Notre article consiste en une étude talmudique à propos du messianisme. Nous analysons en particulier une double difficulté. La première consiste dans le nouage obscur que le Talmud suggère entre des éléments intimes de la subjectivité humaine et l’advenue collective globale, de nature politique, d’un dépassement de la société mercantile inégalitaire. La deuxième concerne l’élaboration de cette subjectivité, que l’on peut dire paradoxale, puisqu’elle conjoint une forme de désespoir de la délivrance à une attente renouvelée. Notre approche s’inscrit dans la (...) continuité des lectures talmudiques d’Emmanuel Levinas, en ce qu’elle n’est pas historique, mais cherche à proposer la constitution d’une pensée féconde pour notre modernité. (shrink)

Ce livre a pour ambition de penser l'amour, d'en produire une pensée contemporaine. A cet effet, il articule deux axes a priori divergents. Il présente d'abord une lecture inédite des trois grandes pensées contemporaines sur l'amour : celles d'Emmanuel Levinas, de Jacques Lacan et d'Alain Badiou. Il développe ensuite une élaboration singulière qui traverse les très anciens enseignements du judaïsme biblique et talmudique. Il ne s'agit pas pour Jérôme Benarroch d'exposer une pensée historiquement reconnue du judaïsme sur le sujet, (...) mais de proposer une théorie de l'amour formulée dans le langage de la pensée contemporaine, à l'école de ses enjeux et questionnements. La méthode de cette élaboration consiste en un dialogue de la philosophie et de la psychanalyse avec ces divers et parfois paradoxaux enseignements traditionnels. Malgré leur hétérogénéité indiscutable, les pensées de Levinas, de Badiou et de Lacan partagent un même geste, qui apparaît presque comme une constante de la contemporanéité : le rejet de la figure de l'Un. Le livre soutient la thèse qu'en amour, l'Un n'est pas, mais qu'il doit advenir. Que l'unicité de chacun - de chaque sujet amoureux - advient par l'effort d'une construction éperdue de l'Un de l'amour. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly optimistic conception of (...) rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity. (shrink)

In this two-part analysis, I analyze Marc Lewis’s arguments against the brain-disease view of substance addiction and for a developmental-learning approach that demedicalizes addiction. I focus especially on the question of whether addiction is a medical disorder. In Part 1, I argued that, even if one accepts Lewis’s critique of the brain evidence presented for the brain-disease view, his arguments fail to establish that addiction is not a disorder. Relying on my harmful dysfunction analysis of disorder, I defended the view (...) that addiction is a medical disorder and a brain disorder. In Part 2, I consider some broader philosophical issues raised by Lewis’s arguments: I consider a larger puzzle, at the heart of the neo-Kraepelinian program in contemporary psychiatry, that is raised by Lewis’s argument that addiction is not a disorder because the brain displays no damage but only normal learning: must all mental disorders be brain disorders, or can mental disorders occur in normal brains? I argue that mental disorders can occur in normal brains. I critique Lewis’s response to the evolutionary “novel environment” approach to explaining why addiction is a disorder. Lewis agrees with brain-disease proponents that interpreting addiction as brain disorder relieves addicts of moral censure, but I argue that moral defect and brain disease are not exclusive. Finally, I consider Lewis’s “developmental-learning” account of addiction that encourages positive and empowering narrativizing of addiction, but I argue that the developmental-learning view is vacuous due to use of an overly broad notion of “development.”. (shrink)

Recently, "Religious Studies" published an article by Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss, arguing that there exists a necessary being who is a creator of the world. Building on their argument, I argue that, assuming that there is exactly one creator, that creator is essentially omnipotent.

In this two-part analysis, I analyze Marc Lewis’s arguments against the brain-disease view of substance addiction and for a developmental-learning approach that demedicalizes addiction. I focus especially on the question of whether addiction is a medical disorder. Addiction is currently classified as a medical disorder in DSM-5 and ICD-10. It is further labeled a brain disease by NIDA, based on observed brain changes in addicts that are interpreted as brain damage. Lewis argues that the changes result instead from normal neuroplasticity (...) and learning in response to the intense rewards provided by addictive substances, thus that addiction is not a brain disease and by implication not a medical disorder at all. I argue that even if one accepts Lewis’s reinterpretation of the brain evidence, his conclusions do not follow. Relying on my harmful-dysfunction analysis of medical disorder, I defend the view that substance addiction is in fact a medical disorder and a brain disorder. In Part 1, I identify five arguments Lewis puts forward against the brain-disease view and evaluate them as arguments that addiction is not a disorder: Addiction is not a chronic, relapsing condition; There is no clear boundary between addiction and other strong desires; Negative consequences are not unique to disorders; The brain disease model does not account for behavioral addictions; and, Addiction is like love. I argue that Lewis’s arguments are invalid because they fail to take account of the context of addiction and its relation to biological design. (shrink)

