focus on aspects of Leibniz's response to the problem of evil. Kremer shows how, in the case of Leibniz's treatment of the fate of infants who die unbaptized, Leibniz abandons the Augustinian approach to the problem of evil and calculates the fate of all creatures on the basis of what produces... (shrink)

al-ʾUmūr al-ʿāmma refers to the introductory chapter heading for concepts and topics which address the issues of metaphysics, the science of the universal. This introductory heading which encompasses general topics, concepts, and cases, is the most distinctive feature that differentiates the kalām in the Muta’akhkhirūn period from the Kalām in the Mutaqaddīmūn period. This is because the science of Kalām inherited these topics as the result of its interaction with peripatetic philosophy represented by Islamic philosophers, such as al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, (...) and Avicenna. Before Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, theologians addressed various concepts such as mawjūd, maʿdūd, maʿdūm, qadīm, muḥdāth, shayʾ by including them in their works as commonly used nouns and adjectives in a disorganised manner or without devoting a separate chapter heading to them. It was al-Rāzī, who discussed al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma under a separate heading with original content and through a combined method based on the relationship between Kalām and philosophy by using the previously available literature, that helped al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma acquire an important status in the science of Kalām. This is because this tittle, which examine abstract and general concepts such as existence, non-existence, mawjūd, maʿdūm, quiddity (māhiyyah) and its appendages such as unity, multiplicity, necessity, possibility, impossibility, ḥudūth, eternity a parte ante (qidam), substance (jawhar), accident (ʿaraḍ), cause (ʿilla), and maʿlūl, were reconsidered by the theologians after al-Rāzī and became a point of departure for their works. Later theologians largely followed al-Rāzī’s framework and organisation of al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma and/or based their new organisations on it. Besides using his framework, they tried to define al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma in different ways and from different perspectives, and, at times, allowed for debates of sorts. One of the debates that emerged as a result of these defining endeavours is why these concepts were included within the scope of al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma discussions or what aspects of these concepts were discussed within al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma. This debate revolves around such notions as quiddity, impossibility, and non-existence in relation to the aforementioned notions. Among these concepts, non-existence takes the lead. This is because existence is both the most general concept and one of the most commonly addressed concepts in al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma due to its direct relationship with other concepts. This has brought non-existence, which has a close relationship with existence, to the forefront. In these discussions, the concept of non-existence is sometimes examined alone, sometimes together with the concept of impossibility, both directly and indirectly. In fact, the reason for the inclusion and evaluation of the concept of non-existence in al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma per se has turned into topic of discussion by itself over time. In this context, after discussing the conceptualisation process of al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma, this study examines how philosophers and theologians, who, it must be reiterated, define al-ʾumūr al-ʿāmma in different ways, examine the concept of non-existence under that chapter heading, and it goes on to determine the aspects that led them to include non-existence therein. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The study aims to define and comprehend the phenomenon of freedom as an anthropological problem in the Christian philosophical heritage of A. Augustine and H. Skovoroda. The objectives of the study are: a) to identify the main aspects of the problem of freedom in the Christian philosophy of Augustine; b) to clarify the essence and specificity of understanding of freedom in the philosophical anthropology of H. Skovoroda; c) to compare the peculiarities of the statement of the problem of freedom (...) by Augustine and Skovoroda. _Theoretical basis._ The achievement of the purpose is based on theoretical-methodological, historical-philosophical and comparative analysis of the content of the concept of freedom within the philosophical views of A. Augustine and H. Skovoroda. Also, the analysis of the original sources of the thinkers has allowed to formulate the theoretical and practical significance of their ideas in this field and their importance for the further development of world philosophy. _Originality._ It has been confirmed that in the religious philosophy of Augustine, freedom appears on an immanent-spiritual plane and is a phenomenon manifested as a person’s ability of self-determination in his actions. Augustine explains freedom by raising the question of free will, evil, salvation, predestination and divine grace. It is substantiated that the analysis of the problem of freedom in the philosophy of H. Skovoroda presupposes an understanding of the main components of his philosophical and anthropological theory: ontological (the doctrine of "two natures" and "three worlds"); gnoseological (the concept of self-knowledge); ethical (the problem of happiness, good, etc.). It is determined that human freedom in the work of both philosophers is defined in conceptual and semantic aspects as a moral and ethical choice between good and evil. It is established that both Augustine and Skovoroda emphasize the discovery by man of the moral, spiritual law and life in accordance with its norms – this is a kind of idea of positive freedom ("freedom for"), and the call to escape from the world of evil is the idea of negative freedom ("freedom from"). _Conclusions._ Thus, we continued the historical-philosophical study of the peculiarities of the understanding of the concept of human freedom in Ukrainian philosophical thought, which is manifested by comparing it with the theoretical heritage of world philosophy, with the spiritual and philosophical experience of the past. The ideological kinship of the concepts of freedom of Aurelius Augustine and Hryhorii Skovoroda is obvious. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the world's afflictions with the fundamental attributes and justice of God. Throughout their lives people encounter painful events originating from nature and other individuals. Furthermore, it is believed that God created everything, particularly in divine religions. Scholars and thinkers have debated for centuries why an omniscient, omnipotent, just, and compassionate God would create evil. The problem of evil is sometimes employed by atheists as evidence against religion, and at times as philosophical (...) proof for the absence of God. Nowadays, it exerts a profound impact on people's beliefs within social media platforms. This article aims to address doubts and objections surrounding the problem of evil. Numerous studies have been conducted on this current issue. The subject, which is basically examined as natural and moral evil in the philosophy of religion, has been examined under the titles such as justice and cruelty, goodness and evil, will and power in classical theology. In this study, the subject is examined in terms of the relationship between the subject of evil and its object, and attention is drawn to the role of man in the formation of evil. In this context, a general overview of the problem of evil is presented in the introduction. The second section delves into how the problem of evil is approached in philosophical and theological traditions, specifically examining the viewpoints of classical kalam schools. In the later parts of the study, the subject has been tried to be reinterpreted under different titles. Within this framework, it is suggested that some doubts and questions about the problem of evil arise from a lack of understanding of religion, while others stem from interpretations perceived as religious within the tradition. To propose a solution to the problem, the concept of God, known for its power and authority in classical times, should be reevaluated. In the context of Islam, God should be considered as an entity possessing complete knowledge, absolute will and power, and creating the universe for goodness, possesses justice and mercy and bestows numerous blessings upon humanity. This perspective finds ample support in the verses of the Qur'an. The problem of evil sometimes emerges from misconceiving the relationship between God and nature as equivalent to a God-human relationship. However, God designed the universe's order to support the emergence of life in nature and make it conducive to the lives of all living beings, particularly humans. Natural phenomena and events unfold by the laws set by Allah. Evils such as diseases, fires, earthquakes, floods, storms, volcanic eruptions, rain, and lightning are not events directly orchestrated by God to harm humans. The harm they cause is primarily a result of humans' negative interactions with nature. Precautions can mitigate these harms. Yet, humans who pollute air, water, and forests and build poorly located structures hastily attribute the resulting evils to God. A careful examination of the numerous blessings in nature underscores that the universe was created by God as a benevolent order. God created humanity to undergo tests within such a world, aiming for human happiness in both this world and the hereafter. Thus, the entirety of God's will be goodness. Evil, conversely, arises from humanity's exercise of free will and the potential to commit malevolent acts. Consequently, evil stems from human interactions with nature and fellow beings. Destiny is another frequently misconstrued aspect. It refers to the natural and moral laws established by Almighty Allah to govern the order of nature and human existence. Destiny presents a realm of possibilities and does not coerce anyone's actions. To address the problem of evil, the portrayal of God, whose sole intent is good, must be reconstructed. Additionally, concepts like testing, fate, death, and sustenance need to be reinterpreted in alignment with this conception. Furthermore, methods that facilitate the acquisition of accurate religious information through social media should be developed to suit contemporary requirements. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The main purpose of the study is to examine Kant’s first experience in creating a methodology for determining the holistic, spiritual nature of man, firstly, in terms of identifying the range of phenomena that should be included in the analysis of the spiritual essence of man, and secondly, this experience may be indicative for identifying dead ends in the research of spirituality of modern philosophers. _Theoretical__ basis._ The study is based on the methodology of philosophical anthropology formulated by M. (...) Scheler, which, on the one hand, integrates the achievements of philosophy of life, phenomenology, existentialism and philosophical hermeneutics, and on the other hand, is based on the premise of the initial direct unity of the opposition of mental and physiological processes of human life. The basis for further expansion of the theoretical framework is the experience of spiritual practices of the Ancient East and religious practices of the Christian Middle Ages. Particularly noteworthy is the experience of modern psychotherapeutic practices, which, for all their diversity, have their roots in the depths of primitive beliefs and mysteries of ancient civilisations, and the tips of their branches reaching to the ideas of modern transpersonal psychology. _Originality__._ Firstly, the author uses M. Scheler’s ideas about the spiritual nature of man and the unity of his essential forces: corporeality, senses, feelings, thinking, values of worldview principles and the Absolute to analyse Kant’s anthropological concept. Secondly, Kant’s position on the way of describing human nature reveals contradictions. These contradictions are caused, on the one hand, by the prevailing mechanistic picture of the world, and, on the other hand, by the philosopher’s intuitive assumptions that did not follow from the provisions of his dualistic position (the concepts of mind and soul as used in Kant’s work "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View"). Thirdly, the author identifies those fragments of the said work where Kant assumes the presence of corporeality, but does not clearly formulate its role in building the integral nature of the spiritual man. _Conclusions__._ Immanuel Kant was one of the first to raise the issue of the primary study of human nature in comparison with issues of ontology, epistemology, morality, etc. However, the philosopher failed to create a concept of holistic human nature, the essence of which would be its spiritual core. Kant based his methodology of studying human nature on the dualistic opposition of the essential forces of man. This methodology was conditioned by the dominant mechanistic picture of the world. Kant’s researches in the field of morality, aesthetics, and science were carried out in the cognitive-theoretical plane, so they were unable to reach a true synthesis of the essential forces of man by their methodology. Such a synthesis is possible on the basis of spiritual practice. The results of the study of the experience of the achievements and mistakes of the outstanding philosopher in the study of human nature open up the possibility of further refinement and development of philosophical and anthropological methodology in understanding the spiritual nature of man as a whole through comprehension of the mechanism of spiritual practice and, on this basis, understanding of the phenomenon of spirituality in all historical forms of its manifestation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Global Healing and Reconciliation:The Gift and Task of Religion, a Buddhist-Christian PerspectivePeter C. Phan"No peace among nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions. No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions." Hans Küng's oft-quoted dictum proves even more apposite in the current international situation. Whether or not the September 11, 2001, tragedy and its aftermath (...) can be accounted for in religious terms, there has been a widespread perception that they were part of the conflict between Islam and the West and that this "clash of civilizations" has deep roots in different religious worldviews.Hindsight now shows us that "smart bombs" and armies do not and cannot resolve political problems in Afghanistan and Iraq or spread democracy in the world no matter how one judges the morality of these wars. The question then arises whether there are other ways and means to achieve world peace and reconciliation, to bring about healing among nations, and whether religions can be counted among these. More specifically, if religions can be harnessed to this task, which elements of the "foundation of the religions"—to use Hans Küng's words—need to be investigated in the dialogue among religions in order to bring about reconciliation among religions that in turns leads to reconciliation among nations?This essay explores how Buddhists and Christians can together serve the cause of peace and reconciliation among nations. I will first reflect on the nature, strategies, and spirituality of reconciliation. Next, I consider how the Buddha's and Jesus' teachings on justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation can contribute to global healing. To show the transformative power of these teachings, I conclude with some reflections on how the followers of the Buddha and Jesus can work together for world peace and global healing.Global Healing and Reconciliation: Strategies and SpiritualityAt first sight it seems preposterous and hypocritical to speak of global healing and reconciliation as the gift and task of religion. A brief glance at the history of global [End Page 89] warfare will persuade us of the sad fact that, in the words of Charles Kimball, "more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history."1 One is reminded of Jesus' injunction that we must first take the log out of our own eyes before attempting to take the speck out of our neighbor's (Matthew 7:5). Yet, religion is arguably the most powerful and effective institutional force for peace and reconciliation. To see how religion can bring this gift of peace to the world and achieve this task of global healing, a brief consideration of the nature and process of reconciliation is helpful.Etymologically, reconciliation means to cause two estranged persons or groups to meet each other again (re-, again + concilium, meeting). By extension, it means to resolve a dispute and to re-establish friendship and harmony, or, at a minimum, peaceful coexistence between opposed individuals or groups.2Reconciliation is both a process and a state of affairs. As process, it sets into motion a complex of agencies and strategies that cannot be used as a universally applicable recipe but requires appropriate tailoring to diverse contexts.3 The process includes certain intermediate stages as conditions of possibility for achieving the desired result. As a personal and sociopolitical state of affairs, reconciliation is an ever-fragile and elusive reality. Ultimately, because of human propensities toward violence and domination, total reconciliation and perfect peace is not achievable by human efforts but is hoped and prayed for as an eschatological gift bestowed by God or as a transcendent blessing beyond this world. This fact does not of course diminish our responsibility to bring about global healing by means of all the resources available, religious and otherwise.What Reconciliation Is NotIn our work for reconciliation it is essential to ascertain what it is not. In a helpful study on reconciliation Catholic theologian Robert Schreiter distinguishes three concepts that are allied to reconciliation but can distort its true sense. The first... (shrink)

