Christian Pfeiffer explores an important, but neglected topic in Aristotle's theoretical philosophy: the theory of bodies. A body is a three-dimensionally extended and continuous magnitude bounded by surfaces. This notion is distinct from the notion of a perceptible or physical substance. Substances have bodies, that is to say, they are extended, their parts are continuous with each other and they have boundaries, which demarcate them from their surroundings. Pfeiffer argues that body, thus understood, has a pivotal role in (...) Aristotle's natural philosophy. A theory of body is a presupposed in, e.g., Aristotle's account of the infinite, place, or action and passion, because their being bodies explains why things have a location or how they can act upon each other. The notion of body can be ranked among the central concepts for natural science which are discussed in Physics III-IV. (shrink)

The aim of this volume is to investigate the topic of Substance and Attribute. The way leading to this aim is a dialogue between Islamic and Western Philosophy. Most of the collected papers in our book are results of contributions to a workshop, organized by the editors of the volume, as an integrated part of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Lower Austria, taking place in August 2006. The general theme of this conference was Cultures: Conflict, (...) Analysis, Dialogue. The organizational frame of the workshop and also of this edition is the partnership between the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, Iran, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria, the first formal high level academic partnership between an Iranian Institution and a European University. Dialogue is our aim, but not speaking about dialogue. Our dialogue shall be a work in practice; and our practice is a philosophical one. Our project is motivated by the observation that the roots of Islamic and of Western Philosophy are very similar. There is a strong consensus among historians of philosophy that these roots are the same in substance, and the differences are only of accidental importance. Some of the articles in this volume are dedicated to the history of philosophy, in Islamic thinking as well as in Western traditions. Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas are authors to whom reference is made in most of the historical contributions. Through their elaborations, these contributions will make clear what is mentioned here roughly. (shrink)

This volume aims to investigate the topic of Substance and Attribute. The way leading to this aim is a dialogue between Islamic and Western Philosophy. Our project is motivated by the observation that the historical roots of Islamic and of Western philosophy are very similar. Thus some of the articles in this volume are dedicated to the history of philosophy in Islamic thinking as well as in Western traditions. But the dialogue between both philosophies is not (...) only an historical issue, it also has systematic relevance for actual philosophical questions. The topic Substance and Attribute particularly has systematic relevance for the actual ontological debate. (shrink)

Le principe de l’identité des indiscernables constitue l’un des aspects essentiels de la métaphysique leibnizienne de la substance. Il implique notamment que toute substance s’individualise par la totalité infinie de ses propriétés. Sur le plan épistémologique, ce principe pose toutefois problème: comment un entendement fini parvient-il à se représenter les individus, sachant que seul l’entendement de Dieu possède la capacité de connaître la série infinie des propriétés qui individualise la substance? L’auteur vise ici un double objectif : (...) d’une part, démontrer qu’il existe chez Leibniz une philosophie de la connaissance suffisamment distincte des autres disciplines, notamment de la logique et de la métaphysique. D’autre part, examiner l’impact de cette épistémologie sur la théorie de l’individuation. Il s’agit d’analyser les différents moyens employés par Leibniz pour expliquer la conception des êtres individuels du point de vue de la représentation humaine. (shrink)

In Section 1, the author argues that Bolzano does not have a Meinongian view of merely possible objects, not even in the context of his theory of intentionality. In section 2, it is argued that Williamson’s necessitist conception, according to which there is a merely possible golden mountain, was not anticipated by Bolzano. An eternalist reconstruction is rejected as well. The argument takes recourse to Bolzano’s semantics of temporal statements, which also underlies his argument for the eternity of substances and (...) makes it plausible to assume that Bolzano had a perdurantist view, according to which there are merely possible objects just in case there are actual objects whose generation is to be metaphysically explained, in terms of grounding, by recourse to a merely possible object’s being replaced by an actual object. Furthermore, it is argued that merely possible objects à la Bolzano are not substances, in his narrow sense of the term, and that his case for such objects in connection with his view of generation is less than convincing. However, section 3 argues that Bolzano’s conception combines with his view of substance to yield an interesting perdurantist conception of personal identity. (shrink)

It is not asserted that an actual occasion excludes other occasions in the sense that it is completely independent of or isolated from them. This is an element in the 'traditional' doctrine of substance which Whitehead regards as fundamentally false. Nor will exclusiveness be asserted in any sense which is incompatible with what I understand to be Whitehead's doctrine of objectification, which is his theory of how one actual entity is 'present in' another. Nothing could be clearer from Whitehead's (...) writings than the fact that he means to say that actual occasions are 'present in' or included by other actual occasions. There is no intention of denying this obvious fact. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the way in which the parts of a whole are is different from the way in which the whole exists. Parts of an object are only potentially, whereas the whole exists actually. Although commentators agree that Aristotle held this doctrine, little effort has been made to spell out precisely what it could mean to say that the parts are only potentially. In this paper, I shall attempt to elucidate that claim and explain the philosophical motivation behind it. (...) I will argue that the motivation of mereological potentialism is to account for the unity of material substance. For a part to be potentially is, I will argue, a form of ontological dependence of the part on the whole. Potential parts have their being as a possible division of the whole. I will further explain this by specifying how the parts are grounded in the capacities of the whole and how the parts are individuated by the whole. (shrink)

