In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fulfilling Mitzvot through the Practice of Lovingkindness and WisdomDavid J. GilnerSince it has been more than forty years since I last wrote a paper in comparative religion, I have chosen not to attempt a scholarly paper. Rather, after a biographical sketch, I will discuss examples of Jewish texts that underpin my choice to pursue a path that includes practices drawn from the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, and explain how (...) I plan to teach these practices within traditional Jewish settings.I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a Jewish family that identified with the Conservative movement. When I turned five, I was sent to a modern Orthodox yeshiva. For three and a half hours each morning, first five, then six days a week, I studied a comprehensive Jewish curriculum—taught in modern Hebrew—which included Bible, commentaries, Talmud, history, grammar, and the laws and customs of Ashkenazic Jewry. At fourteen, I left the yeshiva to attend a nondenominational Christian prep school. This seemingly radical change in schools and religious traditions occasioned no significant intellectual conflicts or spiritual anxieties. By fourteen, I sensed that religion was something people were born into; it was one of the cards life dealt you at birth.My sophomore year at Emory University saw the beginning of my interest in Buddhism. I began to practice Sōtō Zen sitting (zazen), and, in my readings, stumbled upon the koan Mu, which occupied my attention in and out of meditation for several years. I became a religion major and was particularly interested in modern Japanese religions. However, my advisor discouraged me from pursuing this interest in graduate school and suggested I build further on my strong traditional Jewish education, which is how I came to Hebrew Union College in 1972 to pursue a PhD in biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies.It was at that time that I began to practice Transcendental Meditation, and, subsequently, the TM Sidhis program, a practice that took, on average, three hours per day, and four and a half hours on days when I did group practice. Not finding a job teaching Bible led me to library school, after which I returned to Hebrew Union College in 1977 to work as a librarian. I became involved in interfaith community outreach, and lectured, led Bible study groups, and conducted Passover seders at local [End Page 27] churches, toward the goal of enhancing interfaith dialogue and understanding in the community. At this time I was fortunate to become friends with Paul Knitter, then a professor at Xavier University.In 1997, after twenty-five years of dedicated twice-daily practice, it became clear to me that I was "attached" to my TM meditation program and that this attachment was hindering my growth. I put my TM Sidhis practice aside and went back to zazen. Soon, I became associated with the Dzogchen organization led by Lama Surya Das, and trekchö became my basic practice. As a member of the online "three-year mandala program," I received a cassette-based education in various Tibetan meditation practices, which included my first experiences with visualization, as part of Tara and Machigma practices.In 2001, I learned of many unfilled requests sent to Hebrew Union College by small congregations asking for students to lead High Holidays services, so I volunteered. For the past ten years, I have served as the High Holidays rabbi at Congregation Tikkun Olam in Woodstock, Illinois. The phrase tikkun olam, often translated as "repairing the world," has become popularized in Jewish culture over the past two decades.In 2003, a friend sent me a teaching tape by Lama John Makransky on loving-kindness practice. My immediate gut reaction was that everything else I had done for thirty-five years was preparation for this teaching. I attended several courses in which Lama Makransky taught practices to cultivate innate lovingkindness and wisdom, and in 2007 I was privileged to attend the week-long course in which he taught his then forthcoming book Awakening through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness. Since then, I have attended other courses taught by Makransky under the aegis of the Foundation for Active Compassion. Within the realm of Ati Yoga, I think it... (shrink)

Neither full belief nor partial belief is more fundamental, ontologically speaking. A survey of some relevant cognitive psychology supports a dualist ontology instead. Beliefs come in two kinds, categorical and graded, neither more fundamental than the other. In particular, the graded kind is no more fundamental. When we discuss belief in on/off terms, we are not speaking coarsely or informally about states that are ultimately credal.

