In the twenty-first century, the debate about life on other worlds is quickly changing from the realm of speculation to the domain of hard science. Within a few years, as a consequence of the rapid discovery by astronomers of planets around other stars, astronomers very likely will have discovered clear evidence of life beyond the Earth. Such a discovery of extraterrestrial life will change everything. Knowing the answer as to whether humanity has company in the universe will trigger one of (...) the greatest intellectual revolutions in history, not the least of which will be a challenge for at least some terrestrial religions. Which religions will handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life with ease and which will struggle to assimilate this new knowledge about our place in the universe? Some religions as currently practiced appear to only be viable on Earth. Other religions could be practiced on distant worlds but nevertheless identify both Earth as a place and humankind as a species of singular spiritual religious importance, while some religions could be practiced equally well anywhere in the universe by any sentient beings. Weintraub guides readers on an invigorating tour of the world's most widely practiced religions. It reveals what, if anything, each religion has to say about the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe. (shrink)

Pursuing Justice, Second Edition, examines the issue of justice by considering the origins of the idea, formal systems of justice, current global issues of justice, and ways in which justice might be achieved by individuals, organizations, and the global community. Part 1 demonstrates how the idea of justice has emerged over time, starting with religion and philosophy, then moving to the justice as a concern of the state, and finally to the concept of social justice. Part 2 outlines the very (...) different mechanisms used by various nations for achieving state justice, including systems based on common law, civil law, and Islamic law, with a separate discussion of the US justice system. Part 3 focuses on four contemporary issues of justice: war, genocide, slavery, and the environment. Finally, Part 4 shows how individuals and organizations can go about pursuing justice, and describes the rise of global justice. This updated timely book helps students understand the complexities and nuances of a society's pursuit of justice. It provides students with the foundations of global justice systems, integrating Greek philosophies and major religious perspectives into a justice perspective, and contributes to undergraduate understanding of international justice bodies, NGOs, and institutions. New edition is completely updated and revised to achieve relevance for today's students Covers concepts of justice as well as ideas for pursuing and achieving justice Examines how our modern laws began, and traces their evolution to today's laws Presents concepts and issues in justice studies as well as a comparison of several systems of law Teaching resources include discussion questions and real-world examples. (shrink)

This essay brings psychoanalytic theory on trauma together with film and television criticism on rape narrative in an analysis of Michael Coel’s 2020 series I May Destroy You. Beyond the limited carceral framework of the police procedural, which dislocates the act of violence from the survivor’s history and context, Coel’s polyvalent, looping narrative metabolizes rape television’s forms and genres in order to stage and restage both trauma and genre again and anew. Contesting common conceptions of vulnerability and susceptibility that prefigure (...) a violent breach of autonomy, Coel’s series and her interviews about it invite an ethics of looking that embraces a curiosity in the unknowable and untreatable kernel of subjective experience and defies and resists a policing of the survivor’s thoughts and emotions. By emphasizing and exploring what psychoanalysis calls the “afterwardness” of trauma, Coel foregrounds her main character’s subjectivity prior to her victimization, widens the sphere of consequence beyond the victim and criminal justice system to the survivor’s larger community, and entreats that community to preserve a space for her to look and look again at everything, without judgment. (shrink)

It is argued that causal understanding originates in experiences of acting on objects. Such experiences have consistent features that can be used as clues to causal identification and judgment. These are singular clues, meaning that they can be detected in single instances. A catalog of 14 singular clues is proposed. The clues function as heuristics for generating causal judgments under uncertainty and are a pervasive source of bias in causal judgment. More sophisticated clues such as mechanism clues and repeated interventions (...) are derived from the 14. Research on the use of empirical information and conditional probabilities to identify causes has used scenarios in which several of the clues are present, and the use of empirical association information for causal judgment depends on the presence of singular clues. It is the singular clues and their origin that are basic to causal understanding, not multiple instance clues such as empirical association, contingency, and conditional probabilities. (shrink)

Suppose that entities composed of two distinct components can be qualitatively ordered in two ways, such that each ordering relation satisfies the axioms of conjoint measurement. Without further assumptions nothing can be said about the relation between the pair of numerical scales constructed for each component. Axioms are stated that relate the two measurement theories, and that are sufficient to establish that the two conjoint scales on each component are linearly related.

Sexual violence against women is an issue of urgency that arises in all cultures locally, nationally, globally and transnationally. This problem has broad dimensions in both the public and private domains, both cases that are reported or not reported to law enforcement. Factually, the trend of this problem has been identified as increasing every year in Maluku, Indonesia. Therefore, the church requires serious attention to prevention and systematic treatment to overcome it. This sensitivity and awareness are a manifestation of the (...) church’s sense of calling and responsibility for the restoration of human dignity. The pastoral sermon service model is the church’s strategic approach to handling this problem. This research aimed to develop a model of pastoral sermons for victims of sexual violence against women in Maluku. This research focused on identifying and exploring the tragic experiences and impacts of sexual violence against women. Furthermore, a cross-cultural pastoral model was created for victims of violence.Contribution: This article provided a new perspective from the post-modern homiletics to approach social issues. This new homiletical approach to dealing with the problem of women’s sexual violence is one of the main focuses of ‘Women’s Theological Studies’ in HTS. (shrink)