Eugen Bleuler introduced the concept of double bookkeeping in schizophrenia to describe the tendency for people who experience delusions to simultaneously be convinced of the delusional content and yet to act as if the delusion(s) was untrue/irrelevant or be unbothered by discrepancies. We open the question of whether there exists a double reality in individuals with addiction and whether double bookkeeping can be applied to addiction. While double bookkeeping has primarily been explored in schizophrenia, this concept may hold promise in (...) elucidating insight deficits in individuals with substance use disorders. We propose two forms of addiction double bookkeeping: 1) Partial compartmentalization: individuals demonstrate some awareness of the deleterious consequences of drug use, but continue to engage in addictive behaviors; and 2) Total compartmentalization: individuals who act as if the negative consequences of addiction do not exist, reflecting a more generalized and deeper lack of awareness into their own actions. We propose that a basic alteration in the individual’s sense of self occurs in addiction double bookkeeping as it does in schizophrenic double bookkeeping. We describe the proposed double reality in addiction from first-person and third-person perspectives, accounting for their differences. Three clinical exemplar cases are presented, and conceptual implications are explored. (shrink)

This article brings Leibniz' metaphysics down to earth. The long sought genesis of thinking is based on the organic nature. Leibniz' metaphysics is comprehensible as universal, because it links logic with the ontological fundamentals of the real. The paradox of individual substance is solvable. Herefore fact and concept of thinking are to be stretched towards acting, self-evolution as well as becoming self-conscious. So individual substance becomes the principle of organic nature, of becoming self-conscious, of historicity as well as (...) the principle of person — by the very structure. The opposites of belief and knowledge, of nature and history can be derived from the same principle. All human beings, all living beings are inseparably linked by their common structure. They differ though in the various informations and contents which flow in this structure. (shrink)

Le Système de l'Harmonie préétablie est un système de communication. L'harmonie est une métaphore, que Leibniz reconnaît avoir empruntée à l'art ; la communication est un concept, qui, réglant les rapports perçus entre les éléments, produit et fait fonctionner le système comme tel. La notion de communication s'analyse en termes de correspondance, connexion, liaison, commerce, concomitance, accord, entr'expression (ou, figure négative, entr'empêchement). Lancée dans la controverse avec les cartésiens, elle s'applique à la relation de l'âme au corps ; mais encore (...) des corps aux corps, des substances aux substances, des âmes aux âmes, des esprits aux esprits ; mais aussi à ce qui réunit ou sépare les religions, les églises, les savoirs, les cultures. La communication traverse le système du monde comme celui des textes : elle est de physique, de métaphysique, de morale, de théologie, d'épistémologie. (shrink)

Aristotle's notion of matter has been seen either as unintelligible, it being some mysterious potential entity that is nothing in its own right, or as simply the notion of an everyday object. The latter is the common assumption in contemporary approaches to hylomorphism, but as has been pointed out, especially by scholars with a background in ancient philosophy, if we conceive of matter as an object itself we cannot account for the unity of hylomorphic substances. Thus, they assume that (...) a hylomorphic substance is an essential unity and matter not a constituent at all. This solution to the problem of unity, however, brings us back to the mysterious notion of matter. For these reasons, I will revisit Aristotle's conception of matter in this paper. I will argue that an understanding of form as a cause of being requires that matter be an independent constituent of the individual substance. However, I agree that the conception of matter as an individual object with an essence makes it impossible to solve the problem of unity. We therefore need to take seriously Aristotle's assertion that matter is nothing in its own right and not an individual. By denying that matter is an individual, Aristotle does not introduce a mysterious entity, nor does he deny that it can be identified independently of the whole; instead, matter for Aristotle is an irreducible plurality, and this explains why it is not an individual and has no essence. I will conclude with some observations on how this gives rise to two competing versions of hylomorphic constitution. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of (...) triviality and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of (...) triviality and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

Eugen Bleuler introduced the concept of double bookkeeping in schizophrenia to describe the tendency for people who experience delusions to simultaneously be convinced of the delusional content and yet to act as if the delusion(s) was untrue/irrelevant or be unbothered by discrepancies. We open the question of whether there exists a double reality in individuals with addiction and whether double bookkeeping can be applied to addiction. While double bookkeeping has primarily been explored in schizophrenia, this concept may hold promise in (...) elucidating insight deficits in individuals with substance use disorders. We propose two forms of addiction double bookkeeping: 1) Partial compartmentalization: individuals demonstrate some awareness of the deleterious consequences of drug use, but continue to engage in addictive behaviors; and 2) Total compartmentalization: individuals who act as if the negative consequences of addiction do not exist, reflecting a more generalized and deeper lack of awareness into their own actions. We propose that a basic alteration in the individual’s sense of self occurs in addiction double bookkeeping as it does in schizophrenic double bookkeeping. We describe the proposed double reality in addiction from first-person and third-person perspectives, accounting for their differences. Three clinical exemplar cases are presented, and conceptual implications are explored. (shrink)

Abstract:Robert Sugden has suggested a normative standard of freedom as ‘opportunity’ that is supposed to help realign normative economics – with its traditional rational choice orientation – with behavioural economics. While allowing preferences to be incoherent, he wants to maintain the anti-paternalist stance of orthodox welfare economics. His standard, though, presupposes that people respond to uncertainty about their own future preferences by dismissing any kind of self-constraint. We argue that the approach lacks psychological substance: Sugden's normative benchmark – the (...) ‘responsible person’ – can hardly serve as a convincing role model in a contractarian setting. An alternative concept is introduced, and some implications are briefly discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse Émilie Du Châtelet’s (1706–49) account of causation which, in turn, is crucial for understanding her philosophical main work, the Institutions de physique (1740/1742). So far, the topic of causation in Du Châtelet’s thought has received but little attention despite its importance. I will show that Du Châtelet’s account of physical causation is that of physical influx much in line with the position taken by some of the most prominent eighteenth-century German metaphysicians at the time of (...) the publication of her Institutions: Martin Knutzen (1713–49), Johann Peter Reusch (1691–1758) and the pre-Critical Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). I will argue that physical influx takes place at the level of simple substances or physical monads, and I will defend my interpretation against the main objection to physical influx: that it conflicts with Leibniz’s non-transfer argument. The ultimate metaphysical details regarding how physical influx has to be understood remain an issue, that of understanding the causality of the cause. This, however, is an issue that other causal theories face, too (in their own way). (shrink)

