This article will reflect on the practice of tithing in the Christian church during the post-apostolic period to the Council of Nicaea. Through literature search and analysis of primary sources, this article will consider: 1) whether the alleged absence of tithing practice in ante-Nicene church is confirmed historically, and 2) the possible explanations and meanings of the early church's views on tithing. Based on this research, it can be concluded that there aren’t strong evidences that the post-apostolic and ante-Nicene church (...) had taught and practiced regularly tithe. This article suggests five explanatory factors indicating that such behavior occurred for circumstantial reasons, not theological. (shrink)

First-ever comprehensive introduction to the major new subject of quantum computing and quantum information.

The _Maimonides Review_ is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles, which seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies.

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of knowledge and justification. (...) To shed light on the problem, we introduce a ‎novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, ‎action, and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to ‎certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject’s particular decision-taking circumstances, ‎and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which ‎the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by ‎the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject’s beliefs that are ‎formed based on Internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how ‎filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic ‎responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.‎. (shrink)

Information providing and gathering increasingly involve technologies like search ‎engines, which actively shape their epistemic surroundings. Yet, a satisfying account ‎of the epistemic responsibilities associated with them does not exist. We analyze ‎automatically generated search suggestions from the perspective of social ‎epistemology to illustrate how epistemic responsibilities associated with a ‎technology can be derived and assigned. Drawing on our previously developed ‎theoretical framework that connects responsible epistemic behavior to ‎practicability, we address two questions: first, given the different technological ‎possibilities available (...) to searchers, the search technology, and search providers, ‎who should bear which responsibilities? Second, given the technology’s ‎epistemically relevant features and potential harms, how should search terms be ‎autocompleted? Our analysis reveals that epistemic responsibility lies mostly with ‎search providers, which should eliminate three categories of autosuggestions: those ‎that result from organized attacks, those that perpetuate damaging stereotypes, and ‎those that associate negative characteristics with specific individuals.‎. (shrink)

This book investigates how knowledge is conceived and explored within the African context. Epistemology, or the philosophical theory of knowledge, has historically been dominated by western philosophers, but this book shines a much-needed spotlight on knowledge systems originating within the African continent. Bringing together key voices from across the field of African philosophy, this book explores the nature of knowledge systems across the continent and how they are rooted in Africans' ontological sense of being and self. At a time when (...) moves to decolonize curricula are gaining momentum, this book shows how understanding the specific ways of knowing that form part of the every day life of the African, will play an important part in rebalancing studies of Philosophy globally. Employing critical, conceptual and rigorous analyses of the nature and essence of knowledge as understood by indigenous African societies, the book ultimately asks what could pass as an African theory of knowledge. This important guide to the connections between knowledge and being, in African philosophical thought, will be an important resource for researchers and students of philosophy and African Studies. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an analysis of Plotinus’ argument for the existence of a quasi-psychic entity, the so-called ‘trace of soul’, that functions as an immanent cause of life for an organism’s body. I argue that Plotinus posits this entity primarily in order to account for the body’s possession of certain quasi-psychic states that are instrumental in his account of soul-body interaction. Since these quasi-psychic states imply that an organism’s body has vitality of its own , and Platonic souls (...) are no part or aspect of any body, Plotinus draws the conclusion that the soul must be a cause of the body’s life by imparting a quasi-psychic qualification to it. In so doing, Plotinus introduces elements of hylomorphism into Platonist psychology, and addresses a problem for the animation of the body that Platonic soul-body dualism may plausibly be thought to face. (shrink)

How to accept a conditional? F. P. Ramsey proposed the following test in (Ramsey 1990).(RT) If A, then B must be accepted with respect to the current epistemic state iff the minimal hypothetical change of it needed to accept A also requires accepting B.

In this paper, I investigate the foundations of Plotinus’ innovative theory that prime matter is unaffectable. I begin by showing that Plotinus’ main arguments for this thesis (in Ennead 3.6) all rely upon the controversial assumption that the properties prime matter underlies are not properties of prime matter itself. It is then argued that prime matter’s privation of sensible qualities has its conceptual basis in an idiosyncratic understanding of form-matter composition generally, and its primary doctrinal basis in Aristotle’s critical reports (...) on the Platonists’ substratum in Physics 1.9. While Plotinus finds Platonic authority for unaffectible matter in the Receptacle passage of the Timaeus, it is Aristotle’s testimony that provides the crucial impetus for reading that text in this way. On this basis, Plotinus develops a Platonist conception of form’s inherence in matter with distinctively non-Aristotelian features. (shrink)

The 2015 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes nootropic drugs should be available under prescription”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, now in its seventh year, provided the starting point for arguments on the subject. The present article brings together and extends many of the arguments put forward during the debate. We explore the current usage of nootropic drugs, their safety and whether it would be beneficial to individuals and (...) society as a whole for them to be available under prescription. The Varsity Medical Debate was first held in 2008 with the aim of allowing students to engage in discussion about ethics and policy within healthcare. The event is held annually and it is hoped that this will allow future leaders to voice a perspective on the arguments behind topics that will feature heavily in future healthcare and science policy. This year the Oxford University Medical Society at the Oxford Union hosted the debate. (shrink)

