Three of the most venerable objections to anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine are traceable to Xenophanes and his critique of the early Greek gods. Though suitably revised, these ancient criticisms have persisted over the centuries, plaguing various religious communities, particularly those of classical Christian commitment. Xenophanes complained that anthropomorphism leads to unseemly characterizations, noting that both over the ages, the list of unseemly characteristics has expanded somewhat.

We consider the logical form of a natural language sentence to be a formal object which determines both the logical properties of the sentence and, more generally, the ways the sentence is logically related to other sentences. Thus if some NL sentence logically entails another, this fact must follow, given the logical forms of the two sentences. The power of a theory of logical forms of natural language then lies first in what logical properties and relations it can define, and (...) second, in which NL sentences it can show to be logically related to which others. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In a footnote to ‘Of Miracles’, David Hume defined the miraculous as ‘… a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent .’ In the opening pages of the essay itself, however, Hume dropped the reference to agency in favour of the simpler declaration that any ‘ … miracle is a violation of the laws of nature …’ This preference for the simpler formulation was deliberate. According to (...) Hume, it was their violation of natural law that provided the genuinely intimidating obstacle against miracles. As the course of his argument makes clear, Hume believed that the massive accumulation of evidence supporting the regularity of nature invariably would overwhelm any meagre reports to the contrary. For this reason alone, questions of divine agency could be ignored as purely academic. (shrink)

Recent work in natural language semantics leads to some new observations on generalized quantifiers. In § 1 we show that English quantifiers of type $ $ are booleanly generated by their generalized universal and generalized existential members. These two classes also constitute the sortally reducible members of this type. Section 2 presents our main result--the Generalized Prefix Theorem (GPT). This theorem characterizes the conditions under which formulas of the form Q1x 1⋯ Qnx nRx 1⋯ xn and q1x 1⋯ qnx nRx (...) 1⋯ xn are logically equivalent for arbitrary generalized quantifiers Qi, qi. GPT generalizes, perhaps in an unexpectedly strong form, the Linear Prefix Theorem (appropriately modified) of Keisler & Walkoe (1973). (shrink)

According to Langdon Gilkey, both religion and science are cognitive enterprises, but they are separated methodologically. As a result, science and religion are concerned with different, though related levels of truth. Against these claims, historical examples are used to argue that scientific and religious explanations cannot be so neatly separated. To the contrary, both fields frequently treat overlapping ranges of data in methodologically opportunistic ways.

This special issue presents developments in research on the cognitive mechanisms and consequences of surprise. Amidst much progress, surprise research has often been siloed, so, as editors, we have sought to juxtapose insights, theories, and findings, to support cross‐fertilization in future research. The present paper sets the stage by presenting a historical summary, highlighting contrasts in definitions, and tracing major threads running through this issue and the larger surprise literature.

a transitive verb, Lt b) is its minimal correspondent built with a reciprocal verb.* (I) a. m+aN+enjika (Manenjika) an-dRabe Rakoto. pREs+AcT+cltase Acc-Rabe Rakoto..

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 233-235 [Access article in PDF] News and Views The 1999 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Edward L. ShirleySt. Edward's UniversityThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met in Boston on Friday and Saturday, November 19 and 20, 1999. This year's papers addressed the problems of consumerism from Buddhist and Christian perspectives.In the first session, Stephanie Kaza presented a paper (...) in which she analyzed consumerism in light of Buddhist teachings. In her introduction, she offered a brief analysis of consumerist patterns in the first, third, and "fifth" worlds, paying special attention to the ecological impacts of consumerism, the formation of an ideology of consumerism, and the various players in the globalization of consumerism.In the second part of her paper, Stephanie offered an analysis of American "mall mentality" in light of the twelve links of codependent origination found in Buddhist teachings. One can enter the wheel at any point, and malls, advertising, and the entirety of consumeristic culture are designed to stimulate the birth of each of these links: malls are designed to engender craving, clinging, ignorance, and so forth. Because each link in the chain leads to the next, there ensues a "vicious cycle" from which it is difficult to escape. As one can enter the cycle at any point, however, the chain can be broken at any point as well. It was at this point that Stephanie offered a framework for liberation, noting that in Buddhism there are spiritual practices which are designed to help break the cycle at any link, and thus lead to liberation.As there was no Christian respondent, the session went immediately to group discussion, where the worldwide proliferation of "mall mentality" was explored, with the observation that malls in Asian countries are often indistinguishable from those in the United States, even housing identical stores. A sense of helplessness and frustration was expressed by many, but it was noted that each Tradition has a set of tools and resources for dealing with both the frustration as well as the disease, including teachings regarding moderation, simplicity, and restraint.In the second session, Jay McDaniel addressed consumerism from a Christian perspective. Noting that we sometimes speak of dual practice as Buddhists and Christians, he spoke of the "dual practice" of being both a consumer and a Christian. Thus, he noted, he was speaking about consumerism from the inside. Sharing a parable of an old woman and a grasshopper, Jay spoke of various dimensions of [End Page 233] Christian life, such as seeing the Divine in others, hearing and discerning an inner voice, themes of death and Resurrection, and approaching God, not as an object, but as "open space."Jay then spoke of the "Bad News" of consumeristic society, which has produced an over-consuming and "consuming" lifestyle and values to support that lifestyle. It has become, Jay argued, an unofficial religion in which economic growth has become God, and whose priests are economists, politicians and CEOs. Evangelistic advertisers draw us into the church, that is, the mall, and offer us the salvation of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement. Creation is a collection of commodities and humans are skin-encapsulated egos.Jay then spoke of the need for Christians to respond on three levels: intellectual reflection, practical action, and spiritual discipline. For the first level, Jay emphasized a twofold approach: there is a need for historical and policy analysis as well as an explicit presentation of Christian alternative worldviews to the predominant consumerist myth. For the second level, Jay emphasized the need for social engagement to address the structural factors of consumerism. For the third level, he emphasized the need to develop a quality of heart that expresses itself in the intellectual and action arenas, particularly through a revitalization of the Christian contemplative tradition. Through daily practice of sacramental awareness (the presence of the Divine here and now), discernment, trust, and open space, through a daily practice of letting go and living the Paschal Mystery, Jay said Christians can begin to counter the lure... (shrink)

