Max Weber's fragmentary writings on social status suggest that differentiation on this basis should disappear as capitalism develops. However, many of Weber's examples of status refer to the United States, which Weber held to be the epitome of capitalist development. Weber hints at a second form of status, one generated by capitalism, which might reconcile this contradiction, and later theorists emphasize the continuing importance of status hierarchies. This article argues that such theories have missed one of the most important forms (...) of contemporary status: celebrity. Celebrity is an omnipresent feature of contemporary society, blazing lasting impressions in the memories of all who cross its path. In keeping with Weber's conception of status, celebrity has come to dominate status “honor,” generate enormous economic benefits, and lay claim to certain legal privileges. Compared with other types of status, however, celebrity is status on speed. It confers honor in days, not generations; it decays over time, rather than accumulating; and it demands a constant supply of new recruits, rather than erecting barriers to entry. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks has recently argued that substance dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness do not cohere well with the Incarnation. He has also claimed that physicalism about human persons avoids this problem, which should lead Christians to be physicalists. In this paper, I argue that there are plausible dualist accounts of embodiment and humanness that avoid his objections. Furthermore, I argue that physicalism is inconsistent with the Incarnation.

Large‐scale characterization of the human microbiota has largely focused on Western adults, yet these populations may be uncharacteristic because of their diets and lifestyles. In particular, the rise of “Western diseases” may in part stem from reduced exposure to, or even loss of, microbes with which humans have coevolved. Here, we review beneficial microbes associated with pathogen resistance, highlighting the emerging role of complex microbial communities in protecting against disease. We discuss ways in which modern lifestyles and practices may deplete (...) physiologically important microbiota, and explore prospects for reintroducing or encouraging the growth of beneficial microbes to promote the restoration of healthy microbial ecosystems. (shrink)

Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premises: Kim’s Dictum (...) and the Nowhere Man principle. Kim’s Dictum says that causation requires a spatial relation. Nowhere Man says that souls can’t be in space. By our lights, both premises can be called into question. We’ll begin our evaluation of the argument by pointing out some consequences of Kim’s Dictum. For some, these will be costs. We will then present two defeaters for Kim’s Dictum and a critical analysis of Kim’s case for Nowhere Man. The upshot is that Kim’s argument against substance dualism fails. (shrink)

I defend and clarify my arguments in "Real Representation of Fictional Objects" in response to criticisms from Joseph Sartorelli. In particular, I clarify why Kripke's notion of "levels of language" and a pragmatic principle suggested by van Inwagen do not support the view that works of fiction generate fictional objects but do not represent them.

I consider two views that combine different elements of general theistic replies to natural evil, those of Peter van Inwagen and William Hasker. I end with a Hasker-style defense – one that, unlike Hasker's, denies the existence of pointless natural evils – and some brief observations on the direction of future debate.

ABSTRACTAssuming there are fictional objects, what sorts of properties do they have? Intuitively, most of their properties involve being represented—appearing in works of fiction, being depicted as clever, being portrayed by actors, being admired or feared, and so on. But several philosophers, including Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, Kendall Walton, and Amie Thomasson, argue that even if there are fictional objects, they are not really represented in some or all of these cases. I reconstruct four kinds of arguments for this (...) unexpected conclusion; they concern the semantics of names, pragmatic force, creation, and representations’ qualitative content. But I find all the arguments flawed. I then argue for the contrary, employing a new perspective: representation of fictional objects begins with the works of fiction that originate them. A work of fiction represents its “native” objects because our culture bestows that property on it. I sketch conditions for such property bestowal and argue that they are satisfied in this case. (shrink)

This article traces the meaning of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον in available Roman-Egypt papyri, the LXX, early-Jewish literature, and Greek writings to determine the meaning of πανδοχεῖον [inn] used in Luke 10:34. It is argued that a lexical study of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον and available information on travel in the ancient world indicate that there is no evidence for the so-called non-commercial inns in the ancient world and that commercial inns and innkeepers, in principle, were all ‘bad’. In conclusion, the (...) implications of this understanding of πανδοχεῖον and πανδοκεύς (Lk 10:34, 35) for the possible intended meaning of the parable are discussed, a conclusion that begs further research regarding the identity of the protagonist in the parable. (shrink)

In this review article, the book by J.H. van Wyk, Augustine: A study on the ethics of the church father from Africa is presented and discussed. Short overviews of the content of the six chapters are given. They are: Introduction – the necessity for a book on Augustine’s ethics in Afrikaans, Orientation – an overview of his life and works, Grounding – the relationship between dogmatics and ethics, Typology – the character of his ethics, Themes – marriage and sexual ethics, (...) political ethics and animal ethics, Findings – evaluation of Augustine’s ethics. Support is given to the argument that Augustine is an important forerunner to the Reformation. Information is provided on Augustine and the early years of the Reformation in Wittenberg. Critical remarks are made about the author’s understanding of the relationship between faith and works, dogmatics and ethics. The Lutheran understanding of this topic is presented as an important alternative to the Reformed version that is defended in this book. Finally, attention is given to Augustine’s ‘theory of the two cities’. Also in this regard advice is given from one of Luther’s publication. His exposition of Mary’s Song in Luke 1:46–55 is used as an example of how a witness to the government could look like. (shrink)