I argue that Metaphysics H.6 is not an isolated chapter but the conclusion of an argument begun in H.3. This view will provide further and better arguments for the following view about long-standing interpretative debates: first, Aristotle provides a substantive account of the unity of the composite substance (although he also briefly addresses the unity of the form); second, neither Aristotle’s conception of matter nor his account of form changes between H.1–5 and H.6; and third, H does not rely (...) on and is not completed by book Θ in any significant way. (shrink)

The notion of absolute spirit, while undeniably central to Hegel’s philosophy, has been somewhat neglected in the literature. Two main lines of interpretation can be identified: a traditional metaphysical reading, according to which “absolute spirit” refers to an infinite spiritual substance, and a non-metaphysical reading, according to which it refers to activities in which human beings articulate their understanding of the principles that guide their communal life. Both types of reading are problematic exegetically as well as philosophically. This (...) article develops an epistemological reading instead. Accordingly, “absolute spirit” refers to a kind of knowledge, which is distinct from empirical and practical knowledge. Hegel conceives of art, religion, and philosophy as species of such knowledge. While this view might seem astonishing, it can be justified by showing that it is by recourse to paradigmatic instances of artistic, religious, and philosophical activity that the otherwise indefinable notion of truth is fixed. (shrink)

This is an essay about language, thought, and culture in general, and about Ancient Greek and Classical Chinese in particular. It is about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that language influences the mind, and applies this hypothesis to Greek and Chinese. It is also an essay in comparative philosophy as well as a contribution to the history of ideas. From the language side, I rely on the nineteenth-century German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, and from the culture side on the (...) contemporary French sinologist François Jullien. Combining their ideas, I give substance to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and explain some of Jullien's claims about the historical and political developments of Chinese culture. The central .. (shrink)

1.Summary The key terms. 1. Key term: ‘Sunyata’. Nagarjuna is known in the history of Buddhism mainly by his keyword ‘sunyata’. This word is translated into English by the word ‘emptiness’. The translation and the traditional interpretations create the impression that Nagarjuna declares the objects as empty or illusionary or not real or not existing. What is the assertion and concrete statement made by this interpretation? That nothing can be found, that there is nothing, that nothing exists? Was Nagarjuna denying (...) the external world? Did he wish to refute that which evidently is? Did he want to call into question the world in which we live? Did he wish to deny the presence of things that somehow arise? My first point is the refutation of this traditional translation and interpretation. 2. Key terms: ‘Dependence’ or ‘relational view’. My second point consists in a transcription of the keyword of ‘sunyata’ by the word ‘dependence’. This is something that Nagarjuna himself has done. Now Nagarjuna’s central view can be named ‘dependence of things’. Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces. 3. Key terms: ‘Arm in arm’. But Nagarjuna did not stop there. He was not content to repeat this discovery of relational reality. He went on one step further indicating that what is happening between two things. He gave indications to the space between two things. He realized that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them may be essential for understanding the reality. This open space is not at all empty. It is full of energy. The open space is the middle between things. Things are going arm in arm. The middle might be considered as a force that bounds men to the world and it might be seen as well as a force of liberation. It might be seen as a bondage to the infinite space. 4. Key term: Philosophy. Nagarjuna, we are told, was a Buddhist philosopher. This statement is not wrong when we take the notion ‘philosophy’ in a deep sense as a love to wisdom, not as wisdom itself. Philosophy is a way to wisdom. Where this way has an end wisdom begins and philosophy is no more necessary. A.N. Whitehead gives philosophy the commission of descriptive generalization. We do not need necessarily a philosophical building of universal dimensions. Some steps of descriptive generalization might be enough in order to see and understand reality. There is another criterion of Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Not his keywords ‘sunyata’ and ‘pratityasamutpada’ but his 25 philosophical examples are the heart of his philosophy. His examples are images. They do not speak to rational and conceptual understanding. They speak to our eyes. Images, metaphors, allegories or symbolic examples have a freshness which rational ideas do not possess. Buddhist dharma and philosophy is a philosophy of allegories. This kind of philosophy is not completely new and unknown to European philosophy. Since Plato’s allegory of the cave it is already a little known. (Plato 424 – 348 Befor Current Era) The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg has underlined the importance of metaphors in European philosophy. 5. Key terms: Quantum Physics. Why quantum physics? European modes of thought had no idea of the space between two this. They were bound to the ideas of substance or subject, two main metaphysical traditions of European philosophical history, two main principles. These substances and these subjects are two immaterial bodies which were considered by traditional European metaphysics as lying, as a sort of core, inside the objects or underlying the empirical reality of our world. The first European scientist who saw with his inner eye the forces between two things had been Michael Faraday (1791-1867). Faraday was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism. Later physicists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and others followed his view in modern physics. This is a fifth point of my work. I compare Nagarjuna with European scientific modes of thought for a better understanding of Asia. I do not compare Nagarjuna with European philosophers like Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The principles and metaphysical foundations of physical sciences are more representative for European modes of thought than the ideas of Hegel, Heidegger and Wittgenstein and they are more precise. And slowly we are beginning to understand these principles. Let me take as an example the interpretation of quantum entanglement by the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose discusses in the year of 2000 the experiences of quantum entanglement where light is separated over a distance of 100 kilometers and still remains connected in an unknown way. These are well known experiments in the last 30 years. Very strange for European modes of thought. The light should be either separated or connected. That is the expectation most European modes of thought tell us. Aristotle had been the first. Aristotle (384 - 322 Before Current Era) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He told us the following principle as a metaphysical foundation: Either a situation exists or not. There is not a third possibility. Now listen to Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other” (Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2000 page 66). This sentence of Roger Penrose is a first step of a philosophical generalization in a Whiteheadian sense. 6. Key terms: ‘The metaphysical foundations of modern science’ had been examined particularly by three European and American philosophers: E. A. Burtt, A.N. Whitehead and Hans-Georg Gadamer, by Gadamer eminently in his late writings on Heraclitus and Parmenides. I try to follow the approaches of these philosophers of relational views and of anti-substantialism. By ‘metaphysical foundations’ Edwin Arthur Burtt does not understand transcendental ideas but simply the principles that are underlying sciences. -/- 7. Key terms: ‘Complementarity’, ‘interactions’, ‘entanglements’. Since 1927 quantum physics has three key terms which give an indication to the fundamental physical reality: Complementarity, interactions and entanglement. These three notions are akin to Nagarjuna’s relational view of reality. They are akin and they are very precise, so that Buddhism might learn something from these descriptions and quantum physicists might learn from Nagarjuna’s examples and views of reality. They might learn to do a first step in a philosophical generalisation of quantum physical experiments. All of us we might learn how objects are entangled or going arm in arm. [The end of the summary.] -/- « Wenn du gerade das, wodurch auch immer du gefesselt bist, erkennst, wirst du zur Freiheit gelangen. Wenn du diesen speziellen Pfad verwirklichst, gelangst du in einem Leben zur Buddhaschaft. Deswegen verhält es sich folgendermaßen : Wenn plötzlich die Geistesregung « Begierde » enststeht, dann betrachte, ohne ihr zu folgen, direkt ihre Essenz und verweile in dieser Betrachtung, ohne Ablenkungen zuzulassen. Auf diese Weise reinigt Begierde sich selbst, ohne aufgegeben zu werden, da sie ohne Grundlage und Ursprung entsteht. Das wird « Befreiung in sich selbst », « unterscheidende ursprüngliche Weisheit » oder Buddha Amitabha » genannt ». Jigden Sumgön, Licht, das die Dunkelheit durchbricht, Otter Verlag, München 2006, Seite 47, 48 . (shrink)

