Contemporary theoretical physics is divided into diversified theories of different phenomena. These are characteristically frameworks for giving mathematical descriptions of perceptions, in the absence of understandable explanations or a unified worldview. This is not an optimal state of affairs, for people by nature desire to understand; this sets a major obstacle for an optimal progress rate of physics, for understandable explanations are more prolific of new predictions and applications than non-understandable explanations. Disunification in physics can be remedied only (...) by discovering an understandable ontology and applying it as the basis of unifying explanations of phenomena that were earlier explained by different theories. Due to disunified physics and the nature of traditional analysis in philosophy, there is no consensus about central concepts such as time, possibility and truth. It is suggested that philosophical analysis would be more prolific of understandable and applicable concepts, were it complemented by a method of unification. (shrink)

Science and philosophy study well-being with different but complementary methods. Marry these methods and a new picture emerges: To have well-being is to be "stuck" in a positive cycle of emotions, attitudes, traits and success. This book unites the scientific and philosophical worldviews into a powerful new theory of well-being.

The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that promised to contribute (...) to the realization of an enlightened, rational and science-oriented society and culture. The Manifesto was not the only „scientific world-conception“ that philosophers and scientists put forward in the 1920s. Also the scientific world-conception of the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, and the Weltanschauung of Sigmund Freud deserve to be mentioned. Still other examples of are Carnap’s Scientific Humanism and the project of The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science which was related to American pragmatism as well, as is shown by Charles W. Morris and others. Forgotten for a long time, since the beginning of the 21rst century, at least some of the Viennese projects are reconsidered in a new wave of „socially engaged philosophy of science”. (shrink)

Arguments about the relationship between science and religion often proceed by identifying a set of essential characteristics of scientific and religious worldviews and arguing on the basis of these characteristics for claims about a relationship of conflict or compatibility between them. Such a strategy is doomed to failure because science, to some extent, and religion, to a much larger extent, are cultural phenomena that are too diverse in their expressions to be characterized in terms of a unified worldview. (...) In this paper I follow a different strategy. Having offered a loose characterization of the nature of science, I pose five questions about specific areas where religious and scientific worldviews may conflict - questions about the nature of faith, the belief in a God or Gods, the authority of sacred texts, the relationship between scientific and religious conceptions of the mind/soul, and the relationship between scientific and religious understandings of moral behavior. My review of these questions will show that they cannot be answered unequivocally because there is no agreement amongst religious believers as to the meaning of important religious concepts. Thus, whether scientific and religious worldviews conflict depends essentially upon whose science and whose religion one is considering. In closing, I consider the implications of this conundrum for science education. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that despite the philosophical, theological and cultural challenges, it is still possible to maintain, in a legitimate and critical way, a worldview that is coherent, unified, comprehensive and meaningful. I believe that the philosophical theology of KarlRahner offers just such a perspective. Hence, this paper explored the extent to which Karl Rahner’s understanding of the unity of matterand spirit, expressed in his integration of theology and evolution, can serve as the foundation for a (...) more comprehensive and integratedunderstanding of reality. I endeavored to provide a preliminary assessment of the adequacy of this integration by evaluating its abilityto respond to some of the important challenges to Christian theism raised by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett. By showingthat Rahner’s integration of theology and evolution can respond adequately to these challenges, the paper provides a promising firststep toward a more comprehensive investigation. (shrink)

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu is known for his critical contribution to Buddhist Abhidharma thought, his turn to the Mahayana tradition, and his concise, influential Yogacara-Vijñanavada texts. _Paving the Great Way_ reveals another dimension of his legacy: his integration of several seemingly incompatible intellectual and scriptural traditions, with far-ranging consequences for the development of Buddhist epistemology and the theorization of tantra. Most scholars read Vasubandhu's texts in isolation and separate his intellectual development into distinct phases. Featuring close studies of Vasubandhu's (...) _Abhidharmakosabhasya_, _Vyakhyayukti_, _Vimsatika_, and _Trisvabhavanirdesa_, among other works, this book identifies recurrent treatments of causality and scriptural interpretation that unify distinct strands of thought under a single, coherent Buddhist philosophy. In Vasubandhu's hands, the Buddha's rejection of the self as a false construction provides a framework through which to clarify problematic philosophical issues, such as the nature of moral agency and subjectivity under a broadly causal worldview. Recognizing this continuity of purpose across Vasubandhu's diverse corpus recasts the interests of the philosopher and his truly innovative vision, which influenced Buddhist thought for a millennium and continues to resonate with today's philosophical issues. An appendix includes extensive English-language translations of the major texts discussed. (shrink)

The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for (...) beauty at the semantic level). By the 13th Century in the West, the pleasure experienced in beauty is characterized as disinterested. Yet, on the basis that all cultural manifestations of the pythagorean theory of beauty recognize that judgments of beauty are genuine judgments, we would want to say that judgments of beauty are lawful. In addition, from ancient times, up until after Kant, philosophers of beauty within this tradition recognize two kinds of beauty: a universal, unchanging beauty coexisting with a relative, dynamic beauty. These two kinds of beauty and the tensions discussed above, are reconciled and dissolved respectively, according to the metaphysical/religious commitments of the particular author. As yet, however, these features of beauty have not been reconciled within a physicalist worldview. This is what I set out to do. (shrink)

