Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while (...) none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while (...) none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The theory of action underlying Immanuel Kant's ethical theory is the subject of this book.

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. (...) Part II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a ground-breaking study of ancient Greek views of the emotions and their influence on subsequent theories and attitudes, Pagan and Christian. While the central focus of the book is the Stoics, Sorabji draws on a vast range of texts to give a rich historical survey of how Western thinking about this central aspect of human nature developed.

What makes us human? Richard Swinburne presents new philosophical arguments, supported by modern neuroscience, for the view that we are immaterial souls sustained in existence by our brains.

Richard Sorabji; VII*—Aristotle On the Rôle of Intellect in Virtue, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 107–129, htt.

Richard Swinburne presents a new edition of the final volume of his acclaimed trilogy on philosophical theology. Faith and Reason is a self-standing examination of the implications for religious faith of Swinburne's famous arguments about the coherence of theism and the existence of God.By practising a particular religion, a person seeks to achieve some or all of three goals - that he worships and obeys God, gains salvation for himself, and helps others to attain their salvation. But not all (...) religions commend worship, and different religions have different conceptions of salvation. Faced with these differences, Richard Swinburne argues that we should practice that religion which has the best goals and is more probably true than the creeds of other religions. He proposes criteria by which to determine the probabilities of different religious creeds, and he argues that, while requiring total commitment, faith does not demand fully convinced belief. While maintaining the same structure and conclusions as the original classic, this second edition has been substantially rewritten, both in order to relate its ideas more closely to those of classical theologians and philosophers and to respond to more recent views. In particular he discusses, and ultimately rejects, the view of Alvin Plantinga that the 'warrant' of a belief depends on the process which produced it, and John Hick's contention that all religions offer valid paths to salvation. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a new edition of the final volume of his acclaimed trilogy on philosophical theology. Faith and Reason is a self-standing examination of the implications for religious faith of Swinburne's famous arguments about the coherence of theism and the existence of God. By practising a particular religion, a person seeks to achieve some or all of three goals - that he worships and obeys God, gains salvation for himself, and helps others to attain their salvation. But not (...) all religions commend worship, and different religions have different conceptions of salvation. Faced with these differences, Richard Swinburne argues that we should practice that religion which has the best goals and is more probably true than the creeds of other religions. He proposes criteria by which to determine the probabilities of different religious creeds, and he argues that, while requiring total commitment, faith does not demand fully convinced belief. While maintaining the samestructure and conclusions as the original classic, this second edition has been substantially rewritten, both in order to relate its ideas more closely to those of classical theologians and philosophers and to respond to more recent views. In particular he discusses, and ultimately rejects, the view of Alvin Plantinga that the 'warrant' of a belief depends on the process which produced it, and John Hick's contention that all religions offer valid paths to salvation. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a unique discussion of the development of moral conscience over a period of 2500 years, from the playwrights of the fifth century BCE to the present. He addresses key topics including the original meaning and continuing nature of conscience, the ideas of freedom of religion and conscience with climaxes in the early Christian centuries and the seventeenth, the disputes on absolution or 'terrorisation' of conscience, dilemmas of conscience, and moral double-bind, the reliability of conscience if it (...) is shaped by local custom, and modern opposition to the idea of conscience and its role in legislation. (shrink)

Stakeholder theorists have generally misunderstood the nature and ramifications of the fiduciary responsibilities that corporate directors owe their stockholders. This fiduciary duty requires the exercise of care, loyalty, and honesty with regard to the financial interests of stockholders. Such obligations do not conflict with the normative goals of stakeholder theory, nor, after a century of case law that includes Dodge Bros. v. Ford, do fiduciary responsibilities owed shareholders prevent managerial policies that are generous orsensitive to other corporate stakeholders. The common (...) law recognizes a multitude of legal relationships between various corporateconstituents, and fiduciary duties are only a subset of the obligations that arise from these relationships. This article argues that statuteand case law can bring comparable legal protection to constituents other than stockholders, and suggests ways that these protectionsmight be further strengthened. Implications for management education are also discussed. (shrink)

The classical social theorist Emile Durkheim proposed the counterintuitive thesis that crime is beneficial for society because it provokes punishment, which enhances social solidarity. His logic, however, is blemished by a reified view of society that leads to group-selectionist thinking and a teleological account of the causes of crime. Reconceptualization of the relationship between crime and punishment in terms of evolutionary game theory, however, suggests that crime (cheating) may confer benefits on cooperating individuals by promoting stability in their patterns of (...) cooperation. (shrink)