Change-blindness occurs when large changes are missed under natural viewing conditions because they occur simultaneously with a brief visual disruption, perhaps caused by an eye movement, a flicker, a blink, or a camera cut in a film sequence. We have found that this can occur even when the disruption does not cover or obscure the changes. When a few small, high-contrast shapes are briefly spattered over a picture, like mudsplashes on a car windscreen, large changes can be made simultaneously (...) in the scene without being noticed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Influence of Personalism on Harkness and King, Their Pacifism, and Their PersistenceNatalya A. Cherry (bio)I. IntroductionAs it is the hallmark of liberal theologies to take their critics seriously and learn from the criticisms offered, it is important to acknowledge a valid potential criticism of this article at its outset. Rufus Burrow, in God and Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, and Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr., observed that (...) scholarship on King demonstrates a tendency on the part of white scholars to try to use the work of Boston Personalists to claim outsized influence on King.1 Perhaps these tendencies reflect an effort by white scholars to cling to the coattails of King’s massive popularity or to mask our own complicity in white supremacy. This paper therefore refrains from claiming that Georgia Harkness, the first woman appointed a theology professor in an American theological school, had a major, direct influence on King. Rather it identifies Personalist-influenced models of God common to Harkness and King—as a result of their both having studied under Borden Parker Bowne’s student Edgar S. Brightman—that appear to undergird their commitments to nonviolence. It respectfully considers their influences and their models of God, the confluences of their commitments, and the outlook for nonviolence at the ends of their lives, as well as for the present and future, over 55 and 49 years since their respective deaths.II. Evidences of InfluencesTwo pieces of textual evidence demonstrate Harkness’s and King’s mutual respect for one another and offer some insight into their experiences with Boston Personalism. One is an epistolary exchange between the two that includes a letter from King, in which he acknowledged his familiarity with Harkness’s [End Page 57] work.2 Though he did not mention it in this letter, the other piece of textual evidence is his brief reference to an article by Harkness in the third chapter of his doctoral dissertation3 completed at Boston University.4 [End Page 58]The first, epistolary evidence results from the fact that King had received a letter from Harkness as he recuperated from a very nearly successful, apparent assassination attempt carried out on September 20, 1958. The letter from Harkness was dated ten days later, incidentally the same day he publicly forgave his attacker, who was later found to be criminally insane. In her letter, Harkness wished him well, expressed admiration for his work in the civil rights movement and specifically offered her appreciation for his recently published book about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Stride Toward Freedom. A book-signing for it, in fact, had put him in the path of his attacker in Harlem that September day. In the opening of her letter, Harkness had taken pains to identify herself to him, to which King replied,You needed not take the extra paragraph to introduce yourself to me. I have known you for several years through your writings. When I was a student in theological seminary...I had the great privilege of reading some of your books and articles. When I went to Boston University for my doctoral studies, I naturally heard your name many times, for Boston University, as you know, is very proud of you and never forgets to mention that you are one of its graduates. I have long admired your Christian witness and your sound theology. I hope it will be possible for us to meet personally in the not-too-distant future.5While there does not appear to be a record of whether this hope of meeting in person was ever fulfilled, nor of which of Harkness’s “books and articles” King had read in seminary, there is clear record—in the other textual evidence mentioned above—of his encounter with her work while he studied at Boston.There, his dissertation, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” referred his readers to an article Harkness had published in 1938, entitled “The Abyss and the Given.”6 The reference emerges in King’s third chapter, on “Tillich’s conception of God,” where he eventually would describe love and justice as inextricably... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical OpennessPaul O. IngramThe Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness. By Beverly J. Lanzetta. Albany: State University of New York, 2001. 182 pp.The central thesis of The Other Side of Nothingness is that apophatic mystical experience offers Christians a theology of humility sensitive to religious pluralism, which in turn is a means of overcoming the (...) "pains of spiritual oppression" caused by religious intolerance and doctrinal imperialism. The book's argument is that "mystical consciousness" overturns the dogmatic truth claims of "conventional theology" by preparing the self for the experience of radical openness to "divinity," however "divinity" is theologically named in the "conventional theology" of humanity's religious traditions. The book's author, Beverly J.Lanzetta, draws on a variety of Christian mystical texts to support her claims: Meister Eckhart, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Teresa of Avila, Bonaventure, and the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing. She also makes comparative references to Hindu, Buddhist, and Sufi traditions, along with contemporary writers such as Abraham Joshua Heschel, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Howard Thurman, and Dorothy Day to illustrate her claim that apophatic mystical experience—the experience of the utter [End Page 306] annihilation of the self—draws the mystic to a place beyond a tradition's historical and normative self-understanding to new dimensions of the Sacred and, sometimes, to new "revelatory paradigms." The revelatory paradigm Lanzetta believes she has discovered in the evidence she cites is that "the divine nature itself is pluralistic, non-absolute, and is continually the source of new religious traditions," by which she means something similar to what John Cobb calls "creative transformation." For her, this is the antidote to religious imperialism and the exclusivism of conventional theology, meaning "non-mystical theology," which she argues is the source of religions fanaticism in all religions traditions, particularly in Christianity.There is much to admire about Lanzetta's take on mysticism and its importance for undercutting theological absolutism of the sort one encounters in the Christian Right or in certain radical movements within contemporary Islam. Her analyses of the mystical texts she cites to support her arguments are carefully crafted and accurately express the theologies of the Christian mystics who are the foci of her own theological reflection. Her writing style is elegant and clearly expresses the passion with which she embraces her views. I especially liked her focus on kenotic Christology in her description of the "Apophatic Christ" who "bears the generosity of speech and teaches an ethic of radical openness," which Lanzetta claims is also an openness to truths found outside Christian tradition. "All are called not to his name, his ministry, or even to his person, but are called to sustain the tension between the saying and the unsaying, and between the living and the dying, in which God's nonviolent heart yearns for unconcealment" (p. 90). Indeed, this is the heart of Christian mystical experience of Christ, particularly attested to in the writings of Maguerite Porete and Hildegard von Bingen. Yet kenotic Christologies are also found in nonmystical theology, which Lanzetta tends to lump together pejoratively under her category "conventional theology." Consequently, as much as I admire this book and agree with its essential conclusions—but for different reasons—my trouble with this work originates in Lanzetta's assertion of a hard dualism between mystical theology and "ordinary theology," a dualism that undermines her arguments and conclusions. My concern is threefold.First, mystical experience is primarily a matter of consciousness in the sense that something previously unknown and unexperienced is suddenly "there." This unanticipated presence is as real to the mystic's perspective as everyday experiences are, which is why mystics so often speak of being empowered to "see" or "touch" or "taste" what has been up to now imperceptible. If the experience is apophatic in structure—a usually brief moment of awareness in which all subject-object duality is overcome so that the mystic isn't aware of a self separated from what the self experiences or even that there is an "experience happening"—the mystic is neither thinking, feeling, or interpreting. That is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XX, Number 1, April 1994, pp. 143-149 David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and GREG COOLIDGE David Hume's views on public credit have not only received prominent attention in the literature on his political thought, but have even been the subject of attention in The Wall Street Journal.1 Most of the attention has centered on Hume's essay "Of Public Credit" of 1752, (...) and treats it only as an expression of ideas, without relating it to the historical facts. This note lays out Hume's views on this matter throughout his lifetime, and juxtaposes them with figures for the actual public debt, carrying the story down to the twentieth century. Public debt as we know it only goes back about 300 years. The British government in the 1690s was the first modern government to establish enough genuine credit that private citizens would loan it money without having to be compelled.2 At the turn of the century, in the year 1700, the British public debt amounted to 14.2 million pounds sterling.3 As early as 1741, Hume was already worrying about the public debt in the essay "Of Liberty and Despotism" (later changed to "Of Civil Liberty"). In the last paragraph of that essay, he wrote of the "degeneracy" brought about by public debt, suggested that debt-service "taxes may, in time, become altogether intolerable, and all the property of the state be brought into the hands of" the government. If it is not curbed, we may come to "curse our very liberty," he wrote.4 That year, the national debt totaled 48.8 million pounds (45.2 million in 1701 pounds5). John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge are at the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Laursen e-mail: [email protected]. 144 John Christian Laursen and Greg Coolidge Hume's essay of 1752, "Of Public Credit, " was devoted entirely to criticism of the public debt (Essays, 349-365). His thoughts on public credit at this time can be summed up in this ominous warning: It must, indeed, be one of these two events; either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation. (Essays, 360-361) Hume acknowledged that the use of public credit could benefit the economy in some ways: more men with large stocks and incomes, may naturally be supposed to continue in trade, where there are public debts; and this, it must be owned, is of some advantage to commerce, by diminishing its profits, promoting circulation, and encouraging industry. (Essays, 354) But the many disadvantages would outweigh such advantages (Essays, 354355 ): 1) "It is certain, that national debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital," making the head too large for the body. 2) Public stocks "banish gold and silver from the most considerable commerce of the state." 3) The taxes levied to pay the interest oppress the poorer people. 4) "As foreigners possess a great share of our national funds, they render the public, in a manner, tributary to them, and may in time occasion the transport of our people and our industry." 5) Public credit encourages an idle and useless rentier class. All of this pales, however, in comparison to the political consequences. From the point of view of the body politic, public credit was a threat to the security of the state. It would die a natural or a violent death. In wartime, or some national emergency, the funds necessary for the functioning of the economy would be diverted to other purposes. The economy, now dependent on credit, would crumble. The whole fabric, already tottering, falls to the ground, and buries thousands in its ruins. And this, I think, may be called the natural death of public credit. (Essays, 363) Hume Studies David Hume and Public Debt: Crying Wolf? 145 Another scenario would occur if the government became too indebted to intervene in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Our children, weary of the struggle, and fettered with encumbrances, may sit down secure, and see their neighbors oppressed and conquered ; till, at last, they themselves... (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

