Timothy Williamson has recently argued that few mental states are luminous , meaning that to be in that state is to be in a position to know that you are in the state. His argument rests on the plausible principle that beliefs only count as knowledge if they are safely true. That is, any belief that could easily have been false is not a piece of knowledge. I argue that the form of the safety rule Williamson uses is inappropriate, and (...) the correct safety rule might not conflict with luminosity. (shrink)

Using Finsler brane solutions [see details and methods in: S. Vacaru, Class. Quant. Grav. 28:215001, 2011], we show that neutrinos may surpass the speed of light in vacuum which can be explained by trapping effects from gravity theories on eight dimensional (co) tangent bundles on Lorentzian manifolds to spacetimes in general and special relativity. In nonholonomic variables, the bulk gravity is described by Finsler modifications depending on velocity/momentum coordinates. Possible super-luminal phenomena are determined by the width of locally anisotropic brane (...) (spacetime) and induced by generating functions and integration functions and constants in coefficients of metrics and nonlinear connections. We conclude that Finsler brane gravity trapping mechanism may explain neutrino super-luminal effects and almost preserve the paradigm of Einstein relativity as the standard one for particle physics and gravity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is no viable alternative to construing our knowledge and justified belief as resting on a foundation restricted to truths about our internal states. Against Williamson and others I defend the claim that the internal life of a cognizer really does constitute a special sort of cognitive home that is importantly different from the rest of what we think we know and justifiably believe.

We tend to want to avoid and ignore our dark or difficult emotions, biases, and tendencies-and we eschew them on a cultural and societal level because they reveal painful, ugly truths. The labeling of darkness as "negative" becomes a collective excuse to justify avoiding everything that makes humans uncomfortable: racism, spiritual bypass, environmental destruction. Welcoming darkness with curiosity and reverence, rather than fear or judgment, enables us to access our innate capacity for compassion and collective healing. In Seeing with the (...) Heart, dharma teacher, shaman, and deep ecologist Deborah Eden Tull asks us to recognize, explore, and engage with the darkness we experience in our lives in order to learn important lessons and tools for bringing awakening, healing, and compassion to ourselves-and to our world. In an age of global uncertainty, Tull presents the radical teaching of endarkenment--that we can only awaken to wholeness through fully embracing the dark. Darkness, she posits, is not the absence of light, but an intrinsic, vital, healing, and restorative aspect of nature. Tull addresses the spiritual, ecological, psychological, and interpersonal ramifications of our bias towards light over dark. She offers a radical path to wholeness that can be found only through learning to embrace the interplay of both darkness and light, within ourselves and within our world. She offers inspiring teachings, meditations, and mindful inquiry questions to integrate into our daily practice an experiential understanding of endarkenment. (shrink)

This superb collection of writings on buddha nature by the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) focuses on the transition from ordinary deluded consciousness to enlightened wisdom, the characteristics of buddhahood, and a buddha's enlightened activity. Most of these materials have never been translated comprehensively. The Third Karmapa's unique and well-balanced view synthesizes Yogacara Madhyamaka and the classical teachings on buddha nature. Rangjung Dorje not only shows that these teachings do not contradict each other but also that they supplement each other (...) and share the same essential points in terms of the ultimate nature of mind and all phenomena. His fusion is remarkable because it clearly builds on Indian predecessors and precedes the later often highly charged debates in Tibet about the views of Rangtong ("self-empty") and Shentong ("other-empty"). Although Rangjung Dorje is widely regarded as one of the major proponents of the Tibetan Shentong tradition (some even consider him its founder), this book shows how his views differ from the Shentong tradition as understood by Dolpopa Taranatha and the First Jamgon Kongtrul. The Third Karmapa's view is more accurately described as one in which the two categories of rangtong and shentong are not regarded as mutually exclusive but are combined in a creative synthesis. For those practicing the sutrayana and the vajrayana in the Kagyu tradition, what these texts describe can be transformed into living experience. (shrink)