Fruit d'une large collaboration interuniversitaire, cet ouvrage, qui fait suite a une publication consacree a eidos, idea et morphe, expose les resultats d'une enquete qui a porte sur tous les emplois du mot ousia dans la philosophie grecque jusqu'a Aristote ; il commence par un apercu des significations du mot dans la litterature non philosophique. Est ainsi offert un cadre de reference exhaustif pour l'etude d'une notion qui compte parmi les plus importantes et aussi les plus complexes de l'histoire de (...) la philosophie. Chacune des uvres concernees de Platon et d'Aristote fait l'objet d'un examen systematique, suivi d'un bilan partiel. Des conclusions generales recapitulent la polysemie foisonnante d'ousia, qui va de l'avoir aux differentes facettes de l'etre, et en font voir aussi l'evolution ainsi que les principaux enjeux philosophiques. Trois outils de travail s'y ajoutent: une riche bibliographie, un index de toutes les occurrences d'ousia chez Platon et chez Aristote ainsi qu'un index de plus de 200 mots grecs apparaissant dans ce champ semantique. (shrink)

The studies in this second collection by Professor Stead, which includes three pieces hitherto unpublished, investigate in detail the philosophical basis and legitimacy of important statements of early Christian doctrine, focusing on the writings of Arius, Athanasius and Augustine. Arius is shown as a theologian of merit, rather than the monster portrayed by conventional historians, with Athanasius' polemical attacks on him emerging as ill-founded - though Athanasius' own positive teaching is deservedly famous. Augustine appears as not only a masterly theologian, (...) but an enterprising philosopher, albeit one capable of error. His cosmology, often neglected, forms the subject of one of the unpublished studies. (shrink)

The reticence of scholars of ethics to enter into fundamental moral reasoning is well known. William Casebeer’s ambitious new book, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition, which is the publication of his 2001 University of California, San Diego, Ph.D. dissertation, stands in stark contrast. Casebeer, who teaches philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy, has undertaken the project of developing a comprehensive moral theory derived from what he terms “methodological naturalism.” Methodological naturalism, he explains, is a system (...) of moral reasoning derived exclusively from the empirically verifiable claims of science. His ethic starts with the materialist premise that all reality is reducible to matter and energy; since matter and energy are sufficiently explainable in terms of facts derived from the scientific method; morality too, as real—he is undeniably a moral realist—must be sufficiently explained in terms of such facts. With particular attention given to the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology, Casebeer’s naturalism boldly asserts that ethics is reducible to science, moral norms to empirical facts, and practical judgments to theoretical propositions. This of course implicates the author in what critics refer to as the “naturalistic fallacy,” that is, the illicit inference from facts to norms. Aware of this, Casebeer attempts to show that such an inference is not only not illicit but itself the substance of fundamental moral reasoning. Unfortunately his refutation of the naturalistic fallacy is selective. He reduces the entire complex discussion to a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, then successfully throws into doubt the existence of such a distinction and judges himself done with the whole question. Using David Hume and G. E. Moore as his principal foils, his refutation entirely ignores the most enduring and plausible argument against deriving “ought” from “is,” proposed by the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas and his contemporary expositor, the Oxford philosopher John Finnis. (shrink)

We address the question of whether it is possible to operate a time machine by manipulating matter and energy so as to manufacture closed timelike curves. This question has received a great deal of attention in the physics literature, with attempts to prove no-go theorems based on classical general relativity and various hybrid theories serving as steps along the way towards quantum gravity. Despite the effort put into these no-go theorems, there is no widely accepted definition of a time machine. (...) We explain the conundrum that must be faced in providing a satisfactory definition and propose a resolution. Roughly, we require that all extensions of the time machine region contain closed timelike curves; the actions of the time machine operator are then sufficiently “potent” to guarantee that closed timelike curves appear. We then review no-go theorems based on classical general relativity, semi-classical quantum gravity, quantum field theory on curved spacetime, and Euclidean quantum gravity. Our verdict on the question of our title is that no result of sufficient generality to underwrite a confident “yes” has been proven. Our review of the no-go results does, however, highlight several foundational problems at the intersection of general relativity and quantum physics that lend substance to the search for an answer. (shrink)

