Study on the concept of substance, one of the basic elements in Jaina philosophy.

Treatise on the fundamentals of Sankhya philosophy with commentary.

One important version of the problem of divine freedom is that, if God is essentially good, and if freedom logically requires being able to do otherwise, then God is not free with respect to willing the good, and thus He is not morally praiseworthy for His goodness. I develop and defend a broadly Molinist solution to this problem, which, I argue, provides the best way out of the difficulty for orthodox theists who are unwilling to relinquish the Principle of Alternate (...) Possibilities. The solution is that the divine essence includes the property of transworld goodness: i.e., for any possible morally significant choice that God could have faced, if God had actually faced it, God would have chosen to will the good. This view makes coherent the otherwise paradoxical theological intuition that it is within God’s power to do something evil, but He would not ever do such a thing. (shrink)

The relations of power between healthcare-related institutions and the professionals that interact with them are changing. Generally, the institutions are gaining the upper hand. Consequently, the intellectual abilities necessary for professionals to pursue the internal goods of healthcare are changing as well. A concrete case is the struggle over sickness benefits in Sweden, in which theSwedish Social Insurance Agency(SSIA) and physicians are important stakeholders. The SSIA has recently consolidated its power over the sickness certificates that doctors issue for their patients. (...) The result has been a stricter gatekeeping of sickness benefits. In order to combat the inroads made by state institutions into sickness certification, and into the sphere of medical practice, some doctors have developed cunning “techniques” to maximize the chance to have their sickness certificates accepted by the SSIA. This article attempts to demonstrate that cunning intelligence—the ability of the weak to “outsmart” a stronger adversary—plays an important role in the practice of medicine. Cunning intelligence is not merely a defective form of prudence (phronesis), nor is it simply an instance of instrumental reason (techne), but rather an ability that occupies a distinct place among the intellectual abilities generally ascribed to professionals. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language (...) -- Natural theology -- Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

According to a (once) venerable tradition, our knowledge of the external world is crucially dependent on divine favor: our ability to obtain knowledge of the world around us is made possible by God’s having so ordered things. I argue that this view, despite its unpopularity among con­temporary philosophers, is supported by a certain inference to the best explanation: namely, it provides an effective way of reconciling two widely held beliefs that, on the assumption of naturalism, appear incompatible: (1) that knowledge (...) is incompatible with the kind of luck present in Gettier sce­narios and (2) that arguments for external world skepticism can be effectively rebutted by “shifting” them in the style of G. E. Moore. (shrink)

The commonly occurring metaphors and models of the doctor–patient relationship can be divided into three clusters, depending on what distribution of power they represent: in the paternalist cluster, power resides with the physician; in the consumer model, power resides with the patient; in the partnership model, power is distributed equally between doctor and patient. Often, this tripartite division is accepted as an exhaustive typology of doctor–patient relationships. The main objective of this paper is to challenge this idea by introducing a (...) fourth possibility and distribution of power, namely, the distribution in which power resides with neither doctor nor patient. This equality in powerlessness—the hallmark of “the age of bureaucratic parsimony”—is the point of departure for a qualitatively new doctor–patient relationship, which is best described in terms ofsolidaritybetweencomrades. This paper specifies the characteristics of this specific type of solidarity and illustrates it with a case study of how Swedish doctors and patients interrelate in the sickness certification practice. (shrink)

This book presents a unique collection of papers on various philosophical aspects of the unknown and unvoiced truth and reality of the cosmic world. It offers a systematic analysis of the three philosophical theories of Quietism, Agnosticism and Mysticism and introduces readers to the fundamentals of mystical knowledge claimed by philosophical schools of the east and the west. It discusses, debates and deliberates on philosophical issues concerning the acquisition of truth, its objectivity and its various dimensions along with the application (...) of thoughts pertaining to Quietism, Agnosticism, and metaphysical-mystic traditions in philosophy. It examines and precisely defines the scope and limits of knowledge, the respective way of life, its expressions and morality, mystical revelation, ineffability of the ultimate, value realism, and faith and reason - with a primary focus on the classical Indian schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Agnosticism, the Bāuls, Greek traditions, modern western meta-philosophy, and contemporary quietist debate in religion and theology. This insightful collection should be of great interest to independent researchers, students and teachers of philosophy, theology, Mysticism and Agnosticism, cultural studies and religious studies. (shrink)

