The nature of consciousness is considered one of science’s most perplexing and persistent mysteries. We all know the subjective experience of consciousness, but where does it arise? What is its purpose? What are its full capacities? The assumption within today’s neuroscience is that all aspects of consciousness arise solely from interactions among neurons in the brain. However, the origin and mechanisms of qualia are not understood. David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the difficulties in elucidating the (...) origins of subjectivity from the point of view of reductive materialism. We propose that the hard problem arises because one or more assumptions within a materialistic worldview are either wrong or incomplete. If consciousness entails more than the activity of neurons, then we can contemplate new ways of thinking about the hard problem. This review examines phenomena that apparently contradict the notion that consciousness is exclusively dependent on brain activity, including phenomena where consciousness appears to extend beyond the physical brain and body in both space and time. The mechanisms underlying these “non-local” properties are vaguely suggestive of quantum entanglement in physics, but how such effects might manifest remains highly speculative. The existence of these non-local effects appears to support the proposal that post-materialistic models of consciousness may be required to break the conceptual impasse presented by the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

In this essay, Amy Voss Farris and Pratim Sengupta argue that a democratic approach to children's computing education in a science class must focus on the aesthetics of children's experience. In Democracy and Education, Dewey links “democracy” with a distinctive understanding of “experience.” For Dewey, the value of educational experiences lies in “the unity or integrity of experience.” In Art as Experience, Dewey presents aesthetic experience as the fundamental form of human experience that undergirds all other forms of experiences (...) and that can bring together multiple forms of experiences, locating this form of experience in the work of artists. Particularly relevant to the focus of this essay, computational literacy, Dewey calls the process through which a person transforms a material into an expressive medium an aesthetic experience. Farris and Sengupta argue that the kind of experience that is appropriate for a democratic education in the context of children's computational science is essentially aesthetic in nature. Given that aesthetics has received relatively little attention in STEM education research, the authors' purpose here is to highlight the power of Deweyan aesthetic experience in making computational thinking available and attractive to all children, including those who are disinterested in computing, and especially those who are likely to be discounted by virtue of location, gender, or race. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 4 Seiten: 549-573.

This article considers the engagement of Mario Tronti - one of the leading figures of classical Italian workerism [operaismo] - with the thought of Max Weber. Weber constituted one of Tronti’s most important cattivi maestri. By analysing Weber’s influence upon Tronti’s development, this article aims to show the ways in which this encounter affected his Marxism and political theory in general. In particular, during the period of the debate in Italian Marxism about the thesis of the autonomy of the political, (...) Tronti increasingly adopted Weberian terminology and theoretical points of reference. Ultimately, the article argues that Tronti’s heretical method led him to incorporate and to re-propose theoretical and political problematics that are characteristic of bourgeois political theory: namely, the dyad administration/charisma, and a teleological and anthropological approach to history. Focusing upon this heterodox encounter therefore enables us to understand one of the trajectories of the transformation of Marxism that occurred during its recurrent rendezvous with the ‘Marx of the bourgeoisie’. (shrink)

Preaching from the Book of Joshua can often be “trouble” because of the book’s content. To avoid trouble in a sermon is to rob the text of its potential healing power. In our contemporary world, preaching from this difficult book may prove necessary. This essay explores several homiletical approaches.

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)

“De-Conditioning and Images of the Mind” explores the categories of Stephen Priest as developed in his article, “The Unconditioned Soul.” Through an analysis of historical and contemporary examples of the “conditioned” mode in recent philosophical and scientific discussions of the mind, the article articulates limitations of the proposed methods and advances examples of “de-conditioning” the mind that point in the direction of what Priest calls the “unconditioned.”.

SummaryThe recent atonement literature reveals a growing trend accepting the thesis that the Reformer’s doctrine just is the biblical doctrine of penal substitution. This is the claim of William Lane Craig in his recent works on the atonement. In the present article, we challenge these set of claims in Craig’s recent works and advance an alternative theory of the atonement that has some significant footing in the Reformed theological tradition, most notably reflected in the theologian, William Ames. Finally, we lay (...) out several reasons why Craig’s doctrine of the atonement fails to capture the biblical data on the atonement and fails to avoid the legal fiction problem parasitic on most, if not all, accounts of penal substitution. (shrink)

Recent attention to the context of biblical texts and to their literary dimension has been fruitful for preachers. But on the eve of a new millennium, biblical studies and homiletics must reclaim their identities as theological disciplines. As sacred scripture, the Bible's chief role is to serve as resource for the church's teaching, doctrine, and preaching.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 1 Seiten: 39-56.

The teaching profession -- The purpose of schools -- Trends in education -- Philosophical foundations of education -- International influences on the foundations of education -- Historical foundations of American education -- Legal and ethical issues in education -- Social issues in education -- The administration and governance of schools -- School funding -- Teachers in the schools -- The school curriculum -- Effective instructional strategies -- Managing the classroom environment -- Schools and their environment -- Education in other countries.

