Four Views on Christian Metaphysics presents four prominent views held among Christians today on the major questions in philosophical metaphysics. What is the nature of existence itself? What is it for something to exist? What are universals? What is the soul? How do these things relate to God, in light of special and general revelation? The four Christian perspectives presented in this book are: Platonism, Aristotelianism, idealism, and postmodernism. The purpose of this book is to help Christians think deeply and (...) carefully about a Christian view of the ultimate nature of reality and our place in it. (shrink)

n one of the numerous movie versions of A Christmas Carol , Ebenezer Scrooge, mounting the steps to visit his dying partner, Jacob Marley, encounters a dignified gentleman sitting on a landing. "Are you the doctor?" Scrooge inquires. "No," replies the man, "I'm the undertaker; ours is a very competitive business." The cutthrought world of intellectuals must rank a close second, and few events attract more notice than a proclamation that popular ideas have died. Darwin's theory of natural selection (...) has been a perennial candidate for burial. (shrink)

Medical nihilism is the view that we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions. Jacob Stegenga argues persuasively that this is how we should see modern medicine, and suggests that medical research must be modified, clinical practice should be less aggressive, and regulatory standards should be enhanced.

Hegel was ambivalent about Dutch genre painting’s uncanny ability to find beauty in daily life. The philosopher regarded the Dutch painterly aesthetic as Romanticism avant la lettre, and classifies it as such in his Lectures on Aesthetics, under the section entitled “Die romantischen Künste [The Romantic arts].”1 Dutch art, in Hegel’s reading, is marred by many shortcomings. The most prominent among these are the “subjective stubbornness [subjective Beschlossenheit]” that prevents this art from attaining to the “free and ideal forms of (...) expression” that marked the productions of Italian artists such as Raphael. In contradistinction to their Italian counterparts, Dutch artists in Hegel’s view are apt to. (shrink)

Une religion est un dispositif de croyance qui peut s’employer dans le sens de l’émancipation ou être dévoyé par des dispositifs de domination, de persécution, voire de terreur. Les analyses du djihadisme sous-estiment trop souvent sa dimension religieuse, notamment messianique et apocalyptique.

The comparison between natural evolution and the action of a tinkerer has become highly popular since its reintroduction by François Jacob at the end of the 1970s. It has been used as a weapon against the existence of an “intelligent design” as well as a way for synthetic biologists to promote their ambitious projects. I will describe the complex history of this metaphor, and examine its pertinence. Whereas Darwin considered it as a way to describe how evolution proceeded, (...) class='Hi'>Jacob linked it with a description of the imperfections of organisms, while Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin criticized what they called the “Panglossian” vision of most evolutionary biologists. The distinction between the work of engineers and that of tinkerers is not obvious. There are limits to the process of evolution, but their alleged description so far reflects the limits of knowledge on the part of evolutionary biologists more than the existence of true barriers to the evolutionary process. And, in their work, synthetic biologists crucially need the optimizing action of natural selection. To give a definition of synthetic biology is no easy task; the false distinction drawn between the work of synthetic biologists and the action of evolution is of no help. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The objective of the present edition of this monograph is the same as that of earlier editions, namely, to provide readers with some mathemati cal maturity a rigorous and modern introduction to the ideas and principal theorems of probabilistic information theory. It is not necessary that readers have any prior knowledge whatever of information theory. The rapid development of the subject has had the consequence that any one book can now cover only a fraction of the literature. The latter is (...) often written by engineers for engineers, and the mathematical reader may have some difficulty with it. The mathematician who understands the content and methods of this monograph should be able to read the literature and start on research of his own in a subject of mathematical beauty and interest. The present edition differs from the second in the following: Chapter 6 has been completely replaced by one on arbitrarily varying channels. Chapter 7 has been greatly enlarged. Chapter 8 on semi-continuous channels has been drastically shortened, and Chapter 11 on sequential decoding completely removed. The new Chapters 11-15 consist entirely of material which has been developed only in the last few years. The topics discussed are rate distortion, source coding, multiple access channels, and degraded broadcast channels. Even the specialist will find a new approach in the treatment of these subjects. Many of the proofs are new, more perspicuous, and considerably shorter than the original ones. (shrink)

The essential nature of science is revealed in an amplification of the relation between the arts and science.

