One of the most difficult problems for a student of religion is the problem of how to relate different religious views of life. It is not difficult to say, ‘My religious orientation has the only truth,’ but the art of giving evidence and argument to support a view on how they should be compared is almost nonexistent. Because of this, the recent work that John Hick has done in this area deserves thoughtful consideration. Since I am working on a (...) book which is concerned with this issue, I am not only going to discuss Hick's views but also defend an alternative way of relating religious views of life. I hope this article will stimulate reactions which will be of help in my work on the book. (shrink)

The "New Hume" referred to in the title of this collection of essays is the Hume who is supposed to be a causal realist in Galen Strawson's and John Wright's senses of that term. There are, of course, other "New Humes." There is the "New Hume" who is not an inductive sceptic, the "New Hume" who is a moral realist, and the "New Hume" who is a causal realist of a very different kind, to name but a few. Perhaps (...) the book should have been called A New Hume Debate to acknowledge the many interesting and new interpretations of Hume that have very little to do with Strawson's and Wright's forms of causal realism and may even be incompatible with them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao AbeJohn B. Cobb Jr.Masao Abe spent a year at the Blaisdell Institute in Claremont, 1965–1966. I was on sabbatical in Germany that year. On return I learned from many people that I had missed a great opportunity for an authentic encounter with a living Buddhist thinker who understood Christianity very well. Fortunately, he visited Claremont again, although more briefly, and this time I was able to take (...) advantage of his visit.I was, and am, convinced that Whiteheadians have much to gain from the encounter with Buddhists. At one level we can grasp and assimilate the idea of dependent origination or pratitya samutpada quite easily. For Whitehead too the ultimate reality consists in the many becoming one. For Whitehead human experience is an example of this reality and, indeed, that example is the one he most fully analyzed.On the other hand, we Whiteheadians incline to objectify the whole process. More often than with Whitehead himself, we are describing a process that is going on objectively out there. Abe taught me the difference. He liked to distinguish the perspective of the swimmer battling against the current in dangerous waters and observers on the bank. To understand that all unit events are instances of dependent origination is one thing; to experience oneself in that way is quite another. And what is especially important is to recognize that experiencing oneself is not objectifying one’s past or imagining oneself in the eyes of an observer. It is embodying the absolutely immediate, ever-changing reality that is experience now.Whitehead never thought of his ontological analysis as having direct religious importance. For him, as part of the understanding that all things are perpetually perishing, it constituted the ultimate threat to the meaningfulness of life. The religious dimension came as a response to this threat.For Abe, of course, the full existential realization of what we are, is in itself salvific in the sense of healing. It puts an end to guilt, defensiveness, and attachment, and it makes us wholly acceptant of whatever is. It leads to, or perhaps is, enlightenment, expressing itself in wisdom and compassion. Given the history of Buddhism, one must accept the profound truth in this affirmation, although, given the history of Buddhism, one must also recognize that matters are never as simple as this formulation sounds.I have spoken personally of an example of what and how I learned from Abe. This is a testimonial that can be matched by scores, perhaps hundreds, of others. Certainly [End Page 119] in our ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue group, Abe was the foremost teacher. My goal in helping to organize this group was to give my fellow Christian theologians the chance to learn from him and other Buddhists. I am proud of the extent to which, especially because of Abe’s gifts as a teacher, my purpose was fulfilled.Appreciating the truth of Buddhism, and agreeing with Abe that Christian theology through the centuries has been distorted by clinging to substantialist modes of thought, I was particularly eager to engage him in a dialogue about the relation of Buddhism and Christian process theology, in particular a Christian process theology that recognized and appreciated the spiritual value of Buddhist enlightenment. Since Abe felt that Buddhists had something to learn from Christianity about social ethics, the suggestions of Christian theology, including its process form, for modifications or developments of Buddhism were not wholly lost on him. He supervised two dissertations by Buddhists on this topic, of which I was the official advisor, one by a Zen Buddhist (Chris Ives) and the other by a Pure Land Buddhist (John Ishihara, now Yokota). He criticized fellow Buddhists in our dialogue group for not being as open to learning from their Christian dialogue partners as these partners were open to Buddhist insights. In short he supported real dialogue, always ready to share his wisdom, and encouraging openness to further development of Buddhism.None of us is perfect, or, at least, none of us fulfills what someone else would see as perfection. In my judgment Abe was unnecessarily wedded to features of his Buddhist tradition that inhibited learning from Christianity, particularly in its process... (shrink)

Essays on atheism by Kurt Baier, John Dewey, Paul Edwards, Antony Flew, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Sidney Hook, Walter Kaufmann, Corliss Lamont, Wallace I. Matson, H.J. McCloskey, Ernest Nagel, Kai Nielsen, Richard Robinson, Bertrand Russell, and Michael Scriven.