With the challenges from science, there has been a shift away from traditional or classical versions of substance dualism toward emergentist accounts of the mind. Of particular importance for those still inclined to make some distinction between the mind and brain, emergent substance dualism provides an attractive option. However, it promises more than it can deliver. In the present article, I show that a version of emergent substance dualism, where the brain produces a soul, lacks the resources to account for (...) the particularity of the soul. I show that, if, in fact, souls have primitive thisness, then physical laws could not produce these souls. That being the case, I show how creationism and emergent substance dualism, rather than being disjunctive options, are compatible. In the end, what I call emergent-creationism or creationist-emergentism provides an attractive theory of the origin of souls. (shrink)

In the recent history of philosophy few works have appeared which favorably portray Idealism as a plausible philosophical view of the world. Considerably less has been written about Idealism as a viable framework for doing theology. While the most recent and significant works on Idealism, composed by the late John Foster (Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenological Idealism), have put this theory back on the philosophical map, no such attempt has been made to re-introduce (...) Idealism to contemporary Christian theology. Idealism and Christian Theology is such a work, retrieving ideas and arguments from its most significant modern exponents (especially George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards) in order to assess its value for present and future theological construction. As a piece of constructive philosophical-theology itself, this volume considers the explanatory power an Idealist ontology has for contemporary Christian theology. (shrink)

On the heels of the advance since the twentieth-century of wholly physicalist accounts of human persons, the influence of materialist ontology is increasingly evident in Christian theologizing. To date, the contemporary literature has tended to focus on anthropological issues (e.g., whether the traditional soul / body distinction is viable), with occasional articles treating physicalist accounts of such doctrines as the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus cropping up, as well. Interestingly, the literature to date, both for and against this influence, is (...) dominated by philosophers. The present volume is a collection of philosophers and theologians who advance several novel criticisms of this growing trend toward physicalism in Christian theology. The present collection definitively shows that Christian physicalism has some significant philosophical and theological problems. No doubt all philosophical anthropologies have their challenges, but the present volume shows that Christian physicalism is most likely not an adequate accounting for essential theological topics within Christian theism. Christians, then, should consider alternative anthropologies. (shrink)

The beatific vision is a subject of considerable importance both in the Christian Scriptures and in the history of Christian dogmatics. In it, humans experience and see the perfect immaterial God, which represents the final end for the saints. However, this doctrine has received less attention in the contemporary theological literature, arguably, due in part to the growing trend toward materialism and the sole emphasis on bodily resurrection in Reformed eschatology. As a piece of retrieval by drawing from the Scriptures, (...) Medieval Christianity, and Reformed Christianity, we motivate a case for the Reformed emphasis on the immaterial and intellectual aspects of human personal eschatology and offer some constructive thoughts on how to link it to the contemporary emphasis of the body. We draw a link between the soul and the body in the vision with the help of Christology as reflected in the theology of John Calvin, and, to a greater extent, the theology of both John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. (shrink)

The doctrine of the atonement is a subject of perpetual curiosity for a number of contemporary theologians. The penal substitution theory of atonement in particular has precipitated a great deal of recent interest, being held up by many Protestants as ‘the’ doctrine of atonement. In this essay, we make a defense against the objection to the Anselmian theory of atonement that is often leveled against it by exponents of the Penal Substitution theory, namely, that Christ’s work does not accomplish anything (...) for those whom it appears he undertakes his atoning work, but merely makes provision for salvation. (shrink)

Studies of scientific practice demonstrate that the development of scientific models is an enactive and emergent process. Scientists make meaning through processes such as perspective taking, finding patterns, and following intuitions. In this paper, we focus on how a group of fourth grade learners and their teacher engaged in interpretation in ways that align with core ideas and practices in kinematics and computing. Cycles of measuring and modeling––including computer programming––helped to support classroom interactions that highlighted the interpretive nature of modeling (...) and participation in model construction as a knowledge-building process. We draw on literature from the history and philosophy of science in order to analyze the students’ interpretive actions as forms of epistemic and representational agency, constituting a construct we term disciplined interpretation. We demonstrate how students’ disciplined interpretative moves help to position them as owners of their own design decisions and their rights to interpret the phenomena they were modeling, data collected from those phenomena, and the scientific and computational models themselves. We present four extended episodes that characterize the nature of activity in the classroom and the development of students’ disciplined interpretations in terms of learning to recognize scientific patterns amid complex perceptual fields, and to represent them in ways that support sensemaking. (shrink)

Abstract“Your patient just died; do you mind pronouncing her?” It was six‐thirty in the morning three months after I had graduated from medical school, and I had just relieved the covering nighttime intern. I must have looked horrified. Pronouncing a death is one of the last things we do for a patient, but it's a ritual that doctors learn outside of formal training. If, as the data suggests, young physicians do not have any training on death pronouncement in medical school (...) and do not receive any direct observation from faculty during their postgraduate years, pronouncing a death remains deeply buried in the informal curriculum, or “hidden curriculum,” a term that has been used to describe the massive body of tacit cultural education that takes place in medical school and residency. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 3 Seiten: 368-397.