Government can control conflicts of interest in business firms by either issuing obligatory commands to behave in a specified way or by creating incentives to alter private behavior. In order to choose between these two approaches, we also need to know something about the nature of the subject firms and the way that they are likely to respond to particular stimuli. Legislators and legal scholars often rely on intuition to predict the behavior of firms, but this will not suffice for (...) such a complex situation. Fortunately, there is a well-developed body of scholarship that addresses organizational behavior; unfortunately, like many bodies of scholarship, it contains rival and conflicting approaches. This article discusses four of these approaches to organizational behavior: the nexus of contracts theory, an application of rational choice theory to corporations; decision theory; general systems theory and its recent autopoetic variants; and new institutionalism. It then uses each of these approaches to predict the way that firms will respond to obligatory commands and behavior incentives. The specific cases it discusses are the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and contemporary compliance theory’s idea of reasonable, responsive, or cooperative enforcement. (shrink)

avant propos This paper is basically Keenan (1992) augmented by some new types of properly polyadic quantification in natural language drawn from Moltmann (1992), Nam (1991) and Srivastav (1990). In addition I would draw the reader's attention to recent mathematical studies of polyadic quantiicationz Ben-Shalom (1992), Spaan (1992) and Westerstahl (1992). The first and third of these extend and generalize (in some cases considerably) the techniques and results in Keenan (1992). Finally I would like to acknowledge the stimulating and constructive (...) discussions ofthe earlier paper with many scholars, notably Dorit Ben-Shalom, Jaap van der Does, Hans Kamp, Uwe Mormich, Arnim von Stechow, Mats Rooth, and Ede Zimmermann. And I repeat here the acknowledgment in the earlier paper to Jim Lambek, Ed Stabler and two anonymous referees for Linguistics and Philosophy (the latter responsible for substantial improvements in the proofs - see footnote 10). (shrink)