There is a dilemma facing mainstream environmental ethicists. One of our leading spokesmen, Holmes Rolston, III, offers a rich ethical position, but one that lacks internal connections between principles relevant to the environment and principles relevant to human society. These principles are just different; thus no higher-order guidance is available to cope with cases of conflict between them. A second major spokesman, Baird Callicott, recommends a "land ethics" that is internally coherent but sadly inadequate for addressing many distinctly human ethical (...) concerns. To escape this dilemma I advocate an alternative worldview, "Personalistic Organicism." On this view, inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, a continuum of values, pervading the universe, can undergird a unified ethics in which human persons are recognized as especially valuable without rupturing the continuities that bind humanity to the rest of the living (and nonliving) environment. (shrink)

There is a dilemma facing mainstream environmental ethicists. One of our leading spokesmen, Holmes Rolston, III, offers a rich ethical position, but one that lacks internal connections between principles relevant to the environment and principles relevant to human society. These principles are just different; thus no higher-order guidance is available to cope with cases of conflict between them. A second major spokesman, Baird Callicott, recommends a "land ethics" that is internally coherent but sadly inadequate for addressing many distinctly human ethical (...) concerns. To escape this dilemma I advocate an alternative worldview, "Personalistic Organicism." On this view, inspired by Alfred North Whitehead, a continuum of values, pervading the universe, can undergird a unified ethics in which human persons are recognized as especially valuable without rupturing the continuities that bind humanity to the rest of the living environment. (shrink)

North American society has undergone a period of sacralization where ideas of spirituality have increasingly been infused into the public domain. This sacralization is particularly evident in the nursing discourse where it is common to find claims about the nature of persons as inherently spiritual, about what a spiritually healthy person looks like and about the environment as spiritually energetic and interconnected. Nursing theoretical thinking has also used claims about the nature of persons, health, and the environment to attempt to (...) establish a unified ontology for the discipline. However, despite this common ground, there has been little discussion about the intersections between nursing philosophic thinking and the spirituality in nursing discourse, or about the challenges of adopting a common view of these claims within a spiritually pluralist society. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the call for ontological unity within nursing philosophic thinking in the context of the sacralization of a diverse society. I will begin with a discussion of secularization and sacralization, illustrating the diversity of beliefs and experiences that characterize the current trend towards sacralization. I will then discuss the challenges of a unified ontological perspective, or closed world view, for this diversity, using examples from both a naturalistic and a unitary perspective. I will conclude by arguing for a unified approach within nursing ethics rather than nursing ontology. (shrink)

In this brief note, a concept of the ‘scientific worldview’ is examined. In particular, contrary to some of the most often misconceptions regarding the concept, it will be argued (1) that there cannot be a ‘scientific worldview’ in the traditional sense of a Weltanschauung if science is taken in its strictest sense, (2) that the remaining ontological and epistemic skeleton cannot be a single unified picture of the world (Weltbild), and (3) that the supposed ‘truth’ of these (...) remaining pictures cannot be unambiguously grounded either in the methodology of science, although the methodology itself can be explanatory and predictively adequate and successful, or in the technological success that is associated with science. (shrink)

As an answer to the humanistic, socially oriented critique of the information-processing paradigms used as a conceptual frame for library information science, this article formulates a broader and less objective concept of communication than that of the information-processing paradigm. Knowledge can be seen as the mental phenomenon that documents (combining signs into text, depending on the state of knowledge of the recipient) can cause through interpretation. The examination of these “correct circumstances” is an important part of information science. This article (...) represents the following developments in the concept of information: Information is understood as potential until somebody interprets it. The objective carriers of potential knowledge are signs. Signs need interpretation to release knowledge in the form of interpretants. Interpretation is based on the total semantic network, horizons, worldviews, and experience of the person, including the emotional and social aspects. The realm of meaning is rooted in social-historical as well as embodied evolutionary processes that go beyond computational algorithmically logic. The semantic network derives a decisive aspect of signification from a person’s embodied cultural worldview, which, in turn, derives from, develops, and has its roots in undefined tacit knowledge. To theoretically encompass both the computational and the semantic aspects of document classification and retrieval, we need to combine the cybernetic functionalistic approach with the semiotic pragmatic understanding of meaning as social and embodied. For such a marriage, it is necessary to go into the constructivistic secondorder cybernetics and autopoiesis theory of von Foerster, Maturana, and Luhmann, on the one hand, and the pragmatic triadic semiotics of Peirce in the form of the embodied Biosemiotics, on the other hand. This combination is what I call Cybersemiotics. (shrink)

