I shall argue that the question ‘Can we speak literally of God?’ is fundamentally an epistemological question concerning whether we can know that God exists. If and only if we can know that God can exist can we know that we can speak literally of God.

Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason.

Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or epistemic warrant for these beliefs is not derived from other justified beliefs through inductive evidential support or deductive methods of inference. These ‘basic beliefs’ constitute the foundations of empirical (...) knowledge. One can give a reason for the justification of a basic belief even though the justification for that belief is not based on other beliefs. Thus, according to Chisholm, if asked what one's justification was for thinking that one knew, presently, that one is thinking about a city one takes to be Albuquerque, one could simply say ‘what justifies me…is simply the fact that I am thinking about a city I take to be Albuquerque’. (shrink)

While accepting and welcoming our main thesis and project, Schäfer and Hühn’s Commentary on our paper focuses on two main criticisms, both of which seem to us mistaken. The first of these is that our paper falsely argues “that the existing definitions of leadership out there fall short in describing the role of ethics in leadership.” The second seems to be a belief that (i) we claim to be offering an entirely new definition of leadership and misrepresenting its nature because (...) (ii) in the view of Schäfer and Hühn this supposedly new definition “is essentially un-Aristotelian.”. (shrink)

‘Epistemics: an enterprise linking traditional epistemology, first with cognitive science and, second, with social scientific and humanistic disciplines that explore the interpersonal and cultural processes impinging on knowledge and belief’ (Epistemology and Cognition, p. vii).

Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that (1) "God is everything and everything is God ... the world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature" (H.P. Owen). Similarly, it is the view that (2) everything that exists constitutes a 'unity' and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine (A. MacIntyre). I begin with an account of what the pantheist's ethical position is formally likely to be (...) (e.g. objectivist etc.). I then discuss the relationship between pantheism and ecology in the context of the search for the metaphysical and ethical foundations for an ecological ethic. It is claimed that it is no accident that pantheism is often looked to for such foundations. (shrink)

The use of logico-semiotic and systems-structural approaches in the analysis of types of abstraction and forms of generalization of concepts was begun in the '50s and '60s by D. P. Gorskii, who at that time introduced the concept of idealization into the terminology. In the early '70s he continued his analysis of the problem of scientific understanding, delineating the specific features of definitions in the theories of natural sciences and in the social science disciplines. In the book under review, Gorskii (...) in a certain sense sums up his results and develops them further. (shrink)

The first part of this essay asks: What is the function, purpose and value of a museum? Has any museologist or philosopher given a credible account of philosophical problems associated with museums? Is there any set of properties shared by the diverse entities called museums? Overgeneralization is the principal problem here. The essay then examines a central kind of museum experience; one that invokes and relies upon nostalgia. I argue that the attraction of museums are varied but are best explained (...) affectively and in terms of the orectic rather than cognitively conatively. Although this need not be taken as conflicting with the idea that museums are focused on scholarship, it is more consonant with the claim that exhibitions are central. Museums may at times both pique and satisfy our curiosity. However it is a mistake to see ‘curiosity’ as merely, or even primarily, a matter of cognition. (shrink)

In this paper I dispute Eliot Deutsch's claim [See Deutsch, Eliot (1996) Self-deception: a comparative study, in: Roger T. Ames and Wimal Dissanayake (Eds) Self and Deception: a cross-cultural enquiry (Albany, State University of New York Press), pp. 315-326] that examining self-deception from the perspective of non-Western traditions (i.e. how it is understood in those cultures) can help us to better understand the nature of the phenomenon in one's own culture. Although the claim appears to be uncontrover-sial and perhaps even (...) self-evident, I shall argue that it is fundamentally mistaken. What is important about both the claim and my critical assessment of it is not what it tells us about self-deception. I shall show that it tells us little about self-deception; that Deutsch confuses ignorance with self-deception; and that he straightforwardly equivocates on the concept. Instead, what is interesting is what Deutsch's treatment of self-deception in comparative perspective can tell us about comparative philosophy. The significance of what follows in this paper is less about self-deception than it is about comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In “Narrative Explanations: The Case of History,” Paul A. Roth attempts to defend the legitimacy of narrative explanation in history against two central objections—the “methodological” and the “metaphysical.” Like Roth, I find the category of narrative explanation acceptable even if it is problematic, and even if the notions of “narrative,” “explanation,” and “narrative explanation” are not altogether clear. The philosophically grounded “methodological” objections to narrative explanation are often, though not invariably, based on an acceptance of some form of positivism and (...) a Hempelian “governing-law model” of explanation. As Roth points out, this in turn is based on allegiance to the thesis of the methodological unity of empirical science, whether the allegiance be overt, closeted, or cryptic. (shrink)

