Voices from the gay community -- Biblical understandings -- Findings from the sciences -- Constitutional framework for public policy -- Same-sex marriage : pluralism -- Anti-Discrimination laws -- Voices from younger Christians -- Churches and the LGBT community -- Case study conversations about LGBT people and issues -- Conclusion: a possible way forward.

Technology design has social as well as technical determinants. These social factors, such as the political context and social philosophy, vary historically and cross-nationally. The work upon which this paper is based addresses the nature of process technology design in the United States and focuses on the underlying assumptions that guide technology design, based on both historical analysis and survey and case studies of current design practices. Central to this work is an analysis of how the US approaches compare to (...) some of the other industrial nations and the assumptions and implications of different social design concepts such as human-centered design, skill-based design, and human factors. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the recently renewed debate over methodological individualism (MI) by carefully sorting out various individualist claims and by making use of recent work on reduction and explanation outside the social sciences. My major focus is on individualist claims about reduction and explanation. I argue that reductionist versions of MI fail for much the same reasons that mental predicates cannot be reduced to physical predicates and that attempts to establish reducibility by weakening the requirements for reduction also fail. (...) I consider and reject a number of explanatory theses, among them the claims that any adequate theory must refer only to individuals and that individualist theory suffices to explain fully. The latter claim, I argue, is not entailed by the supervenience of social facts on individual facts. Lastly, I argue that there is one individualist restriction on explanation which is far more plausible and significant than one would initially suspect. (shrink)

Advances in molecular biology have generally been taken to support the claim that biology is reducible to chemistry. I argue against that claim by looking in detail at a number of central results from molecular biology and showing that none of them supports reduction because (1) their basic predicates have multiple realizations, (2) their chemical realization is context-sensitive and (3) their explanations often presuppose biological facts rather than eliminate them. I then consider the heuristic and confirmational implications of irreducibility and (...) argue that purely biochemical approaches are likely to be unsound and to be unable to confirm an important range of statements. I conclude by sketching criteria for scientific unity that do not entail reducibility and yet leave an important place for identifying underlying mechanisms. Molecular biology, properly understood, provides an excellent paradigm of non-reductive unity between different explanatory levels. (shrink)

In the recent methodological individualism-holism debate on explanation, there has been considerable focus on what reasons methodological holists may advance in support of their position. We believe it is useful to approach the other direction and ask what considerations methodological individualists may in fact offer in favor of their view about explanation. This is the background for the question we pursue in this paper: Why be a methodological individualist? We start out by introducing the methodological individualism-holism debate while distinguishing two (...) forms of methodological individualism: a form that says that individualist explanations are always better than holist accounts and a form that says that providing intervening individualist mechanisms always makes for better explanations than purely holist ones. Next, we consider four lines of reasoning in support of methodological individualism: arguments from causation, from explanatory depth, from agency, and from normativity. We argue that none of them offer convincing reasons in support of the two explanatory versions of individualism we consider. While there may well be occasions in which individualists’ favorite explanations are superior, we find no reason to think this always must be the case. (shrink)

Debates about explanation in the social sciences often proceed without any clear idea what an 'account' of explanation should do. In this paper I take a stance - what I will call contextualism - that denies there are purely formal and conceptual constraints on explanation and takes standards of explanation to be substantive empirical claims, paradigmatically claims about causation. I then use this standpoint to argue for position on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning reduction, idealized models, social (...) mechanisms, functional explanations, inference to the best explanation and interpretive understanding. (shrink)

Recently, technology has impacted upon sports umpiring and refereeing. One effect is that the means to make sound judgments has becoe ‘distributed’ to new groups of people such as TV viewers and commentators. The result is that justice on the sports field is often seen not to be done and the readiness to question umpires' decisions that once pertained only to the players and, in some sports, to the crowd, has spread to anyone who has a television. What is more, (...) the questioning can now be done on good grounds. This change is explained and a way of thinking about it is put forward. The aim is to develop a theory of the relationship between human match officials and technology. Toward this end I offer a new terminology for the kinds of justice that are involved in match officiating. I argue that the introduction of new technology should be done in such a way as to maintain the justice of decisions and that justice is not the same as accuracy. Justice is best served with a restrained use of new technology. (shrink)