Infinity and the Brain proposes a logical and scientific way to resolve the paradox of mind and matter -- by explaining how the perception of a finite image is dependent upon the contrasting infinitude of God. The theory holds that awareness is equal to a tension between existence and nonexistence, such that the self is illuminated to itself (becomes conscious) to the exact measure that it anticipates the infinitude of its own nonexistence. This "anticipation" is actually a "tendency toward" a (...) loss of structure in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, a process that is restrained by effort and the consequent wholesness of an image. An understanding of how effort is linked to an image and how both are dependent upon neural systems inseparable from "infinity anticipation" sets the stage for a new worldview -- in which mind is seen as dependent upon the immanence of an infinite God. And because "mind" can be defined by the presence of an image which intrinsically restrains disorder, we see by extrapolation that the entire universe must be fundamentally personal, not objective as currently viewed by modern science. Book jacket. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jan Patočka and Paul Ricoeur endured their own cognitive-spiritual crisis, particularly during the development and outbreak of war in the 1930s. Their philosophies of history are thus, on the one hand, born of a rethinking of modern philosophy from the time of Galileo and Descartes, and on the other, a suffering of crisis that Europe itself was suffering. Stemming from the historical and philosophical context of Husserl’s epistemology in the Krisis, both Ricoeur and Patočka had to (...) confront history and the decadence of European sciences, as it concerns the difficulty of remembering the past and describing events in history. These responses to the problem of modern philosophy and science in Europe point to the symptom of spiritual crisis due to ‘modern man’ having no unified worldview. By means of care of the soul and the challenging of the state in action, a hermeneutics of peace emerges from their spiritual crises. (shrink)

This book argues for a unified worldview of moral cosmology that will allow us to be truly at home in the universe, a view that was disrupted by the European Enlightenment. The author contends that a basic understanding of quantum physics and relative theory offers the widest possible background for the renewal of a moral cosmology.

In this article, after reviewing traditional arguments from design, I consider some more recent versions: the so-called ‘new design arguments’ for the existence of God. These arguments enjoy an apparent advantage over the traditional arguments from design by avoiding some of Hume’s famous criticisms. However, in seeking to render religion and science compatible, it seems that they require a modification not only of our scientific understanding but also of the traditional conception of God. Moreover, there is a key problem with (...) arguments from design that Mill raised to which the new arguments seem no less vulnerable than the older versions. The view that science and religion are complementary has at least one significant advantage over other positions, such as the view that they are in an antagonistic relationship or the view that they are so incommensurable that they are neither complementary nor antagonistic. The advantage is that it aspires to provide a unified worldview that is sensitive to the claims of both science and religion. And surely, such a worldview, if available, would seem to be superior to one in which, say, scientific and religious claims were held despite their obvious contradictions. Given this, it should come as no surprise that many religious thinkers have been attracted to the view that science and religion are complementary. Here, I wish to consider a cluster of arguments exemplifying this position: namely, ‘new design arguments’ for the existence of God. These arguments rely directly on developments in late twentieth-century natural science in attempting to establish their conclusions. One question that will need to be addressed is: To what extent are they susceptible to the criticism that they only succeed by distorting the religious beliefs they claim to champion? But before we examine new design arguments, it would be wise to consider first of 1 all the traditional arguments from design, and note some of the problems they have faced.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Edward MacKinnon BORIS PASTERNAK'S CONCEPTION OF REALISM To desire truth is to desire direct contact with a piece of reality. To desire contact with a piece of reality is to love. —Simone Weil, The Needfor Roots According to czeslaw milosz, Boris Pasternak "did not pluck fruits from the tree of reason, the tree of life was enough for him. Confronted by argument, he replied with his sacred dance." (...) Pasternak's poetry, he concludes, is "antispeculative, anti-intellectual," and though he was compelled to make certain concessions in the course of writing Doctor Zhivago, speculative thought nonetheless remained for him a perennial and decided "adversary." ' However, the familiar and conveniently stark distinction between lyricist and thinker upon which such judgments depend is in fact both naive and tiresome since, plainly, creativity and reflection need in no way necessarily subvert one another. Accordingly, while it is indeed likely that the most valued feature of Pasternak's poetry and best prose is its detailed recording ofthe world's incessant change, of the magic and movement of weather and gardens, seasons and landscapes, Milosz is far from just in so readily and categorically dismissing any attribution of poetic thought to Pasternak. For as much as the whole of his poetry amounts to a celebration of life's small wonders, unrivaled in their greatness, there remains at bottom the inspiration of the thinker, of one who has seen and felt, but who at the same time has had to compile and consider in an attempt to make sense of the whole. As if in open challenge to Milosz, CM. Bowra notes that Pasternak's poetic sensibility is "both physical and intellectual." The mental states described in his poems, Bowra writes, "begin with sensations of the eye and ear but contain something else in their mental appreciation of the 211 212Philosophy and Literature situation," namely, his "gift for grasping abstract problems." 2 If Milosz remains unconvinced, and if Wladimir Weidle dismisses Pasternak's poetic thought as "puny and piteous," still more poets and critics have shared Bowra's view.3 Henry Gifford refers to Pasternak's "philosophical habit of mind," Ronald Hingley to the "pyrotechnics" ofhis "darting intellect," and Yury Lotman to his personal and "thoroughly professional philosophical culture." 4 In her review ofPasternak's My Sister, Life, meanwhile, Marina Tsvetaeva observes that "thought is what works in him, burrows in subterranean passages...." 5 And though Nadezhda Mandelstamclaims that the word of all poets "flows from a general, integrated view of the world," she acknowledges too that poets "vary in the range and depth of their understanding" and proceeds to cite Pasternak as her one example of a poet with a particularly unified worldview.6 If we were to agree with Francis Sparshott that "the fiercest hatreds spring from the closest relationships," we could assume in turn that the fundamental antagonism customarily alleged to obtain between the creative and critical faculties in fact indicates only some common, if confused, origin or inspiration.7 In creating, after all, it is predictable rather than idiosyncratic that the artist will be led to investigate the roots ofart within himself, tiiat he will be tempted by the urge to define, to entertain, that is, some rudimentary theory. And indeed, in Pasternak 's case, it is not simply a matter of his poetry and prose having been informed by certain tacit, if stray, aesthetic conceptions, but rather of his having supplemented his intensely thoughtful artwith aconcurrently developed theory. In this article, I want specifically to consider Pasternak's conception of realism, that standard of achievement which, according to his theory, constitutes the touchstone of all great art. In order more firmly to ground this notoriously vague and unwieldy notion, I will appeal not only to complementary theoretical conceptions of Pasternak's, but also to those central ideas advanced by Iris Murdoch in The Sovereignty of Good. My intention will be to locate Pasternak's brand of realism within what I take to be an identifiable tradition, or at least a conspicuous and pervasive theoretical tendency, according to which the most crucial criterion of artistic realism is judged to be not any properly physical aspect ofthe completed work, and certainly... (shrink)