Evidence is univocal, not equivocal. Its implications don't depend on our beliefs or values, the evidence says what it says. But that doesn't mean there's no room for rational disagreement between people with the same evidence. Evaluating evidence is a lot like polling an electorate: getting an accurate reading requires a bit of luck, and even the best pollsters are bound to get slightly different results. So, even though evidence is univocal, rationality's requirements are not "unique." Understanding this resolves several (...) puzzles to do with uniqueness and disagreement. (shrink)

Many standard philosophical accounts of scientific practice fail to distinguish between modeling and other types of theory construction. This failure is unfortunate because there are important contrasts among the goals, procedures, and representations employed by modelers and other kinds of theorists. We can see some of these differences intuitively when we reflect on the methods of theorists such as Vito Volterra and Linus Pauling on the one hand, and Charles Darwin and Dimitri Mendeleev on the other. Much of Volterra's and (...) Pauling's work involved modeling; much of Darwin's and Mendeleev's did not. In order to capture this distinction, I consider two examples of theory construction in detail: Volterra's treatment of post-WWI fishery dynamics and Mendeleev's construction of the periodic system. I argue that modeling can be distinguished from other forms of theorizing by the procedures modelers use to represent and to study real-world phenomena: indirect representation and analysis. This differentiation between modelers and non-modelers is one component of the larger project of understanding the practice of modeling, its distinctive features, and the strategies of abstraction and idealization it employs. (shrink)

Modelers often rely on robustness analysis, the search for predictions common to several independent models. Robustness analysis has been characterized and championed by Richard Levins and William Wimsatt, who see it as central to modern theoretical practice. The practice has also been severely criticized by Steven Orzack and Elliott Sober, who claim that it is a nonempirical form of confirmation, effective only under unusual circumstances. This paper addresses Orzack and Sober's criticisms by giving a new account of robustness analysis and (...) showing how the practice can identify robust theorems. Once the structure of robust theorems is clearly articulated, it can be shown that such theorems have a degree of confirmation, despite the lack of direct empirical evidence for their truth. (shrink)

Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism are our two most prominent theories of scientific inference. Are they compatible? Van Fraassen famously argued that they are not, concluding that IBE must be wrong since Bayesianism is right. Writers since then, from both the Bayesian and explanationist camps, have usually considered van Fraassen’s argument to be misguided, and have plumped for the view that Bayesianism and IBE are actually compatible. I argue that van Fraassen’s argument is actually not so misguided, (...) and that it causes more trouble for compatibilists than is typically thought. Bayesianism in its dominant, subjectivist form, can only be made compatible with IBE if IBE is made subservient to conditionalization in a way that robs IBE of much of its substance and interest. If Bayesianism and IBE are to be fit together, I argue, a strongly objective Bayesianism is the preferred option. I go on to sketch this objectivist, IBE-based Bayesianism, and offer some preliminary suggestions for its development. (shrink)

Clark and Shackel have recently argued that previous attempts to resolve the two-envelope paradox fail, and that we must look to symmetries of the relevant expected-value calculations for a solution. Clark and Shackel also argue for a novel solution to the peeking case, a variant of the two-envelope scenario in which you are allowed to look in your envelope before deciding whether or not to swap. Whatever the merits of these solutions, they go beyond accepted decision theory, even contradicting it (...) in the peeking case. Thus if we are to take their solutions seriously, we must understand Clark and Shackel to be proposing a revision of standard decision theory. Understood as such, we will argue, their proposal is both implausible and unnecessary. (shrink)

Conditionalization and Jeffrey Conditionalization cannot simultaneously satisfy two widely held desiderata on rules for empirical learning. The first desideratum is confirmational holism, which says that the evidential import of an experience is always sensitive to our background assumptions. The second desideratum is commutativity, which says that the order in which one acquires evidence shouldn't affect what conclusions one draws, provided the same total evidence is gathered in the end. (Jeffrey) Conditionalization cannot satisfy either of these desiderata without violating the other. (...) This is a surprising problem, and I offer a diagnosis of its source. I argue that (Jeffrey) Conditionalization is inherently anti-holistic in a way that is just exacerbated by the requirement of commutativity. The dilemma is thus a superficial manifestation of (Jeffrey) Conditionalization's fundamentally anti-holistic nature. (shrink)

Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World is an account of modeling in contemporary science. Modeling is a form of surrogate reasoning where target systems in the natural world are studied using models, which are similar to these targets. My book develops an account of the nature of models, the practice of modeling, and the similarity relation that holds between models and their targets. I also analyze the conceptual tools that allow theorists to identify the trustworthy aspects of (...) models. Taken as a whole, I try to account for the ways that modeling is actually practiced by theorists, while abstracting sufficiently to understand the similarities and differences among examples of concrete, mathematical, and computational modeling.I am grateful to Wendy Parker, Jay Odenbaugh, and Bill Wimsatt for their careful and interesting reading of my book, as well as their constructive criticisms. Although I naturally disagree with some of their critiques, I have learned much .. (shrink)