In sentences like Every teacher laughed we think of every teacher as a unary (=type (1)) quantifier - it expresses a property of one place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms, unary quantifiers bind one variable. Two applications of unary quantifiers, as in the interpretation of No student likes every teacher, determine a binary (= type (2)) quantifier; they express properties of two place predicate denotations. In variable binding terms they bind two variables. We call a binary quantifier Fregean (or (...) reducible) if it can in principle be expressed by the iterated application of unary quantifiers. In this paper we present two mathematical properties which distinguish non-Fregean quantifiers from Fregean ones. Our results extend those of van Benthem (1989) and Keenan (1987a). We use them to show that English presents a large variety of non-Fregean quantifi ers. Some are new here, others are familiar (though the proofs that they are non-Fregean are not). The main point of our empirical work is to inform us regarding the types of quantification natural language presents - in particular (van Benthem, 1989) that it goes beyond the usual (Fregean) analysis which treats it as mere iterated application of unary quantifiers. Secondarily, our results challenge linguistic approaches to "Logical Form" which constrain variable binding operators to "locally" bind just one occurrence of a variable, e.g., the Bijection Principle (BP) of Koopman and Sportiche (1983). The BP (correctly) blocks analyses like For which x, x's mother kissed x? for Who did his mother kiss? since For which x would locally bind two occurrences of x. But some of our irreducible binary quantifiers are naturally represented by operators which do locally bind two variables. This paper is organized as follows: Section 1 provides an explicit formulation of our questions of concern. Section 2 classifies the English constructions which we show to be non-Fregean. Section 3 presents the mathematical properties which test for non-Fregean quantification and applies these tests to the constructions in Section 2. Proofs of the mathema tical properties are given in the Appendix. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 183-187 [Access article in PDF] The 2001 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Edward L. Shirley St. Edward's University The annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met in Denver, Colorado, on Friday and Saturday, November 16 and 17, 2001. This year's papers addressed the question of "dual belonging" from both Buddhist and Christian perspectives.On Friday afternoon, two papers were delivered, (...) the first paper by Catherine Cornille, who suggested three categories of dual belonging: syncretism, drawing elements from both traditions; belief that both traditions point to a higher reality, which may not be expressible in itself; and inculturation, incorporating local symbols and rituals into a tradition that is being transplanted from elsewhere. She then focused on the issue of inculturation.Inculturation, she argued, assumed an essence of a religion that had independent existence from cultural expressions. The people involved in the process of inculturation may not, in fact, believe that they are dual practitioners, but rather that they are simply expressing the essence of a tradition through new symbols. She understands this as belonging to a symbol from one religious tradition (e.g., Christ) while using the hermeneutical tools of another.The caveat that must be acknowledged in this process, according to Cornille, is that it is impossible to separate religious developments from their roots. For example, while there has been some talk of a "Christian Vedanta," the fact is Vedanta was developed in a particular context, and cannot be separated from its Vedic roots. At the same time, however, it must be admitted that religious traditions have, in fact, historically developed in such a manner. As Cornille points out, Greek expressions are not in themselves Christian, but have in fact helped to shape Christianity, as, for example, in the Nicene Creed.Ruben Habito, who focused more on his personal journey, delivered the second paper. In his late twenties, while still in Jesuit formation, he was sent to Japan and there was introduced to the practice of Zen. He spoke of his meditation on the mu koan, and his first experience of kensho, direct insight. He went on to further koan meditation from there.As he was preparing for ordination as a Jesuit priest, he began to wonder: How did [End Page 183] he still deal with Jesus, the Trinity, Incarnation, and the Paschal Mystery if he was committed to Zen practice? He found his answer in his Jesuit training: He was being called to continued metanoia, the continual movement from self to love. In Zen terms, he was undergoing a continuing process of transformation.In Buddhism, it is said that the myriad beings are one's true self. This is the meaning of the phrase "to be awakened by the myriad beings." In the Buddhist tradition, one of those myriad beings who assist in awakening is the bodhisattva Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In the Christian tradition, this function is often associated with the Virgin Mary. The iconography of these two figures is often quite similar, to the point that early Jesuits took the figure of Kanzeon to be the Virgin Mary. During times of persecution, Japanese Christians would use a double-sided figure, with Kanzeon on one side and Mary on the other. This composite of Maria-Kannon has become, for Habito, a symbol of the potential of being nourished by the two traditions.The first response was from Jay McDaniel, who drew an analogy from biology. Some trees have two sets of roots, one a deep taproot and the other a secondary root system. Could this be an image for those drawing from two paths?McDaniel's response was based on his personal encounters with two traditions. He spoke of how reading Thomas Merton twenty-five years ago changed his life and helped him overcome a fundamentalist Christian background. He spoke of how Ruben Habito has helped him understand what it means to walk two paths. Like Whitehead, he feels that he can say "yes" to both a Personal God and to the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness... (shrink)

In 1992, James Keenan put forward a renewed interpretation of the development of Aquinas’s thought to the effect that he shifted from an intellectual determinism in his early works, to an understanding of the autonomy of the will in the Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae; this autonomy is the ground for Keenan’s (and others’) distinction between moral goodness and moral rightness. The present essay analyzes Keenan’s interpretation in terms of the body of criticism that it has generated over the (...) past ten years. In particular, it highlights five important implications that Keenan draws from his theory of the will’s autonomy: the separation of volition from knowledge in the dynamic of freedom, the virtue of charity as formal and non-specific, the moral neutrality of the acquired virtues, the two measures of moral action, and sin as moral “badness.”. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A significant and controversial 1996 news story was Dm% Alliance, a 3-part series wkitten by reporter Gary Webb fm the San Jose Mercury News. In the series, which appeared August 18-20, Webb reported links during the 1980s among the Central Intelligence Agency, a California drug ring, and US.-backed Nicaraguan rebels. Critics raised ethical questions about how Webb obtained information and about how he and the Mercury News presented the story. This essay examines those questions and discusses journalists' virtues. Guidelines for (...) cultivating virtues are presented. (shrink)