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

[Editor's introduction: The following are excerpts from three talks given at the conference "Policies and Publics for Science and Technology, " London, April 1990. They introduce a British research initiative in public understanding of science and point to early results. The program was developed and coordinated by the Science Policy Support Group. At the meeting, a new journal for specialists in this area was launched: Public Understanding of Science, to be edited by John Durant, Science Museum, London SW7 2DD, (...) UK. The first issue of the journal is expected to appear in April 1991. Science, Technology, & Human Values reaffirms its long commitment to publishing research on public attitudes toward science and particularly welcomes articles on this topic of general interest to the field of science and technology studies.]. (shrink)

Genetic testing has historically been performed in the context of chronic disease and cancer diagnostics. The timelines for these tests are typically measured in days or weeks, rather than in minutes. As such, the concept that genetic information might be generated and then used to alter management in the acute setting has, thus far, not been feasible. However, recent advances in genetic technologies have the potential to allow genetic information to be generated significantly quicker. The m.1555A>G genetic variant is present (...) in one in 500 individuals and predisposes to profound hearing loss following the administration of aminoglycoside antibiotics. These antibiotics are used frequently in cases of neonatal sepsis and it is estimated that approximately 180 neonates in the UK are at risk of antibiotic induced hearing loss each year because of this genetic change. Knowledge of this variant in the acute setting would allow clinicians to prescribe alternative antibiotics. The Pharmacogenetics to Avoid Loss of Hearing study will implement a genetic point of care test (POCT) for the m.1555A>G variant within two major UK based neonatal intensive care units. This represents the first trial of a genetic POCT aimed at altering management in the acute setting. This round table discussion outlines the novel ethical issues faced in the development of this trial and the legal barriers to implementation. We ask five stakeholders to provide their opinions on this trial and their perspectives on the concept of genetic testing in the acute setting.Trial registration numberISRCTN-13704894. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single largest item of international trade is (...) a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down. While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted reforms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts - "Voltaire's bastards"--Whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion. Already known to millions of readers as the author of novels which portray the overwhelming effects of this power on the modern individual by weaving together international finance, the oil and arms business, guerrilla warfare, drug traffic, and the world of art, here Saul lays aside the mask of fiction to speak in his own voice. Only by withdrawing from our addiction to "solutions," he argues, reclaiming the citizens' right to question and participate in public life, and recovering a common sense capacity for intelligent panic, can we find a way out of our permanent crisis. (shrink)

In a fair, infinite lottery, it is possible to conclude that drawing a number divisible by four is strictly less likely than drawing an even number; and, with apparently equal cogency, that drawing a number divisible by four is equally as likely as drawing an even number.

I want to discuss a doctrine and a concept in theory of knowledge which has various manifestations from at least the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The concept is that of direct or immediate cognition, the doctrine says that only what is like mind can be directly or immediately present to mind. This doctrine raises the question of how we can know things other than ourselves and our experiences: the concept of direct presence most usually had the consequence of (...) making our knowledge of the world indirect, uncertain, or impossible. The directly present must in some way inform us about the indirectly present. (shrink)

This thesis investigates how children ought to be influenced with respect to religion. To answer this question, I develop a theory of cognitive curriculum content and apply it to the teaching of religious beliefs and beliefs about religions. By ‘a theory of cognitive curriculum content,’ I mean a theory that determines which truth-claims belong on the curriculum, and whether or not teachers ought to promote students’ belief of those claims. I extend this theory to help educators to decide which attitudes (...) address on the curriculum and whether or not to promote them. I then apply this to the case of religious attitudes and attitudes about religions. I argue that where having or failing to have a certain attitude makes a significant difference to students’ lives, it ought to be addressed by curricula. Where failing to have the attitude is irrational, this failure ought to be remedied; where having the attitude is irrational, that attitude ought to be discouraged; and where neither having nor failing to have the attitude is irrational, that attitude ought to be introduced and discussed without encouragement or discouragement. In so far as is practicable, educators should aim to acquaint students with arguments for and against having these attitudes and initiate them into the practice of assessing their soundness. The implications of this theory for extra-curricular influence, such as upbringing in the home, are also explored. (shrink)

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "If I Stay" Allyson Healeys life is exactly like her suitcase--packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything shes not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform (...) Allysons life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, "Just One Day" shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost... and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know. The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willems story--"Just One Year"--is coming soon. (shrink)

Pursuing Jacques Derrida's reflections on the possibility of "religion without religion," John Llewelyn makes room for a sense of the religious that does not depend on the religions or traditional notions of God or gods. Beginning with Derrida's statement that it was Kierkegaard to whom he remained most faithful, Llewelyn reads Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Deleuze, Marion, as well as Kierkegaard and Derrida, in original and compelling ways. Llewelyn puts religiousness in vital touch with the struggles (...) of the human condition, finding religious space in the margins between the secular and the religions, transcendence and immanence, faith and knowledge, affirmation and despair, lucidity and madness. This provocative and philosophically rich account shows why and where the religious matters. (shrink)

A comprehensive exploration of pragmatic themes emerging from neuroscientific research,illustrating why neurophilosophy should take this advancing pragmatist direction seriously.