Chris Tweedt has offered a solution to the “common sense problem of evil,” on which that there is gratuitous evil is justified non-inferentially as a trivial inference from non-inferentially justified premises by invoking versions of CORNEA. Tweedt claims his solution applies not only to the versions of the common sense problem of evil offered by Paul Draper and Trent Dougherty, but also to that offered by me in this journal in 1992. Here I argue that Tweedt fails to defeat this (...) version of the problem. So even if Tweedt’s response to Draper and Dougherty is successful, a version of the common sense problem of evil survives. (shrink)

Our utterances are typically if not always "situated," in the sense that they are true or false relative to unarticulated parameters of the extra-linguistic context. The problem is to explain how these parameters are determined, given that nothing in the uttered sentences indicates them. It is tempting to claim that they must be determined at the level of thought or intention. However, as many philosophers have observed, thoughts themselves are no less situated than utterances. Unarticulated parameters need not be mentally (...) represented. In this paper, I try to make precise the notion of representation at stake here. In one sense of 'representation', something is represented if it is inferentially relevant. In another, less demanding sense, something is represented if it is relevant to the construction of a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. Ad hoc concepts act as "proxies" for cognitively more demanding representations. They "imitate" the latter's epistemic and pragmatic roles while being inferentially less sophisticated. Thus, there are two senses in which a thought can be said to be situated: (1) its truth-value is relative to a non-represented contextual parameter, (2) its truth-value is not itself relative, but it involves a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. (shrink)

This work exposes the practices that are controlling education and reducing it to little more than skills development in preparation for work. It questions the strategy of mentoring to show how its dynamic requires docility from the learner and thus perpetuates inequality.

It is shown that a number of questions, usually considered philosophical rather than scientific, can be reformulated to apply to a world of automata or "well-informed heat engines." In some cases they admit of physical answers, but in many cases obtaining answers entails violation of the second law of thermodynamics. This is demonstrated explicitly for the problem of determinism and free will, for the discovery of the origin or ultimate fate of the universe, or for the discovery of causes or (...) purposes in nature. (shrink)

I argue that the issues of foodquality, in the most general sense includingpurity, safety, and ethics, can no longer beresolved through ``normal'' science andregulation. The reliance on reductionistscience as the basis for policy andimplementation has shown itself to beinadequate. I use several borderline examplesbetween drugs and foods, particularly coffeeand sucrose, to show that ``quality'' is now acomplex attribute. For in those cases thesubstance is either a pure drug, or a bad foodwith drug-like properties; both are marketed asif they were foods. (...) An example of theinadequacy of old ways of thinking is obesity,whose causes are as yet outside the purview ofmedicine, while its effects constitute anepidemic disease. The new drug/food syndromeneeds a new sort of science, what we call``post-normal.'' This is inquiry at the contestedinterfaces of science and policy; typically itdeals with issues where facts are uncertain,values in dispute, stakes high, and decisionsurgent. With the perspective of post-normalscience, we can better understand some keyissues. We see that ``safety'' is different from``risk,'' being pragmatic, moral, and recursive.Also, we understand that an appropriatefoundation for regulation and ethics is not somuch ``objectivity'' as ``awareness.'' In an agewhen ``consumers'' are becoming concerned``citizens,'' the relevant science must becomepost-normal. (shrink)

In this paper we present some benefits of semantic minimalism. In particular, we stress how minimalism allows us to avoid cognitive overloading, in that it does not posit hidden indexicals or variables at the LF or representational level and it does not posit the operation of free enrichment processes when we produce or hear a sentence. We nonetheless argue that a fully adequate semantic minimalism should embrace a form of relativism—that is, the view that semantic content must be evaluated, pace (...) Cappelen and Lepore, vis-à-vis a given situation, the latter being a fragment of a possible world or a partial world. In so doing we shall show how Cappelen and Lepore damage the insight of semantic minimalism insofar as they insist that the semantic content should be evaluated with respect to a whole possible world. This move fails to capture the powerful contextualist intuition that it does not make much sense to evaluate the content of, say, Naomi is rich, or Jon is tall, with respect to, for instance, the actual world. (shrink)

Preface by Dr. Franz Alexander - Director, Psychiatric and Pychosomatic Research Institute Mount Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles. Vol. 9.

This book critically explores indigenous sub-Saharan African agrarian thought. Indigenous African agrarian philosophy is an uncharted and largely overlooked area of study in the burgeoning fields of African philosophy and philosophy of nature. The book shows that wherever human beings have lived, they have been preoccupied with exploring ways to ensure the sustainable management of limited resources at their disposal, to attain to their basic needs: food, shelter, and security. The book also shows that agriculture and the way people relate (...) with nature are an essential, but generally neglected, determinant of the emergence and orientation of all philosophical traditions. In traditional, pre-colonial African culture, it was difficult to separate agriculture from African relational ontology. Agriculture and the use of natural resources were at the centre of community life and influenced the social, political, economic, and spiritual worldviews of the people. In their contact with nature through agriculture, different beliefs, knowledge systems, norms, moral outlooks, cultural practices and institutions emerged and have been valorized to guide societies on how to sustainably manage the environment. As a way of life, then, agriculture was deeply connected with indigenous beliefs, values, and practices which transcended a wide range of issues related to ecological ethics, food ethics, religion, traditional medicine, political economy, social organisation, biological reproduction and species survival, indigenous knowledge, and property rights. This book will thus be a valuable resource for policy makers and researchers in diverse fields such as philosophy, geography, sociology, anthropology, and development studies. (shrink)