Is the beloved community local, national, global, or universal? What kind of love is required for the beloved community? Is such a community only an ideal, or can it be actualized in the here and now? Tracing the phrase beloved community from Josiah Royce through Martin Luther King Jr. to a variety of contemporary usages, Goodson, Kuehnert, and Stone debate answers to the above questions. The authors agree about the importance of beloved community but disagree on the details. These differences (...) come out through arguments over the local vs. the universal, the type of love the beloved community calls for, and what it means to conceptualize community. Ultimately, they argue, the purpose of beloved community involves responding to the cries of the wounded and those who suffer in the wounded world. (shrink)

A major new history of how the Enlightenment transformed people’s everyday lives The Secular Enlightenment is a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Margaret Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of (...) the Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Human frailties once attributed to sin were now viewed through the lens of the newly conceived social sciences. People entered churches not to pray but to admire the architecture, and spent their Sunday mornings reading a newspaper or even a risqué book. The secular-minded pursued their own temporal and commercial well-being without concern for the life hereafter, regarding their successes as the rewards for their actions, their failures as the result of blind economic forces. A majestic work of intellectual and cultural history, The Secular Enlightenment demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come. (shrink)

The ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ is a delicious turn of phrase, one that Marx even compares to Hegel’s infamous ‘negation of the negation’. But what does it mean, and is it still relevant today? Before I analyse the content of Marx’s expression, I briefly consider contemporary legal understandings of expropriation, as well as some examples of it. In the remainder of the essay, I spell out different kinds of expropriation in Marx and focus on an ambiguity at the core of (...) the notion of ‘expropriating the expropriators’, namely, whether it describes an immanent and objective tendency within the development of the capitalist mode of production or else actively prescribes a form of revolutionary political praxis for the working class. My answer is that it does both, though not without tension. Finally, I develop some implications of these reflections by showing how the concept of expropriation can be put to use today, in struggles around housing, climate and work. (shrink)

The phenomenon of widespread stigmatization of victims of deadly, or previously incurable, diseases in African traditional societies would appear to pragmatically contradict the humanistic values of communalism associated with those societies. However, the implied contradiction of the phenomenon, which borders on irrationality and injustice, seems amenable to a rational explanation when one considers the thick ontological underpinnings of African traditional communalism along with their epistemic significance. The justification of the proffered explanation, the paper avers, is made clearer when it is (...) taken as a paradigm of Jurgen Habermas’ theory of (communicative) rationality and action. Against this background, the paper argues that such global social problemsas terrorism and internet scams may well be justifiable if Habermas’ strategic and contextual models of rationality and action are communicatively valid. (shrink)

Over de vraag hoe geloof en verstand zich onderling verhouden, bestaat geen communis opinio; ook in het verleden is die er nooit geweest. Integendeel, de filosofiehistorie vertoont een complexe verscheidenheid van opvattingen. In dit artikel heb ik deze geordend in een beperkt aantal grondschema’s of grondmodellen. Ik breng zeven van die grondmodellen ter sprake, en duid ze kortweg aan met de termen identificatie, conflict, subordinatie, complementariteit, fundering, authenticiteit en transformatie. Mijn analyse laat zien hoe deze modellen, eenmaal present op het (...) publieke forum, zich blijvend doen gelden, tot op de dag van vandaag. Hun sterke en zwakke kanten dagen ons uit tot een eigen standpuntbepaling in het debat over religie en rede. (shrink)

