This book guides readers through an investigation of religion from a naturalistic perspective and explores the very meaning of the term ‘religious naturalism’. Oppy considers several widely disputed claims: that there cannot be naturalistic religion; that there is nothing in science that poses any problems for naturalism; that there is nothing in religion that poses any serious challenges to naturalism; and that there is a very strong case for thinking that naturalism defeats religion. -/- Naturalism and Religion: A Contemporary Philosophical (...) Investigation is an ideal introduction for undergraduate and postgraduate students of religious studies and philosophy who want to gain an understanding of the key themes and claims of naturalism from a religious and philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Preface -- Introduction -- Preliminary matters -- Some big ideas -- Minimal theism and naturalism -- Standard theism and naturalism -- Conclusion.

According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.

In this paper I will review the developments in the foundations of mathematics in the last 150 years in such a way as to show that they have delivered something of a rather different kind: mathematical pluralism.

In this paper, I will argue that Locke is a substance dualist in the general sense, in that he holds that there are, independent of our classificatory schema, two distinct kinds of substances: wholly material ones and wholly immaterial ones. On Locke’s view, the difference between the two lies in whether they are solid or not, thereby differentiating him from Descartes. My way of establishing Locke as a general substance dualist is to be as minimally committal as possible at the (...) outset, especially with respect to the classic debates on Locke’s positions in this domain, including those concerning substrata, real essences, and the like. Nonetheless, I show that minimal commitments about Locke’s primary/secondary quality distinction are sufficient to derive some substantive conclusions about his positions on these issues, as well as that he is a general substance dualist. (shrink)

This paper argues for tlie claims that a) a natural language such as English is semanticaly closed b) semantic closure implies inconsistency. A corollary of these is that the semantics of English must be paraconsistent. The first part of the paper formulates a definition of semantic closure which applies to natural languages and shows that this implies inconsistency. The second section argues that English is semeantically closed. The preceding discussion is predicated on the assumption that there are no truth value (...) gaps. The next section of the paper considers whether the possibility of these makes any difference to the substantive conclusions of the previous sections, and argues that it does not. The crux of the preceding arguments is that none of the consistent semantical accounts that have been offered for solving the semantical paradoxes is a semantic ofEnglish. The final section of the paper produces a general argument as to why this must always be the case. (shrink)

The paper concerns time, change and contradiction, and is in three parts. The first is an analysis of the problem of the instant of change. It is argued that some changes are such that at the instant of change the system is in both the prior and the posterior state. In particular there are some changes from p being true to p being true where a contradiction is realized. The second part of the paper specifies a formal logic which accommodates (...) this possibility. It is a tense logic based on an underlying paraconsistent prepositional logic, the logic of paradox. (See the author's article of the same name Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979).) Soundness and completeness are established, the latter by the canonical model construction, and extensions of the basic system briefly considered. The final part of the paper discusses Leibniz's principle of continuity: Whatever holds up to the limit holds at the limit. It argues that in the context of physical changes this is a very plausible principle. When it is built into the logic of the previous part, it allows a rigorous proof that change entails contradictions. Finally the relation of this to remarks on dialectics by Hegel and Engels is briefly discussed. (shrink)

The problem of higher-order misrepresentation poses a dilemma for the higher-order theory of consciousness. The two ways of conceiving of the theory each run into a different difficulty raised by the problem of misrepresentation. If the theory is conceived relationally, i.e., conceived so as the higher-order state causes or makes a first-order state conscious, then the theory faces a problem raised by Block concerning the implausibility of non-existent conscious states. If conceived non-relationally, i.e., conceived in such a way as it (...) is the higher-order state itself which is the conscious state, then consideration of Neander’s original misrepresentation problem, that this seems to make the first-order state a spinning wheel in the explanation of consciousness, raises the conceptual problem that this version of the higher-order theory seems not to offer a philosophical theory of consciousness that is distinct from the first-order theory. (shrink)

There is at present a certain dispute about counterfactuals taking place. What is at issue is whether counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents are all true. Some hold that such counterfactuals are vacuously true, appearances notwithstanding. Let us call such people vacuists. Others hold that some counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents are true; some are false: it just depends on their contents. Let us call such people non-vacuists. As a notable representative of the vacuists, I will take Tim Williamson. On the (...) other side, I will take the position defended by Berto, French, Priest, and Ripley. I will argue (unsurprisingly) that the better choice is Non-Vacuism. That, however, is a subsidiary aim of this paper. The main point is to illustrate the method of theory-choice. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes between various senses in which one might be a pluralist about logic. In several of these, pluralism is uncontentiously correct. The difficult issue is whether there are different accounts of validity that are equally correct. It argues for logical monism in this regard.