People often have beliefs that are widely regarded as silly by the experts or by the general population. This leads us to ask why believers believe silly things if they are widely thought to be silly, and then why believers believe the specific things they do. I propose that silly beliefs function as in-group and out-group tribal markers. Such markers act as an honest costly signal; honest and costly because such beliefs are hard to fake. Then I offer a developmentalist (...) account of belief formation, in which beliefs are seen to be the result of a process of acquiring beliefs as cheaply and effectively as possible, leading to a reluctance to abandon early core beliefs later in life. Then I consider whether beliefs even can form a unified worldview, and ask how conversion occurs within the developmental characterization I propose. Finally, I consider how this may play out in terms of crises of faith. (shrink)

The late nineteenth century was not only a time in which religious faith was questioned in light of increasing claims of natural science. It is more accurate to see the familiar Victorian crisis of faith as but one aspect of a larger historical phenomenon, one in which the methods of both religion and science came under scrutiny. Among several examinations of the status of scientific knowledge in the waning decades of the century, the treatment of the subject by the German (...) theologian Wilhelm Herrmann and philosopher Hans Vaihinger rejected its objective nature and denied that either scientists or theologians had access to the truth of nature. Although this stance regarding the nature of science, religion, and their relationship was limited to intellectuals in German society at the time, it foreshadowed developments in our own day in which the traditional search for truth has been problematized. (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)

How do we inferentially unify separately acquired empirical information into a single comprehensive picture of the lives of persistent particulars? This paper argues that hidden in such inferences is a Fregean puzzle that can only be solved by individuating our demonstratives thoughts in terms of object-dependent Fregean Senses. I begin by characterizing some constraints on a non-skeptical account of our inferential unification of empirical information. I then go on to show that traditional Fregean views of Sense cannot explain the rationality (...) of such inferences; the consequence of which would be widespread skepticism concerning fundamental aspects of our empirical worldview. I show how the theory of object-dependent Senses can account for the rationality of the puzzling inferences. Lastly, I consider the alternative that we abandon a Fregean explanation of the rationality of inferences. While not fully dismissing that option, I briefly raise, what I take to be, a daunting challenge that uniquely faces non-Fregean views of rational inference. (shrink)

The production of knowledge should be premised on the inclusion of all epistemologies to provide possibilities to build a more just world. However, knowledge production, as we have it today, is premised on Western epistemology which is used to distil other knowledges before they could be accepted as legitimate. This approach stifles possibilities to find different ways of knowing that could contribute to imagining the world anew. There is a need, therefore, to unthink the West such that we find other (...) ways to understand the world. The article helps in unthinking the West to allow an authentic understanding of the indigenous people of South Africa. I argue that the ontology of AmaZulu – one of the indigenous groups in South Africa – is an ethic-orientated ontology that is expressed through the concept of ukukhonza – a process where one surrenders their identity in order to belong to the group (this can also refer to worship). In ukukhonza, the surrendering of one’s identity is to ensure harmonious living centred on a common identity that is unified by the principles of ubuntu. Drawing on the nuances of ukukhonza, this article argues that the ontology of AmaZulu is centred on respecting life in its different forms because it is believed that everything is interconnected. This understanding of life provides a different conceptualisation of God which anchors the religion that is practised everyday such that doing good is inescapable. This is an ethic-oriented ontology which when brought forth in its authentic form can address the many ills of modern society.Contribution: This is the conceptual article that contributes to rethinking religion from an African perspective to provide a possibility of an ethic-centred society that can inform the new ways of being in the world. (shrink)

The main goal of this article is to explain the transdisciplinary training model developed at the National University of Education in Ecuador, based on the ancestral worldviews of Buen Vivir. Good Living is a philosophical and political concept of the Kichwa indigenous peoples in the Andean Region, where human beings are interconnected with planet Earth and the whole cosmos. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its Constitution, in order to (...) face climate change and to restore the ecological footprint. This article first unifies scientific knowledge with ancestral wisdom, creating an inter-epistemological dialogue using a transdisciplinary approach. Second, the article explores the epistemological notions of transdisciplinary education: self-training, hetero-training, eco-training, and onto-training. Third, the article argues that as a result, Educational Sciences of Good Living emerged to design regenerative cultures that face socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene age. In sum, the article argues that training transdisciplinary educators implies an intercultural, decolonial, and biocentric approach that promotes their inner spiritual self-awareness, among other perceptive, affective, emotional, rhetorical, poetic, epistemic, creative, artistic, cognitive, and philosophical dimensions. (shrink)

