Thus Pascal sets forth the romanticist thesis that reason has nothing to do with the deep intimations of the worshipping soul. Religion is an affair of the heart, and the productive Source of all things cannot be comprehended by the exercise of the finite intellect. This doctrine foreshadows the Kantian dichotomy between phenomena and noumena: the understanding can legitimately operate only within the sphere of space, time and natural causality, as it knows nothing of the transcendental postulates of the moral (...) life. In Kant's case, however, the opposition is worked out by means of a sustained and systematic analysis of man's faculties of cognition, and the intuitions of moral feeling are not without a rationality of their own. One might say that in Kant's view there is a logic of ethical sentiment as well as a logic of the scientific understanding, the former being practical, the latter theoretical. In the practical domain of morality the categories of the scientific understanding do not apply: the individual who acts from a sense of duty is free and immortal, besides being destined to receive rewards from the hand of God according to his deserts. The practice of the moral life therefore creates a sort of categoreal vacuum, the individual becoming a noumenon, emancipated from the shackles of the sensible world; from an empirical point of view, morality means self-transcendence. (shrink)

Theism is sometimes defined by reference to the contrasted doctrines of Deism and Pantheism. Deism, it is said, lays stress on God's transcendence, while Pantheism emphasizes his immanence to the exclusion of his transcendence. Theism, on the other hand, mediates between these two one-sided doctrines and affirms that God is at once both immanent and transcendent. He is in the world and yet beyond it. This definition, however, can only be accepted with qualification because some forms of Pantheism are arrived (...) at by stressing, not the immanence, but the transcendence of God. According to Neo-Platonism, for example, the ineffable Absolute is so transcendent in existence and value that the world is reduced to the humble status of a mere illusory appearance and all veritable reality is absorbed in the Divine. This complication of the matter means that when studying the nature of Theism it is necessary to consider the opposition between Cosmism and Acosmism as well as that between transcendence and immanence The cosmistic tendency is to affirm, whereas the acosmistic tendency is to deny, the ultimate reality of the finite individual's effective autonomy. Theism is cosmistic, in the sense that it refuses to reduce the finite individual to a mere dependent mode of God. Nevertheless, the acosmistic tendency is very evident in many so-called theistic systems—so much so in some cases, indeed, that what is alleged to be Theism really amounts to Pantheism in disguise. (shrink)

In his analysis of the concept of causality, Hume finds that all events accounted causes and effects are contiguous and successive. No object can act efficaciously upon another so long as the objects are at a distance from each other. It may sometimes appear that “distant objects are productive of one another,” but on examination it is discovered that they are linked together by a series of intermediate causes which are contiguous among themselves; and even where examination does not directly (...) disclose the intermediate causal chain, it is still presumed that it exists. Also the cause is temporally prior to the effect. If I throw a stone through a window, the smashing of the glass follows the act of throwing the stone. It is only after the realization of the cause that the effect appears. Thus a cause is an object that is precedent to and contiguous with another object that is called the effect. (shrink)

Burkill sees Kant's critical philosophy as the source of a vicious dualism in modern philosophy, a dualism between the phenomenally contented and the phenomenally discontented. After two chapters spent making this point, sketching both Kant's basic position and his criticisms of it, the author briefly considers a multitude of post-Kantian philosophers of all varieties. He ends with a constructive solution of the dualism, offering a doctrine of God as the élan vital, a positive principle inherent in the nature of (...) things, open to a descriptive philosophy based on an empiricism which sees the world of experience as made up, not of discrete events, but of entities in dynamic interconnection.--W. G. E. (shrink)