According to Fitting Attitude theorists, for something to possess a certain value it is necessary and sufficient that it be fitting (appropriate, or good, or obligatory, or something) to take a certain attitude to the bearer of that value. The idea seems obvious for thick evaluative attributes, but less obvious for the thin evaluative attributes—like goodness, betterness, and degrees of value. This paper is an extended argument for the thesis that the fitting response to the thin evaluative attributes of states (...) is desire, broadly construed. The good is what it is fitting to desire, the bad what it is fitting to be averse to, and the better what it is fitting to prefer. I start with two prominent challenges to the FA schema (Wrong Kinds of Reasons and Solitary Goods). For the FA schema to survive these challenges—along with some developments of them—the fitting response to the goodness of a state has to be a non-factive, non-doxastic representation of the state as good—in other words, an appearance of the goodness that state. That desires and preferences are non-doxastic value appearances is independently attractive, and I argue that this is in fact the simplest hypothesis compatible with the Fitting Attitude approach.Fitting Attitudes. (shrink)

This paper articulates Sylvan's theory of mathematical objects as non-existent, by improving (arguably) his treatment of the Characterisation Postulate. It then defends the theory against a number of natural objections, including one according to which the account is just platonism in disguise.

A number of different theories of truthlikeness have been proposed, but most can be classified into one of two different main programmes: the probability-content programme and the likeness programme.1 In Brink and Heidema [1987] we are offered a further proposal, with the attraction of some novelty. I argue that while the heuristic path taken by the authors is rather remote from what they call ‘the well-worn paths’,2 in fact their point of arrival is rather closer to existing proposals within the (...) likeness approach than might at first appear. It is the purpose of this note to outline the logical connections and to assess the reasons which have been offered in favour of the new proposal. (shrink)

The judicial appointments regime in England and Wales is unbalanced. The pre-2005 appointments regime conferred excessive discretion on the Lord Chancellor, but the post-2005 regime has gone much too far in the opposite direction. Today, the Lord Chancellor is almost entirely excluded from the process of selecting lower level judges and enjoys only limited say over the selection of senior judges. In this article I argue that the current regime places too little weight on the sound reasons for involving the (...) minister in individual selection decisions, including the scope for ministerial input to enhance judicial independence, to supply political leadership on judicial diversity and to render more effective the discharge of the Lord Chancellor’s systemic responsibility for the justice system as a whole. I argue that shortlists reconcile the need to more fully involve the Lord Chancellor whilst at the same time ensuring that candidates satisfy a merit threshold. (shrink)

High School student Godwyn argues the certainty and significance behind the utopian society, that is, Plato’s Republic. He emphasizes the politically incorrect standards of the Republic to the modern era, while examining the vision of what Plato intended.

In many philosophical traditions, it is held that reality is non-dual. Of course, to be non-dual, as opposed to dual, is itself to partake of a certain duality. If reality really is non-dual, it must transcend this duality too. But what could this mean? Can one make coherent sense of it? To keep the discussion focussed, I will locate it in one specific tradition: the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. The idea that ultimate reality is non-dual goes back to the earliest Mahāyāna (...) sūtras at the turn of the Common Era. Thereafter, the question of what it means to transcend duality plays a central role in Buddhist philosophy. The point that reality must transcend even the duality between duality and non-duality plays a significant role in the Chinese Sanlun philosopher Jizang (, 549–623). His discussion points the way to an answer to our problem which may be articulated with the techniques of contemporary paraconsistent logic, as we will see. (shrink)

This note is an analysis of the paradox given by Myers. It is shown, assuming that the resources available in paraconsistent logic may be applied, how the conclusion of the paradox may be perfectly acceptable, but that the argument is, nonetheless, invalid. This provides a dialethic solution to the paradox.