In the first half of the first century BC the Academy of Athens broke up in disarray. From the wreckage of the semi-sceptical school there arose the new dogmatic philosophy of Antiochus, synthesized from Stoicism and Platonism, and the hardline Pyrrhonist scepticism of Aenesidemus. With his extensive knowledge of the ways in which Plato was read and invoked as an authority in late antiquity Dr Tarrant builds a most impressive reconstruction of Philo of Larissa's brand of Platonism and of its (...) arrival in Middle Platonism, particularly that of Plutarch, long after the Academy's institutional demise. Particularly valuable is his exploitation for this purpose of a text barely discussed since its publication 80 years ago - a commentary on Plato's Theaetetus whose unidentified author Dr Tarrant has cogently argued to be a follower of Philo. Among many other achievements, Dr Tarrant throws much light on the relation of Aenesideman scepticism to the Academy. (shrink)

Moje zainteresowanie pracami i dziełem Michaiła Bachtina oraz Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy bierze swój początek z odkrycia, ze obaj myśliciele zgodnie twierdzili, iż religijna moc języka oraz mowy wyrasta z różnorodnych kryzysów życiowych. Theoria przez nich stworzona zbudowana jest na gruncie praxis i czerpie swą siłę ze zderzenia doświadczeń duchowych i intelektualnych obu filozofów z rewolucyjnym wrzeniem otaczającej ich współczesności. Wykład niniejszy to próba nawiązania dialogu z osobami podzielającymi podobne zainteresowania i troski. Pisząc go kierowałem się także pragnieniem zaabsorbowania uwagi moich słuchaczy (...) przedstawione w nim istoty metalingwistyki głoszonej przez „nieortodoksyjnego" prawosławnego teoretyka literatury i filozofa języka, Michaiła Bachtina, oraz znaczeniem metanomiki opracowanej przez „rewolucyjnie konserwatywnego" chrześcijańskiego myśliciela mowy i filozofa społecznego, Eugena Rosenstocka-Huessy. Zamiarem moim jest przedstawienie roli, jaką społeczno-religijne modele filozofii i socjologii oparte na mowie i języku mogą^ odegrać w dążeniach do zaprowadzenia pokojowego współistnienia na całej naszej planecie. Ten właśnie obszar zainteresowań został określony przez Williama Jamesa, amerykańskiego filozofa pragmatyzmu, mianem „moralnego równoważnika wojny”. Przywołując na pamięć ogromną rzeszę myślicieli, których prace odnoszą się bezpośrednio do wyznaczonego tu obszaru – a w pewnych przypadkach noszą znamiona dzieła prekursorskiego – nie możemy poprzestać na wymienieniu tylko nazwiska Williama Jamesa. Inne wielkie postaci to: Charles Sanders Pierce, George Herbert Mead, a także myśliciele podejmujący zagadnienia, które później stały się treścią filozofii Rosenstocka-Huessy, tj. Giovanni Battista Vico, J. G. Hamann, Comte de Saint-Simon oraz Giuseppe Ferrari. (shrink)

Perhaps the burning issue facing us today is how people from different cultural backgrounds can live together or in close proximity with one another and preserve their identities without destroying one another. This topic is important to me because I believe that new understandings about what we mean by the terms “speech” and “reality”' may contribute towards an improvement in our ability to work together with peoples of diverse backgrounds in order to create a more caring an humane planet. As (...) I approach my three score and ten years of life and think about the importance for future generations of the legacies of my teacher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, of Mikhail Bakhtin, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, two Christians and two Jews, whose lives and writings have also influenced my own life and thinking. I would single out their insights into speech and language as worthy of serious attention by future generations. When asked by students and colleagues if there is a single unifying theme that we should focus our energies on, without hesitation, I say: speech and reality. (shrink)