In Historical Representation Frank Ankersmit seeks a juste milieu between postmodern theory and historical practice. But he still insists that the meaning of a historical representation “is not found, but made in and by [the] text.” Thus “there will be nothing, outside the text itself, that can govern or check [the conceptualization].” Accordingly, “a representation itself cannot be interpreted as one large description. I would not hesitate to say that this—and nothing else—is the central problem in the philosophy of history.” (...) On the other hand, he affirms that “a historical representation ‘is about’ a certain part of the past,” that historical debate is a “semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about the past.” Everything hinges on how to grasp this idea of “aboutness.” I propose an alternative reading of post-positivist philosophy of science in hopes of reaching the juste milieu. The issue is whether colligatory concepts in history have a more radically constructed character than theoretical terms in natural-scientific theory, and whether, as with the latter, they can make intersubjective claims to warrant. My view is that colligatory concepts in historical representations can be conceived to refer in roughly the same way that theoretical terms do in natural-scientific theories. All the problems I find in Ankersmit’s approach come to the fore in his fruitful analogy to portrait painting. First, the personality the portrait evokes is not restricted to the representation, but is of the sitter. We are offered insight not into painting but into an actual character. That is, there is a cognitive, not simply an aesthetic, dimension to representation. Historical terms pick out something intersubjectively affirmable in reality, and discrimination is possible among rival versions. The question is how to regard—to explain and to evaluate—these underdetermined objects of consideration, not to preclude them by stipulation. (shrink)

The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. The idea of evolution had been around, in various guises, since the time of Ancient Greece. And nor did theorizing about evolution stop with what Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's dangerous idea." In this riveting new book, bestselling science writers John and Mary Gribbin explore the history of the idea of evolution, showing how Darwin's theory built on what went before (...) and how it was developed in the twentieth century, through an understanding of genetics and the biochemical basis of evolution, into the so-called "modern synthesis" and beyond. Darwin deserves his recognition as the primary proponent of the idea of natural selection, but as the authors show, his contribution was one link in a chain that extends back into antiquity and is still being forged today. (shrink)

In this provocative book, John Keane calls for a fresh understanding of the vexed relationship between democracy and violence. Taking issue with the common sense view that 'human nature' is violent, Keane shows why mature democracies do not wage war upon each other, and why they are unusually sensitive to violence. He argues that we need to think more discriminatingly about the origins of violence, its consequences, its uses and remedies. He probes the disputed meanings of the term violence, (...) and asks why violence is the greatest enemy of democracy, and why today's global 'triangle of violence' is tempting politicians to invoke undemocratic emergency powers. Throughout, Keane gives prominence to ethical questions, such as the circumstances in which violence can be justified, and argues that violent behaviour and means of violence can and should be 'democratised' - made publicly accountable to others, so encouraging efforts to erase surplus violence from the world. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the most gifted and productive philosophers of the decades following the Second World War. Her writings present challenges to readers: some of them are very difficult to comprehend while others seem philosophically-minded yet situated outside of philosophy as such. There are also the issues of whether she had a philosophical method and of the influence of Wittgenstein on the manner of her approach. A summary and estimate of Anscombe’s enduring contributions is presented before exploring the (...) style and aims of her philosophical work. Then two of her writings on religion are examined and their implications for her attitude to philosophy considered. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

John Maynard Smith, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, recently summarized in the NYRB the sharply conflicting assessments of Stephen Jay Gould: "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not (...) be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists.". No one can take any pleasure in the evident pain Gould is experiencing now that his actual standing within the community of professional evolutionary biologists is finally becoming more widely known. If what was a stake was solely one man's self-regard, common decency would preclude comment. (shrink)

Modularity is a fundamental doctrine in the cognitive sciences. It holds a preeminent position in cognitive psychology and generative linguistics, as well as a long history in neurophysiology, with roots going all the way back to the early nineteenth century. But a mature field of neuroscience is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has challenged orthodox conceptions of the modular mind. One way of accommodating modularity within the new framework suggested by these developments is to go for increasingly soft versions of (...) modularity. One such version, which I call the “system” view, is so soft that it promises to meet practically any challenge neuroscience can throw at it. In this paper, I reconsider afresh what we ought to regard as the sine qua non of modularity and offer a few arguments against the view that an insipid “system” module could be the legitimate successor of the traditional notion. (shrink)

Philosophy as a separate discipline is a rather new phenomenon. This presents problems for our understanding of what constitutes the history of philosophy. Past writers often approached their concerns from a multi-disciplinary perspective; thus to understand them we have to do more than answer a contemporary set of issues. To that end, I suggest we attend to Locke's advice on how to read a text. Following this advice may permit us to avoid several puzzles which result from misreading a text.