As government pressure on major technology companies builds, both firms and legislators are searching for technical solutions to difficult platform governance puzzles such as hate speech and misinformation. Automated hash-matching and predictive machine learning tools – what we define here as algorithmic moderation systems – are increasingly being deployed to conduct content moderation at scale by major platforms for user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This article provides an accessible technical primer on how algorithmic moderation works; examines some (...) of the existing automated tools used by major platforms to handle copyright infringement, terrorism and toxic speech; and identifies key political and ethical issues for these systems as the reliance on them grows. Recent events suggest that algorithmic moderation has become necessary to manage growing public expectations for increased platform responsibility, safety and security on the global stage; however, as we demonstrate, these systems remain opaque, unaccountable and poorly understood. Despite the potential promise of algorithms or ‘AI’, we show that even ‘well optimized’ moderation systems could exacerbate, rather than relieve, many existing problems with content policy as enacted by platforms for three main reasons: automated moderation threatens to further increase opacity, making a famously non-transparent set of practices even more difficult to understand or audit, further complicate outstanding issues of fairness and justice in large-scale sociotechnical systems and re-obscure the fundamentally political nature of speech decisions being executed at scale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Holy Spirit and the World Religions:On the Christian Discernment of Spirit(s) "after" BuddhismAmos YongIntroductionArguably, recent Christian theological reflection on religious pluralism and the world religious traditions has taken what might be called "a pneumatological turn."1 This emerging conversation is itself an outgrowth of focused attention on both pneumatology and trinitarian theology during the last generation. Applied to the world of the religions, the turn to pneumatology has furthered (...) discussion on theology of religious pluralism by introducing new categories and shifting directions of inquiry. So whereas previous thinking about the religions focused on whether or not they were or are salvific, a pneumatological theology of religions asks whether or not and how, if so, the religions are divinely providential instruments designed for various purposes. Further, while earlier debates focused on whether or not the religions were or are the results of common grace or natural revelation, a pneumatological theologiareligionum asks other kinds of questions, such as, what is the relationship of religion and culture, or of religion and language? How does religion function to sustain life and community? What role does religion play via-à-vis the other dimensions and domains of life, whether it be the arts, politics, economics, etc.? Finally, previous theologies of religion bogged down on abstract intra-Christian issues as evident in the dominant categories of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism; a pneumatological theology of religions, on the other hand, attempts to push beyond these in-house categories by engaging religious others on their own terms.In explorations of a pneumatological theology of religions, however, one set of problematic questions repeatedly arises. Simply put, it has to do with how Christians can discern the Holy Spirit in the world of the religions and do so nonimperialistically in our postcolonial world. The Christian assumption is that besides the Holy Spirit of God, there are other spirits, perhaps unholy ones—human, institutional, even demonic—that are operative in the world in general and in the religions particularly. The biblical injunction to "test the spirits to see whether they are from [End Page 191] God" (1 John 4:1) is especially crucial for a pneumatological theology of religions. The Johannine account presents a criterion for discerning the Spirit that is christological: "every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist" (1 John 4:3). The immediate goal in the Johannine context is to provide tools to discern Gnostic deformations of Christian faith within the community. In the present situation of encountering religious pluralism, however, the context is interreligious rather than intra-Christian, and the task is complicated by the fact that other religious traditions may well have different definitions of the good, beautiful, true, and holy, and different criteria to discern such.The dilemma is this: If we discern the Spirit using Christian (e.g., biblical) criteria, we end up either "christianizing" the other insofar as we find the Spirit to be present, or "demonizing" the other insofar as we find the Spirit absent. In the former case, we appear to have allied ourselves with Rahner's idea of "anonymous Christianity," and thus opened ourselves up to all the difficult counterquestions generated by such a position, not the least of which is that we have imposed our own categories on religious others who are distinct from ourselves and have their own self-understandings. In the latter case, not only have we arrived at theologically charged rhetoric liable to be abused socially and politically, but we have also done so by declaring religious others void of certain goods and values as determined by criteria external to them. In fact, even to ask if the Spirit is present and active in other religions is to stand within a Christian framework—the Holy Spirit always being the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of Christ, which is not assumed by other faiths. What is the alternative? Can Christians even attempt to discern the Holy Spirit using non-Christian (i.e., non-biblical) criteria or criteria derived from other faiths? Does not to do so result either in relativizing Christian norms alongside those of other faiths or in reverse... (shrink)