A replicator is simply something that makes copies of itself. There are hypothetical replicators (e.g., self-catalyzing chemical cycles) that are suspected to be unable to exhibit heritable variation. Variation in any of their constituent molecules would not lead them to produce offspring with those new variant molecules. Copying, such as in DNA replication or in xerox machines, allows any sequence to be remade and then sequence variations to be inherited. This distinction has been used against non-RNA-world hypotheses: without RNA replication (...) systems have no capacity to exhibit heritable variation. However, is copying the only way to have heritable variation? This article suggests that evolution can happen without anything being copied and that, in fact, RNA copying is too complex to arise spontaneously as the first pre-biotic system. There would then be a historical gradation of systems from non-alive to alive in which the capacity to have heritable changes would progressively increase and in which copying, as in template-based RNA-replication, would be a crucial but relatively late event. In addition, this article proposes a way by which RNA replication could have arisen, after systems able to evolve arose, as a crucial innovation and how that innovation spread over existing evolutionary systems and became a major driver of subsequent evolution. (shrink)

There is an important class of conditionals whose assertibility conditions are not given by the Ramsey test but by an inductive extension of that test. Such inductive Ramsey conditionals fail to satisfy some of the core properties of plain conditionals. Associated principles of nonmonotonic inference should not be assumed to hold generally if interpretations in terms of induction or appeals to total evidence are not to be ruled out.

In developing his theory of aether in De Caelo 1, Aristotle argues, in DC 1.4, that one circular motion cannot be contrary to another. In this paper, I discuss how Aristotle can maintain this position and accept the existence of celestial spheres that rotate in contrary directions, as he does in his revision of the Eudoxan theory in Metaphysics 12.8.

A foundational idea of evo‐devo is that morphological variation is not isotropic, that is, it does not occur in all directions. Instead, some directions of morphological variation are more likely than others from DNA‐level variation and these largely depend on development. We argue that this evo‐devo perspective should apply not only to morphology but to evolution at all phenotypic levels. At other phenotypic levels there is no development, but there are processes that can be seen, in analogy to development, as (...) constructing the phenotype (e.g., protein folding, learning for behavior, etc.). We argue that to explain the direction of evolution two types of arguments need to be combined: generative arguments about which phenotypic variation arises in each generation and selective arguments about which of it passes to the next generation. We explain how a full consideration of the two types of arguments improves the explanatory power of evolutionary theory. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/Egbvma_uaKc. (shrink)

Plotinus maintains that there is a single first principle, the One (or the Good), from which all other things derive. He is usually thought to hold this view on the grounds that any other thing’s existence depends on its participation in a paradigm of unity. This paper argues that Plotinus has a further, independent argument for adopting a single first principle, according to which principle pluralism is committed (unacceptably) to attributing good cosmic states of affairs to chance. This argument exhibits (...) similarities to ancient design arguments, but is used to draw the more radical conclusion that there is only one non-derivative existent. (shrink)

Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop 2023 (28/09/2023).

RESUMENEl desarrollo embriológico es un fenómeno que ha inspirado la especulación filosófica desde temprano en la historia del pensamiento. Desde los tiempos de Aristóteles dos modelos conceptuales antitéticos se han utilizado tradicionalmente para comprender la embriogénesis: o el embrión posee ya una forma o estructura, o ésta se forma de nuevo en cada generación. Nuestro objetivo en este artículo es mostrar que el contraste entre la posición preformacionista y epigenética persiste a pesar de los formidables avances teóricos y experimentales de (...) la biología del desarrollo contemporánea. El preformacionismo y la epigénesis han perfeccionado constantemente sus posiciones en el curso de la historia con el fin de responder a los retos conceptuales de la época. Este continuo proceso de transformación ha dado lugar a una convergencia parcial entre las dos posiciones. Sin embargo, vamos a argumentar que, a pesar de los esfuerzos por conciliar ambas posturas, esta antinomia, que se erige como una de las más fundamentales de la biología, no será fácil de superar. ABSTRACTThe process of development of the embryo has inspired philosophical speculation since the advent of Western thought. Since the time of Aristotle two antithetical conceptual models have traditionally been used to understand embryogenesis: either form or structure is preformed in the embryo or it is newly formed with each generation. Our aim in this article is to show that the contrast between the pre-formationist and epigenetic positions persists despite the formidable theoretical and experimental advances of contemporary developmental biology. Pre-formationism and epigenesis have constantly refined their positions in the course of history in order to answer the conceptual challenges of each epoch. This process of continuous transformation has resulted in a partial convergence of the two positions. However, we shall argue that, despite the partial successes of this process of continuous convergence, one of the most fundamental antinomies in biology persists. (shrink)

Training guide by the Previous Rebbe for the molding of spirits, written for use by the first counselors at the first Lubavitch yeshiva, Tomchei Tmimim: practical, spiritual steps to move past transmitting intellectual ideas to developing character.