This article begins with a review of studies in perception and depth psychology concerning the experience of exposure to sacred artworks in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox contexts. This follows with the results of a qualitative inquiry involving 45 Roman Catholic, Eastern and Coptic Orthodox, and Protestant Christians in Canada. First, participants composed narratives detailing memories of spiritual experiences involving iconography. Then, in the context of a darkened room evocative of a sacred space, they viewed artworks depicting Biblical themes and (...) interpreted their meanings. Stimuli included “Western” paintings from the Roman tradition—a selection from the Gothic, Northern Renaissance, and Renaissance canon—and matched “Eastern” icons in the Byzantine style. Spiritual experience narratives were analyzed in terms of word frequencies, and interpretations of sacred artworks were analyzed thematically. Catholics tended to utilize emotional language when recalling their spiritual experiences, while religious activity was most often the concern of Protestants, and Orthodox Christians wrote most about spiritual figures and their signifiers. A taxonomy of response styles was developed to account for participants’ interpretations of Western and Eastern artworks, with content ranging from detached descriptions to projective engagement with the art-objects. Our approach allows for representation of diverse Christians’ interpretations of sacred art, taking into consideration personal, collective, and cultural-religious sources of meaning. Our paradigm also offers to enrich our understanding of the numinous or emotional dimension of mystical contact. (shrink)

Before going further, it will be helpful to consider briefly the notion that novelty per se is a fundamental human need. Experiments with human beings, as well as with animals, indicate that the maintenance of normal, successful behavior depends upon an adequate level of incoming stimulation—or, as some have put it, of novelty.2 But lumping all novelty together is misleading. At least three kinds of novelty need to be distinguished. Some novel patterns arise out of, or represent, changes in the (...) fundamental rules governing the organization of musical processes and structures. By significantly weakening our comprehension of the musical relationships presented—undermining not only our understanding of what is past but our ability to envisage what is to come—such systemic change seriously threatens our sense of psychic security and competent control. Far from being welcome, the insecurity and uncertainty thus engendered is at least as antipathetic, disturbing, and unpleasant as stimulus privation. Novel patterns may also result from the invention of a new strategy that accords with prevalent stylistic rules. Though they may initially seem to threaten existing competencies, the function and significance of novel strategies within the larger set of stylistic constraints can usually be grasped without too much delay or difficulty. For a while the tensions produced by strategic innovation may seem disturbing. But in the end, when our grasp of the principles ordering events is confirmed and our sense of competency is reestablished and control is reinforced, tension is resolved into an elation that is both stimulating and enjoyable. Most novel patterns—original themes, rhythms, harmonic progressions, and so forth—involve the innovative instantiation or realization of an existing strategy or schema .3 Novelties of this kind not only enhance our sense of control—a feeling that we know how things really “work”—but provide both the pleasure of recognition and the joy of skillfully exercising some competency. We enjoy novelty—the stimulation of surprise, the tension of uncertainty—as long as it can be accommodated within a known and understandable set of constraints. When the rules governing the game are abrogated or in doubt—when comprehension and control are threatened—the result is usually anger, anguish, and desperation.These responses to novelty are consequences of fundamental and poignant verities of the human condition: the centrality of choice in human behavior. Because only a minute fraction of human behavior seems to be genetically specified, choice is inescapable.While in lower organisms, behavior is strictly determined by the genetic program, in complex metazoa the genetic program becomes less constraining, more “open” as Ernst Mayr puts it, in the sense that it does not lay down behavioral instructions in great detail but rather permits some choice and allows for a certain freedom of response. Instead of imposing rigid prescriptions, it provides the organism with potentialities and capacities. This openness of the genetic program increases with evolution and culminates in mankind.4The price of freedom is the imperative of choice. Human beings must choose were to sow and when to reap, when to work and where to live, when to play and what to build. Intelligent, successful choices are possible only if alternative courses of action can be imagined and their consequences envisaged with reasonable accuracy. 2. For further discussion, see my Music, the Arts, and Ideas , p. 50.3. Rules are transpersonal but intracultural constraints—for instance, the pitch/time entities established in some style, as well as grammatical and syntactic regularities. Strategies are general means for actualizing some of the possibilities that are potential in the rules of the style. The rules of a style are relatively few, while the number of possible strategies may, depending upon the nature of the rules, be very large indeed. The ways of instantiating a particular strategy are, if not infinite, at least beyond reckoning.4. François Jacob, The Possible and the Actual , p. 61. See also Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin , p. 257. (shrink)