Syncrisis as literary motif in the story about the grown-up child Jesus in the temple (Lk 2:41–52 and the Thomas tradition): The article explores hermeneutical solutions for the negative response from the child Jesus towards his biological parents in the Lukan temple story (Lk 2:41–52). The ‘wisdom’ of the child who acts in an ‘adult-like’ way is interpreted as a syncrisis. This literary motif is explained by an analysis of the contrasting positive and negative acts of the child Jesus towards (...) teachers of the Torah in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (shrink)

This article examines the phrase ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου in Matthew and Luke’s versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the light of Ewe-Ghanaian eschatological vision. Theoretically, it uses a combination of the historical–critical and indigenous Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutical approaches to explore the implication of βασιλεία for the Ewe-Ghanaian Christian. The article discusses the diversity in the interpretations of the text from the early church to the modern and postmodern periods in Christian history and argues that this diversity has (...) occurred as a result of the fluidity of the eschatological visions in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and that the linear eschatological vision described by the church is inconsistent with the cyclical vision in Ewe cosmology. This dual eschatological vision creates a dilemma in the Ewe-Ghanaian Christian’s understanding of the eternal states. Finally, it is argued that to resolve this eschatological dilemma is to clearly define the place of Ewe eschatological vision in Christian eschatology and interpreting the former as replica of the latter. (shrink)

The issues, raised in Żukowski (arXiv:0809.0115v1, 2008), concerning the relevance of the von Neumann theorem for the single-system’s quantumness test proposed in Alicki and Van Ryn (J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41:062001, 2008) and performed for the case of single photon polarization in Brida et al. (Opt. Express 16:11750, 2008; arXiv:0811.3376, 2008) and the usefulness of Bell’s inequality for testing the idea of macroscopic quantum systems are discussed in some details. Finally, the proper quantum mechanical description of the experiment with (...) polarized photon beams is presented. (shrink)

Van Aarde, AG - Scheffler, EH 1988. Suffering in Luke's Gospel (Bladsy 183).Hattingh, LJ - Steenkamp, JJ 1987. Die Wêreldraad van Kerke se bemoeienis met die rassevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika. 'n Historiese analitiese oorsig van die periode 1950-1970 (Bladsy 190).

Painting can only be thought in relation to the image. And yet, with (and within) painting what continues to endure is the image of painting. While this is staged explicitly in, for example, paintings of St. Luke by artists of the Northern Renaissance—e.g., Rogier van der Weyden, Jan Gossaert, and Simon Marmion—the same concerns are also at work within both the practices as well as the contemporaneous writings that define central aspects of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this (...) paper is to begin an investigation into the process by which painting stages the activity of painting. This forms part of a project whose aim is an investigation of the way philosophy should respond to the essential historicity of art (where the latter is understood philosophically). (shrink)

In the absence of explicit punitive sanctions, why do individuals voluntarily participate in intergroup warfare when doing so incurs a mortality risk? Here we consider the motivation of individuals for participating in warfare. We hypothesize that in addition to other considerations, individuals are incentivized by the possibility of rewards. We test a prediction of this “cultural rewards war-risk hypothesis” with ethnographic literature on warfare in small-scale societies. We find that a greater number of benefits from warfare is associated with a (...) higher rate of death from conflict. This provides preliminary support for the relationship between rewards and participation in warfare. (shrink)

How people learn chunks or associations between adjacent items in sequences was modelled. Two previously successful models of how people learn artificial grammars were contrasted: the CCN, a network version of the competitive chunker of Servan‐Schreiber and Anderson [J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 16 (1990) 592], which produces local and compositionally‐structured chunk representations acquired incrementally; and the simple recurrent network (SRN) of Elman [Cogn. Sci. 14 (1990) 179], which acquires distributed representations through error correction. The models' susceptibility to two (...) types of interference was determined: prediction conflicts, in which a given letter can predict two other letters that appear next with an unequal frequency; and retroactive interference, in which the prediction made by a letter changes in the second half of training. The predictions of the models were determined by exploring parameter space and seeing howdensely different regions of the space of possible experimental outcomes were populated by model outcomes. For both types of interference, human data fell squarely in regions characteristic of CCN performance but not characteristic of SRN performance. (shrink)

In an illuminating article, Claus Beisbart argues that the recently-popular thesis that the probabilities of statistical mechanics (SM) are Best System chances runs into a serious obstacle: there is no one axiomatization of SM that is robustly best, as judged by the theoretical virtues of simplicity, strength, and fit. Beisbart takes this 'no clear winner' result to imply that the probabilities yielded by the competing axiomatizations simply fail to count as Best System chances. In this reply, we express sympathy for (...) the 'no clear winner' thesis. However, we argue that an importantly different moral should be drawn from this. We contend that the implication for Humean chances is not that there are no SM chances, but rather that SM chances fail to be sharp. (shrink)