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not (...) only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve. In his previous book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, The Beginning of Infinity is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind. (shrink)

Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes’s thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, (...) optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science—an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes’s philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes’s philosophy by thinkers such as René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes’s thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes’ metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes’s philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes’s philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes’s moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English. (shrink)

This book is the first complete intellectual biography of Hermann Cohen and the only work to cover all his major philosophical and Jewish writings. Frederick C. Beiser pays special attention to all phases of Cohen's intellectual development, its breaks and its continuities, throughout seven decades. The guiding goal behind Cohen's intellectual career, he argues, was the development of a radical rationalism, one committed to defending the rights of unending enquiry and unlimited criticism. Cohen's philosophy was therefore an attempt to defend (...) and revive the Enlightenment belief in the authority of reason; his critical idealism an attempt to justify this belief and to establish a purely rational worldview. According to this interpretation, Cohen's thought is resolutely opposed to any form of irrationalism or mysticism because these would impose arbitrary and artificial limits on criticism and enquiry. It is therefore critical of those interpretations which see Cohen's philosophy as a species of proto-existentialism or Jewish mysticism. Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography attempts to unify the two sides of Cohen's thought, his philosophy and his Judaism. Maintaining that Cohen's Judaism was not a limit to his radical rationalism but a consistent development of it, Beiser contends that his religion was one of reason. He concludes that most critical interpretations have failed to appreciate the philosophical depth and sophistication of his Judaism, a religion which committed the believer to the unending search for truth and the striving to achieve the cosmopolitan ideals of reason. (shrink)

The metaparadigm concept of person as a core emphasis for nursing theorizing has attracted considerable attention in western literature, but has received less attention in the context of eastern philosophical contexts. In this philosophical inquiry, we sought to clarify the concept of what it is to be a human being according to ideas deriving from Islamic tradition, drawing on concept analysis as general approach to advance an understanding of how nursing within an Islamic context might operationalize metaparadigm conceptualization. Specifically, we (...) considered person as human being on the basis of its definition, attributes/characteristics and boundaries to explore the anatomy of the concept in this context. Our analysis revealed that Islamic thought is relevant to two distinct understandings of the holistic concept of human being. Reciprocal interaction worldview organizes the dimensions of being human (cognitive, emotion, social and spiritual) into a whole. Simultaneous action worldview emphasizes that the human is a coherent and unified creature in harmony with the universe. In Islamic thought, these two worldviews are integrated and operate concurrently. Nurse–patient interactions arising from an integrated perspective that aligns both of these worldviews will allow for informed applications of knowledge to practice and enhanced patient care. (shrink)

The Evolutionary Synthesis is often seen as a unification process in evolutionary biology, one which provided this research area with a solid common theoretical foundation. As such, neo-Darwinism is believed to constitute from this time onward a single, coherent, and unified movement offering research guidelines for investigations. While this may be true if evolutionary biology is solely understood as centred around evolutionary mechanisms, an entirely different picture emerges once other aspects of the founding neo-Darwinists’ views are taken into consideration, (...) aspects potentially relevant to the elaboration of an evolutionary worldview: the tree of life, the ontological distinctions of the main cosmic entities , the inherent properties of self-organizing matter, evolutionary ethics, and so on. Profound tensions and inconsistencies are immediately revealed in the neo-Darwinian movement once this broader perspective is adopted. This pluralism is such that it is possible to identify at least three distinct and quasi-incommensurable epistemological/metaphysical frameworks as providing a proper foundation for neo-Darwinism. The analysis of the views of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Bernhard Rensch, and Ernst Mayr will illustrate this untenable pluralism, one which requires us to conceive of the neo-Darwinian research agenda as being conducted in more than one research programme or research tradition at the same time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the action of centripetal and centrifugal forces in utterances from the religious sphere, which reveal worldviews of the evangelical Christian segment regarding disability. For that, we selected a video available on YouTube, containing utterances by the hosts Tito Rocha and Leandro Quadros regarding disabilities, as well as the response of an internet user about the positioning of these individuals. The theoretical and methodological reflection is based on the dialogical orientation of language, considering dialogic relations, voices, and (...) centripetal and centrifugal forces. Additionally, we drew upon studies on worldviews, the inclusion of people with disabilities, religious discourse, and Christian theology. The results reveal that the discourses of the hosts reflect and refract a Christian worldview that unifies the understanding of disability due to divine punishment caused by sin. While the internet user’s comment presents movements of centralization and dispersion of this Christian perspective. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a family of responses to the evidential problem of evil. What unifies this family is two general claims. First, that even if God were to exist, we shouldn’t expect to see God’s reasons for permitting the suffering we observe. Second, the previous claim entails the failure of a variety of arguments from evil against the existence of God. In this essay, we identify three particular articulations of skeptical theism—three different ways of “filling in” those two claims—and describes (...) their role in responding to evidential arguments of evil due to William Rowe and Paul Draper. But skeptical theism has been subject to a variety of criticisms, several of which raise interesting issues and puzzles not just in philosophy of religion but other areas of philosophy as well. Consequently, we discuss some of these criticisms, partly with an eye to bringing out the connections between skeptical theism and current topics in mainstream philosophy. Finally, we conclude by situating skeptical theism within our own distinctive methodology for evaluating world views, what we call “worldview theory versioning.”. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy in the 20 th century was largely hostile territory to the self as traditionally conceived, and this tradition has been continued in two recent works: Mark Johnston’s Surviving Death , and Galen Strawson’s Selves . I have argued previously that it is perfectly possible to combine a naturalistic worldview with a conception of the self as a subject of experience , a thing whose only essential attribute is a capacity for unifi ed and continuous experience. I argue (...) here that this conception of the self is unthreatened by the otherwise valuable considerations advanced by Johnston and Strawson. Both are inclined to identify selves-at-times with momentary episodes of experience (or centres or ‘arenas’ of consciousness). Both go on to argue, albeit in diff erent ways, that individual selves cannot extend beyond the confi nes of these brief episodes. However, in so doing they give insuffi cient weight to an important phenomenological datum: the continuity of our ordinary experience. When the latter is recognized, and appropriately understood, it provides us with a secure basis upon which a more recognizable conception of the self can be constructed. (shrink)