Since its appearance over a decade ago, Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument has come under sustained attack. Defenders of the luminous overwhelmingly object to the argument's use of a certain margin-for-error premise. Williamson himself claims that the premise follows easily from a safety condition on knowledge together with his description of the thought experiment. But luminists argue that this is not so: the margin-for-error premise either requires an implausible interpretation of the safety requirement on knowledge, or it requires other equally implausible (...) assumptions. In this paper I bolster the margin-for-error premise against these attacks by recasting Williamson's own two-part defence, the first part intended to work on the assumption that there is no constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic, and the second intended to work without this assumption. Pace various luminists, I argue that the appeals to safety needed for Williamson's two-part defence are plausible. I also argue that all that is needed to generate the margin-for-error premise from these safety conditions is an empirical assumption about the kinds of creatures we are: that is, creatures whose beliefs are structured by certain dispositions. By recasting the anti-luminosity argument in this way, we can understand what is really at stake in the debate about luminosity: that is, whether we are luminous. (shrink)

Awakening the Luminous Mind is the third book of guided meditation practices in a series by the acclaimed author and teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Tenzin Rinpoche will guide you to bring these simple practices into your everyday life by turning inward and finding what he calls your "inner refuge." By this he means boundless space, infinite awareness, and the qualities that arise that have the power to transform your life. As you follow the principles in this book and complimentary CD, (...) you will discover greater creativity and intelligence, liberation from suffering, understanding and connectivity, and freedom from the ego that strives to control our life experiences. (shrink)

Suárez’s primary attempt to rethink angelology can be found in the De Angelis. This work is a mighty commentary on the prima pars of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (qq. 50-64) which Suárez left to his colleagues after his years in Coimbra (1597-1607), and which was published posthumously in Lyon in 1620. The composition of the text is somewhat stratified and it includes many references to the Disputationes Metaphysicae, but Suárez most likely already started writing it during his years of teaching in (...) Spain and Italy (1575-1597), before 1597. Because of its Thomistic inspiration, the De angelis is a fundamentally theological and doctrinal work, the metaphysical core of which is independently treated in the DM 35, entitled De immateriali substantia creata. In this passage, which is eminently theoretical, Suárez grapples with the most important quaestiones concerning angels under a metaphysical point of view, therein offering one of the most interesting overviews of early modern angelology. In this paper, I will refer especially to the DM 35, a more synthetic and peculiar work, with some reference to De Angelis as well. I will focus especially on sections 1-3 of DM 35, and try to reconstruct Suárez’s views on the following points: a) the cosmological necessity of angels, their rational demonstrability and the possibility of man’s knowing them (sections 1-2); b) the immaterial essence of angels (section 3). (shrink)

In this paper I shall argue that Tim Williamson’s argument for the anti-luminosity of many mental states faces difficult logical, psychological and epistemological problems. From a logical point of view, his argument is correct. However, the contrary argument that says that the anti-luminosity thesis does not necessarily follow from it is also correct. This opens a sceptical scenario. Hence, if Williamson wants to convince us that we should rationally prefer his argument rather than the other, he needs to add considerations (...) that are not merely logical. These are psychological and epistemological in nature. However, none of these considerations is convincing. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing claims in Sven Rosenkranz’s Justification as Ignorance is that Timothy Williamson’s celebrated anti-luminosity argument can be resisted when it comes to the condition ~K~KP—the condition that one is in no position to know that one is in no position to know P. In this paper, I critically assess this claim.

This essay tries to demonstrate two distinct but complementary visions to a central theme of Christian faith: humanity’s redemption in the crucified Christ. It will attempt to show how the poetics of Simone Weil (1909–1943) and the poetic art of Georges Rouault (1871–1943) embody different understandings of Christian faith. Considering faith from a philosophical approach, Weil detaches the sufferings of Christ from the totality of salvific history. Viewing faith from the artistic approach, Rouault places the crucified Christ in the context (...) of the history of salvation, including Mary and the Church. Though different from one another, these two visions reveal to us a light in the midst of our dark or suffering existence that makes audible or perceptible the silence of God’s love in Christ that is its source. (shrink)

Acupuncture, herbs, and bodywork are fast becoming accepted as complements to standard healing methods. This riveting personal story of the unconventional education of an alternative healer provides extraordinary insight into how and why such methods work. Blending Chinese medicine, the martial arts, and Native American knowing, Daniel Santos challenges us to view the body and its healing in an exciting new way.

"In Yoga and the Luminous, a book that emerges from more than thirty years of practice, study, and reflection, Christopher Key Chapple addresses the need for an ...