Effective public policy to mitigate climate change footprints should build on data-driven analysis of firm-level strategies. This article’s conceptual approach augments the resource-based view of the firm and identifies investments in four firm-level resource domains to develop capabilities in climate change impact mitigation. The authors denote the resulting framework as the GISTe model, which frames their analysis and public policy recommendations. This research uses the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Project database, with high-quality information on firm-level climate change strategies for 552 companies (...) from North America and Europe. In contrast to the widely accepted myth that European firms are performing better than North American ones, the authors find a different result. Many firms, whether European or North American, do not just “talk” about climate change impact mitigation, but actually do “walk the talk.” European firms appear to be better than their North American counterparts in “walk I,” denoting attention to governance, information management, and systems. But when it comes down to “walk II,” meaning actual Technology-related investments, North American firms’ performance is equal or superior to that of the European companies. The authors formulate public policy recommendations to accelerate firm-level, sector-level, and cluster-level implementation of climate change strategies. (shrink)

SECTION ONE THE STATE OF OURWORLD It may easily be said that our so called modern twentieth century was one of the most barbaric and wasteful centuries of human history. Here are the statistics: World War I (9.7 million military and 9 ...

Study of the works of Devacandragaṇi, Jaina philosopher.

Articles on Jainism doctrines and philosophy, refuting theories of other religions.

This study investigates a text excerpt containing 20,000 Russian letters of the alphabet, excluding $\Cprime$ and $\Cdprime$, from Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin–the entire first chapter and sixteen stanzas of the second.

The purpose of this book is to trace the main developments in Greek philosophy during the period which runs from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.c. to the end of the Roman Republic. These three centuries, known to us as the Hellenistic Age, witnessed a vast expansion of Greek civilization eastwards, following Alexander's conquests; and later, Greek civilization penetrated deeply into the western Mediterranean world assisted by the political conquerors of Greece, the Romans. But philosophy throughout this (...) time remained a predominantly Greek activity. The most influential thinkers in the Hellenistic world were Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics. This book gives a concise critical analysis of their ideas and their methods of thought. The last book in English to cover this ground was written sixty years ago. In the interval the subject has moved on, quite rapidly since the last war, but most of the best work is highly specialized. There is a clear need for a general appraisal of Hellenistic philosophy which can provide those who are not specialists with an up-to-date account of the subject. Hellenistic philosophy is often regarded as a dull product of second-rate thinkers who are unable to stand comparison with Plato and Aristotle. This book will help to remove such misconceptions and arouse wider interest in a field which is fascinating both historically and conceptually. (shrink)

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent four (...) examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. In a new foreword A.A. Long explores the impact of this volume in the context of Williams's stunning career. (shrink)

O propósito deste artigo é o de examinar o ceticismo sobre a moral e as leis tal como abordado e respondido por Guy de Brués nos seus Diálogos contra os Novos Acadêmicos (1557). Proponho que, para uma apreciação adequada desse tema, é preciso distinguir dois níveis em que essa filosofia se apresenta na obra: aquele em que ela é exposta na fala dos personagens incumbidos de defendê-la (sustentando diferentes versões da tese de que “tudo é opinião”) e aquele que é (...) discernível através de alguns pontos de acordo ao longo das discussões, no qual revela-se antes uma afinidade entre os interlocutores com a Nova Academia. Esta situação aparentemente paradoxal pode ser melhor compreendida se cotejamos os Diálogos com a declamatio paradoxal ou o diálogo filosófico de matriz ciceroniana. De modo mais geral, sugerimos que o papel da filosofia da Nova Academia, especialmente em sua dimensão moral e política, é maior do que usualmenre reconhecido na redescoberta do ceticismo na França do século XVI. (shrink)

The master narrative of Apartheid South Africa created a specific identity for white boys and men and, together with this identity, a very particular role and place within the South African context. This identity was exemplified in the men who were conscripted into the military from 1967 until 1994, and who participated in operations on the border regions of Namibia and Angola as well as within local townships in the war of liberation against apartheid and minority rule. Many veterans have (...) been left grappling not only with the traumas associated with combat but also with the loss of their identities as war heroes in a country under changed political control. As a result, many of their personal stories and experiences of combat have been silenced by society at large and also, to varying degrees, within their own families, the Church, and among the younger generation who have grown up under a different dispensation. The conflict between vacillating narratives of villains who fought on the wrong side of history and victims of a closed socialisation system has supported the identity struggle faced by many veterans today. Against this backstory, this article explores the effects of storytelling as a trauma release using a narrative approach.Contribution: This article offers a contribution to the use of storytelling in pastoral conversations as a trauma release for untold stories. This insight links to the focus and scope of the journal as a pastoral narrative approach has been used under the umbrella of Practical Theology. (shrink)

Se aborda el problema de qué es una ley científica. Se analiza la concepción tradicional hempeliana sobre la posibilidad de caracterizar una forma lógica para los enunciados de ley científica, que las distinguiría de las regularidades accidentales, concluyendo que ello no es posible. Se analiza entonces el problema de cómo es posible la predicción a partir de enunciados de ley, si no hay diferencia lógica con afirmaciones de regularidad, buscando criterios que permitan el establercimiento de afirmaciones proyectables. Correlativamente se trata (...) el problema de la normatividad de un criterio de identificación de candidatos a enunciados de ley, candidatos que ya no denominamos "lawlike statements" puesto que se ha abandonado la pretensión de que lo que determina los buenos candidatos a leyes sea su forma. A lo largo del texto se analizan de modo argumentado las posiciones filosóficas más tradicionales. Las conclusiones apuntan a la posibilidad de criterios de identificación a leyes sólo parcialmente normativos. (shrink)