Gandhi’s writings on moral issues propose an easiest formula to the world to establish harmony and peace in the global society. In a world where people are confronting a psychological fear of sudden terror and violence, the Gandhian formula of ‘non-violence (ahimsa) as a means’ to form a perfect harmonious world is getting strong attention of the world-community. Truth and non-violence are the two most valuable ingredients of Gandhian moral thoughts. For him, Truth or God is the end and non-violence (...) is the mean and the two can not be separated. They are more effective in life when they are used in their united form. This unity can be actualized only through the motive of ‘love to humanity’ without separating one person from another on any ground. He argues that the unity of truth and non-violence is a better way to have a moral and harmonious life. In this paper, I will focus upon the Gandhian formula in wider perspective, which reflects in his political activities and his writings as well, with the contention that it is highly applicable to normalize the violence rooted in different parts of the world at both the levels of religious and political. I will contend that Gandhian notion of truth and non-violence in terms of ends and means may play a medicinal role to harmonize the world suffering from extremism and terrorism. (shrink)

The implicit activities of the living body in sports (such as heart rate, involuntary gestures, stress, reflex, emotional regulation and interaction expressions) emerge in the consciousness of the lived body without our voluntary control. We demonstrate physiological emersion, and how, including in dramaturgical perception, physiological flows and processes collide with the image of a whole body. In this paper, we introduce corporeal non-property as the missing (?) link between phenomenology and neuroscience, renewed by research on the cerebral unconscious and the (...) perception of their lived body. Rather than mindfulness, physical activity obliges the subject to learn the unconscious and his motor skills from his living body: a new psychoanalysis of sport is thus established by studying what emerges from the activity of the living body up to the level of the conscious description of motor action. In this paper, we explain why that awareness occurs, and why it matters for the understanding of unconscious activity of the athlete’s living body. This is potentially interesting, although it needs, as a theory, to overcome the obvious reliance of the body on unconscious or habitual/automated physiological processes. But the incorporation of body techniques forms a habitus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata by Brian BlackKrishna Mani Pathak (bio)In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata. By Brian Black. New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. xii + 2158. Paperback £38.99, isbn 978-0-367-43600-1. Brian Black's In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata is a brilliant book that exhibits three distinct features which can certainly help an inquiring mind understand not only the structure and nature of the text of the Mahābhārata but also (...) the meanings contained in it, alongside aspects of Hindu historiography. It investigates the text through literary, philosophical, and social perspectives that Black argues emerge in the dialogues over strī-dharma, puruṣa-dharma, and the social identity and status of women (see for example, pp. 117, 124, 130, 140). The work's literary character can be seen in Black's analysis of the text and its epical narratives. In this book, the story of the Mahābhārata is presented by Black as a web of narratives wherein every verbal encounter and dialogue among all the participating interlocutors refers to a specific meaning and (deterministic) role played by these divine and terrestrial characters as interlocutors: "All the main human characters are incarnations and/or descendants of divine figures…and [experience] intense emotional reactions to their own situations and the actions of others" (p. 5). For instance, most male and female characters in the narratives of the Mahābhārata, including Vyāsa (the author), who is said to have "the power of omniscience," and Kṛṣṇa, who is God Himself, help the readers extrapolate how the entire series of trailing events in the Mahābhārata is destined to happen. This is what Black highlights when he writes that "as author of the narrative, [Vyāsa's] appearances within it often move the story along, as well as offer lenses through which to understand its cosmic implications" and that he "draws on his omniscience to provide an explanation of the marriage that transcends the knowledge of ordinary humans" (p. 61). Further, Black emphasizes destiny's (active) role when he writes that "the story of Draupadī's previous birth invites reading the Mahābhārata as a karmic narrative in which the actions and decisions of characters create the conditions for subsequent events in the central story" (p. 76). Perhaps for this reason, Black highlights his methodological approach to the text and its literary character in the beginning of the book to explain that the Mahābhārata is more like a complex narrative than any other Hindu legend or mythology and is difficult to understand without contextualizing its dialogues and [End Page 1] their historical connections. Besides, the temporal aspect of the conversations between the characters is another literary condition to connect various sub-narratives to the main story. Black uses the term "dialogue" in three different ways while examining the text of the Mahābhārata, and this is how he proposes the text should be explored by the inquisitive mind:I understand the term "dialogue" in three main ways: (1) as verbal encounter: the conversations, discussions, and debates between characters within the text; (2) as intra-textuality: the relationship between different dialogues in different sections of the text; and (3) as hermeneutics: my interpretive approach to the text. In most of the remainder of this Introduction, I will prepare the way for the subsequent chapters by discussing each of these three understandings of dialogue and how they are related to the book as a whole. (p. 4)Black observes that most scholars, both from the East and the West, have tried to understand the text of the Mahābhārata and its embedded stories from different perspectives, taking them merely as dialogues or a product of dialogical relations, and hardly anyone has explored the most fundamental aspect of dialogue in the Mahābhārata, i.e., "the verbal exchanges between characters" that he takes as the book's starting point (p. 1). Black's literary perspective has made the book an interesting and illuminating read, despite the fact that most of the characters of the Mahābhārata have either a divine origin... (shrink)