While studies on contextual coitus verses interpretations have been explored by many scholars, there is a paucity of research addressing the theme holistically and spotlighting the aspects of moral ethics of its communication. To fill this lacuna, this study aims to analyse the communication ethics of coitus words in the Qur’an. Two main questions are discussed in this study. Firstly, what is the semantic meaning of coitus in the Qur’an? Secondly, why does the Qur’an employ certain terminologies to convey the (...) topic of coitus? This study applies a case study design to analyse the word ‘coitus’ in the verses of the Qur’an holistically. The results show that the Qur’an utilises 12 keywords related to coitus for the purpose of fostering the communication ethics of the Arab community at the time of revelation. Moreover, this study found that the Qur’an uses those specific keywords to respond to the sexual behaviour of pre-Islamic Arab community, narration of eroticism in other scriptures and gender inequality in sexuality. This study resolves that the words of ‘coitus’ in the Qur’an have implications for the emergence of Quranic communication ethics, which respects the aspects of comprehensiveness, politeness, analogy, aesthetics, intensity and gender equality. These six aspects form sexual communication ethics that are probed from a humanist perspective.Contribution: This article contends to unify the concept of theology and the principles of communication ethics. In particular, this study provides a theoretical contribution to the ethics of sexual communication that is sourced from the worldview of Qur’anic theology. Also, the methodology of this study can be a prototype of semantic analysis research that discusses certain topics and spot important keywords around that topic. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein (2015) argues explicitly that analytic social metaphysics, provided its account of ontological ‘grounding’ is repaired in specific ways, can rescue social science from explanatory impasses into which he thinks it has fallen. This version of analytic social ontology thus directly competes with radically naturalistic alternatives, in a way that (...) helps to clarify what makes some metaphysics genuinely scientific (that is, part of the scientific enterprise and worldview). I consider this competition, marshal considerations against the value to social science of analytic metaphysics, and sketch a contrasting scientific metaphysics for understanding the implications of revisionist social ontology in unified scientific ontology. (shrink)