The Middle Ages saw a great flourishing of philosophy. Now, to help students and researchers make sense of the gargantuan—and, often, dauntingly complex—body of literature on the main traditions of thinking that stem from the Greek heritage of late antiquity, this new four-volume collection is the latest addition to Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Philosophy series. Christina Van Dyke of Calvin College, USA, and an editor of the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, has carefully assembled classic contributions, as well as (...) more recent work, to create a one-stop ‘mini library’ of the best and most influential scholarship. -/- With a comprehensive index and a useful synoptic introduction newly written by the editor, Medieval Philosophy will be welcomed as an indispensable resource for reference and research. (shrink)

Essays from the cutting edge of psychedelic research, from Breaking Convention 2017.

Filosofische studie over de mogelijkheid het moderne nihilisme-vraagstuk te overwinnen in een nieuwe metafysica.

Talk of levels is everywhere in cognitive science. Whether it is in terms of adjudicating longstanding debates or motivating foundational concepts, one cannot go far without hearing about the need to talk at different ‘levels’. Yet in spite of its widespread application and use, the concept of levels has received little sustained attention within cognitive science. This paper provides an analysis of the various ways the notion of levels has been deployed within cognitive science. The paper begins by introducing and (...) motivating discussion via four representative accounts of levels. It then turns to outlining and relating the four accounts using two dimensions of comparison. The result is the creation of a conceptual framework that maps the logical space of levels talk, which offers an important step toward making sense of levels talk within cognitive science. (shrink)

In his book The Myth of Evil, Phillip Cole argues that we ought to abandon the concept of evil. Cole claims that the concept of evil forms part of a dualistic worldview that divides normal people from inhuman, demonic, and monstrous wrongdoers. Such monsters are found in fiction, Cole suggests, but not in reality, so evil is of no explanatory use. Yet even if there were actual evil persons, Cole maintains, evil would be a redundant, pseudo-explanatory concept, a psychological black (...) hole that is of no use in our explanations of why people do wrong. Contrary to Cole's claims, evil does have the requisite form to function as an explanation, and thus, if there are any actual evil actions or persons, evil will be explanatorily useful. Cole is right to suggest that evil cannot provide a complete explanation for any actions, but none of our virtue or vice concepts can do so, and they are none the worse for that. Cole is also right to suggest that the concept of evil is often used to play certain narrative roles, but he fails to see that evil can play those roles only if it has an explanatorily useful form. While it is true that evil could be paraphrased out of explanations of actions without any loss of information, that does not show that the concept is explanatorily redundant. In fact, Cole's preferred alternative explanations of extreme wrongdoing that eschew appeals to evil are themselves inadequate because they fail to account for the directed and intentional nature of some extremely wrong actions. (shrink)

The traditional problem of evil sets theists the task of reconciling two things: God and evil. I argue that theists face the more difficult task of reconciling God and evils that God is specially obligated to prevent. Because of His authority, God's obligation to curtail evil goes far beyond our Samaritan duty to prevent evil when doing so isn't overly hard. Authorities owe their subjects a positive obligation to prevent certain evils; we have a right against our authorities that they (...) protect us. God's apparent mistake is not merely the impersonal wrong of failing to do enough good — though it is that too. It is the highly personal wrong of failing to live up to a moral requirement that comes bundled with authority over persons. To make my argument, I use the resources of political philosophy and defend a novel change to the orthodox account of authority. (shrink)

Certain non-voluntarists have recently defended political authority by advancing two-part views. First, they argue that the state, or the law, is best (or uniquely) capable of accomplishing something important. Second, they defend a substantive normative principle on which being so situated is sufficient for de jure authority. This paper uses widely accepted tenets to show that all such defenses of authority fail.

The best arguments for a nation-state’s right to exclude unwanted outsiders actually condemn nation-level regimes of restriction. Two argumentative steps lead to this conclusion. The first points out that the best arguments for exclusion generalize: if they show that nation-states have the right to exclude, they perform the same service for a great many towns, cities, subnational states, and provinces. The second step constructs a dilemma. The right to exclude is important enough to justify the suffering of would-be immigrants, or (...) it is not. If it is, the right to exclude is very important indeed–would-be immigrants often suffer grievously. But nation-level regimes would then be a serious moral problem: they would deprive a great many municipalities of a right that matters a great deal. Turning to the dilemma’s second horn, if the right to exclude is not important enough to justify the suffering of would-be immigrants, nation-level regimes are straightforwardly immoral. Either way, we arrive at this paper’s central thesis: the best arguments for a nation-states right to exclude actually condemn nation-level regimes of exclusion. (shrink)