Bringing together work composed from 1890 to 1924, the nineteen pieces collected in the posthumously published Last Essays serve as a primer to Conrad's wide interests and to the varieties of his style. This edition, supported by an extensive textual apparatus, brings together various prose pieces, including reminiscences, reviews, essays on the sea and politics, as well as several miscellaneous items, including his 'Congo Diary' and the other notebook he kept in Africa in 1890. The introduction situates these writings in (...) Conrad's career, offers new perspectives on Conrad in the marketplace and as a writer of occasional prose and traces the contemporary reception of the volume. The notes explain literary and historical references, identify real-life places and indicate Conrad's main sources. Early drafts and notes for several essays are published here for the first time, making this authoritative critical edition a major contribution to Conrad studies. (shrink)

The Alcibiades purports to offer us the very first conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades. Previously, it seems, Socrates has just lingered at the back of a crowd of lovers looking rather stupid. This is hardly surprising. Socrates did look stupid, and both Aristophanes and his rival Ameipsias thought that he was good enough material for a laugh to present him on stage in their comedies at the Dionysia of 423 BC. The only slight surprise here is that Alcibiades, though he (...) is mentioned in other Aristophanic comedies, is never actually named in the Clouds. One might suspect that the young man Pheidippides, whom Socrates exposes to the corrupting influence of philosophic argument and the ensuing amoral attitudes, bears some relationship to Alcibiades. He shares with him a partially Alcmaeonid background, a passion for horse-racing, and an interesting lisp, but as the play stands Pheidippides is never seen as having been in any way close to Socrates.1 Their relationship is in fact akin to one between the principal of a college and an individual first-year student, with no sinister overtones whatever. I doubt that the relationship with Alcibiades had by that stage been seen as in any way unusual; either its bizarre nature was a well-kept secret, or it was not seen as very unusual after all. Alcibiades had experienced the attentions of a host of would-be lovers, so what would have made Socrates special? (shrink)

In The Neoplatonic Socrates, leading scholars in classics and philosophy address this gap by examining Neoplatonic attitudes toward the Socratic method, Socratic love, Socrates's divine mission and moral example, and the much-debated issue of moral rectitude. Collectively, they demonstrate the importance of Socrates for the majority of Neoplatonists, a point that has often been questioned owing to the comparative neglect of surviving commentaries on the Alcibiades, Gorgias, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, in favor of dialogues dealing explicitly with metaphysical issues. Supplemented with (...) a contextualizing introduction and a substantial appendix detailing where evidence for Socrates can be found in the extant literature, The Neoplatonic Socrates makes a clear case for the significant place Socrates held in the education and philosophy of late antiquity. (shrink)

What was the nature and degree of Eastern influence on Carl Jung's complex concept of "the Self"? It is argued that Chinese Taoism rather than Hinduism provided the fundamental formative influence on this central idea, especially as it is expressed through the I Ching. This influence came indirectly through the development of Jung's notion of "synchronicity," correlative parallels between the inner and the outer realms of experience.

I examine Fox’s tripartite characterization of deep ecology. His assessment abandons Naess’s emphasis upon the pluralism of ultimate norms by distilling what I refer to as the deep ecology approach to “Self-realization!” Contrary to Fox, I argue that his popular sense is distinctive and his formal sense is tenable. Fox’s philosophical sense, while distinctive, is neither necessary nor sufficient to adequately characterize the deep ecology approach. I contend that the deep ecology approach, as a formal approach to environmental philosophy, is (...) not dependent upon and embodies much more than any single ultimate norm. I discuss how Naess’s deep ecology approach supports a wide diversity of ultimate norms. The only stipulation placed upon ultimate norms, to make them deep ecological ultimate norms, is that the so called deep ecology platform be derivable from them. The deep ecology approach is distinguished, in part, through its focus on diminishing environmentally degrading practices and policies by addressing root causes and by highlighting pseudo-conflicts. I present an interpretation of the deep ecology approach that hightlights Naess’s emphasis upon assisting individuals to arrive at thoroughly reasoned, consistent, and ecologically sound concrete decisions by supporting them in the articulation of their own personal ecological total views (ecosophies). (shrink)