A communitarian perspective, which is characteristic of African normative thought, accords some kind of primacy to society or a group, whereas human rights are by definition duties that others have to treat individuals in certain ways, even when not doing so would be better for others. Is there any place for human rights in an Afro-communitarian political and legal philosophy, and, if so, what is it? I seek to answer these questions, in part by critically exploring one of the most (...) influential theoretical works on human rights in a sub-Saharan setting, namely, Claude Ake’s ‘The African Context of Human Rights’. Ake famously maintains that a typically Western approach to rights is inappropriate in the sub-Saharan region, in two major respects. First, Ake contends that although a human rights legal framework might be suitable for an ‘individualistic’ society, it is not for one of the sort common among traditional black peoples, for whom group rights are alone apt. Second, Ake maintains that, insofar as rights are relevant, rights to socio-economic goods are of much more importance in an African context than rights to civil liberties, due process and the like. Using Ake’s article as a foil, I draw on values salient in sub-Saharan moral worldviews to construct a unified philosophy of rights that not only provides reason to doubt his two claims, but also offers a promising way to reconcile a communitarian framework with a robust prizing of human rights alongside ones that are more collectively oriented. In short, I aim to provide a principled foundation for the core elements of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel by Thomas A. LewisVincent LloydReligion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel THOMAS A. LEWIS Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 277 pp. $135Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel explicates Hegel’s account of religion and contends that Hegel offers important insights for contemporary conversations in religious studies. Specifically, Thomas Lewis argues in this book that Hegel’s thought enriches discussions regarding the relationship between philosophy and (...) religion, religious pluralism, the meaning of tradition, and the concept of religion itself.Lewis is careful and reasonable in his explication of Hegelian texts, cognizant of recent scholarship on Hegel in both English and German, but also attentive [End Page 226] to Hegel’s location in German political history and the history of ideas. The young Hegel, we learn, was primarily a social theorist and not a philosopher. Concerned with social fragmentation in the context of the late Holy Roman Empire, Hegel saw religion as a means to unify. He understood civil religion (not just philosophy or natural religion) as capable of engaging the imagination in a way that motivates people to act in line with reason and so to act morally. In Hegel’s mature thought, religion is integrated into his broader philosophical system; it is an entry point into the dialectical movement beyond immediacy. Yet Hegel continues to think that religion inculcates crucial intuitions about what matters most to us as we live together. While some philosophers have recently emphasized Hegel’s deep debt to Kant, others hold that Hegel’s account of religion demonstrates his distance from Kant. For Lewis, Hegel’s account of religion, as the entwined beliefs and practices representing a community’s sensibilities, demonstrates his close relation to Kant and his continuing struggle to bring together sensibility and understanding, worldly objects, and human thoughts.Lewis occasionally ventures beyond the explication of Hegel, although these forays sometimes feel brief and thin. Like Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout, Lewis presents Hegel’s view of religion as essentially mixing—or synthesizing—history, narrative, community, and identity. Lewis understands Stout to be in agreement with Hegel, extending Hegel’s account of religious tradition to include the broader array of traditions that we encounter in the contemporary world. He suggests that Hauerwas could learn to better appreciate religion’s conceptual aspect from Hegel. Hegel and MacIntyre share what might seem to be a Christian triumphalism, but Lewis reads this more sympathetically as a self-awareness that rejects relativism. They both argue that (certain versions of) Christianity can account for the insights of other worldviews and can address contradictions in those other worldviews. But MacIntyre requires that such judgments be based on deep knowledge of two traditions in a comparison; Hegel paints non-Protestant traditions with very broad strokes. Indeed, this is the point where Lewis himself is the most critical of Hegel. He charges that Hegel’s attempt to survey all major world religions (in his account of “determinate religion”) is overly ambitious, and he argues that Hegel would be more successful had he detached this survey from his argument for Christianity’s status as the “consummate religion.” Hegel’s conception of consummate religion should be understood more broadly, Lewis argues, to include nonreligious beliefs and practices, such as civic education, that reflect the spirit of a community.Lewis claims that Hegel complicates the supposed Protestant bias of religious studies scholarship with its focus on belief at the expense of practice. Although unequivocally Protestant, Hegel’s approach to religion emphasizes the inextricability of practice and belief. But what was Hegel’s approach? Was it an [End Page 227] alternative Protestant tradition? Was it a theological movement or simply a philosophical one? Further, it is unclear whether Lewis’s Hegel would find any use for religious ethics other than as an idiom for ethical reflection suited to those who are not capable of advancing to philosophical heights.Vincent LloydSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Proceeding from the thesis of Remi Bragues, that Europe constantly attains its identity in contras and via delimitation, this article describes the Catholic and Protestant concept of Europe which was developed in the 19th century: Both agree in the rejection of Enlightenment ideals, and yet pursue different interests: While the Catholic line strives toward integration by means of the Church, Protestantism relies upon the nation state. These two lines can be understood as blueprints of current controversies: How is the relationship (...) between the nation state and the European Union to be determined? Does Europe need a unifying basis of values? Finally, the article makes a case for integration by means of seeking a common law which is open to different national and worldview traditions, and for seeing the independent profile of Europe in such secular law. (shrink)

Medical Humanities the journal started life in 2000 as a special edition of the JME. However, the intellectual taproots of the medical humanities as a field of enquiry can be traced to two developments: calls made in the 1920s for the development of multidisciplinary perspectives on the sciences that shed historical light on their assumptions, methods and practices; refusals to assimilate all medical phenomena to a biomedical worldview. Medical humanities the term stems from a desire to situate the significance (...) of medicine as a product of culture. But despite growing usage over half a century the term defies a unifying encapsulation and continues to conjure up a multitude of discourse communities, including scholars working at the interfaces of health and humanities, arts and health, and medical education and bioethics. The field is intellectually capacious and polymorphous, forming and reforming around critical new research questions and teaching tasks spanning disciplines. (shrink)

This book begins with standard ontological topics--such as the nature of existence--and of metaphysics generally, such as the status of universals, form, and accidents. What is the proper subject matter of metaphysical speculation? Are essence and existence really distinct in bodies? Does the body lose its unifying form at death? Can an accident of a substance exist in separation from that substance? Are universals real, and, if so, are they anything more than general concepts? Among the figures it examines are (...) Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, John Buridan, Dietrich of Freiburg, Robert Holcot, Walter Burley, and the 11th-century Islamic philosopher Ibn-Sina. There is also an emphasis on metaphysics broadly conceived. Thus, additional discussions of connected topics in medieval logic, epistemology, and language provide a fuller account of the range of ideas included in the later medieval worldview. (shrink)

