Interview with Robert K. Logan by Marcin Trybulec.

In Grassroots Spirituality, Robert Forman documents an important and profound shift in the nature of spirituality in North America, that strongly influences Europe as well. His exciting survey graphically illustrates the possibility of this "grassroots" movement shaping a creative era that responds to new and old needs of religiosity.

Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara II. By Horst Steible and Fatma Yildiz. Die Inschriften von Fara, vol. 4. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. Pp. x + 272. €78.

Lorsque certaines conditions sont réunies, une théorie sociale peut naître à partir d’un résultat obtenu lors d’un travail de recherche. Cette idée fut exposée bien trop rapidement dans un précédent article dans les termes qui suivent : « une recherche empirique fructueuse ne se contente pas de vérifier des hypothèses issues d’une théorie, elle est également à l’origine de nouvelles hypothèses. On peut nommer cette composante du travail de recherche la “sérendipité”, c’est-à-dire la...

This important collection of essays offers a sustained philosophical examination of fundamental questions raised by multicultural education in primary and secondary schools. The essays focus on both theory and policy. They discuss the relation between culture and identity, the role of reason in bridging cultural divisions, and the civic implications of multi-culturalism in the teaching of history and literature. Several of the essays examine aspects of multicultural policies in California and New York, as well as the curriculum guidelines promulgated by (...) the National Council for Social Studies. Although much has been published on the subject of multi-culturalism, including the cultural war on American campuses, there is very little available on the impact of multicultural policies for primary and secondary education. So this is a volume that will be welcomed by all those interested in multicultural education: philosophers and historians of education, sociologists, professional educators and policy-makers. (shrink)

Is faith that p compatible with disbelief that p? I argue that it is. After surveying some recent literature on the compatibility of propositional and non-propositional forms of faith with the lack of belief, I take the next step and offer several arguments for the thesis that both these forms of faith are also compatible, in certain cases, with outright disbelief. This is contrary to the views of some significant recent commentators on propositional faith, including Robert Audi and Daniel (...) Howard-Snyder. The primary argument revolves around the possibility of maintaining a single faith through drastic changes in cognitive attitude. I argue that once we allow that propositional faith is compatible with weaker cognitive attitudes than belief, such as acceptance or assent, there is prima facie reason to consider propositional faith as sometimes compatible with disbelief. I then consider objections and offer some final reflections on the significance of the thesis. (shrink)

Our society's longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, although (...) conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law's willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. Conscience and the Common Good reframes the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus. (shrink)

The visual bias of all written or notated forms of language is examined. These include writing, math, science, computing and the Internet which together with speech form an evolutionary chain of six languages. The proposition that Google might be the seventh language is explored.

On this occasion, I shall try to respond to the suggestions that I report what it was like to be a graduate student at Harvard in the early 1930s engaged in writing a dissertation which took the shape in print of the monograph, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. This, quite some time before the sociology of science had emerged with a cognitive and social identity. I shall not attempt an account – let alone an explanatory account – of (...) the micro-environment at Harvard back then that provided local context for that study. Indeed, I suspect that the Gerald Holton, Everett Mendelsohn and Arnold Thackray reconstructions come closer to the intellectual and social reality of that time and place than anything I might reconstruct. (shrink)

The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...) faces challenges concerning the inscrutability of predication and the incompatibility with bundle theory, whereas module trope theory faces challenges concerning character overdetermination and a collapse into austere nominalism. These differences indicate that the modifier/module distinction divides the advantages of general trope theory and thus presents the trope theorist with a pivotal choice. (shrink)

The Description for this book, The Analysis of Knowing: A Decade of Research, will be forthcoming.

Postmodemism's censure of metanarratives expresses a moral claim and moral concern about those who have spawned injustice in the name of Truth. Ironically, while this censure is an indictment against the historic failures of the Christian church, it is also a corroboration of Christian theology. On postmodernism, a moral claim must be understood either instrumentally (emotivism or prescriptivism) or ideally (subjectivism or intersubjectivism), and neither is adequate. Rather, the moral claim requires moral realism. Moral realism, however, is best explained by (...) theism. While sharing many of postmodemism's moral concerns, theism—especially Christian theism—can best enable and satisfy these concerns, whereas postmodernism can only frustrate them. Thus, theism uniquely enables moral accountability, communication, and tolerance. Moreover, Christian theism, in virtue of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, uniquely redeems moral concerns from futility and offers hope to those concerned for justice. (shrink)