Matthias Joseph Scheeben has been described as one of the greatest and least read theologians of the modern era. This article provides an overview of his theology of predestination, which remains a significant but little-studied aspect of his thought. Section I offers a general sketch of Scheeben's theology of predestination, employing the chapter on this topic in The Mysteries of Christianity as a primary source. Section II takes a deeper look at Scheeben's theology of predestination through an engagement with relevant (...) sections of his untranslated masterwork, the Dogmatik. This section will highlight Scheeben's relationship to both the de auxiliis controversy and the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Connections between Scheeben's theology of predestination and his other theological positions are noted throughout. (shrink)

This is an essay on place in light of the ecological crisis as an exercise in what Pierre Charbonnier has recently called ecological reason, that is, “the environmental reflexivity of our species.” How do the roots of our prevailing political and economic relationships to the many lands that sustain us appear retroactively from the perspective of ecological reason? In a kind of tragic reversal, the mad rush to global prosperity and political dignity now appears as the emerging catastrophe of our (...) failure to heed the terrestrial affordances that sustain us. I explicate this problem and root about for responses to it by lacing together the recent work of Charbonnier as well as John Sallis, Bruno Latour, and Brian Burkhart in a single weave of place-specific thinking. How can we begin to rethink place from the ground up? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 217-221 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Buddhism in America Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America Buddhism in America. By Richard Hughes Seager. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. By Charles S. Prebish. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. These two books are (...) general overviews of Buddhist religion as practiced in America. 1 Buddhism in America is written for a general audience, even for readers unfamiliar with Buddhism, and would work well as a textbook. Luminous Passage presupposes some familiarity with the topic of Buddhism in America, and is addressed mainly to fellow scholars and supporters of Buddhism. Both books focus on Buddhist communities in America (leaders and institutions) and opt not to discuss Buddhist thought, [End Page 217] doctrine, or theology (margology). This review will describe each book in turn, and then raise some issues.Seager characterizes Buddhism in America as "a road map to the American Buddhist landscape, in which histories, communities, institutions, and individuals are set in meaningful relationship to each other in order to make sense of developments that are often baffling in their complexity" (xii). Buddhism in America is divided into three parts and fourteen chapters. Part 1 (chapters 1-4) offers background information on basic Buddhist teachings, institutions, historical traditions, and a brief history of Buddhism in America. Part 1 is a useful primer for readers unfamiliar with Buddhism and adds to this book's value as a college textbook. Part 2 (chapters 5-10) is "the heart of the book," with chapters on the Japanese Pure Land sect Jodo Shinshu (Buddhist Churches of America), the proselytizing movement Soka Gakkai, Japanese Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism (including vipassana meditation groups), and "other" forms of Buddhism (Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese). Part 3 (chapters 11-14) discusses the themes of gender, social engagement, interreligious dialogue, and Americanization. The book concludes with seventeen profiles of prominent Buddhist figures, a chronology, glossary, resources, and an index. The glossary is superfluous (the index directs the reader to longer definitions in the text), and is misleading in several cases (e.g., "bodhisattva" should be defined as "enlightenment being," not "wisdom body"). The section of resources includes select annotated bibliographies of books, periodicals, videos, and Web sites (75 percent current). The list of videos is particularly valuable for teaching.Chapter 13, "Intra-Buddhist and Interreligious Dialogue," will be of particular interest to readers of this journal. The section on Christian-Buddhist dialogue is very short (221-225), mostly on Thomas Merton and his legacy. In keeping with his focus on communities rather than doctrines, Seager approaches the topic of interreligious encounter by discussing recent dialogues rather than by discussing doctrinal or philosophical issues.Luminous Passageis also a book about Buddhist communities. It is intended as a companion volume to The Faces of Buddhism in America, a collection edited by Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka and published simultaneously by University of California Press. Like Seager's book, Luminous Passage is based on recent fieldwork, but unlike the former book, Luminous Passage is also based on the author's encounters with Buddhist figures over the years and his career as a buddhologist. The author's personal approach to his topic is both a strength and a weakness. An advantage of writing such a personal book is the plethora of interesting anecdotes that the author is able to include. However, a disadvantage to writing such a personal book is that the book becomes strongly shaped by the author's personal concerns. The author identifies himself as a Buddhist academic, and the book expresses his own ideals and hopes for the future of "American Buddhism." As the title of the book suggests, the author is hopeful for a "luminous passage," an evolution of the Buddhist traditions in America into an identifiably American Buddhism.Luminous Passage has six chapters, plus preface and appendix. Chapter 1 sketches [End Page 218] the history of Buddhism in America and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 217-221 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Buddhism in America Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America Buddhism in America. By Richard Hughes Seager. Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. By Charles S. Prebish. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. These two books are (...) general overviews of Buddhist religion as practiced in America. 1 Buddhism in America is written for a general audience, even for readers unfamiliar with Buddhism, and would work well as a textbook. Luminous Passage presupposes some familiarity with the topic of Buddhism in America, and is addressed mainly to fellow scholars and supporters of Buddhism. Both books focus on Buddhist communities in America (leaders and institutions) and opt not to discuss Buddhist thought, [End Page 217] doctrine, or theology (margology). This review will describe each book in turn, and then raise some issues.Seager characterizes Buddhism in America as "a road map to the American Buddhist landscape, in which histories, communities, institutions, and individuals are set in meaningful relationship to each other in order to make sense of developments that are often baffling in their complexity" (xii). Buddhism in America is divided into three parts and fourteen chapters. Part 1 (chapters 1-4) offers background information on basic Buddhist teachings, institutions, historical traditions, and a brief history of Buddhism in America. Part 1 is a useful primer for readers unfamiliar with Buddhism and adds to this book's value as a college textbook. Part 2 (chapters 5-10) is "the heart of the book," with chapters on the Japanese Pure Land sect Jodo Shinshu (Buddhist Churches of America), the proselytizing movement Soka Gakkai, Japanese Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism (including vipassana meditation groups), and "other" forms of Buddhism (Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese). Part 3 (chapters 11-14) discusses the themes of gender, social engagement, interreligious dialogue, and Americanization. The book concludes with seventeen profiles of prominent Buddhist figures, a chronology, glossary, resources, and an index. The glossary is superfluous (the index directs the reader to longer definitions in the text), and is misleading in several cases (e.g., "bodhisattva" should be defined as "enlightenment being," not "wisdom body"). The section of resources includes select annotated bibliographies of books, periodicals, videos, and Web sites (75 percent current). The list of videos is particularly valuable for teaching.Chapter 13, "Intra-Buddhist and Interreligious Dialogue," will be of particular interest to readers of this journal. The section on Christian-Buddhist dialogue is very short (221-225), mostly on Thomas Merton and his legacy. In keeping with his focus on communities rather than doctrines, Seager approaches the topic of interreligious encounter by discussing recent dialogues rather than by discussing doctrinal or philosophical issues.Luminous Passageis also a book about Buddhist communities. It is intended as a companion volume to The Faces of Buddhism in America, a collection edited by Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka and published simultaneously by University of California Press. Like Seager's book, Luminous Passage is based on recent fieldwork, but unlike the former book, Luminous Passage is also based on the author's encounters with Buddhist figures over the years and his career as a buddhologist. The author's personal approach to his topic is both a strength and a weakness. An advantage of writing such a personal book is the plethora of interesting anecdotes that the author is able to include. However, a disadvantage to writing such a personal book is that the book becomes strongly shaped by the author's personal concerns. The author identifies himself as a Buddhist academic, and the book expresses his own ideals and hopes for the future of "American Buddhism." As the title of the book suggests, the author is hopeful for a "luminous passage," an evolution of the Buddhist traditions in America into an identifiably American Buddhism.Luminous Passage has six chapters, plus preface and appendix. Chapter 1 sketches [End Page 218] the history of Buddhism in America and... (shrink)

Control stimuli are key for understanding the extent to which face processing relies on holistic processing, and affective evaluation versus the encoding of low-level image properties. Luminance polarity reversal combined with face inversion is a popular tool for severely disrupting the recognition of face controls. However, recent findings demonstrate visibility-recognition trade-offs for LP-reversed faces, where these face controls sometimes appear more salient despite being harder to recognize. The present report brings together findings from image analysis, simple stimuli, and behavioral (...) data for facial recognition and visibility, in an attempt to disentangle instances where LP-reversed control faces are associated with a performance bias in terms of their perceived salience. These findings have important implications for studies of subjective face appearance, and highlight that future research must be aware of behavioral artifacts due to the possibility of trade-off effects. (shrink)

What is the connection between having a phenomenal property and knowing that one has that property? A traditional view on the matter takes the connection to be quite intimate. Whenever one has a phenomenal property, one knows that one does. Recently most authors have denied this traditional view. The goal of this paper is to defend the traditional view. In fact, I will defend something much stronger: I will argue that what it is for a property to be phenomenal is (...) for it to be a property one must know oneself to have when on has it. As we will see, this theory has a number of surprising and welcome upshots, suggesting that the traditional view has been unjustly maligned. (shrink)