The doctrine of creation and the knowledge of nature have come into tension in modernity. Against this background, the article discusses the basic problems of a theology of nature starting from a systematic theology of religious communication. Dogmatic statements about the world as God’s creation are not about a description of nature and reality but about a reflexive account of Christian–religious communication. The object of the doctrine of creation is thus the world-related contents of the Christian religion as well as (...) the function these have in it. Thus, both the critique of the representational version of the doctrinal tradition’s conception of creation and its reflexive turn in 20th-century Protestant theology are taken up and carried forward in such a way that the belief in creation is not understood as a general qualification of the world but is related to the concrete contents of religious communication. Contribution: The article proposes a new formulation of the traditional doctrine of creation on the basis of a systematic theology of religious communication. This approach is intended to avoid a coexistence of religious belief in creation and scientific explanation of the world, as well as their being pushed into one another. By transferring the belief in creation to Christian–religious communication, the latter thematises how religious contents are created in the Christian religion. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary debate about the nature of expertise often conflates having expertise with either the individual possession of competences or a certain role ascription. In contrast to this, the paper attempts to demonstrate how different dimensions of expertise ascription are inextricably interwoven. As a result, a balanced account of expertise will be proposed that more accurately determines the closer relationship between the expert’s dispositions, their manifestations and the expert’s function. This finally results in an advanced understanding of expertise that (...) views someone as an expert only if she is undefeatedly disposed to fulfill a contextually salient service function adequately at the moment of assessment. (shrink)

Spatial, physical, and semantic magnitude dimensions can influence action decisions in human cognitive processing and interact with each other. For example, in the SNARC effect, semantic numerical magnitude facilitates left-hand or right-hand responding dependent on the small or large magnitude of number symbols. SNARC-like interactions of numerical magnitudes with the radial spatial dimension (depth) were postulated from early on. Usually, the SNARC effect in any direction is investigated using fronto-parallel computer monitors for presentation of stimuli. In such 2D setups, however, (...) the metaphorical and literal interpretation of the radial depth axis with seemingly close / far stimuli or responses are not distinct. Hence, it is difficult to draw clear conclusions with respect to the contribution of different spatial mappings to the SNARC effect. In order to disentangle the different mappings in a natural way, we studied parametrical interactions between semantic numerical magnitude, horizontal directional responses, and perceptual distance by means of stereoscopic depth in an immersive virtual reality (VR). Two VR experiments show horizontal SNARC effects across all spatial displacements in traditional latency measures and kinematic response parameters. No indications of a SNARC effect along the depth axis, as it would be predicted by a direct mapping account, were observed, but the results show a non-linear relationship between horizontal SNARC slopes and physical distance. Steepest SNARC slopes were observed for digits presented close to the hands. We conclude that spatial-numerical processing is susceptible to effector-based processes but relatively resilient to task-irrelevant variations of radial-spatial magnitudes. (shrink)

Under the independence and competence assumptions of Condorcet’s classical jury model, the probability of a correct majority decision converges to certainty as the jury size increases, a seemingly unrealistic result. Using Bayesian networks, we argue that the model’s independence assumption requires that the state of the world (guilty or not guilty) is the latest common cause of all jurors’ votes. But often – arguably in all courtroom cases and in many expert panels – the latest such common cause is (...) a shared ‘body of evidence’ observed by the jurors. In the corresponding Bayesian network, the votes are direct descendants not of the state of the world, but of the body of evidence, which in turn is a direct descendant of the state of the world. We develop a model of jury decisions based on this Bayesian network. Our model permits the possibility of misleading evidence, even for a maximally competent observer, which cannot easily be accommodated in the classical model. We prove that (i) the probability of a correct majority verdict converges to the probability that the body of evidence is not misleading, a value typically below 1; (ii) depending on the required threshold of ‘no reasonable doubt’, it may be impossible, even in an arbitrarily large jury, to establish guilt of a defendant ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’. (shrink)

Standard arguments for essentialism with respect to natural kinds such as gold, star, water or tiger enlist essentialist principles or essentialist intuitions. I argue that we need neither. All it takes to establish essentialism for the kinds in question are insights from science and semantics. Semantics establishes that natural kind predicates such as “is gold” or “is a star” are paradigm terms whose application conditions are relationally determined, object involving, and actuality dependent. Science assures us that a posteriori (...) hypotheses such as “∀x” are deeply explanatory, as well as true. Taken together, these results establish essentialism for kinds such as gold, star, water or tiger. I consider this a deflationary result. When it comes to natural kind essentialism, there is no need for substantial metaphysics, be it essentialist or otherwise. (shrink)