Richard Tieszen presents an analysis, development, and defense of a number of central ideas in Kurt Gödel's writings on the philosophy and foundations of mathematics and logic. Tieszen structures the argument around Gödel's three philosophical heroes - Plato, Leibniz, and Husserl - and his engagement with Kant, and supplements close readings of Gödel's texts on foundations with materials from Gödel's Nachlass and from Hao Wang's discussions with Gödel. He provides discussions of Gödel's views, and develops a new type of (...) platonic rationalism that requires rational intuition, called 'constituted platonism'. (shrink)

This book provides ways of thinking about information and the new responsibilities engendered by its acquisition, processing, storing, dissemination and use. It offers a set of concepts, methods, arguments and illustrations designed to sharpen the reader's ethical focus. Organized into three sections, the first provides a conceptual background for the book as a whole. The second part focuses on fundamental concepts about ethics and includes descriptions of the process of ethical thinking and a range of theories and principles that can (...) be used in ethical situations. In the final part, the concepts of information and the need for ethics and ethical thinking are applied to the various levels of the social system to which they. (shrink)

Tracking representationalism explains the negative affective character of pain, and its capacity to motivate action, by reference to the representation of the badness for us of bodily damage. I argue that there is a more fitting instantiation of the tracking relation – the badness for us of extremely intense stimuli – and use this to motivate a non-reductive approach to the negative affective character of pain. The view of pain proposed here is supported by consideration of three related topics: the (...) pain caused when the body is damaged, reparative pain, and the messenger-shooting objection to tracking representationalism. (shrink)

This article responds to a recent empirical study by De Brigard and Weijers on intuitions about the experience machine and what it tells us about hedonism.

The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave (...) eroticism its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education. (shrink)

A generation ago, the field of business ethics largely abandoned analyzing the broader issue of social justice to focus upon more micro concerns. Donaldson applied the social contract tradition of Locke and Rawls to the ethics of management decision-making, and with Dunfee, has advanced this project ever since. Current events suggest that if the field is to remain relevant it needs to return to examining social and economic fairness, and Rawl's approach to social contracting suggests a way to start. First, (...) however, the field needs to discard the weaker and counterproductive aspects of its Lockean legacy: Locke's hostility to government activism and his indifference with regard to outcomes for the bulk of society. Donaldson's and Dunfee's social contracting approach is not suited to, nor was it designed to, analyze or resolve broad issues of social and economic justice. Their postulated network of communities upon which they rely is problematic in a number of ways, and while they take the legal and political status quo into account, their method does not deal with the historical reality that, as the economic and social environment changes, promoting greater justice requires new and sometimes coercive government interventions. Rawls's work, however, does acknowledge the historically demonstrable necessity of using the power of government to help to achieve desirable social outcomes. While he rejected Mill's methodology, Rawls was inspired by the earlier philosopher's concerns for social justice at a time of major economic change. The field would do well to follow the example of both men in this respect. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that selection history accounts of function can support a fully reductive naturalization of functional properties. I argue that this assumption is false. A problem with the alternative causal role account of function in this context is that it invokes the teleological notion of a goal in analysing real function. The selection history account, if it is to have reductive status, must not do the same. But attention to certain cases of selection history in biology, specifically those (...) involving meiotic drive, shows that selection historical explanations are available in the case of items without any plausible function. Making contributions to goals, here fitness, must be introduced as an additional constraint in the analysis, either explicitly, or implicitly by appeal to individual functions or the selection-of/selection-for distinction. (shrink)

: A standard interpretation of Kantian "maxims" sees them as expressing reasons for action, implying that we cannot act without a maxim. But recent challenges to this interpretation claim that Kant viewed acting on maxims as optional. Kant's understanding of maxims derives from Christian Wolff, who regarded maxims as major premises of the practical syllogism. This supports the standard interpretation. Yet Kant also viewed commitments to maxims as essential for virtue and character development, which supports challenges to the standard interpretation, (...) and raises questions about the coherence of Kant's overall conception of the role of maxims in practical philosophy. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a unique exploration of the development of moral conscience over 2500 years, from the playwrights of classical Greece to the present. His virtuoso study of the development of pagan, Christian, and secular conceptions of conscience culminates in a consideration of the nature, value, and role of conscience today.