This paper is an English version of the paper that was published in German under the title: "Über die Aussichten erfolgreicher Beweise für Theismus oder Atheismus". My English paper was translated into German by Gabriele Schlegel. -/- The aim of this paper is to examine the prospects for proofs or successful arguments for the existence or non-existence of God.

Wesley C. Salmon (1977) has written a characteristically elegant and ingenious paper 'The Curvature of Physical Space'. He argues in it that the curvature of a space cannot be intrinsic to it. Salmon relates his view that space is affinely amorphous to Grunbaum's view (Grunbaum 1973, esp. Ch. 16 & 22) that it is metrically amorphous and acknowledges parallels between the arguments which have been offered for each opinion. I wish to dispute these conclusions on philosophical grounds quite as much (...) as on geometrical ones. Although I concentrate most on arguing for a well defined, intrinsic affinity for physical space the arguments extend easily to support a well defined, intrinsic metric. (shrink)

A core commitment of the reflexive theory of consciousness is that conscious states are themselves necessarily the contents of mental states. The strongest argument for this claim—the necessity of inner-content for consciousness—is the argument from unconscious perception. According to this argument, we find evidence for the necessity claim from cases of alleged unconscious perception, the most well-known and widely discussed of these being blindsight. However, the reflexive theory cannot partake in this argument and therefore, must rely on at least one (...) of the other arguments for the necessity claim. These arguments are significantly less convincing than the argument from unconscious perception, and thus the reflexive theory is left in a dialectically weak position. (shrink)

Many of our current environmental problems stem from damage to the natural world through excessive use of modern technologies. Since these problems are now global in scope, it is helpful to take a comparative philosophical approach—in this case by way of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's thoughts on these topics are quite consonant with classical Daoist thinking, in part because he was influenced by it. Although Zhuangzi and Heidegger warn against the ways technology can impair rather than promote human (...) flourishing, they are not simply anti‐technological in their thinking. Both rather recommend a critical stance that would allow us to shift to a more reflective employment of less disruptive technologies. (shrink)

Jacob Vernet (1698-1789) was the most important and influential Genevan pastor of his day, successively holding the posts of Professor of Belles-Lettres (1739) and of Theology (1756) at the city's Acad mie. A 'liberal' theologian, he had personal contacts with several of the leading philosophes, all of which turned sour after a time. This book describes Vernet's contacts with Montesquieu, d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau. It also investigates a charge made repeatedly by his enemies, namely that he was a hypocrite who (...) disguised his real beliefs. Vernet's religious and philosophical opinions are thus reviewed as expressed in his major works, Trait de la v rite de la religion chr tienne, Instruction chr tienne and Lettres critiques d'un voyageur anglais. The connection between Vernet's ideas and the social and political situation in his native Geneva is also studied in depth. The pastor's relations with Montesquieu have often been seen as a cause for congratulation, for he edited the first edition of De l'Esprit des lois, but a close reading of Montesquieu's correspondence shows that this episode was far from being an unqualified success. Similarly, Vernet's contacts with Rousseau give pause for thought: the relevant evidence that he was on occasion somewhat devious in his dealings with the great author is reviewed comprehensively. Particular attention is given to Vernet's relations with Voltaire. In 1760 the pastor was vilified in the second of the Dialogues chr tiens, accused of greed and dishonesty. But did Voltaire actually write the second Dialogue? If not, who did? These intriguing questions are discussed in detail, special attention being given to Vernet's own essays of self-justification, the Lettre Monsieur le Premier Sindic(1760) and M moire Mr. le Premier Sindic (1766, both of which are reproduced in appendices. Jacob Vernet's long life and many works give a fascinating insight into the problems and inconsistencies of liberal Protestantism during the various stages of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

In 1928 Ivan Orlov published a remarkable paper which contains the first formulation of a relevant logic. The paper remained largely unknown to English-speakers until this discovery of relevant log...

My topic concerns the martial arts – or at least the East Asian martial arts, such as karatedo, taekwondo, kendo, wushu. To what extent what I have to say applies to other martial arts, such as boxing, silat, capoeira, I leave as an open question. I will illustrate much of what I have to say with reference to karatedo, since that is the art with which I am most familiar; but I am sure that matters are much the same with (...) other East Asian martial arts. (shrink)