The bootstrapping problem poses a general challenge, afflicting even strongly internalist theories. Even if one must always know that one’s source is reliable to gain knowledge from it, bootstrapping is still possible. I survey some solutions internalists might offer and defend the one I find most plausible: that bootstrapping involves an abuse of inductive reasoning akin to generalizing from a small or biased sample. I also argue that this solution is equally available to the reliabilist. The moral is that the (...) issues raised by bootstrapping are orthogonal to questions about internalism and basic knowledge, having more to do with the nature of good inductive reasoning. (shrink)

Van Fraassen famously endorses the Principle of Reflection as a constraint on rational credence, and argues that Reflection is entailed by the more traditional principle of Conditionalization. He draws two morals from this alleged entailment. First, that Reflection can be regarded as an alternative to Conditionalization – a more lenient standard of rationality. And second, that commitment to Conditionalization can be turned into support for Reflection. Van Fraassen also argues that Reflection implies Conditionalization, thus offering a new justification for Conditionalization. (...) I argue that neither principle entails the other, and thus neither can be used to motivate the other in the way van Fraassen says. There are ways to connect Conditionalization to Reflection, but these connections depend on poor assumptions about our introspective access, and are not tight enough to draw the sorts of conclusions van Fraassen wants. Upon close examination, the two principles seem to be getting at two quite independent epistemic norms. (shrink)

How do readers create representations of fictional worlds from texts? We hypothesize that readers use the real world as a starting point and investigate how much and which types of real-world information is imported into a given fictional world. We presented subjects with three stories and asked them to judge whether real world facts held true in the story world. Subjects' responses indicated that they imported many facts into fiction, though what exactly is imported depends on two main variables: the (...) distance that a narrative world lies from reality and the types of fact being imported. Facts that are true of the real world are more likely to be imported into worlds that are more similar to the real world, and facts that are more central to the representation of the real world are more likely to be imported overall. These results indicate that subjects make nuanced inferences when creating fictional worlds, basing their representations both on how different a story world is from the real world and on what they know to be causally central to the real world. (shrink)

Each of us, right now, is having a unique conscious experience. Nothing is more basic to our lives as thinking beings and nothing, it seems, is better known to us. But the ever-expanding reach of natural science suggests that everything in our world is ultimately physical. The challenge of fitting consciousness into our modern scientific worldview, of taking the subjective “feel” of conscious experience and showing that it is just neural activity in the brain, is among the most intriguing explanatory (...) problems of our times. -/- In this book, Josh Weisberg presents the range of contemporary responses to the philosophical problem of consciousness. The basic philosophical tools of the trade are introduced, including thought experiments featuring Mary the color-deprived super scientist and fearsome philosophical “zombies”. The book then systematically considers the space of philosophical theories of consciousness. Dualist and other “non-reductive” accounts of consciousness hold that we must expand our basic physical ontology to include the intrinsic features of consciousness. Functionalist and identity theories, by contrast, hold that with the right philosophical stage-setting, we can fit consciousness into the standard scientific picture. And “mysterians” hold that any solution to the problem is beyond such small-minded creatures as us. -/- Throughout the book, the complexity of current debates on consciousness is handled in a clear and concise way, providing the reader with a fine introductory guide to the rich philosophical terrain. The work makes an excellent entry point to one of the most exciting areas of study in philosophy and science today. (shrink)

Weisberg identifies the risks throughout a 2000 year span of western history of overly flexible responses to crises and perceived emergencies. So ensconced is the norm of infinite openness to ideas and changing circumstances that, he argues, his readers need to work hard to be able to resist the tendency of others to fold their tents and betray their own deepest and soundest values when challenged to do so by "new" conditions.