Some of the most important developments of symbolic logic took place in the 1920s. Foremost among them are the distinction between syntax and semantics and the formulation of questions of completeness and decidability of logical systems. David Hilbert and his students played a very important part in these developments. Their contributions can be traced to unpublished lecture notes and other manuscripts by Hilbert and Bernays dating to the period 1917-1923. The aim of this paper is to describe these results, focussing (...) primarily on propositional logic, and to put them in their historical context. It is argued that truth-value semantics, syntactic ("Post-") and semantic completeness, decidability, and other results were first obtained by Hilbert and Bernays in 1918, and that Bernays's role in their discovery and the subsequent development of mathematical logic is much greater than has so far been acknowledged. (shrink)

Richard Sylvan died suddenly at the age of 60, when he had just completed this major text. But though this volume is the mature expression of one of our foremost modern philosophers, it remains, like all his work, pioneering, eclectic and controversial. Sylvan's theory of 'plurallism', the culmination of his life's work, is the subject of this important text. In his own characteristically provocative words, 'There is not merely a plurality of correct theories and more or less satisfactory worldviews: (...) there is a corresponding plurality of actual worlds. Plurality penetrates deeper in full plurallism than linguistic surface or than conceptual or theoretical structure, to worlds...There is no single fact of the matter, there are facts and matters.'. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman; Aesthetic Experience: From Analysis to Eros, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 64, Issue 2, 18 April 2005, Pages 217–229.

The normative power of consent plays a central role in enabling individuals to permissibly interact with one another. However, in the philosophical literature, the relationship between consent and permissible action is not always well understood. In this article I outline an account of the normative effect of valid consent, in order to clarify this relationship. I first argue that consent’s primary moral significance lies in its effect upon our interpersonal moral relationships. Specifically, I argue that valid consent serves to cancel (...) a directed duty owed to the consenter. Other things being equal, this equips the consentee with a directed permission: they will no longer wrong the consenter by acting in the consented to manner. However, this account does not yet explain how consent impacts upon the all things considered permissibility of an action. On the assumption that all things considered permissibility is a function of an agent’s reasons for action, we require an account of consent’s effect on those reasons. I consider, and then reject, Michelle Dempsey’s recent suggestion that consent affects a consentee’s reasons for action by granting them an exclusionary permission. I propose that we should instead understand consent to function as a cancelling permission. (shrink)

"This interesting volume of essays on contemporary religion and its ambivalent relationship to modernity not only serves as a testimony to the intellectual influence of Robert Bellah, it establishes a new school of comparative religious and social thought. This Bellahian school--at the intersection of sociological, theological, and contemporary philosophical thinking--has roots in Durkheim and Weber, borrows insights from Marx, Foucault, and Bourdieu, and finds its clearest voice in the writings of Bellah himself. The essays by some of Bellah's colleagues and (...) former students that have been gathered in this volume address some of the most sagacious of these Bellahian themes: the religious dimension of contemporary civil societies, the relationship between religious and capitalist values, the cultural critique of modernity, and the moral visions that hold a promise of civic renewal."—Mark Juergensmeyer, author of Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (California, 2000). "This highly readable collection of original, thought-provoking essays by leading scholars provides fresh insights into the issues that Robert Bellah has addressed so fruitfully in his long career. Readers will learn much about such issues as how Calvinism contributed to political revolution, why democracies require an enlarged sense of political community, how the religious foundations of Japan and the United States differ, and what it means to be a Christian and an American."—Benton Johnson, coauthor of Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Protestant Baby Boomers (1994) and author of Functionalism in Modern Sociology: Understanding Talcott Parsons (1975). (shrink)

Wijdicks and colleagues1 recently presented the Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)2 in the evaluation of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients. They studied 120 patients in an intensive care setting (mainly neuro-intensive care) and claimed that “the FOUR score detects a locked-in syndrome, as well as the presence of a vegetative state.”1 We fully agree that the FOUR is advantageous in identifying locked-in patients given that it specifically tests for eye movements (...) or blinking on command. This is welcomed given that misdiagnosis of the locked-in syndrome has been shown to occur in more than half of the cases (see Laureys and colleagues3 for review). As for the diagnosis of the vegetative state, the scale explicitly tests for visual pursuit, and hence can disentangle the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state (MCS). The diagnostic criteria for MCS have been proposed4 only recently, but Wijdicks and colleagues1 do not mention the existence of this clinical entity in their article. As for the vegetative state, MCS can be encountered in the acute or subacute setting as a transitional state on the way to further recovery, or it can be a more chronic or even permanent condition. The MCS refers to patients showing inconsistent, albeit clearly discernible, minimal behavioral evidence of consciousness (eg, localization of noxious stimuli, eye fixation or tracking, reproducible movement to command, or nonfunctional verbalization).4 The FOUR scale does not test for all of the behavioral criteria required to diagnose MCS.4 It is known from the literature (see Majerus and colleagues5 for review) that about a third of patients diagnosed with vegetative state are actually in MCS, and this misdiagnosis can lead to major clinical, therapeutic, and ethical consequences. We tested the ability of the newly proposed FOUR scale to correctly diagnose the vegetative state in an acute (intensive care and neurology ward) and chronic (neurorehabilitation) setting.. (shrink)