The article dealt with the question of the ratio of Yuri Mamleev’s I-utrism to Tradition. The problem is in the contradiction between two positions, which Mamleev notes in different places of “The Destiny of Being” – a view of the I-utrism as a new approach within the framework of Tradition, and as going beyond it with the introduction of extraneous elements. Based on the connection between the I-utrism and the “Last Doctrine”, which clearly lies outside the Tradition, the author of (...) the article concludes that the I-utrism should not be considered as a new approach within the framework of the Tradition, but as an autonomous construction to it. According to the author, the I-utrism due to its own radicalism contains two key problems that lead not only to a break with Tradition but also to a violation of the inner integrity of Mamleev’s philosophy itself. These two problems are defined as the radicalization of the Vedanta formula “Atman = Brahman” and the absence of the figure of the Other. I-utrism forms unified I, which the author of the article proposes to call “I-total”, because it displaces everything but itself, including the classical concept of the Absolute. Hence the lack of a topos for Mamleev’s concepts such as “Abyss” and “Eternal Russia”. It is compounded by the prevention of the metaphysical event of the Other, which is especially important for the idea of a metaphysical and mysterious Russia that requires intersubjectivity. In the process of analyzing these problems and issues, the article compares the philosophical positions of Stirner and Mamleev, as well as addresses the topic of demonic I-utrism. After all, the author concludes that the I-utrism needs to be revised and softened. This would allow it to exist organically in the overall picture of Mamleev’s worldview and not lose touch with Tradition despite the inevitable exit from it. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present a philosophical worldview, specifically metaphysical. This is important precisely to obtain a generalist view of reality, at a time when philosophical discussions are becoming increasingly specialized. The metaphysical worldview presented here is a general perspective on time, space, matter, laws of nature, the mind and the normativity. In order to achieve such goal, (1) we will talk about the nature of philosophy and its relation to the construction of a (...) class='Hi'>worldview, (2) we will discuss some arguments to talk about the nature of the aforementioned entities, and (3) we will conclude by presenting a unified metaphysical worldview that takes these arguments into account. (shrink)

With reference to recently proposed theoretical models accounting for reduction in terms of a unified dynamics governing all physical processes, we analyze the problem of working out a worldview accommodating our knowledge about natural phenomena. We stress the relevant conceptual differences between the considered models and standard quantum mechanics. In spite of the fact that both theories describe systems within a genuine Hilbert space framework, the peculiar features of the spontaneous reduction models limit drastically the states which are (...) dynamically stable. This fact by itself allows one to work out an interpretation of the formalism which makes it possible to give a satisfactory description of the world in terms of the values taken by an appropriately defined mass density function in ordinary configuration space. A topology based on this function and which is radically different from the one characterizing the Hilbert space is introduced, and in terms of it the idea of similarity of macroscopic situations is precisely defined. Finally, the formalism and the interpretation are shown to yield a natural criterion for establishing the psychophysical parallelism. The conclusion is that, within the considered theories and at the nonrelativistic level, one can satisfy all sensible requirements for a completely satisfactory macro-objective description of reality. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to reconstruct Otto Neurath’s naturalistic program for practical philosophy. This program, which he calls “felicitology,” was intended as a version of ethics suitable for the “scientific worldview” of the logical empiricists. I begin by situating Neurath’s ethical concerns in the context of the debate between his fellow Austro-Marxists and the Marburg neo-Kantians. I then show why, contrary to many logical empiricists, Neurath thought that ethical considerations had an important role to play in scientific inquiry. (...) I argue that this conclusion follows from his contribution to the protocol-sentence debate of the early 1930s. Finally, I show how Neurath’s advocacy of unified science, democratic socialism, a world economy, and his method of visual learning all relate to his program for felicitology. (shrink)

Science does not exist in vacuum; it arises and works in context. Ground-breaking achievements transforming the scientific landscape often stem from philosophical thought, just as symbolic logic and computer science were born from the early analytic philosophy, and for the very reason they impact our global worldview as a coherent whole as well as local knowledge production in different specialised domains. Here we take first steps in elucidating rich philosophical contexts in which Samson Abramsky’s far-reaching work centring around categorical (...) science as a new kind of science may be placed, explicated, and articulated. We argue, inter alia, that Abramsky’s work, as a whole, may be construed as demonstrating the categorical unity of science, or rather the sciences, in a mathematically rigorous, down-to-earth manner, which has been a salient feature of his work. At the same time we trace his intellectual history, leading from duality, to intensionality, and to contextuality, and place it in a broader context of philosophy beyond the analytic-continental divide, namely towards the reintegration of them as in the post-analytic tradition. Besides, we address issues in philosophy of category theory, such as the foundational autonomy of category theory and the (presumably two) dogmas of set-theoretical foundationalism, which Abramsky actually touch upon in one of his few philosophically inclined works. As to philosophy of category theory, we also address categorical structuralism as higher-order structuralism, categorical epistemology as elucidating higher-order meta-laws, and categorical ontology as allowing for reduction of ontological commitment via structural realism, the structuralist resolution of Benaceraff’s dilemma, and the pluralistic multiverse view of science as opposed to the set-theoretical reductionist ‘universe’ view. We conclude by speculating about the existence of the Oxford School of (Pluralistic) Unified Science as opposed to the Vienna Circle of (Monistic) Unified Science and to the Stanford School of (Pluralistic) Disunified Science; Categorical Unified Science may potentially allow us to reconcile the two camps on the unity and disunity of science whilst doing justice to both of them. Categorical unity arguably allows for unification via epistemological and ontological networking, and via knowledge transfer thus enabled, rather than unification via the reduction of everything and every truth to a single foundationalist framework, whilst taking at face value disunity, plurality, and diversity, and their significance in science and in human civilisation as a whole. (shrink)