Two essential periods may be identified in the early stages of the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets. The first was the period during which a very well known deficiency disease, rickets, acquired a scientific status: this required the development of unifying principles to confer upon the newly developing science of pathology a doctrine without which it would have been condemned to remain a collection of unrelated facts with very little practical application. One first such unifying principle was provided by the (...) notion of hygiene; while the blanket explanations provided by this notion alone were much too general to enable rickets to achieve scientific status, it did point out the need to look for specific external causes for the disease and to examine the life-style and dietary habits of the patients. The second phase of the conceptualization of the disease was the assumption of a specific cause — that is, using concepts developed in the area of infectious diseases. This was made possible by fundamental similarities between deficiency and infectious diseases, in spite of their apparent differences. Both types of illness have some of the characteristics of what Georges Canguilhem calls the ontological representation of disease as opposed to dysharmonic representations, which primarily concern the endocrine diseases. It is precisely this shift from one to the other manner of perceiving ill health that enabled the identification of the vitamin D-resistant rickets. Conceptualization of the notion of vitamin D resistancy required that the conditions causing the disease be looked for within the organism rather than outside it; this was thus the first time that endocrine concepts were applied to studying the physiology of vitamin D.The history of resistant rickets therefore represents an interesting model for understanding the growth of biomedical knowledge. It allows the development of a number of more general ideas on the question of the relationship between biology and medicine and on the thorny problem of specificity in medical thinking. As far as this topic is concerned it can be seen that there was an ongoing exchange between medical and biological thinking during the initial period up until 1937, and that one could deny any such specificity in medical thinking during this same period. Albright, for example, used human diseases as spontaneously produced models for experimental biology. It was also more feasible for an experimental biologist to administer toxic doses than for a clinician to do so.What, then, if any, is the place of the specificity of medical thinking in this history? The fact that medicine is characterized not only by it ccognitive content78 but also by its final aim, which is to restore health, makes it necessary to take factors other than objective knowledge into consideration. This is particularly evident in two aspects of medicine, therapeutics and nosology, and in approaching the notion of pathological individuality.Therapeutic activity has a largely empirical approach. Many drugs, such as cod-liver oil, were discovered empirically. Treatment often in the past, and still now, has proceeded by trial and error, upon no established theoretical basis. At this level the relationship between biology and medicine is roughly comparable to that between science and technology79 \3- that is, it is impossible to reduce either therapeutics or technical activities to the simple application of basic science. In this sense, the application of vitamin D to vitamin-resistant rickets is quite typical. Further-more, in the case studied here, the therapeutic activity heralds a definite breaking away from the medicatrix naturae of conventional medicine dating back to ancient times, and it embodies a new concept of the organism and of disease: no longer can the diseased organism be thought of as merely having a perturbed equilibrium requiring restoration by means of a natural style of medicine. On the contrary, vitamin D resistance is an obstacle that indicates profound biological dysfunction, to be rectified only by means of an extremely aggressive and therefore dangerous therapy. The therapy thus serves to reveal the severity of the dysfunction, thereby leading inevitably to conceptual innovation. This sheds light on the theoretical innovations of which the therapeutic activity is capable.Therapeutic activity is also influenced by notions of health and illness, normal and pathological states, none of which may be determined entirely objectively. For example, the term healing as used by Albright in the case of resistant rickets that he described may be discussed in this light.Nosology, or the classification of diseases, depends largely on the description of clinical syndromes, which are themselves mainly based on subjective elements (discomfort, disability, or the extent of a patient's suffering). The advent of pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century disrupted classification by introducing the concept of localized anatomical lesions81-and, hence, an element of material objectivity \3- into nosology. Radiological examination further complicated matters by enabling the equivalent of an autopsy on living matter. Lastly, biological examination complicated nosology by showing that biological anomalies may exist in human beings without necessarily leading to a pathological condition. Medical thinking can choose to combine all these elements to describe a disease, but can also separate them and retain only a few, or a single one, according to requirements - as did Albright.The notion of biological and pathological individuality is fundamental to the development of medical thinking. Whatever its theoretical origin, medical thinking has since ancient times incorporated the idea that each individual reacts differently to the same treatment and his own specific pathological tendencies. I mentioned earlier that in the history of vitamin D-resistant rickets the notion of rachitic tendency reflected this type of thinking. After 1937, this history progressed by successively separating new individual entities, affecting smaller and smaller groups of individuals in each case. In other words, the need to understand and to define individual illness more closely required the development of new concepts and the construction of new individual categories of disease linking these concepts to older clinical, radiological, and biochemical elements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:is There a White Gift?: A Pragmatist Response to the Problem of Whiteness Terrance A. MacMullan Introduction Lucius Outlaw and Shannon SuUivan are prominent contemporary philosophers of race who follow in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois as they search for a theoretical understanding of race and a political solution to the problem of racism. They agree that the solution to racism is not found in the elimination of (...) the idea of race from our discourses as suggested by Naomi Zack and Anthony Appiah, but in a critical conservation of race that is nonhierarchical and committed to addressing the suffering of non-white racial groups.1 This moral and critical conservation of race makes Sullivan and Outlaw standard bearers for Du Bois's idea of the racial gift, which John Shuford writes is rooted in the conviction that, "'race' and race-consciousness are not the causes of racism and racial injustice, [and] that 'race' may be employed toward collective and mutual liberation."2 However, despite their inteUectual kinship regarding their broad approach to race, Outlaw and SuUivan come to a significant and iUuminating disagreement over the issue of whiteness. In Du Boisian terms, they disagree about whether white people, qua white, have a racial gift worth conserving. Outlaw recognizes the illegitimacy of the hierarchical racial taxonomies established during the Enlightenment era but accepts race as a real and meaningful feature of our social landscape. Revealing a strong affinity for Du Bois' approach to race, Outlaw imagines his work as, an inquiry into raciality and ethnicity via a treacherous "third path" between racism and invidious ethnocentrism, on the one side, and anti-racism and antiinvidious ethnocentrism, on the other. What I propose can help us to recognize and nurture races and ethnies as we reconsider raciation and ethnicization as processes by which we humans produce TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 41, No. 4 ©2005 Hi and reproduce ourselves as crucial aspects of our "social construction of ET1 realities."3 H tr* Q η He further argues for "the need to conserve 'race' and 'ethnie' (and 'ethnic- ¡» ity') as vital components of a philosophical anthropology."4 Outlaw there- 5j fore contends that the challenge facing liberatory race theorists is not the «' elimination of race, but instead, "the challenge is to find ways to conserve a Ç) sense of raciality that is both socially useful and consistent with democratic justice." Outlaw clearly wants to avoid invidious ethnocentrism, but what is more significant is that he also rejects the idea that we should purge racial ^j ideas and practices as a means to achieve democratic justice. He, like Du τ> Bois, is fully aware of the evils of racism, but is nonetheless committed to > the belief that human existence is inevitably colored by race as a salient fea- g ture of our social reality. Outlaw's commitment to the conservation of race ;> is so deep that he would preserve race-based communities of meaning, "even ^ if, in the very next instant, racism and perverted, invidious ethnocentrism in every form or > manifestation would disappearforever'. '6 ^ The key to this balancing act is to look at race and ethnicity through the r lens of "philosophical anthropology" instead of through the materialism of > biology. Outlaw argues that when we look at race this way we glean, an understanding and appreciation of senses of belonging and of shared destiny by which individuals are intimately connected to other individuals in ways that make for the constitution of particular kinds of social collectivities, what I term social-natural kinds. Races and ethnies are such "kinds."8 Outlaw thus uses an idea of race that is fully transactional, to use a term coined by Dewey and rewardingly reclaimed by Sullivan. Race is created in the confluence of culture and biology, to the extent that certain biologicaUy determined traits, primarily morphological features, are the tags that play important symbolic roles in terms of how social groups are formed. The goal, therefore, is not to eliminate race, because people long have and likely always will use appearance as one of the many determinants of how they form groups. The goal is, instead, to form groups in ways that encourage human flourishing "consistent... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Buddhism and the Modern World Need Each Other:A Buddhist PerspectiveDavid R. LoyThe mercy of the West has been social revolution. The mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.—Gary Snyder1Another way to make Snyder’s point would be: The highest ideal of the Western tradition has been the concern to restructure our societies so that they are more socially just. The most (...) important goal for Buddhism is to awaken and (to use the Zen phrase) realize one’s true nature, which puts an end to dukkha—especially that associated with the delusion of a separate self. Today it has become more obvious that we need both, not just because these ideals complement each other, but because each project needs the other.As far as I have been able to determine, the Western conception of justice largely originates with the Abrahamic traditions, particularly the Hebrew prophets, who fulminated against oppressive rulers for afflicting the poor and powerless. Describing Old Testament prophecy, Walter Kaufmann writes that “no other sacred scripture contains books that speak out against social injustice as eloquently, unequivocally, and sensitively as the books of Moses and some of the prophets.”2 Is there a Buddhist equivalent? The doctrine of karma understands something like justice as an impersonal moral law built into the fabric of the cosmos, but historically karma has functioned differently. Combined with the doctrine of rebirth (a necessary corollary, since evil people sometimes prosper in this life) and the belief that each of us is now experiencing the consequences of actions in previous lifetimes, the implication seems to be that we do not need to be concerned about pursuing justice, because sooner or later everyone gets what they deserve. In practice, this has often encouraged passivity and acceptance of one’s situation, rather than a commitment to promote social justice.Does the Buddhist emphasis on dukkha (suffering in the broad sense) provide a better parallel with the Western conception of justice? Dukkha is arguably its most important concept: According to the Pali Canon, Sakyamuni Buddha said that what [End Page 39] he had to teach was dukkha and how to end it. Historically, Asian Buddhism has focused on individual dukkha and personal karma, a limitation that may have been necessary in autocratic polities that could and sometimes did repress Buddhist institutions. Today, however, the globalization of democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech opens the door to new ways of responding to social and institutional causes of dukkha.On the other side, the Abrahamic emphasis on justice, in combination with the Greek realization that society can be restructured, has resulted in our modern concern to pursue social justice by reforming political and economic institutions. This has involved, most obviously, various human rights movements (the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, feminism, LGBT liberation, etc.), which have not been an important concern of traditional Asian Buddhism. As valuable as these reforms have been, the limitations of such a institutional approach, by itself, are becoming evident. Even the best possible economic and political system cannot be expected to function well if the people within that system are motivated by greed, aggression, and delusion—the “three fires” or “three poisons” that Buddhism identifies as unwholesome motivations that need to be transformed into their more positive counterparts: generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom.Today, in our globalizing world, the traditional Western focus on social transformation encounters the traditional Buddhist focus on individual awakening. This essay addresses why they need each other in order to actualize their own ideals and uses the example of our present economic situation to explore some of the implications of this interdependence.good versus evilThe difference in focus can be traced back to different paradigms. One way to draw the contrast between the Abrahamic and Buddhist traditions is to consider their dissimilar attitudes toward morality. The Abrahamic religions are (the primary) examples of “ethical monotheism” because they emphasize most of all ethical behavior. God’s main way of relating to us, his creatures, is instructing us how to live by giving us moral commandments. To be a good Jew, Christian, or... (shrink)