"Being and Freedom is an account of ethics in Europe from the French Revolution: a phase of philosophical ethics whose influence ran far beyond philosophy, eventually dominating politics and religion in the West. Developments came from France, Germany, and Britain. This book is currently the only study that treats them together as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The first chapter covers the philosophical conflict at the heart of the French Revolution, between the individualism of the Enlightenment and two very different forms of (...) holistic ethics: the old regime's ethic of service and the radical-democracy of the Rousseauian left. Responses analysing modern freedom and democracy came from a series of French liberal thinkers. In Germany the reaction was to two revolutions seen as inaugurating modernity--the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution of Kant. Here the fate of religion was critical; with it the metaphysics of being and freedom. The story is traced from Kant to Hegel's idealist version of ethical holism. In Britain, Enlightenment naturalism remained the prevailing framework. It took different forms: 'common sense' and the theory of the sentiments in Scotland, utilitarianism in England. From these elements came a synthesis of European themes by John Stuart Mill--comparable in range but opposed to that of Hegel. This period's ethical ideas remain the core of late modern ethics and the contested ground on which ethical disagreements take place today. The final chapter is a retrospective and assessment"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

According to most contemporary philosophers, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is obviously true. We might therefore expect earlier philosophers to endorse it. But I will use a puzzle about identity over time to argue that Descartes would reject it.

Scotus - unlike Thomas Aquinas - never commented on Aristotle's Politics nor did he write any significant political tracts like Ockham. Nevertheless, despite his primary philosophical reputation as a metaphysician, Scotus did have certain definitive ideas about both politics and the morality of the marketplace.

We introduce a new family of jump operators on Borel equivalence relations; specifically, for each countable group [Formula: see text] we introduce the [Formula: see text]-jump. We study the elementary properties of the [Formula: see text]-jumps and compare them with other previously studied jump operators. One of our main results is to establish that for many groups [Formula: see text], the [Formula: see text]-jump is proper in the sense that for any Borel equivalence relation [Formula: see text] the [Formula: see (...) text]-jump of [Formula: see text] is strictly higher than [Formula: see text] in the Borel reducibility hierarchy. On the other hand, there are examples of groups [Formula: see text] for which the [Formula: see text]-jump is not proper. To establish properness, we produce an analysis of Borel equivalence relations induced by continuous actions of the automorphism group of what we denote the full [Formula: see text]-tree, and relate these to iterates of the [Formula: see text]-jump. We also produce several new examples of equivalence relations that arise from applying the [Formula: see text]-jump to classically studied equivalence relations and derive generic ergodicity results related to these. We apply our results to show that the complexity of the isomorphism problem for countable scattered linear orders properly increases with the rank. (shrink)

John Wilson; The Teaching Profession: a case of self-mutilation, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 245–250, https://doi.

This article offers a critique of Ronald Dworkin’s article “A New Philosophy for International Law”, (Philos Public Aff 41: 1–30, 2013). It begins by showing that Dworkin’s moralised theory of law is built on two highly questionable background assumptions. On the one hand, a descriptively implausible characterisation of a positivist-voluntarist view of international law as the reigning “orthodoxy”. On the other hand, the methodologically questionable assumption that a theory of international law must discharge the dual function of explaining the validity (...) of international law in a manner that underwrites its presumptive legitimacy. In its core part, the article then offers a sustained criticism of Dworkin’s moralised account of the validity and legitimacy of international law. Various problems are identified with the “principle of salience” that Dworkin offers in place of consent as a ground for international law. A key concern is the difficulties that stem from Dworkin’s willingness to proceed on the “fantasy” assumption that his theory needs to get off the ground, i.e. that there is an international court with compulsory jurisdiction and reliable mechanisms for enforcing its judgements. Finally, the article concludes with some thoughts on how Dworkin’s “fantasy-based” approach led him to over-estimate the degree to which international law can be a vehicle for the global spread of liberal democratic values. More minimalist ambitions for international legal order, along the lines suggested by John Rawls inThe Law of Peoples, seem more realistic. (shrink)