Meeting of the Minds records the proceedings of the S.I.E.P.M. conference held in Boston from June 14-16, 1996. The conference participants centred their attention on the relationships between medieval and classical modern philosophy. These relationships have been painted in dramatically different ways by those who have presented overviews of the two eras. Hans Blumenberg, in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and his subsequent works, discovers the seeds of modernity in the medieval authors themselves. Leo Strauss and his followers (...) see a radical difference between the classical world views of the ancients and medievals and the successive layers of modern thought. These general portraits demand specifics, and the strength of the conference, whose results are contained in this volume, was that it provided many specific examinations of concrete relations between the philosophical positions of celebrated medieval and modern thinkers. Our hope is that this collection of papers will suggest the direction for further cooperative efforts on the interplay of the philosophical views represented by these two eras, and that the issues commonly debated by the medieval and early modern thinkers represented in this volume will give renewed consideration to important philosophical points that have been ignored in more recent debates. The volume contains contributions from E. Jennifer Ashworth (Waterloo, Ontario), Allan Back (Kutztown, Pennsylvania), Jos Decorte (Leuven), Thomas Dewender (Bochum), Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Nashville), John P.Doyle (St.Louis), Jeremiah Hackett (Columbia, South Carolina), Simo Knuuttila (Helsinki), James McEvoy (Maynooth), A.Stephen McGrade (Storrs), Edward P.Mahoney (Durham, North Carolina), James D.Maliszewski (Toronto), Emily Michael (New York), Woosuk Park (Taejon, Korea), Horacio Santiago-Otero(+) (Madrid), Alison Simmons (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Jean-Luc Solere (Paris), Jose MariSoto Rabanos (Madrid), and Eileen C. Swe. (shrink)

Essays devoted to the work of the late Neil Wilson, Canadian philosopher and contributor to the field of semantic analysis that emerged from the fusion of logic, pragmatism, and ontology. Many of the essays in this volume take their initial inspiration from Wilson's seminal work Substances Without Substrata.

In my paper I tackle the question of whether the term “philosophy” should be restricted to a specific tradition or whether it could be used also for other traditions. I argue in favor of the latter solution from extrinsic and intrinsic viewpoints. From extrinsic viewpoint, more liberal use of the term could facilitate exchanges between scholars of different traditions of thought. From intrinsic viewpoint, I propose an understanding of philosophy as creation of concepts and concepts as contractions and (...) embodiment of reality, not as abstractions or representations of it. (shrink)

An introduction to contemporary debates in philosophy of perception.

For a serious book of philosophy, where better to begin to canvass various philosophical concepts and arguments than in relation to what is so familiar to every one of us –– the fact that we all have many and varied beliefs. The book is an introduction of philosophy, indeed intended as an introductory textbook. The author, as he wrote it, had both the teacher and the student in mind. He hopes it will prove a worthy contribution in (...) the college, seminary and university classroom, both interesting and serious. As well as thirteen clearly written chapters introducing the various topics, it is also provided with helpful summaries, tutorials, and work sheets. In considering belief we raise raises many of the central problems philosophers have discussed: knowledge, truth, justification, rationality, meaning, explanation, self deception, interpretation, reality, cause and effect, personal identity, theories, laws, hypotheses, the self, survival, God. Since belief is a universal phenomenon, it has unfortunately become common to understand the unqualified term ‘believer’ of the religious person. It seems strange to ask the question, ‘Are you a believer?’ outside the religious context. But we do when we are thinking of a particular theory or ideology or political attitude. We sometimes want to know whether she is ‘one of us!’ The author sometimes finds it convenient to illustrate his exposition by referring to religious beliefs. One does not have to be a religious believer to see that it is relevant and indeed interesting to do so. The history of philosophy provides many classical examples of such discussion. The book is of wide general interest. As well as doing service in the classroom, it will also prove its worth within other contexts. It will serve the aims of serious discussion groups, as well as providing a basis for regular and earnest individual study. We hope also that it will find a place with inquiring people of religious faith. (shrink)