An account of the relation between belief and practice is inseparable from a general theory of religion and religious discourse. Rejection of the one time popular, but now more or less defunct, nonrealist position of people such as D. Z. Phillips, Don Cupitt, and indeed Wittgenstein leaves contemporary theo rists in anthropology and the "history of religions" with basically the vastly different "literalist" and "symbolist" analyses of religion from which to choose. This article critically appraises John Skorupksi's influential defense of (...) intellectualism. I argue that his dismissal of symbolist approaches is more theoretically radical than he recog nizes. It rejects outright some of the very foundations and staples of contempo rary anthropology in, for example, Durkheim. His argument for the rejection of the symbolist approach is examined. Skorupski's defense of intellectualism is set in the context of a problematically naive understanding of the nature and function of religion. (shrink)

The shift from the logical to the empirical argument from evil against the existence of God has been seen as a victory by analytic philosophers of religion who now seek to establish that the existence of evil fails to make the existence of God improbable. I examine several arguments in an effort to establish the following: (i) Their victory is pyrrhic. They distort the historical, philosophical and religious nature of the problem of evil. (ii) In attempting to refute the empirical (...) argument they rely on disguised but well-worn strategies. (iii) A refusal to let evil count in any way against the probability of the existence of God indicates that their rejection is ideological and contrary to traditional theism. (iv) Aspects of their arguments are morally repugnant. (v) Their arguments are indicative of a lack of vitality, relevance and “seriousness” in Christian analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

After presenting a paradigm of natural law taken from Cicero and Aquinas, I discuss aspects of Maimonides' ethical theory that appear to conflict with doctrines of natural law. My conclusion will be that Maimonides' adaptation of the Aristotelian metaphysic and doctrine of the "Golden Mean" produced a teleological ethic that is reconcilable with his view that certain moral and legal injunctions are revealed. A doctrine of natural law is compatible with the ethical doctrines that Maimonides held. The thesis I pursue (...) is antithetical to Marvin Fox's (1972:V) contention that "in Judaism there is no natural law doctrine, and in principle there cannot be.". (shrink)

Basically agreeing with Block regarding the need for a distinction between P- and A-consciousness, I characterize the problem somewhat diflerently, relating it more directly to the explanatory gap. I also speculate on the relation between the two forms of consciousness, arguing that some notion of access is essentially involved in phenomenal experience.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:David Michael Levin ROUSSEAU'S CURSE Pretext Rousseau is the author of a text he called his Confessions. ' But neither a text nor a confession can exist without a reader, or an other. Like it or not, we readers are participants in the rite of Rousseau's confessions. Do we have anything to confess? When the reading of a confession uncovers the spelling of a curse, so that the (...) self-accused author appears to accuse his readers, the discoverers of the curse can no longer pretend their neutrality and innocence. In fact, the detectives must assume the identity of the accused. In such a special case, then, the inevitable work of textual interpretation magically doubles as the story of a mysteriously elusive "crime" and its final, or anyway presumed detection. But, as in the very best of such stories, neither the skillfully executed crime nor its invisible author—if indeed these terms denote anything at all—need be what they seem. So perhaps the only thing we can say for sure here is that the spelling of the curse is the curse of spelling. And this puts us on the track of a mystery as ancient as the art of writing itself—a mystery whose story the scholars of hermeneutics have thus far preferred to ignore. The mystery I have in mind is the secret affinity between writing and death. A careful hermeneutic approach to Plato's critique of writing, however, may give us a crucial clue. For what binds written language to the power of death is its role in mourning, its incarnation in the form of shadows: black configurations of shadows placed for visibility against the white of the paper. In Plato's Myth of the Cave, the crime of writing is dimly adumbrated. Writing is idolatry, worship of false images, shadows. Rousseau's Confessions, written near the end of his life in the shadow of death, does not escape the shadows of doubt and suspicion which we, his readers, having discovered our own selves inscribed into the darkness of the text, cannot easily refrain from casting. But as soon as we recognize in the shapes of these shadows a suspicion for which 76 David Michael Levin77 we are responsible, we must confess our fatal complicity in the closing of the hermeneutical circle. Commentary on the Text If Rousseau's Confessions does not read like the typical memoir, neither does it read like the typical confession. A final twist awaits us. We read with a certain innocence, or faith, not prepared for the transitive conclusion: the text, as it happens, will bequeath a monstrous and impossible burden. What is the reader to do? How could it be that this man, who seemed to honor us, and won our trust with the candor of his revelations, should so boldly, by one cross conceit, vanish, only to leave us double-crossed and within a labyrinth which, as he would have us believe, we ourselves have wrought? What are we to make of his work? At first, the Confessions appears to be a work of light: with dazzling clarity of mind and courage no less prismatic, Rousseau proposes to take his readers into the gloomy chasms of his soul. "My purpose," he declares, "is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray is myself" (p. 17). That this, however, is not the whole of his intention, we learn through a neighboring sentence. For he says: "Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I shall come forward with this work in my hand, to present myself before my Sovereign Judge, and proclaim aloud: 'Here is what I have done'..." (p. 17). And yet, even this does not fully disclose his design, since he concedes, somewhat later, that "it is as if, feeling my life escaping from me, I were trying to recapture it at its beginnings" (p. 31). But in the end, as in the beginning, darkness and light are one. And indeed, deep into the Seventh Book, we see that the author's light does begin to dim, and that he no longer speaks with much assurance. Nor is... (shrink)