This is a well written, clear, instructive, erudite book. The author begins with what he calls Ancient Catholicism, which reaches until the Alliance of Church and State under Constantine. Careful attention is given to Patristics, including of course the tremendous achievement of Augustine, the emergence of monasticism, the conflict of the Papacy with the Holy Empire and the East-West Schism. A special section is devoted to what Professor Burkill calls Medieval Developments in which he includes ecclesiastical structures and their (...) political involvements as well as the academic achievements of Scholasticism in its different forms. The analysis of the complexity of the Renaissance, from a humanistic, religious and political point of view, is in the opinion of this reviewer, impressively presented. Indeed these pages, with their factual and ideological content, are among the best. From this heap of facts and ideas arise certain common features which we would do well to remember, as for example, the frequency with which men have been willing to die for their convictions, whatever these happen to be. Every belief has its martyrs, and to hold this as a criterion of truth would be presumptuous. What strikes the reader furthermore in Burkill’s unbiased analysis is the tendency for the persecuted, once triumphant, to become in turn the persecutors. Persecution, religious no less than political, has unfortunately appeared to most if not to all, to be a means of survival. In the last section of his book, where Burkill deals with the last three hundred years, religious pluralism has become overwhelming. Burkill strives to do justice to all and yet to keep some form of unity. The book reaches unto modern times and the last name mentioned is that of Teilhard de Chardin. I should add one more remark. This book is not an apologetics. The author, partial to no one particular brand of Christianity, treats all with respect and objectivity. It is the work of an observer. If he does not reveal the beauty of religion "from within," neither does he deny it. This is not his purpose. Furthermore, although his historical approach is laced with philosophical observations, the book is not what might be called a philosophy of religion either, at least not explicitly. It is a survey written by a man who is both a philosopher and a theologican [[sic]], and in my opinion a very good one.—W. D. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

I would like to begin with the role of philosophy in solving ecological problems, emphasizing two aspects of its role: the struggle against hostile ideology and the organizing and guiding of activity in the sphere of the development of science and the shaping of its problems. This role of Marxist-Leninist philosophy clearly appears in the complex interdisciplinary problem of the interaction between nature and society.

This is the best general book on philosophy for university students: not just an introduction, but a guide which will serve them throughout their studies. It comprises specially commissioned explanatory surveys of the main areas of philosophy, written by thirteen leading philosophers.

v. 1. Edinyĭ i︠a︡zyk chelovechestva. --.

On conduct of life and ethics of Islamic seminarians.

Critical study of of the addresses of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938 from philosophical and religious point of view.

In this paper, the authors have detected a new effect in the area of geomagnetism, related to the behavior of a magnetic dipole freely floating on water surface. An experiment is described in the present paper in which a magnetic dipole fixed upon a float placed on non- magnetized water surface undergoes displacement along with reorientation caused by fine structure of the earth's magnetic field. This fact can probably be explained by secular decrease of the earth's major dipole moment. Further, (...) a detailed study of the phenomenon may create interesting premises for its practical use, particularly for the analysis of fine structure of geomagnetic field and its time-dependent anomalies. A strange behavior of some sea fish species prior to strong earthquakes may be explained if the fish are assumed as 'live magnetic dipoles'. (shrink)

На основе философского обобщения исследований интеллектуальной деятельности мозга в монографии воспроизводится механизм материалистического познания действительности и возникновения сознания. Для преподавателей, аспирантов, студентов вузов.

Measuring Chinese character recognition ability is essential in research on character learning among learners of Chinese as a second language. Three methods are typically used to evaluate character recognition competence by investigating the following properties of a given character: pronunciation, meaning, and pronunciation and meaning. However, no study has explored the similar or dissimilar outcomes that these three measurements might yield. The current study examined this issue by testing 162 CSL learners with various L1 backgrounds and Chinese proficiency levels. Participants' (...) performance in character recognition measured using a phonological method, a semantic method, and a PS method was compared, which led to two major findings. In terms of similarity, participants' performance in character recognition and the influence of L1 background and Chinese proficiency level on character recognition was similar across the three methods. As for differences, the semantic method could yield a character recognition test with better quality than the other two methods, and the three methods yielded different best fitting models and showed different predictions for Chinese proficiency across different L1 groups. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are proposed. (shrink)