Christian philosophy provides the form and systematic theology the substance when the church turns its intellectual face toward the wider public. This united front is vital in the context of a global competition between worldviews, where naturalism in the form of aggressive scientism has declared war on all things religious. Through discourse clarification the philosopher should distinguish between genuine science and the naturalistic reductionism that attempts to co-opt it; and through worldview construction the theologian should then demonstrate how (...) nature viewed by science belongs within a picture where all reality is oriented toward the one God of grace. In the battle between competing explanations of reality, the public Christian philosopher along with the public systematic theologian should offer a worldview with greater explanatory adequacy. (shrink)

The relationship of minds, bodies, and persons has been a central topic of debate in Western philosophy and theology. This article reviews the ongoing debates about the relationship and nature of bodies, minds, and persons among contemporary Christian analytic philosophers and theologians. The first two parts present some general theological constraints for philosophical theories of persons and describe the basic concepts used (substance, property, supervenience, and physicalism). The views themselves fall into three broad categories. Dualists think that persons (...) are either identical with or partly constituted by non-physical souls. On this view, there are immaterial substances and properties. Hylomorphists maintain that persons are composites of bodies and the souls that inform them. Finally, physicalists claim that there are no immaterial parts to persons. Instead, persons are composed of bodies and brains; the mental properties they have supervene on physical properties. (shrink)

The relationship of minds, bodies, and persons has been a central topic of debate in Western philosophy and theology. This article reviews the ongoing debates about the relationship and nature of bodies, minds, and persons among contemporary Christian analytic philosophers and theologians. The first two parts present some general theological constraints for philosophical theories of persons and describe the basic concepts used (substance, property, supervenience, and physicalism). The views themselves fall into three broad categories. Dualists think that persons (...) are either identical with or partly constituted by non-physical souls. On this view, there are immaterial substances and properties. Hylomorphists maintain that persons are composites of bodies and the souls that inform them. Finally, physicalists claim that there are no immaterial parts to persons. Instead, persons are composed of bodies and brains, the mental properties they have supervene on physical properties. (shrink)

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. (...) Part II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This is an exemplary edition of translated lectures by Hegel, both in the quality of the translation and in its editorial matter. The translated text is preceded by an Introduction devoted to historical and textual concerns, and is followed by a brief section-by-section commentary on its substance. A student who works his way through the entire volume will be well initiated into this important region of Hegel’s thought. It is good news that editions of the first and second parts (...) of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are projected in conformity with the format and standard of this edition of Part III. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian DoctrineRichard A. WatsonC. F. Fowler. Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian Doctrine. International Archives of the History of Ideas, 160. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Pp. xiii + 438. Cloth, $168.00.As Defender of the Faith, René Descartes wrote his Meditations to fulfill the request of the Fifth Lateran Council in (...) 1513 "to support with rational demonstrations the Church's teaching on the immortality of the soul" (28). This allowed him to dedicate the Meditations to the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne in hopes of obtaining their approbation. The Faculty remained silent, but Descartes could interpret this as consent, although he removed from later editions the notice of approbation. What the Council asked for were demonstrations of the immortality of the soul and of the substantial union of the soul with the body.Mersenne thought the Meditiations were going to provide these demonstrations, so he included in the title of the first edition the promise to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, but in later editions Descartes changed this to a promise to demonstrate the distinction between the human soul and the body, or that the soul is an independent substance that is not destroyed by the death of the body, and so can be immortal. Independent substancehood does not prove that the soul is immortal, however, for Descartes agreed that God can destroy the soul at any time. This conclusion greatly bothered Mersenne and Arnauld. As for the absolute separation of the soul from the body, Descartes was criticized for supporting the Platonic doctrine of their absolute separation, making it impossible to demonstrate that the union between soul and body is substantial and not accidental. And "the central Christian doctrines of the Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, and Resurrection required a union of body and soul much more intimate than that of agent and instrument" (310). But all that Descartes's proof supports is the Platonic model of a sailor piloting a ship. Never mind that Descartes adamantly denies that the soul sits in the body thus—for the soul in union with the body feels the body as the sailor does not feel the ship—his friends and foes alike saw that the absolute difference of soul and body made their substantial union inexplicable. It also goes against the Aristotelian view of the Council of Vienne in 1311-1312 that "defined the rational soul as the forma corporis" (310). It is exactly this view that Descartes opposed by eliminating substantial forms from his philosophy.Arnauld warned Descartes about these problems, while Gassendi, Hobbes, and others attacked him. In response, Descartes expanded his views without altering them, and complained about being misunderstood. The Jesuit Father Bourdin's attacks hurt him most, for as he told Mersenne, this made him think that all the Jesuits (they stick together) were against him. This, Fowler argues, is why Descartes dedicated the Meditations to the Faculty of the Sorbonne, and not to the Jesuits.Fowler carefully presents the entire sweep of Descartes's ideas and arguments concerning the immortality of the soul and its union with the body. Descartes in fact did not manage to demonstrate either one. He did agree that of the three sorts of truths—those known by revelation alone, those known both by revelation and demonstration, and those known only by demonstration—these points about the soul belong in the middle category. But he never mentions immortality in the Meditations, and when Princess Elisabeth faces him with his inability to explain how the soul and body [End Page 120] can interact, he just says that we experience it. Gassendi asked him the same question, but Descartes ignored him. With other critics, he shifted the question into the first category of truths—it is a matter of revelation. This was not satisfactory either to his critics or to Descartes, for it had led Pompanazzi to materialism, and it led Descartes's first disciple Regius to say bluntly that metaphysics, and in particular Descartes's metaphysics, is irrelevant to the third category of truths, those of mechanics, physics, and medicine.Baillet calls... (shrink)