David Basinger has defended his position on the epistemology of religious diversity against a critique I wrote of it in this journal. Basinger endorses the principle that in the face of pervasive epistemic peer conflict a person has a prima facie duty to try to adjudicate the conflict. He defends this position against my claim that religious belief can be non-culpably “rock bottom” and thus escape “Basinger’s Rule.” Here I show why Basinger’s defense against my critique is not satisfactory, and (...) I argue against accepting Basinger’s Rule. (shrink)

Under the sway of the postulate of determinism, sociologists (with some exceptions) have given little direct attention to sheerly fortuitous events. Such events are analytically distinguishable from those which are considered the results of chance only because we currently lack knowledge of their causation. Exemplifications of pure chance abound in the various arts and sciences, including sociology (especially in work by symbolic interactionists). Direct, explicit consideration of random, accidental, or chance phenomena requires approaches that emphasize both the processes of behavior (...) and interaction and the case-study method of investigation. (shrink)

Theoretical physics is a deductive discipline which presupposes the validity and applicability of certain other disciplines. Among these are logic, algebra, analysis, and geometry. Before relativity, Euclidean geometry was the only one thought to be important for physical space. These disciplines correlate well with experience, and, in the course of time, a priori validity came to be ascribed to them. To Kant, for example, the universe could not possibly be based on any geometry other than Euclid's. The discovery of non-Euclidean (...) geometries by Bolyai and Lobatchevsky, its systematic extension by Riemann, and the critical scrutiny of foundations by Mach and Poincaré shook the “self-evident truth” of Euclidean geometry as applied to the world of physics. The death knell of the a priori truth of any geometry was supplied by Einstein. He showed that a wider body of experience was coordinated by a Riemannian geometry than by Euclidean. He traced the success of Euclidian geometry back to the existence of so-called rigid bodies, in terms of which operations can be associated with numbers which correlate well with numbers associated in a purely mathematical way with mathematical constructs put in correspondence with these bodies. For the physicist, then, the geometry of the real world is now a physical theory whose “truth” like that of all physical theory, is measured by its degree of success in coordinating experience. (shrink)

Stone hurts—and not simply because rocks so easily become missiles. The lithic offers a blunt challenge to our belief that humans matter. Homo sapiens are a species perhaps 200,000 years old. Homo erectus and Homo habilis, two of our earliest ancestors, go back perhaps 2.5 million years. That seems a substantial span. If you were to count one number per second and never pause to sleep or eat, it would take about twelve days to reach one million. Two-and-a-half million is (...) a month filled with incessant counting. Stone was the Earth's first solid. Geologists have identified bedrock that has endured at least 4.3 billion years. Some zircon crystals are older still. Every migrant continent harbors rocks of at least... (shrink)

Ecological crisis is being widely discussed in society today and therefore, the subject of religious naturalism has emerged as a major topic in religion. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-four chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts: ¿ Varieties of religious naturalism and its relations to other outlooks (...) ¿ Some earlier religious naturalists ¿ Pantheism, materialism, and the value-ladenness of nature ¿ Ecology, humans, and politics in naturalistic perspective ¿ Religious naturalism and traditional religions ¿ Putting religious naturalism into practice ¿ Critical discussions of religious naturalism. Within these sections central issues, debates, and problems are examined, including: defining religious naturalism; religious underpinnings of ecology; natural piety; the religious-aesthetic; ecstatic naturalism as deep pantheism; spiritual ecology; African-American religious naturalism; Christian religious naturalism; Dao and water; Confucianism; environmental action; and practices in religious naturalism. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, theology, and philosophy. The Handbook will also be useful for those in related fields, such as environmental ethics and ecology. (shrink)

Throughout the ages one of the central topics in philosophy of religion has been the rationality of theistic belief. This book proposes that parties on both sides of this debate might shift their attention in a different direction, by focusing on the question of whether it is rational to be a religious theist. Explaining that having theistic beliefs is primarily a cognitive affair but being a religious theist involves a whole way of life that includes one's beliefs, Golding argues that (...) it can be pragmatically rational to be a religious theist even if the evidence for God's existence is minimal. The argument is applied to the case of Judaism, articulating what is involved in religious Judaism and arguing that it is rationally defensible to be a religious Jew. The book concludes with a discussion of whether a similar argument might be constructed for other versions of religious theism such as Christianity or Islam, and for non-theistic religions such as Taoism or Buddhism. Joshua Golding offers a carefully wrought explanation of how it can be rational for someone to live a religious life, in particular, a traditional Jewish life. (shrink)