Why is it that some business managers appear to behave differently in private and at work? How, if at all, are the decisions managers make affected by the nature of their organisations? What impact do organisational values have on the moral autonomy of managers? A research project into these questions is now under way in three disparate Australian business firms and this paper sets out the premise underlying it. For purposes of research the general premise is that the moral character (...) of a business influences the moral judgements and actions of its members. More specifically, it is suggested that the economic paradigm renders a business organisation amoral rather than moral or immoral, and as a result moral responsibility comes to be assigned to individual members. However, the socio-cultural nature of such firms interferes with the ability of managers to exercise moral autonomy. Governed as it is by the market or laws of economics, the amoral organisation is likely to transform its members into individuals without moral standards. (shrink)

Chakras are a basic concept of yoga but typically are ignored by scientific research on yoga, probably because descriptions of chakras can appear like a fanciful mythology. Chakras are commonly considered to be centers of concentrated metaphysical energy. Although clear physiological effects exist for yoga practices, no explanation of how chakras influence physiological function has been broadly accepted either in the scientific community or among yoga scholars. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that yoga is based on subjective experience, (...) and practitioners often shun objective descriptions. This essay builds on earlier work hypothesizing that intercellular gap junction connections provide a physiological mechanism underlying subtle energy systems described in yoga as well as other disciplines such as acupuncture. Three physical aspects of chakras are distinguished that are integrated through gap junction mechanisms and are proposed to have arisen during embryological development. Furthermore, electrical conductance associated with a high concentration of gap junctions could generate phenomena that, when subjectively experienced, have the radiant qualities attributed to chakras. This theory provides a scientific rationale for previously unexplained details of chakra theory and offers a new orientation to conceptualizing and studying such subjective phenomena. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s remark to Drury that he looks at philosophical problems from a religious point of view has greatly puzzled commentators. The paper argues that the readings given by commentators Malcolm, Winch and Lebron are illuminating, but inadequate. Second, using Wittgenstein’s “use-conception of meaning” as an example, the paper proposes a more adequate reading that emphasizes Wittgenstein’s view that “nothing is hidden”. In this connection, the paper examines Fodor’s critique of Wittgenstein’s “use-conception” and shows how Fodor only refutes a “misuse-conception meaning” (...) because he presupposes a kind of linguistic meaning, the kind that Wittgenstein emphasizes, that is “already before his eyes”. Wittgenstein’s view that the truth is already before one’s eyes is further explained by employing an ethical analogy with Raskolnikov’s enlightenment in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Finally, the paper addresses the difficult question whether Wittgenstein is, despite his own denials, “a religious man”, and argues that there is a non-trivial religious dimension in Wittgenstein’s life but that there are several important senses in which Wittgenstein is correct that he is not a religious person. (shrink)

Discusses Soren Kierkegaard's use of irrationality in his pseudonymous writings to bolster important truths about rationality.

The article argues that religious fundamentalism, understood, roughly, as the view that people must obey God's commands unconditionally, is conceptually incoherent because such religious fundamentalists inevitably must substitute human judgement for God's judgement. The article argues, first, that fundamentalism, founded upon the normal sort of indirect communications from God, is indefensible. Second, the article considers the crucial case in which God is said to communicate directly to human beings, and argues that the fundamentalist interpretation of such communications is also incoherent, (...) and, on this basis, argues that religious fundamentalism is actually an extreme form of irreligiousness. Finally, the article considers Kierkegaard's prima facie defence of unconditional religious faith, and argues that, despite some similarity with the fundamentalists, Kierkegaard's appreciation of human finitude leads him to a profoundly anti-fundamentalist stance. (shrink)

. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity, existing because of histories of conflicts of interest and arising as outcomes of the complexity of social interactions in groups of long‐lived individuals with varying conflicts and confluences of interest and indefinitely iterated social interactions. Although morality is commonly defined as involving justice for all people, or consistency in the social treatment of all humans, it may have arisen for immoral reasons, as a force leading to cohesiveness within human groups (...) but specifically excluding and directed against other human groups with different interests. (shrink)