Currently, there remains an aversion for substance dualism in both philosophical and theological literature. However, there has been a renewed interest in substance dualism within philosophical literature. In the present article, I advance substance dualism as a viable position that persuasively accounts for the Scriptural and theological data within Christian thought. I make a specific argument in favor of a metaphysically simple substance. Along the way, I note the overlap between the philosophical and theological literature and (...) suggest that a simple soul as substance is a metaphysical presupposition grounding the data. (shrink)

Michael Apostolis (c. 1422–1478),¹ the Greek scholar and prolific author of the fifteenth century, studied in Constantinople under John Argyropoulos (1395/1405–1487)² and taught at Katholikon Museion (Xenon). After the fall of Constantinople, Apostolis shared his time between Crete, Constantinople and Venice, where he improved his Latin. He became Bessarion’s (1408–1472) protégé only briefly, because the latter did not like the polemic overtone of his treatises and came quickly to dismiss his views on the preponderance of Platonic over Aristotelian philosophy. (...) After losing Bessarion’s favor Apostolis returned to Crete, where he worked as a copyist. In addition he established a school.³ In several letters sent to his friends and colleagues he complained about his poverty and the difficulties he faced.⁴ Apostolis appreciated the Platonic philosophical tradition, particularly the philosophy of Georgios Gemistos Pletho (c. 1360–1454). Apostolis’ religious views seemed to be influenced by Pletho’s polytheism, despite his claim that he was nothing but Christian, namely a supporter of the Union of Orthodox and Catholic Church.⁵ Apostolis took part in the dispute between Platonists and Aristotelians that embroiled also the Greek speaking philosophical community throughout the fifteenth century.⁶ Apostolis wrote in favor of Plato with enthusiasm and in a polemic tone. Specifically, he confronted Theodoros Gaza⁷ (1398–1475), a well-known scholar, translator and author of the treatise Adversus Plethonem pro Aristotele,⁸ who was also Bessarion’s protégé. In his Ad Theodori Gazae pro Aristotele de substantia adversus Plethonem obiectiones⁹, Apostolis turned to Bessarion in order to gain his favor and support. (shrink)

Aleksei Fedorovich Losev did not share the hereditary Russian prejudice that science and philosophy exclude religion . Although he did not leave any specialized works in theology, the history of religion, or the foundations of the Christian worldview, many of his books, lines from letters, and fragments of conversations and, most importantly, his whole way of life and life journey show that all his life he reflected continuously and intensely on themes of the Christian faith and, primarily, of the (...) Orthodox faith that he confessed. Not only did he reflect on them, he lived by them. For Aleksei Fedorovich Christianity was never just an object of knowledge, a preoccupation of the reflective mind, but rather the profound foundation of his relationship with the world and with people. It constituted not only his thought and its foundation, but his very life. Religion, as Aleksei Fedorovich understood it, is first of all a certain kind of life, not just a personal worldview, however religious and mystical it might be. It was not a personal morality, however lofty or religious it might be, nor personal feeling or esthetics, however ardent the feeling might be or however perfectly mystical the esthetics. Religion, in his mind, is the realization of a worldview, the material substance of morality, the real affirmation of feeling; it is the life of the person directed to the persons substantial self-affirmation, to self-affirmation in eternity . In recounting the facts of Aleksei Fedorovichs spiritual biography I shall not follow their chronological order. The basic facts can be found in the works of A.A. Takho-Godi, D. Dzhokhadze, M. Gogotishvili, and others. (shrink)

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

The major Western monotheisms, and Christianity in particular, are often supposed to be committed to a substance dualism of a Cartesian sort. Aquinas, however, has an account of the soul which is non-Cartesian in character. He takes the soul to be something essentially immaterial or configurational but nonetheless realized in material components. In this paper, I argue that Aquinas’s account is coherent and philosophically interesting; in my view, it suggests not only that Cartesian dualism isn’t essential to Christianity but (...) also that the battle lines between dualism and materialism are misdrawn. (shrink)

The question of the morality of abortion has long been the subject of intense, sometimes acrimonious debate. Even people within the same religious or philosophical tradition often disagree on the issue. For example, there are Christians who are “pro- choice” and there are Christians who are “pro-life.” Both sides marshal biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments in support of their positions. The substance of the abortion debate seems to reduce to one tricky question: when does personhood begin? Christian experts in (...) various fields, such as theology, biblical studies, ethics, and philosophy, have protracted disagreements over this question. In this article we will apply insights from the current literature on epistemic peer disagreement to the abortion issue. We will assume that there is only one correct answer to the abortion question. However, after making a crucial distinction between rationality as understood by internalists versus externalists, we will argue that there is more than one rational answer to the abortion question, since there is more than one rational way to weight evidence. We will conclude that, in a case of disagreement between two Christians who are epistemic peers with regards to the morality of abortion, both parties can be rational in adhering to their respective positions, but that this does not entail or even support ethical relativism. (shrink)

For the Society of Christian Philosophers, APA San Francisco, April 4, 2007.