A collection of essays on the foundations of biology and its connection to other sciences. Its lengthy and profound foreword by Stuart Kauffman, a major figure in the quantitative analysis of biological regulation at the system level, summarizes the intended main point: “we live not only in a world of webs of cause and effect, but webs of opportunities that enable, but do not cause, often in unforeseeable ways, the possibilities of becoming of the bio- sphere, let alone human life. (...) But most importantly, I seek in this new worldview a re-enchantment of humanity”. (p. 1). To some extent, it’s meant as a reaction to what some perceive as a demoralizing aspects of the mechanistic paradigm that is driven by recent advances in the molecular bio-sciences: “I believe we are partially lost in modernity, seeking half-articulated, a pathway forward. Re-enchantment may be an essential part of this transformation.” (p. 1). I do not agree that the current situation is as bleak as many critics of the scientific mainstream suggest, but this book should appeal to anyone interested in the larger questions of biology no matter where they stand on this issue. All in all, it is an extremely enjoyable and valuable tour of important concepts and controversies. (shrink)

The process-dissociation procedure was used to estimate the influence of spatial and form-based processing in the Simon task. Subjects made manual responses to the direction of arrows . The results provide evidence that the form and spatial location of a single stimulus can have functionally independent effects on performance. They also indicate the existence of two kinds of automaticity—an associative component that reflects prior S-R mappings and a nonassociative component that reflects the correspondence between stimulus and response codes.

Academician Gerasimov devoted his presentation to the problem of improvement and protection of the environment. In his opinion, today, when there is a worldwide threat of exhaustion of natural resources, irreversible pollution, poisoning of the environment, and the impossibility of feeding a growing population, questions of environmental protection and rational use of natural resources are becoming not only an important problem for natural science but a serious social and political matter around which an acute ideological struggle is being waged. Certainly (...) it is a real fact that contemporary mankind is encountering a progressive impairment of the world's ecological situation, caused by the ever more intensive utilization of natural resources under the conditions of rapid scientific and technological progress. Therefore, issues of further rational use of natural resources and improvement and protection of the environment are now becoming problems affecting the everyday interests of the entire population of the earth. (shrink)

We argue for an example of based on Diamond and Carey's (1986) work on expertise and recognition, which is not made use of in The Origin of Concepts. This mechanism for perceptual learning seems to have all the necessary characteristics in that it is innate, domain-specific (requires stimulus sets possessing a certain structure), and demonstrably affects categorisation in a way that strongly suggests it will influence concept formation as well.

Монография посвящена анализу дискурсов и всех сторон взаимодействия реальности с человеком и особенностями его жизнедеятельности. Адресуется специалистам-языковедам, студентам старших курсов и магистрантам.

The twenty-seven fragments under this number ‘were assembled in the belief that they represented lyric verses in the Aeolic dialect and might contribute something to the text of Sappho or Alcaeus’ . The only feature that is ‘unequivocally Aeolic’ is in fr. 2. 9 the letter following is, or possibly the division is not considered, no doubt rightly). Is this indeed a text in the Aeolic dialect ? There is very little other indication: fr. 4. 3 in fr. 4. 5 (...) would seem decisive if the reading were quite certain. (shrink)

I argue that the dual-process account of human learning rejected by Mitchell et al. in the target article is informative and predictive with respect to human behaviour in a way that the authors' purely propositional account is not. Experiments that reveal different patterns of results under conditions that favour either associative or rule-based performance are the way forward.