Traditional Plato scholarship, in the English-speaking world, has assumed that Platonic dialogues are merely collections of arguments. Inevitably, the question arises: If Plato wanted to present collections of arguments, why did he write dialogues instead of treatises? Concerned about this question, some scholars have been experimenting with other, more contextualized ways of reading the dialogues. This anthology is among the first to present these new approaches as pursued by a variety of scholars. As such, it offers new perspectives on Plato (...) as well as a suggestive view of Plato scholarship as something of a laboratory for historians of philosophy generally. The essays gathered here each examine vital aspects of Plato’s many methods, considering his dialogues in relation to Thucydides and Homer, narrative strategies and medical practice, images and metaphors. They offer surprising new research into such much-studied works as _The Republic_ as well as revealing views of lesser-known dialogues like the _Cratylus_ and _Philebus_. With reference to thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Sartre, the authors place the Platonic dialogues in an illuminating historical context. Together, their essays should reinvigorate the scholarly examination of the way Plato’s dialogues “work”—and should prompt a reconsideration of how the form of Plato’s philosophical writing bears on the Platonic conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, (...) their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments. (shrink)

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, (...) their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments. (shrink)

La distinction entre l'approche scientifique du réel des approches religieuse ou philosophique est une tâche urgente si on veut éviter le banal : "Tout est bon, tout se vaut" qui place les diverses connaissances au même niveau d'incertitude et de confusion. Chacune propose en fait un modèle original d'interprétation du monde. Encore faut-il s'attacher à bien comprendre sa portée spécifique et ses limites. Elles ne sont pas équivalentes. Chaque approche est pertinente suivant son intention et dans ses frontières propres. Elles (...) sont comme trois "faces de la vie" pour parler comme Bernard Russel. Il convient seulement de ne pas oublier que la dimension métaphysique de l'existence humaine n'est pas aisément réductible. Ce travail de distinction permet aussi de ne pas les réduire avec ce qui n'est que leurs caricatures : le scientisme, fanatisme et la sophistique. (shrink)

Originally published by the Center for Hellenic Studies, this book investigates the extent to which the Presocratics were hamstrung by their lack of detailed conceptual framework in the case of the words "one" and "many." This investigation is based on Aristotle's analyses.

This collection of original papers by an international group of distinguished philosophers of science impressively demonstrates the links among the philosophic points of view, areas of focus, and methods of treatment used in examining the many facets of scientific inquiry. It will be an indispensable collection for philosophers of science and scientists of various disciplines, including physicists, neuroscientists, and psychologists.

Originally published by the Center for Hellenic Studies, this book investigates the extent to which the Presocratics were hamstrung by their lack of detailed conceptual framework in the case of the words "one" and "many." This investigation is based on Aristotle's analyses.

This chapter consists of a systematic introduction to the nature and function of habitus in Latin medieval philosophy. Over the course of this introduction, several topics are treated: the theoretical necessity to posit habitus; their nature; their causal contribution to the production of internal and external acts; how and why habitus can grow and decay; what makes their unity when they can have multiple objects and work in clusters. Finally, we examine two specific questions: why intellectual habitus represent a (...) special case that triggered considerable debate; how human beings can be said to be free if their actions are determined by moral habitus. (shrink)

According to contemporary understanding of the universal tree of life, the traditionally recognized kingdoms of eukaryotic organisms—Protista, Fungi, Animalia and Plantae—are irregularly interspersed in a vast phylogenetic tree. There are numerous groups that in any Linnaean classification advised by phylogenetic relationships would form sister groups to those kingdoms, therefore requiring us to admit them the same rank. In practice, this would lead to the creation of ca. 25-30 new kingdoms that would now be listed among animals and plants as “major (...) types of life”. This poses problems of an aesthetic and educational nature. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to deal with that issue: a) ignore the aesthetic and educational arguments and propose classification systems that are fully consistent with the Hennigian principles of phylogenetic classification, i.e. are only composed of monophyletic taxa; b) ignore Hennigian principles and bunch small, relatively uncharacteristic groups into paraphyletic taxa, creating systems that are more convenient. In the paper, I present the debate and analyze the pros and cons of both options, briefly commenting on the deeper, third resolution, which would be to abandon classification systems entirely. Recent advances in eukaryotic classification and phylogeny are commented in the light of the philosophical question of the purpose and design principles of biological classification systems. (shrink)