G.W.F. Hegel focuses his treatment of Sophocles' drama, Antigone , in the Phenomenology of Spirit, on the ideal of mutual recognition. Antigone was punished with death for performing the burial ritual honoring her brother, Polyneices, to whose irreplaceability she attests in her well-known speech of defiance. Hegel argues that Antigone's loss of Polyneices was the irreparable loss of reciprocal recognition. Only in the brother sister relation, Hegel thought, could there be equality in mutual recognition. I argue that this equality cannot (...) be found in a marriage union with a husband or in the public sphere of civil society. Situating Hegel's account of marriage in the Philosophy of Right within the history of marriage and historical literature on the emerging market economy of Hegel's time, I demonstrate that Hegel's perception of equality in the reciprocal recognition of the brother sister relation was a function of both economic realities and his relationship with his sister, Christiane. I show desire in the Phenomenology to be the desire for dominance, and I show the brother sister relation to be free of desire. (shrink)

Should we allow performance-enhancing substances in competitive athletics? The first book of its kind, Well Played answers this question by urging us to a deeper appreciation for the purpose of sport. Giving special reference to performance-enhancing substances, Shafer challenges the incompleteness of the ethical arguments and contributes a Christian voice to the discussion. He initiates a theological conversation that is both scholarly and accessible, arguing that a distinctively Christian understanding of sport will have far-reaching implications for how we treat ethical (...) issues like doping. The values, beliefs, and practices within the Christian tradition show an alternative that prioritizes humility and friendship, grace and gratitude over the "win at all costs" mentality that drives the use of performance-enhancing substances for a competitive advantage. This groundbreaking book ventures into new theological territory as it explores the intersections of theology, philosophy of sport, and the ethics of doping. Theologians, ethicists, and pastors, as well as coaches, athletes, and sports fans will benefit from this book's thoughtful reflection on how Christians can play well in the modern sports culture. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Christian Wolff’s conception of motivating and normative reasons. My aim is to show that in the discussion of error cases, Wolff pursues a strategy that is strikingly similar to the strategy of contemporary defenders of nicht-psychologist accounts of motivating reasons. According to many nicht-psychologist views, motivating reasons are facts. My aim is to show that Wolff’s motivation in pursuing this strategy is very different. The point is that due to his commitment to the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason, Wolff has to show that error cases are compatible with the PSR. The issue is worth discussing because it is not yet sufficiently explored what motivating reasons are, according to Wolff, and how they relate, in substance, to normative reasons. Methodologically, my approach can be characterized as one of “mutual illumination”: I think it is possible to highlight some crucial ambiguities of Wolff’s conception against the backdrop of the contemporary conception of motivating reasons, but also to question the importance and role of the ontological question of what motivating reasons are in contemporary discussions against the backdrop of Wolff’s position. (shrink)

Modern analytic philosophy of religion has become increasingly interested in the dogmatic substances of Christian theology. I argue that the doctrine of the Trinity provides an instance of the importance of dogmatic formulation for an appreciation of the philosophical aspect of the Christian concept of God. The starting point of my discussion is the recent defence of pantheism by Michael Levine, and his discussion of Neoplatonist and German Idealist models of deity. Both metaphysical theism and the alleged Neoplatonic metaphysical (...) generalogy of pantheism are considered with particular reference to St Augustine's account of creation in the "Confessions". Just as it is impossible to distinguish the purely philosophical from the purely dogmatic concept of God, one cannot give an adequate modern account of theism without a rigorous and sensitive treatment of the historical models. The issue of pantheism shows how a misunderstanding of the meaning of concept of 'unity' can distort our view of theism as a model of deity. (shrink)

The present dissertation consists of a developmental account of the problem of the ontological status of individuality as manifested initially in the metaphysical thought of Aristotle and subsequently developed by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francis Suarez. ;The philosophical context for the problem of individuality's ontological status is set by the theme, prominent in Greek philosophy, of unity as a mark of what is most real and most perfect. The historical precedent for viewing individuality as fitting under this theme, (...) and thus as having ontological importance, is provided by Aristotle's doctrine of primary substance, which characterizes individuality as a type of unity that pertains to the most fundamental aspects of reality such as this man or this horse. Though this doctrine highlights the ontological primacy of individual entities, the specific issues of where individuality fits on the ontological map, and what role it plays in constituting substances, are discussed only indirectly by Aristotle. These matters remain mostly unaddressed until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which individuality becomes a focal point of philosophical discussion due to the integration of Aristotelian metaphysical thought into Christian doctrine and the accompanying recognition of individuality as a topic of critical importance. ;The problem of individuality's ontological status can be summarized in terms of two questions. First, what kind of thing is individuality, i.e., where does it fit on the ontological map? Second, how is individuality related to the other metaphysical aspects of a thing, such as their form, common nature, etc.? Aquinas's treatment of this problem reveals strong roots in the Aristotelian doctrines of substance and of unity as a transcendental attribute of being. Scotus's account likewise is developed in the context of the aforementioned Aristotelian notions, but is more extensive than Aquinas's and more suggestive of individuality's importance given Scotus's identification of metaphysics as the science of the transcendentals and of individuality as a transcendental. Suarez's treatment of the ontological status of individuality builds upon these notions, synthesizing the insights of his predecessors to formulate an account that is more explicit, more precise, and in many ways more rigorous than his predecessors' accounts. (shrink)

Through the ages, Christians have almost automatically been Mind-Body dualists. The Bible portrays us as spiritual beings, and one obvious way to be a spiritual being is to be (or to have) an immaterial soul. Since it is also evident that we have bodies, Christians naturally have thought of themselves as composite beings, made of two substances—a material body and a nonmaterial soul. Despite the historical weight of this position, I do not think that it is required either by Scripture (...) or by Christian doctrine as it has developed through the ages. So, I want to argue that there is a Christian alternative to Mind-Body Dualism, and that the reasons in favor of the alternative outweigh those in favor of Mind-Body Dualism. (shrink)