This paper argues for a Kierkegaardian account of personal identity in dialogue with MacIntyre, Korsgaard, Frankfurt, Ricœur, and Marion. I engage with the scholarly debate on Kierkegaard’s relationship to practical and narrative accounts of the self and argue that he criticizes the ideal of self-authorship because authentic selfhood must be co-authored with others and embedded in the narrative setting and history that is provided by facticity. Moreover, this relation to facticity requires ethical commitment and existential faith. The phenomenology of the (...) call can show how such commitment and faith overcomes self-alienation by synthesizing the passive and active aspects of selfhood. (shrink)

As a contribution to ramified natural theology, I advance some thoughts in favor of a distinctively Cartesian variation of natural theology that lends itself to the Christian understanding of God as a mind and as personal. I propose that defenders of Cartesian natural theology, as commonly construed in much of the contemporary substance dualist literature, construe the soul as a “sign” or “pointer” to God such that we, as human persons, seem to have access to God’s nature and existence via (...) the soul as a rationale for the world and for persons. On this basis, I respond to a common anti-Cartesian charge from subjectivism. Finally, I suggest that this approach deserves further consideration concerning theological prolegomena. (shrink)

What may seem astonishing is the near dismissal of the beatific vision doctrine in the last 50+ years of biblical and theological scholarship in contrast to the emphasis given to it throughout church history. The state of theological scholarship is changing. In what follows, we set forth a short survey of a theology of the beatific vision, while also introducing the rest of the volume on the beatific vision and theosis, of which we take to have an intimate and overlapping (...) relationship. The editorial article has four parts: it begins by (1) introducing some of the relevant biblical material on the vision, proceeding to (2) develop a theological interpretation of those passages, and then (3) offer a short historical survey of the doctrine, focusing on the relevant medieval and Reformed developments. It finally (4) introduces the articles of the issue. (shrink)

Summary Discussions on soul origins are perceived as antiquated at best. However, there is a recent resurgence of interest in the nature and origins of the mind. This is due in part to the recent developments on the nature of “emergent” properties and/or substances in the contemporary literature on the philosophy of mind. As a contribution to this discussion, I examine the two most prominent theories of mental origins and find that each encounter some noteworthy problems. With these in mind, (...) I recommend that some form of Creationism deserves our attention. It provides a solution to the various philosophical and theological concerns associated with the previously mentioned emergence theories of the mind. Finally, I lay out a more satisfying theory of the soul’s creation in a way that accounts for the benefits of emergentism. (shrink)

In recent scholarship there is an emerging interest in the integration of philosophy and theology. Philosophers and theologians address the relationship between body and soul and its implications for theological anthropology. In so doing, philosopher-theologians interact with cognitive science, biological evolution, psychology, and sociology. Reflecting these exciting new developments, The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology is a resource for philosophers and theologians, students and scholars, interested in the constructive, critical exploration of a theology of human persons. Throughout this collection (...) of newly authored contributions, key themes are addressed: human agency and grace, the soul, sin and salvation, Christology, glory, feminism, the theology of human nature, and other major themes in theological anthropology in historic as well as contemporary contexts. (shrink)

"The influence of materialist ontology largely dominates philosophical and scientific discussions. However, there is a resurgent interest in alternative ontologies from panpsychism to idealism and dualism. The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Historically grounded and constructively motivated, it covers the key topics in philosophy, science, and theology, providing students and scholars with a comprehensive introduction to idealism and immaterialism. Also addressed is post-materialism developments, with explicit attention (...) to variations of idealism and immaterialism. Comprising forty-four chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organised into five clear parts: Idealism and the History of Philosophy Important Figures in Idealism Systematic Assessment of Idealism and Science Idealism, Physicalism, Panpsychism, and Substance Dualism. Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind, The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism will also be of interest to those in related discplines where idealist and immaterialist ontology impinge on history, science, and theology"--. (shrink)

The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of panels. This issue is inspired by the success of those panels, and the remarkably sustained interest in reviving and moving beyond older debates and discussions. The special issue’s focus, Social-Reproduction Feminism, reflects and contextualises the ongoing work and engagement with that thematic that has threaded through the conferences in the 2010s. This Introduction provides a summary overview of the Social-Reproduction Feminism framework, situating it within Marxist-Feminist (...) thinking and politics more generally, and calls on readers to consider its promise and potential as an historical-materialist approach to understanding capitalist social relations in terms of an integrated totality. (shrink)