In his landmark monograph, "The Politics of Jesus", John Howard Yoder challenged mainstream Christian social ethics by arguing that the New Testament account of Jesus's founding of a messianic community entails a normative politics, not only for early Christianity but for the contemporary church. This challenge is further elaborated in several important posthumous publications, especially "Preface to Theology", in which Yoder examines the development of early Christology with attention to its political and ethical implications, and "The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited", Yoder's (...) proposal for a renewed Jewish-Christian dialogue around the moral meaning of messianism. This article interprets these writings with reference to a range of critical scholarship on and about Yoder, Yoder and Augustine, and Jewish and Christian messianism, paying particular attention to questions of political ethics. (shrink)

When the Radical Reformers demanded the separation of church and state, it was not to privatize their convictions or depoliticize the church, but rather an attempt to recognize Jesus as Lord over all. The theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy is currently rethinking theology's influence by secular modernity, thereby making a bold critique of contemporary Christianity. It should not be surprising that Anabaptist theologians have found theological kinship with Radical Orthodoxy. Taking their cuesfrom John Howard Yoder, Henri de Lubac, Jacques (...) Derrida, Stanley Cavell, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Stanley Hauerwas, and others, writers in this volume engage Radical Orthodoxy on topics such as ecclesiology, martyrdom, worship, oath-taking, peace and violence. (Amazon). (shrink)

Certain researchers in the field of moral psychology, following Turiel, argue that children and adults in different cultures make a distinction between moral and conventional transgressions. One interpretation of the theory holds that moral transgressions elicit a signature moral response pattern while conventional transgressions elicit a signature conventional response pattern. Four dimensions distinguish the moral response pattern from the conventional response pattern. 1. HARM/JUSTICE/RIGHTS – Subjects justify the wrongness of moral transgressions by stating that they involve a victim that is (...) harmed, whose rights have been violated or who has been subject to an injustice. Conventional transgressions do not involve a victim that is harmed, whose rights have been violated or who has been subject to an injustice. 2. AUTHORITY – Subjects judge moral transgressions as wrong independent of structures of authority while the wrongness of conventional transgressions can be changed by an authority. 3. GENERALIZABILITY – Subjects judge moral transgressions as generalizably wrong, i.e., independent of time and place, while conventional transgressions’ wrongness depends on time and place. 4. SERIOUSNESS – Subjects judge moral transgressions as more seriously wrong than conventional transgressions. Others have criticized this view for a diversity of reasons. Relevant for our purposes is that, first, there appear to be cultural differences in what constitutes a moral transgression and second, it is unclear what the exact hypotheses are, surrounding this supposed moral/conventional distinction. I will present planned and ongoing experimental research that investigates two specific problems we encountered in the moral-conventional literature. First of all, we cannot draw reliable conclusions from previous work about the generalizability of the wrongness of different kinds of transgressions. In previous experiments, differences in time and place are often but not always confounded with a variety of other differences. For example, Huebner et al. ask participants if the depicted act would be OK for someone who lived elsewhere where everyone else did this. Moreover, when varying time and/or place, participants are likely to assume that other things differ as well. In our study, we vary time and/or place in a variety of scenarios in order to investigate what assumptions participants make when confronted with the generalizability question. Second, it is an open question as to what extent any transgression will universally elicit one of the two signature response patterns. In our study, we make use of existing differences in participants’ value hierarchy to test this. For one and the same scenario, we compare the response of participants for whom authority is an important value with the results of participants for whom authority is not an important value, in order to see if there are differences in the two groups’ response patterns. References: Haidt J., Koller S. & Dias M. 1993. Affect, culture and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65:613-628. Huebner B., Lee, J.L. & Hauser, M.D. 2010. The Moral-Conventional Distinction in Mature Moral Competence. Journal of Cognition and Culture 10: 1-26. Kelly D., Stich S., Haley K.J., Eng S.J. & Fessler D.M.T. 2007. Harm, Affect, and the Moral/Conventional Distinction. Mind & Language 22:117-131. Nichols S. 2004. Sentimental Rules: on the Natural Foundations of Moral Judgment. Oxford University Press. Stich S., Fessler, D.M.T. & Kelly D. 2009. On the Morality of Harm: A response to Sousa, Holbrook and Piazza. Cognition 113:93-97. Turiel E. 1983. The Development of Social Knowledge. Morality & Convention. Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

Context: Metaphysics of perception explores fundamental questions regarding the structure and status of the perceived world or appearance(s. By virtue of perception, the apparent world comes to existence. This, however, does not mean that the apparent world is a projection of mind, that it exists “in the head.” Implications: PL-metaphysics reconciles realism with constructivism. As such, it might be considered either an alternative to constructivism or an improvement and completion of this position. Constructivist content: The article refers to non-Cartesian movements (...) in contemporary philosophy, including radical constructivism, enactive and embodied cognition. Keywords: Perception, metaphysics, radical constructivism, realism, appearance, Jerzy Perzanowski, Plato, Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz, Ernst von Glasersfeld. (shrink)

In this article cheating in network and specifically online computer games is looked into as a moral offence. Reasons for the public ignoring the issue are brought forth. We present what could be considered as cheating in generic terms and in context. Different kinds of cheating are delineated, and remedies proposed. We also identify what is not cheating.

1935. A comprehensive text on the understanding and practice of yoga through the study of the nature of man as taught in the Vedas.

v. 1. Pillars of Sri Gurudeva's sampradaya and Heart-homages to Sri Gurudev.--v. 2. Shri Gurudeva's philosophy of God-realisation.

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: We examine whether there are any irreducible contradictions between ecological psychology and radical enactivism. We concentrate on two points of contention between the two approaches: the relevance of neural structures in understanding perception and the use of semantically loaded concepts in theorizing about perception.