Where is my mind?: locating the mind metaphysically in Hobbes / Amy M. Schmitter -- The Cambridge Platonists: material and immaterial substance / Jasper Reid -- Descartes' philosophy of mind and its early critics / Antonia LoLordo -- Consciousness and reflection: the later Cartesians / Steven Nadler -- Malebranche on mind / Julie Walsh -- Cavendish and Conway on the individual human mind / Karen Detlefsen -- Locke and metaphysics of "state of sensibility" / Vili Lähteenmäki -- Spinoza (...) on thinking substance and the non-substantial mind / Beth Lord -- Two theories of mind as an immaterial substance: Descartes and Leibniz / Martha Brandt Bolton -- Leibniz on perception, sensation, apperception, and conscientia / Christian Barth -- Leibniz on appetitions and desires / Julia Jorati -- The Clarke Collins correspondence / William Uzgalis -- Mental substance and mental activity / Margaret Atherton -- Thomas Reid's common sense philosophy of mind / Todd Buras -- Persons and passions in Hume's philosophy of mind / Angela Coventry -- Kant on the mind / Andrew Brook. (shrink)

The doctrine of the salvation of souls is obviously central to our Christian faith. Yet one of the challenges of communicating this truth is that many people have ontological commitments that don’t even allow for the existence of souls. Therefore, a philosophical understanding of physical reality which is compatible with a Christian understanding of the human person is especially important if we are to preach the Gospel effectively in the modern age. Like many Christian philosophers, I believe that St. Thomas (...) Aquinas provides us with such a philosophical understanding of physical reality. Nevertheless, we need to be careful in how we map Aquinas’s philosophical concepts onto physical phenomena. It is with this concern in mind that I will argue that elementary particles are not substances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 87-100 [Access article in PDF] "Soul-Less" Christianity and the Buddhist Empirical Self:Buddhist-Christian Convergence? Charlene Burns University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Buddhist-Christian dialogue seems to founder on the shoals of theological anthropology. The Christian concept of the soul and concomitant ideas of life after death appear to be diametrically opposed to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, no-self. The anthropological terminology, with its personalist implications in Christianity and (...) its impersonal meanings for Buddhism offers perhaps the greatest challenge to interreligious understanding. The two traditions have built up stereotypical interpretations of one another's (and their own) vocabularies to such an extent that "personal" and "impersonal" have at times operated in dialogue as "party slogans and fighting words. " 1In this paper I explore the plausibility that new interpretations of the human being in both traditions may overcome this problem. There is no agreement across denominations on the meaning of soul for Christianity and likewise no single orthodox interpretation of no-self for all forms of Buddhism. There are of course basics for both traditions that serve as the starting point for all interpretations, and these will be identified below. During the last decade interesting and innovative ways of elaborating on the basics for both Buddhism and Christianity approach something of a middle ground in religious anthropology. It is my thesis that the moves made by Christian theologians toward emphasis on the person as a body-soul unity, and by at least one Buddhist scholar toward the idea of an empirical (not metaphysical) self, are closing what has been perhaps the most problematic gap between the two traditions. The State of the Personal Soul in Christianity The stereotype of Christian anthropology is of the human constituted by a separable body and soul. Although there have been important voices expressing otherwise in history, for the average believer the immaterial soul separates from the physical body at the moment of death, and most assume that the soul goes immediately to its eternal reward or punishment. 2 (While the issue of the timing and nature of resurrection is an important and contested one, attention cannot be given to it here, since the present issue is the soul before death. ) [End Page 87]Early Christians agreed that the human being is more than just a physical body. However, there has never been agreement on the number and kind of "ontological ingredients" it takes to make a person. 3 Trichotomy, dichotomy, and monism have all been proposed at one time or another. The trichotomist position, usually attributed to Paul, was first popular among Greek and Alexandrian Christians. In this view, the human is made up of body, soul, and spirit: the parts function in concert, with soul mediating between the spirit and body. Here, the spirit is the essential self that exists in relationship to God. Dichotomists say that we are made of two substances, body and soul/spirit. This dualism of separable metaphysical substances with soul animating the body came to dominate the Western theological scene, in part due to Augustine's influence. Although there are significant differences in detail between trichotomist and dichotomist positions, what matters for our purposes is the underlying common anthropological assumption that "persons survive apart from their bodies. " 4Strong challenges to dualist anthropologies came in the seventeenth century in the form of materialism and monism. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, argued for materialism, saying that there is no such thing as incorporeal substance. Nothing survives death, he said: it is through divine grace that we will be resurrected into eternity. Present-day descendants of materialism include psychological behaviorism, brain-mind identity theory, and epiphenomenalism. The second strong challenge to dualism took the shape of monism, as in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. He believed that reality is a single substance, and matter and spirit are properties of it. All of creation manifests the absolute substance, God. Each entity exists as idea in the mind of God, and so the soul can be said to be eternal when it becomes one with the mind... (shrink)

Workplace spirituality research has sidestepped religion by focusing on the function of belief rather than its substance. Although establishing a unified foundation for research, the functional approach cannot shed light on issues of workplace pluralism, individual or institutional faith-work integration, or the institutional roles of religion in economic activity. To remedy this, we revisit definitions of spirituality and argue for the place of a belief-based approach to workplace religion. Additionally, we describe the construction of a 15-item measure of workplace (...) religion informed by Judaism and Christianity – the Faith at Work Scale (FWS). A stratified random sample (n = 234) of managers and professionals assisted in refining the FWS which exhibits a single factor structure (Eigenvalue = 8.88; variance accounted for = 59.22%) that is internally consistent (Cronbach’s α = 0.77) and demonstrates convergent validity with the Faith Maturity Scale (r = 0.81, p > 0.0001). The scale shows lower skew and kurtosis with Mainline and Catholic adherents than with Mormons and Evangelicals. Validation of the scale among Jewish and diverse Christian adherants would extend research in workplace religion. (shrink)