It is argued that there is no agreed definition of disease. Purely biological definitions are inadequate and combined biological and social definitions are not yet satisfactory. One approach has been to say that what doctors treat is disease. We are uncomfortable with that because we feel it releases people from obligations on a basis of convenience. In practice the weight given to the idea of disease varies according to what it will imply about obligations and privileges. It is suggested that (...) what doctors treat can be accepted as disease provided that we recognize that the significance of disease must vary with circumstances. Those circumstances include the agreement, more or less, of all persons affected when someone is considered to be a patient. The individual must also be competent and not constrained except by his own biological or psychological characteristics. Keywords: disease, patient-physician relationship, obligation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article discusses bertrand russell's book "human knowledge". This discussion is focused on the problem of probability, In relation to russell's discussion of it in his book. (staff).

A profoundly inspiring yet practical guide to well-being from one of modern Judaism's most beloved sages.As a congregational rabbi for half a century and the bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and twelve other books on faith, ethics, and how to translate the timeless wisdom of religious thought into dealing with everyday challenges, Harold Kushner knows a thing or two about living a good life. In this compassionate new work, Kushner distills nine essential lessons from (...) the sum of his teaching, study and experience, offering a lifetime's worth of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice, inspiration for better living, and strength for trying times. With vital, original insights into everything from belief ("there is no commandment in Judaism to believe in God"), to conscience (the Garden of Eden story as you've never heard it), to mercy ("forgiveness is a favor you do yourself, not a favor to the person who offended you"), grounded in Kushner's brilliant readings of Scripture, history and popular culture, Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life is a capstone addition to Kushner's oeuvre. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated the nature of visuo-auditory crossmodal cueing in a triadic setting: participants had to detect an auditory signal while observing another agent’s head facing one of the two laterally positioned auditory sources. Experiment 1 showed that when the agent’s eyes were open, sounds originating on the side of the agent’s gaze were detected faster than sounds originating on the side of the agent’s visible ear; when the agent’s eyes were closed this pat-tern of responses was reversed. Two additional (...) experiments showed that the results were sensitive to whether participants could infer a hearing function on the part of the agent. When no ear was depicted on the agent, only a gaze-side advantage was observed , but when the agent’s ear was covered , an ear side advantage was observed only when hearing could still be inferred but not when hearing was inferred to be diminished . The findings are discussed in the context of inferential and simulation processes and joint attention mechanisms. (shrink)

The famous eastern tour of inspection undertaken by Scipio Aemilianus, L. Metellus Calvus and Sp. Mummius is now generally dated 140/39 b.c., where Diodorus seems to put it. The accepted view, however, involves discounting an explicit statement by Cicero. It also presents historical difficulties. In 140 b.c. there was no need for such a high-powered Roman initiative, and scholars can discover only very minor political results. Sherwin-White indeed criticised the envoys severely, especially Scipio; they were culpably blind to the new (...) menace of Parthia, which was steadily dismembering the Seleucid Empire east of the Euphrates. This is fair criticism only on the 140/39 b.c. dating. Did Scipio and his colleagues fail to see what is patent to us today? It is time to reexamine rigorously the underlying assumption. In Acad. prior. 2.5 Cicero defends a Roman noble's love of Greek learning in the following terms: ego autem cum Graecas litteras M. Catonem in senectute didicisse acceperim, P. autem Africani historiae loquantur in legatione illa nobili, quam ante censuram obiit, Panaetium unum omnino comitem fuisse, nec litterarum Graecarum nee philosophiae iam ullum auctorem requiro. The date of the embassy must be 144/3 b.c., if we follow the logic of this passage. Scipio was censor with L. Mummius in 142/1 b.c. and their public quarrel was hardly less notable than the embassy, in which L. Mummius' brother shared. Another Ciceronian passage – written some six years earlier – seems to contradict the dating offered in 45 b.c. In de republica 6.11 the elder Africanus prophesies his grandson's future greatness in the famous dream. (shrink)