Previous studies with adult participants have investigated reasoning from one or two uncertain premises with simple deductive arguments. Three exploratory experiments were designed to extend these results by investigating the evaluation of the plausibility of the conclusion of "combined" arguments, i.e. arguments constituted by two or more "atomic" standard arguments which each involved the same conclusion and one uncertain premise out of two. One example is "If she meets Nicolas it is very improbable she will go to the swimming pool; (...) if she meets Sophie it is very probable she will go to the swimming pool; she meets Nicolas; she meets Sophie". With two conflicting arguments, one supporting and one unfavourable, participants chose a compromise stance (Exp. 1), unless the thematic content of the premises allows one to consider one argument as more important than the other (Exp. 3). With two favourable arguments and rather unfamiliar materials, two typical behaviours appeared. One consisted in choosing a degree of plausibility of the conclusion that is intermediate between the modals asserted in the premises, and the other in choosing a more favourable degree than the most favourable modal (Exp. 1). The plausibility of the conclusion increased when the number of supporting atomic arguments increased from one to three, and decreased when the number of unfavourable arguments increased (Exp. 2). Theoretical implications are discussed and a model is sketched. (shrink)

Schelling’s middle period works have always been a source of fascination: they mark a break with the idealism (in both senses of the word) of his early works and the Fichtean and then Hegelian tradition; while they are not weighed down by the reactionary burden of his late lectures on theology and mythology. But they have been equally a source of perplexity. The central work of this period, the Essay on Human Freedom (1809) takes as its topic the moral problem (...) of freedom, but spends much of its time telling a mystical-metaphysical story about the creation of the world that attempts to paint a picture of a kind of irreducible metaphysical contingency in nature. What is the relation between the moral and the metaphysical elements of the Freedom essay? It has never been obvious. But some recent Anglophone scholarship suggests an answer. In her Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard (2006) Michelle Kosch presents a strong case for the view that Schelling’s Freedom essay is motivated by a critique of Kant’s conception of autonomy in ethics. The idea is that Kant’s problems start not if he fails to show that it is rational to be moral, but if he succeeds. For if he does, then it is irrational to be immoral, and hence it is impossible for a rational agent to act immorally: an act not in conformity with duty is evidence of irrationality (perhaps one’s rational agency has been thwarted by pathological inclinations). This is broadly the Socratic position: evil, as a knowing immoral act, is not possible. Officially Kant rejects the classical view, most explicitly in his 1793 Religion with the Bounds of Mere Reason, for a Christian position in which freedom is understood as the freedom to choose between good and evil without thereby abandoning one’s agency. But he has no obvious means for doing so. Kosch attempts to show that Schelling comes, by 1809, to identify his early work with something like this Kantian dilemma: we are as badly off when it comes to our freedom if we are pushed around by reasons as if we are pushed around by causes: the Hegelian ruse of reason is as inimical to our agency as phenomenal determinism. The Freedom essay is the result of Schelling’s attempt to defend a muscular, Christian conception of the possibility of evil. Nevertheless, for Kosch, Schelling’s move to the metaphysical level is still problematic: just where one would expect an account of norms that does not infer them from our rational autonomy, we get, puzzlingly, a cosmology. I will argue that Kosch’s matrix for interpreting Schelling in fact does give us a way of understanding Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency. In broad outline, Schelling’s argument is that our choice of metaphysical schema is constrained by a correct understanding of agency: the world cannot be causally determined because that is inconsistent with our understanding of ourselves as agents; but equally the world cannot be rationally determined, and for the same reason. Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency is an unpacking of the consequences of this inference, and not a botched attempt to ground values outside of rational autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations Of Natural ScienceEric Watkinsone of kant’s most fundamental aims is to justify Newtonian science. However, providing a detailed explanation of even the main structure of his argument (not to mention the specific arguments that fill out this structure) is not a trivial enterprise. While it is clear that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (...) (1786), and his unpublished (and incomplete) Opus postumum should in some way constitute the core of this justification, it is less clear how each of these works does so in detail. In this paper I shall first argue that the standard view of the relationship between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (hereafter simply Metaphysical Foundations) is mistaken. I shall then present my own interpretation of how the Metaphysical Foundations contributes to the justification of Newtonian science. Finally, I shall conclude by considering an important interpretation of the argument of the Metaphysical Foundations developed by Michael Friedman. However, it is first necessary to present briefly Kant’s conception of science (in particular what conditions a body of knowledge must satisfy for Kant in order to be considered science proper) as well as Kant’s own understanding of the relevant differences between his projects in the first Critique, the Metaphysical Foundations, and the Opus postumum.Kant’s conception of science is rather strict if measured by contemporary standards. For in the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant establishes three substantive conditions that a body of knowledge must satisfy in order to be considered science proper.1 (1) It must not consist in empirical principles, [End Page 567] but rather must be obtained solely from pure, a priori principles;2 (2) It must be apodictically certain;3 (3)4 It must be a systematically ordered whole (which means that its various propositions must be related as, for example, antecedents and consequents).5 After stating these conditions, Kant then argues that all natural science proper requires a pure part upon which its apodictic certainty is based. In other words, satisfaction of the first condition immediately implies satisfaction of the second condition as well.6 Accordingly, these three conditions (and the first one in particular) imply that natural science proper requires (or rather presupposes) a justification by something distinct from it that Kant calls a metaphysics of nature.7 But what exactly does a metaphysics of nature encompass? Kant distinguishes two different parts of the metaphysics of nature: a transcendental part and a special part. A metaphysics of nature [End Page 568] is transcendental insofar as it concerns “the laws that make the concept of nature in general possible, even without relation to any determinate object of experience, and [insofar as it is] thus indeterminate with respect to the nature of this or that thing in the sensible world,” whereas a metaphysics of nature is special to the extent that “it is concerned with a special nature of this or that kind of thing of which an empirical concept is given, but so that except for what lies in this concept no other empirical principle is used for knowledge thereof.”8 In short, a transcendental metaphysics, revealing how experience in general is possible, is not supposed to presuppose an empirical concept, whereas a special metaphysics does make such an assumption insofar as it is concerned with the special natures of things.How do the three works cited above relate to Kant’s distinction between a transcendental and a special metaphysics of nature? In the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant clearly indicates that he intends the Metaphysical Foundations to constitute the special metaphysics of nature. Although he does not explicitly refer to the first Critique in the preface, it is also relatively clear that he sees it (or at least the ‘System of Pure Reason’ that Kant foresees as following upon it and as incorporating its fundamental results)9 as constituting [End Page 569] the transcendental part of a metaphysics of nature.10 The Principles of Pure Understanding (‘Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes’) in the Transcendental Analytic argue for what could naturally be described as “laws... (shrink)