This is the introduction to the Special Issue ‘Foundational Issues in Conceptual Engineering’. The issue contains contributions by James Andow, Delia Belleri, David Chalmers, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Eugen Fischer, Viktoria Knoll, Edouard Machery and Amie Thomasson. We, the editors, provide a brief introduction to the main topics of the issue and then summarize its contributions.

While the evidential problem of evil has been enormously influential within the contemporary philosophical literature—William Rowe’s 1979 formulation in “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” being the most seminal—no academic research has explored what cognitive mechanisms might underwrite the appearance of pointlessness in target examples of suffering. In this exploratory paper, we show that the perception of pointlessness in the target examples of suffering that underwrite Rowe’s seminal formulation of the problem of evil is contingent on the (...) absence of broader context. In other words, we show that when such suffering is presented alongside broader contextual information, the appearance of pointlessness, on average, significantly diminishes. In §1 we briefly elucidate Rowe’s formulation of the problem of evil and the thought experiment that motivates a key premise. In §2 and §3 respectively, we briefly explain our hypothesis regarding Rowe’s case and our methods for testing these hypotheses. In §4, we elucidate our results, and in §5 we explore some of the philosophical implications of our findings and gesture towards some areas for future research. Finally, in §6, we briefly connect our research to some of the established philosophical literature on suffering and narrative before concluding. (shrink)

The paper examines some doctrines of the Davidsonian Programme of truth conditional Semantics that relates truth to meaning using Tarski’s T-Convention, in relation to its efficacy in a semantic valuation of the EkeGusii proverb: Nda ’indongi ereta morogi ereta moibi which exemplifies a kind of complex sentence that a given system of Semantics is meant to account for. The coverage of Davidsonian truth-conditional notion of T-convention and that of compositionality are considered to have only a partial reach in accounting for (...) the meaning of the proverb by not incorporating pragmatic aspects. The failure of T-convention is not alleviated by the adoption of radical interpretation as posited by Davidson but is extended to consider aspects of pragmatic enrichment and dynamic Semantics. (shrink)

Mechanistic explanation involves the attribution of functions to both mechanisms and their component parts, and function attribution plays a central role in the individuation of mechanisms. Our aim in this paper is to investigate the impact of a perspectival view of function attribution for the broader mechanist project, and specifically for realism about mechanistic hierarchies. We argue that, contrary to the claims of function perspectivalists such as Craver, one cannot endorse both function perspectivalism and mechanistic hierarchy realism: if functions are (...) perspectival, then so are the levels of a mechanistic hierarchy. We illustrate this argument with an example from recent neuroscience, where the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon of ephaptic coupling cross-cuts the more familiar mechanism for synaptic firing. Finally, we consider what kind of structure there is left to be realist about for the function perspectivalist. (shrink)

This article will argue that the church is the mystic body of Christ that believers must guard from purveyors bend on twisting the truth. There is no doubt that the Catholic social teaching on medical and moral matters has proven to be pertinent and applicable to the ever-changing circumstances of health care and its delivery. In response to today’s challenges, these same moral principles of Catholic teaching provide the rationale and direction for the community of faith. In times of coronavirus (...) characterized by falsehoods, the truth is a virtue the church must strive for: “… If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”(John 8: 31-32). The truth is Christ; it is Christological. Christians must understand the clash of worldviews that is changing the face of Zimbabwean society. A worldview is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world; Christianity is a worldview that directs our daily decisions and actions. Worldviews affect the way we think. A worldview is a well-reasoned framework of beliefs and convictions that gives a true and unified perspective on the meaning of human existence. To paraphrase from the book of First Samuel (16: 7) – to see as God sees and not how the world sees. Beliefs are not simple propositions held inside us which drive our outward behaviour in predictable ways, they are more of acts of commitment than anything else. There is no doubt that the future of Catholicism lies in the hands of the church’s leadership and the believing Christians. Catholics look to their faith leaders for guidance on big decisions as regards COVID-19 issues. Conspiracy theories around COVID-19 deny that the COVID-19 pandemic is a biological virus. Catholics require direction from the Pope down to the episcopal leadership to chart the way forward. A worldview not only impacts how one understands and makes sense of the world but also influences how one expresses oneself in the world. The constellation of personal values, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and ideas that make up our worldview have an effect on our understanding of reality. Coronavirus has caused uncertainty among believers and confusion as to how to cope with the complex problems that arise in COVID-19 related issues. This article will aver that the nature of drawing the contours of catholicity regarding the biblical foundations of the health falls in the hands of orthodox Catholic teachings. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that Plotinus denies deliberative forethought about the physical cosmos to the demiurge on the basis of certain basic and widely shared Platonic and Aristotelian assumptions about the character of divine thought. We then discuss how Plotinus can nonetheless maintain that the cosmos is «providentially» ordered. -/- [Note: This paper is a French translation (prepared by Mathilde Brémond) of a paper that appears in A. Marmodoro and B. Prince (eds.), Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, (...) 2015).]. (shrink)

The essays in this volume trace the fluid movement between phenomenological and religious descriptions of the capable self that emerges across Ricoeur's oeuvre ...