This short political pamphlet has survived to our day through the lucky chance of being included in the minor works of Xenophon, and for over 150 years it has been the subject of lively scholarly debate. The unknown author was a confirmed oligarch, but with an insider's insight into Athenian democracy. Though he cannot approve of this form of government, he is astute enough to see that the system works well on its own terms and that it is therefore popular; (...) it will prove very hard to overthrow. The work has proved difficult to tie down to an historical context. (shrink)

I examine Fox’s tripartite characterization of deep ecology. His assessment abandons Naess’s emphasis upon the pluralism of ultimate norms by distilling what I refer to as the deep ecology approach to “Self-realization!” Contrary to Fox, I argue that his popular sense is distinctive and his formal sense is tenable. Fox’s philosophical sense, while distinctive, is neither necessary nor sufficient to adequately characterize the deep ecology approach. I contend that the deep ecology approach, as a formal approach to environmental philosophy, is (...) not dependent upon and embodies much more than any single ultimate norm. I discuss how Naess’s deep ecology approach supports a wide diversity of ultimate norms. The only stipulation placed upon ultimate norms, to make them deep ecological ultimate norms, is that the so called deep ecology platform be derivable from them. The deep ecology approach is distinguished, in part, through its focus on diminishing environmentally degrading practices and policies by addressing root causes and by highlighting pseudo-conflicts. I present an interpretation of the deep ecology approach that hightlights Naess’s emphasis upon assisting individuals to arrive at thoroughly reasoned, consistent, and ecologically sound concrete decisions by supporting them in the articulation of their own personal ecological total views (ecosophies). (shrink)

The decree establishing an Athenian colony at Brea in the north Aegaean area was firmly placed by the editors of The Athenian Tribute Lists in 446 B.C.; they identified the troops mentioned in lines 26 ff. with the men then serving in Euboia. In 1952, however, Woodhead proposed redating the decree c. 439/8 B.C. and explained lines 26 ff. by reference to the Samian revolt. A decade later I put forward a more radical theory, which seems to have won no (...) adherents. I cannot really complain of this, since my arguments were inevitably far from cogent. For some Thucydides' silence alone will have been decisive. I would like to think that the issue has at least been clarified by now. The A.T.L. dating appears rather less plausible. Demokleides' generalship in 439/8 B.C. would fit excellently with his role as founder of Brea. This strongly supports Woodhead. It is doubtful whether Demokleides was general as early as 446 B.C, though conceivable that he returned to the board as late as 426/5 B.C. Woodhead may well be right in locating Brea on the inner Thermaic Gulf and, if so, this too tells against the A.T.L. dating. All our evidence suggests that real Athenian involvement in this area began in the 430's. (shrink)

The decree establishing an Athenian colony at Brea in the north Aegaean area was firmly placed by the editors ofThe Athenian Tribute Listsin 446 B.C.; they identified the troops mentioned in lines 26 ff. with the men then serving in Euboia. In 1952, however, Woodhead proposed redating the decree c. 439/8 B.C. and explained lines 26 ff. by reference to the Samian revolt. A decade later I put forward a more radical theory, which seems to have won no adherents. I (...) cannot really complain of this, since my arguments were inevitably far from cogent. For some Thucydides' silence alone will have been decisive. I would like to think that the issue has at least been clarified by now. TheA.T.L.dating appears rather less plausible. Demokleides' generalship in 439/8 B.C. would fit excellently with his role as founder of Brea. This strongly supports Woodhead. It is doubtful whether Demokleides was general as early as 446 B.C, though conceivable that he returned to the board as late as 426/5 B.C. Woodhead may well be right in locating Brea on the inner Thermaic Gulf and, if so, this too tells against theA.T.L.dating. All our evidence suggests that real Athenian involvement in this area began in the 430's. (shrink)