In 1921 was published the book of the famous Austrian-British philosopher and funder of the analytic philosophy Ludwig Johann Wittgenstein, in which he wrote, that the big part of our philosophical problems, which were subject of the thinking of the thousands philosophers, are created not by the difficulty of reality but by the complication of the language. When a philosopher analyzes a language he uses, he will find that the biggest part of the philosophical problems is illusory. Following Wittgenstein's advices, (...) in this article we probe to analyze what means the concept "polytheism" and to answer the questions: did the phenomenon, what is with this word described, anytime exist, or it is only a phantasies' fabrication, and all attempts to think about it are wandering in the dark labyrinths without exit. The first problem we have in our way is absolutely darkness in this question. We could not find any research, in which the concept of polytheism is analyzed in this way we changed. So we must get through the forest of an unknown ourselves without opportunity to have support from the experience of the predecessors. We hope our mistakes might be useful for the following researches. The Greek word "doxa polytheos" was first time used by Philo of Alexandria and after them many Judaic and Christian authors repeated this word opposing own religion to the paganism. Jan Bodin 1n 16th Century used this word in the modern mean as a France word "polythéisme". The Greek word "doxa polytheos" and the France one "polythéisme", though they are constructed of the same Greek word "Θεός", based on the different concepts, because in 16 centuries the word "Θεός" changed its means. In Greek-speaking society this word was used to detonate any being who overstate the material world. When Thales of Millet wrote, that "the world is full of gods", he did not mean that there is an Absolut in every small part of the world. When he used the word "Θεός" in this mean, Thales thought about different objects, as we called "God" now. The mean of the term "polytheism" is unclear and is the cause of many researches problems in the religious studies. The Greek word "Θεός" detonated every sacral being, which was the object of the worship, but not the Absolut. When this word went in the term "polytheism", its mean was changed, and it was used for the calling Absolut in the Christian meaning. This transformation of the meaning created the wrong conception that in the world there were or are religions, the members of them believes in the existence of some or many Absolutes. The problem of using concept "polytheism" is not a real academic problem but an illusions problem, what is caused by the wrong and incorrect using of the term. The Greek word "Θεός", of them are created the terms "monotheism" and "polytheism", is used in both terms in different meanings. In the term "monotheism" the word "Θεός" means God-Absolut, and in the term "polytheism" – any beings, what are the objects of the religious worship. The monotheism and polytheism are not two different phase of the entvelopment of the religious consciousness. These ideas are created by the wrongness of Hegel's philosophy and must be uprooted from the lexicon of the religious studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.2 (2001) 115-116 [Access article in PDF] The Ethics of Medical Mistakes: Historical, Legal, and Institutional Perspectives Introduction In late 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report on medical errors, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. The report estimated almost 50,000 deaths per year nationally due to medical mistakes, making it a leading cause of death. IOM speculated that (...) more than half of the deaths related to medical error are preventable. The IOM report shocked the public and medical professionals alike, sparking a national discussion of how to make the health care system safer. This multifaceted issue has profound implications for all aspects of health care, from the very personal--e.g., the relationship of caregiver and patient--to the societal--e.g., a nation's responsibility to its citizens.On 15 May 2000, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hosted an ethics conference devoted to the topic of medical mistakes. The goal was to bring together experts from various disciplines, before an audience of both providers and patients, to discuss medical mistakes and their implications. In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, we present selected papers resulting from that conference. These papers reflect not only the original oral presentations, but also much of the discussion those presentations generated. Three key perspectives on the ethics of medical mistakes are offered: historical, legal, and institutional.Rosa Lynn Pinkus offers a revealing historical perspective on the ethics of medical mistakes. In analyzing the history of mistake reporting in neurosurgery, she shows how the notion of a mistake developed only as the notion of a standard of practice emerged. Although much of managed care is directed toward systematically fostering a standard of care, this pursuit is relatively new in health care. One might speculate that as more standards are created, mistakes--defined as deviations from standard practice--must increase. If deviation from standard practice is overly castigated, however, then needed innovation in practice may be stifled. Interestingly, as Pinkus discusses, medical malpractice suits quickly followed the emergence of practice standards, driving the initial open reporting of mistakes underground. [End Page 115]Taking up the issue of medical malpractice, Thomas May and Mark Aulisio consider the ramifications of the current malpractice system for mistake prevention. The current system, they argue, while failing to adequately achieve its purported goals of deterring medical mistakes and compensating victims, itself creates a climate that deters the open reporting of mistakes by engendering fear and shame in clinicians. According to May and Aulisio, this failure to report medical mistakes openly has serious ramifications. Chief among these is the inability to do root cause analysis of mistakes, and then, where possible, to implement safeguards to minimize the occurrence of future mistakes. Ultimately, both the prevention of medical mistakes and the goals of malpractice litigation itself will be better served if substantial malpractice reform is undertaken.Andy Thurman argues that even in the current climate institutions ought to have a policy (and practice) of admitting to and openly reporting medical mistakes. Thurman argues that doing so not only is the right thing to do, but is also in the interest of institutions. Interestingly, he contends that failing to admit and openly report mistakes is both at odds with the mission of health care institutions and puts them at higher risk of litigation, and liability. In light of this, Thurman then suggests an institutional process for handling medical mistakes.Michael DeVita concedes that disclosing mistakes is widely supported by the health professionals' principles of ethics, but argues that there are a number of factors that conspire to make doing so a very difficult task. In analyzing an index case, DeVita contends that platitudes about being honest are not nearly enough to foster honest behavior and that policies that offer specific guidance on handling unfavorable events are needed in health care institutions.Finally, we conclude with the policy on disclosure of unfavorable events (this terminology is chosen because it includes both iatrogenic and natural diseases and conditions) that resulted from... (shrink)

This provocative but persuasive book is essentially a radical attack upon the Humean conception of causality and the presentation and defense of a counter-theory, closer to everyday experience and pre-Humean traditional views. As formulated by empiricist philosophers, the Humean approach depends on two basic postulates. The philosophical analysis of any non-empirical concept must be a formal explication; any residue elements have to be accounted for in terms of their psychological origins. The world as experienced can be conceived adequately as a (...) logically independent system of things or flux of events, without the unwarranted assumption that individuals persist diachronically. As the grounds for undermining these assumptions, the authors develop a conception of causes as "powerful particulars," i.e., things which have both a nature and powers. So long as the nature remains unchanged the agent in question will continue to behave in this fashion with a natural necessity, stemming from the individual’s nature and specific powers. The opening chapter discusses the problem of conceptual and natural necessity—as distinct from logical necessity which alone is allowed by the Humean empiricists. Natural necessity is the mark of the relationship between real causes and their respective effects, whereas conceptual necessity characterizes the way our statements about such are themselves related. Later the irreducibility of natural necessity is emphasized and its differences from logical entailment spelled out. Chapter two takes up the subject of the "regularity theory and its allies." Characteristic of such are two claims: the empirical content of a causal-relationship statement is exhausted by the actual or hypothetical regularity between independent entities, and the necessity ordinarily attributed to causal production is an illusion, to be accounted for in various ways. Subsequent chapters are devoted to assaulting the pillars of the Humean notion either directly or indirectly through an illuminating and attractive account of their own theory of nature, causal powers, and natural necessity. The final chapter, entitled "Fields of Potential," indulges in speculation about the nature of ultimate entities on the basis of an extended generalization of the notion of the powerful individual, and concludes with a brief account of the historical antecedents of Faraday’s modern field theory and the metaphysical implications of a generalized field theory.—A.B.W. (shrink)