Gravitational interactions allowed astronomers to conclude that dark matter rings all luminous galaxies in gigantic halos, but this only accounts for a fraction of the total mass of dark matter believed to exist. Where is the rest? We hypothesize that some of it resides in dark galaxies, pure dark matter halos that either never possessed or have totally lost their baryonic matter. This article explores methodological challenges that arise because of the nature of observation in astrophysics and examines how the (...) blend of observation, simulation, and theory we call the Observing the Invisible approach might make detecting such dark objects possible. (shrink)

We have known for a long time that there is complex, intelligent life. More recently we have discovered that the physics of our universe is fine-tuned so as to allow for the existence of such life. Call these two observations the Old Datum and the New Datum, respectively. Our question here is: once we know the Old Datum, does the New Datum provide additional evidence for the design hypothesis? I argue that it does not. Thus, there is an important sense (...) in which the much-touted fine-tuning of physics is irrelevant to debates about design. (shrink)

Proponents of individual-based modeling in ecology claim that their models explain the emergence of population-level behavior. This article argues that individual-based models have not, as yet, provided such explanations. Instead, individual-based models can and do demonstrate and explain the emergence of population-level behaviors from individual behaviors and interactions.

The preface paradox is a problem for everyone; you don’t need to be committed to any special epistemological theory to face the problem it raises. The problem of easy knowledge is supposed to be different in this respect. It is generally thought to arise only for those who believe there is such a thing as basic knowledge, i.e. knowledge acquired through a source that one does not know to be reliable or trustworthy. Because it is thought to arise only for (...) those who believe in basic knowledge, the problem of easy knowledge is generally regarded as a problem for, or objection to, the possibility of basic knowledge. (shrink)

Over the last ten years or so, many cognitive scientists have begun to work on topics traditionally associated with philosophical aesthetics, such as issues about the objectivity of aesthetic judgments and the nature of aesthetic experience. An increasingly interdisciplinary turn within philosophy has started to take advantage of these connections, to the benefit of all. But one area that has been somewhat overlooked in this new dialogue is developmental psychology, which treats questions about whether and to what extent children's intuitions (...) about various aspects of aesthetic experience match those of adults, as well as the origins and developmental trajectories of these intuitions. The current paper reviews some recent work in developmental psychology that has the potential to inform philosophical research on a variety of topics – not necessarily because of this work tells us directly about what children think, but because learning what children's aesthetic intuitions are and how they develop can help us to better understand why adults have the intuitions that they do. (shrink)

There is an increasing recognition internationally of the critical impact of communication within healthcare. The link between ineffective communication, patient dissatisfaction and critical incidents is well established. Family Planning New South Wales has sought to address patient-centred care and communication in its policy platform. This article reports on research conducted within FPNSW, which analysed the discourse features that constituted effective doctor–patient1 communication in sexual and reproductive health consultations. The principal aim of the research was to understand how effectively messages were (...) conveyed and received and to what degree patients were active participants in their own sexual healthcare. Analysed consultations were characterised by extremely high levels of communicative competence on the part of the doctors who integrated medical expertise with the development of interpersonal relationships with patients, thus positioning patients as active contributors to the consultations and to decisions about their ongoing treatment. The detailed linguistic analysis identified characteristic features of patient-centred communication that are essential to patient-centred care. These interactions demonstrate that communicating care is just as important as delivering care and involves a drawing together of the medical and the interpersonal in consultations. The article details strategies for interweaving medical knowledge and establishing rapport that can inform practitioner communication practices across different healthcare contexts. (shrink)

one takes to be the most salient, any pair could be judged more similar to each other than to the third. Goodman uses this second problem to showthat there can be no context-free similarity metric, either in the trivial case or in a scientifically ...

It is widely held that consciousness is partially constituted by a “pre-reflective” self-consciousness. Further, it’s argued that the presence of pre-reflective self-consciousness poses a problem for “higher-order” theories of consciousness. Higher-order theories invoke reflective representation and so do not appear to have the resources to explain pre-reflective self-consciousness. This criticism is rooted in the Heidelberg School’s deep reflection on the nature of self-consciousness, and accordingly, I will label this challenge the “Heidelberg problem.” In this chapter, I will offer a higher-order (...) answer to the Heidelberg problem. Instead of attacking the problem head-on, I’ll argue that the view can explain why there appears to be a Heidelberg problem, even if consciousness is ultimately realized by higher-order representation. But I’ll also argue that the theory has indexical resources to more directly counter the Heidelberg problem. Either way, I hope to show that the higher-order theory survives its trip to Heidelberg. (shrink)