It is natural to think of causes as difference-makers. What exact difference causes make, however, is an open question. In this paper, I argue that the right way of understanding difference-making is in terms of causal processes: causes make a difference to a causal process that leads to the effect. I will show that this way of understanding difference-making nicely captures the distinction between causing an outcome and helping determine how the outcome happens and, thus, explains (...) why causation is not transitive. Moreover, the theory handles tricky cases that are problematic for competing accounts of difference-making. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Tenth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:History as a Challenge to Buddhism and ChristianityJohn O’Grady, Elizabeth J. Harris, and Jonathan A. SeitzThe Tenth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies (ENBCS) brought together between sixty and seventy people at the Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium, between 27 June and 1 July 2013, to examine the theme “History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity.” It was (...) a collaborative effort between the ENBCS and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The 2011 ENBCS conference had focused on whether hope was a relevant concept for Buddhists and Christians. The choice of history as a theme complemented this. It also resonated with a research concern of both KU Leuven and the Network.Five key themes were chosen for examination: the traditional Christian and Buddhist conceptions of history; Jesus and the Buddha: fact and fiction; Buddhist and Christian historiography; dangerous memory in Christianity and Buddhism; and permitting historical consciousness in Buddhism and Christianity. Each was approached from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective. An opening lecture addressed the theme “Modern Historical Consciousness and the Challenge to Religion.” In addition, eighteen research papers on Buddhist-Christian relations were given in parallel sessions on Friday evening and Saturday morning. These covered topics as various as the writings of Edmund Pezet (Pierre Gillet), Paul Knitter’s understanding of Buddhist-Christian double belonging (Achim Riggert), Keiji Nishitani and the death of God (Jonatan Navarro Estrada), the encounter of Zen Buddhism and Christianity in the works of D. T. Suzuki (Mariusz Rucki), Buddhist-Christian encounters by Han Yong Woon (Seung Chul Kim), and “Liberating the Conflict from ‘History’ in Sri Lanka” (Jude Lal Fernando).Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Münster, Germany), in the opening lecture, discussed [End Page 189] seven challenges that modern historical consciousness was posing to religion: the challenge of falsification (when historical evidence, for example, showed some doctrines cherished by believers were not taught by the founder), the challenge of uncertainty or methodological doubt, the challenge of methodological naturalism (should a natural explanation be considered more probable than a supernatural one?), the challenge of the distance between past and present, the challenge of change (religions are not static), the challenge of demystification, and the challenge of relativity (the writing of history is perspectival, conditioned by context). He stressed that it would be a blessing to religion if these challenges were faced and, throughout the conference, encouraged other speakers to face them.The first theme was tackled by Mark Blum (Berkeley, USA) from a Buddhist perspective and Jan-Olav Henriksen (Norwegian School of Theology) from a Christian perspective. In a magisterial historical and geographical survey of the Buddhist tradition, Blum first noted that no one had unearthed a traditional notion of Buddhist history in the early texts. The theme of decline and reformation had been taken from Indian cosmology, but with a Buddhist twist and the conviction that it was pointless to talk about beginnings. And in the growth of the Mahāyāna tradition, a dehistoricization of the Buddha had occurred in the belief that the Buddha’s dharma-body was his only “real” body.Henriksen argued that Christian salvation history had its origin in the narrative of the Fall, an event for which there was no historical evidence, and developed into a history of God’s call (election) to all people that they should be brought together in community. It was a history that was linked with the divine logos, a force that Christian theology has seen as deeply interwoven into creation from the beginning of time and that was made human in Jesus.Terrence Merrigan (KU Leuven, Belgium), giving a Christian perspective on the second theme, distinguished three quests or attempts to reach the historical Jesus. The first, from 1774 to 1906, sought to uncover the Jesus that had been obscured by dogma. It imploded with the realization that separating “core” from “myth” was impossible, and conditioned a reactive “no-quest” in the first half of the twentieth century. A “new quest” arose in the 1950s, initiated by Käsemann’s reaction to the theologies of Barth and Bultmann. A further quest that appealed to archaeology and the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus by Allen VerheyMandy Rodgers-GatesThe Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus By Allen Verhey GRAND RAPIDS: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS, 2011. 423 PP. $30.00When Allen Verhey, my former adviser, learned that I would be writing this review, he warned me (with characteristic modesty) that I ought to be careful to critique something about his book, or people might become suspicious. It (...) seems fitting now that this piece is being published after his death, which gives me permission to praise the book without reserve.Over the last few decades, the topic of death and dying has garnered renewed interest among Christian ethicists, and Verhey has been at the center of these conversations. Such conversations have brought into focus the reality that death is not merely the cessation of a life lived well (the “true” subject of ethics) but also that “dying well” is a legitimate subject within ethics. Dying offers unique opportunities for practicing virtues and for loving God, self, and neighbor, and care for the dying and grieving represents an important test of the faithfulness of Christian communities.After beginning with his own assessment of death in the modern West—acknowledging the benefits and triumphs of medicine, along with the pitfalls of medicalized death and the failure of the Church to resist medicalization—Verhey moves to the heart of his book: a retrieval of the Ars Moriendi tradition. Verhey engages a fifteenth-century abridged manual on the art of dying that appeared within the wider genre, one accompanied by wood-block prints (whose images appear alongside Verhey’s text). Placing the little book within its historical context, Verhey describes the view of death presented in it, a “commendacion” of death. He then moves on to the Ars Moriendi’s presentation of temptations faced by the dying person (“Moriens”), the virtues required, and questions, instructions, and prayers for the dying. Along the way, Verhey offers some of his own analysis; but he reserves the bulk of his critique and reformulations for the third section of his book, “Toward a contemporary Ars Moriendi.”Verhey’s articulation of a contemporary Ars Moriendi begins with a “commendacion” of life, in contrast to the medieval commendation of death. He demonstrates how the lens of Jesus’s resurrection serves to illuminate a proper Christian view of death: life is a good—though not the ultimate good—and death and suffering per se ought not to be considered good. At the same time, we need not fear death. Death and suffering are not the greatest evils, and [End Page 191] sometimes they must be risked or accepted “for the sake of God’s cause in the world” (215). Taking its cue from the Ars Moriendi tradition of remembering Jesus, the next chapter traces some of the details of the Passion narratives, including the seven final words of Jesus, and comments on these as they pertain to a modern context of dying. This remembering is then brought to bear on a contemporary retelling of the virtues necessary for dying well—again, relying upon and yet transforming the earlier tradition in nuanced ways. Verhey’s final section, on Christian communities’ care for the dying, includes sustained reflection on the practices of those communities and the resources they offer, focusing particularly on prayer. It offers critiques and additions—for example, recognizing the value of increased silence at funerals, “instead of rushing to fill the silence of death with our words” (348).Verhey’s engagement with the Ars Moriendi literature offers a creative and exemplary use of tradition for a contemporary concern. Our age—one that often refuses to face death—is brought into conversation with another era, when people took their dying seriously. At the same time, Verhey is free with his critique of the tradition and the need to reshape it, primarily on theological grounds. The strength of this book, like all his work, lies in its attention to scripture and its theological nuance and depth. At the same time, he knew and understood people, and that knowledge and pastoral concern are evident throughout. Ultimately, he accomplishes what he expresses in the introduction: “I hope... (shrink)

The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental (...) laws of nature are deterministic, and I will address some common objections. (shrink)

Within the last fifty years as philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science have moved towards increasingly more embodied theoretical frameworks, there has been growing interest in Dance Movement Therapy. DMT has been shown to be effective in mitigating negative symptoms in several psychopathologies including PTSD, autism, and schizophrenia. Further, DMT generally helps participants gain a stronger sense of agency and connection with their body. However, it has been argued that it is not always clear what constitutes these changes in DMT participants. (...) I argue that we can better understand the empirical and phenomenological results of DMT across psychopathologies if we adapt an enactive embodied approach to cognition. I use the framework of embodied enactive cognition and narrative theories of the self to develop an account of DMT as a form of narrative change. I claim that through the acquisition of new bodily skill and bodily awareness, DMT can cause changes to the participant’s narrative self-understanding. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by drawing on (...) a classical debate between Dharmakirti and the Indian materialists. The main argument of the paper is that expanding our conception of causality to accommodate phenomenal content can cast new light on the problem of mental causation. A satisfactory solution to the problem of mental causation must reject the completeness of the physical principle in favor of conceptions of causality that allow for phenomenal properties to play a causal-explanatory function. (shrink)

In normative political theory, it is widely accepted that democracy cannot be reduced to voting alone, but that it requires deliberation. In formal social choice theory, by contrast, the study of democracy has focused primarily on the aggregation of individual opinions into collective decisions, typically through voting. While the literature on deliberation has an optimistic flavour, the literature on social choice is more mixed. It is centred around several paradoxes and impossibility results identifying conflicts between different intuitively plausible desiderata. In (...) recent years, there has been a growing dialogue between the two literatures. This paper discusses the connections between them. Important insights are that (i) deliberation can complement aggregation and open up an escape route from some of its negative results; and (ii) the formal models of social choice theory can shed light on some aspects of deliberation, such as the nature of deliberation-induced opinion change. (shrink)