This essay examines the character of biblical Yael oscillating between two patriarchal mythical images of femininity, as portrayed by Gilbert and Gubar—“the angel” and “the monster.” The argument arising is that the transition between these two polar and opposite characters occurs as an extreme response to oppression and injury, followed by a subversive and defying transformation. The essay points to the manner in which Yael’s story, which embodies this transformation, demonstrates how the female body is at the center of this (...) conversion, not only as a site for patriarchal control and taming, but also as embodying a text of protest and opposition to this oppression. Yael’s story, as illustrated by this analysis, is revealed as a subversive tradition with radical feminist insights. (shrink)

First, I want to start off by saying that The Consciousness Paradox is a wonderful book: well written, strongly argued, and impressively thorough. This is no great surprise, given the quality we've come to expect from Rocco Gennaro over the years, but it is a great thing to have a canonical statement of his view in one place and to have so many of the details of his theory of consciousness filled in. I also want to express my honour at (...) being a part of this symposium. (shrink)

The authors argue that children prefer fictions with imaginary worlds. But evidence from the developmental literature challenges this claim. Children's choices of stories and story events show that they often prefer realism. Further, work on the imagination's relation to counterfactual reasoning suggests that an attraction to unrealistic fiction would undermine the imagination's role in helping children understand reality.

Both adults and children have the ability to not only think about reality but also use their imaginations and create fictional worlds. This article describes the process by which world creation happens, drawing from philosophical and psychological treatments of this issue. First, world creators recognize the need to create a fictional world, as when starting a pretend game or opening a novel. Then, creators merge some real-world knowledge with the premises of the fictional world to construct a fuller representation, though (...) there is some controversy about how much of the real world is represented in any given fictional world. After the world is created, events can be set in motion within it. While it is generally accepted that this basic process is used for a wide variety of fictional worlds, including fictional stories, pretend games, and counterfactual scenarios, this process of world creation can vary over the course of development and depending on the use to which it is put. (shrink)

Some theorists approach the Gordian knot of consciousness by proclaiming its inherent tangle and mystery. Others draw out the sword of reduction and cut the knot to pieces. Philosopher Thomas Metzinger, in his important new book, Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, instead attempts to disentangle the knot one careful strand at a time. The result is an extensive and complex work containing almost 700 pages of philosophical analysis, phenomenological reflection, and scientific data. The text offers a sweeping (...) and comprehensive tour through the entire landscape of consciousness studies, and it lays out Metzinger's rich and stimulating theory of the subjective mind. Metzinger's skilled integration of philosophy and neuroscience provides a valuable framework for interdisciplinary research on consciousness. (shrink)

Since the introduction and widespread adoption of chemical herbicides, “weed management” has become almost synonymous with “herbicide management.” Over-reliance on herbicides and herbicide-resistant crops has given rise to herbicide resistant weeds. Integrated weed management (IWM) identifies three strategies for weed management— biological-cultural, chemical-technological, mechanical-physical—and recommends combining all three to mitigate herbicide resistance. However, adoption of IWM has stalled, and research to understand the adoption of IWM practices has focused on single stakeholder groups, especially farmers. In contrast, decisions about weed management (...) often occur within a social ecosystem where multiple stakeholder groups co-create knowledge and practices. To more holistically investigate perceptions and decision-making related to herbicide resistant weed management, we conducted 23 in-depth interviews in combination with Q methodology with farmers and public-/private-sector agricultural professionals in the state of Georgia (U.S.). Our investigation focused on the management of an increasingly herbicide resistant weed, Palmer amaranth, which enabled broader conversations about agricultural systems, farmer livelihoods, and sustainability. Factor and thematic analyses allowed us to identify and characterize two distinct typologies: one primarily valued agronomic efficiency and relied upon chemical-technological management practices, while the other valued diversifying weed management strategies as the pathway to agronomic and economic success. Typologies diverged substantially in attitudes toward the three weed management strategies, the role of technology, and systems management generally. These two viewpoints have implications for how we understand underlying stakeholder motivations and choices around weed management strategies, both of which are crucial in promoting and supporting farmer use of diverse, ecologically-sound, weed management strategies. (shrink)