Este artículo propone una ruta de lectura en la que el ethos de “Las crónicas de Pepe Faroles” de Josefina Vicens puede ser definido como de la provocación. Esta provocación estaría tamizada por el humor y, cabe señalar, es entendida como la intención de producir reacciones específicas en los lectores, no sólo orientadas a la risa, sino también al cuestionamiento de lo realizado en las corridas de toros de los domingos; hacer que la emoción y los comentarios de los (...) aficionados “entren en ebullición”. Las siguientes páginas tienen como fundamento las teorías de Linda Hutcheon y Pere Ballart. (shrink)

This Element considers the relationship between the traditional view of God as all-powerful, all-knowing and wholly good on the one hand, and the idea of human free will on the other. It focuses on the potential threats to human free will arising from two divine attributes: God's exhaustive foreknowledge and God's providential control of creation.

In this paper I consider the view, held by some Thomistic thinkers, that divine determinism is compatible with human freedom, even though natural determinism is not. After examining the purported differences between divine and natural determinism, I discuss the Consequence Argument, which has been put forward to establish the incompatibility of natural determinism and human freedom. The Consequence Argument, I note, hinges on the premise that an action ultimately determined by factors outside of the actor’s control is not free. Since, (...) I argue, divine determinism also entails that human actions are ultimately determined by factors outside of the actors’ control, I suggest that a parallel argument to the Consequence Argument can be constructed for the incompatibility of divine determinism and human freedom. I conclude that those who reject natural compatibilism on the basis of the Consequence Argument should also reject divine compatibilism. (shrink)

This paper argues that implicit bias is a form of sin, characterized most fundamentally as an orientation that we may not have direct access to or control over, but that can lead us to act in violation of God’s command. After noting similarities between certain strategies proposed by experimental psychologists for overcoming implicit biases and certain disciplines developed by Christians on the path to sanctification, I suggest some ways in which the Church might offer its resources to a society struggling (...) to overcome bias and discrimination, and ways in which its teaching and ministry might be informed by the latest research on implicit bias. (shrink)

This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerations against it. Many contributors investigate the relationship between theological determinism and other philosophical issues, (...) theological doctrines, or moral attitudes and practices. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the relationship between theological determinism and philosophical thought. (shrink)

Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three (...) possible responses—libertarian, soft determinist, and free-will skeptic—and weighs the costs and benefits of each. (shrink)

Theological Determinism Theological determinism is the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world. While there is much debate about which prominent historical figures were theological determinists, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Gottfried Leibniz all seemed to espouse the view at least at certain points in their … Continue reading Theological Determinism →.

After Lavoisier's execution, the leading French chemists were Antoine-François Fourcroy , Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Claude-Louis Berthollet . At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Berthollet introduced a new conception of chemical change that challenged the theory of elective affinities which had dominated chemistry for nearly a hundred years. Berthollet's new affinities raised controversy among chemists and had to coexist with the firmly established theory of elective affinities. Apart from the public debate in research articles, Berthollet's affinities also had (...) to compete with the influence of Fourcroy and his school in the textbook market. This paper seeks to assess the extent to which French textbooks published at the beginning of the nineteenth century were committed to Berthollet's innovation, and how they contributed to its marginalization. (shrink)

Most incompatibilist theories of free will and moral responsibility require, for a person to count as morally responsible for an action, that specific events leading up to the action be undetermined. One might think, then, that incompatibilists should remain agnostic about whether anyone is ever free or morally responsible, since whether there are such undetermined events would seem to be an empirical question unsettled by scientific research. Yet, a number of incompatibilists have suggested that the phenomenological character of our experiences (...) already gives us good reason to believe that much of our behavior is freely undertaken, so that we are justified in believing that the free will condition for moral responsibility is often satisfied. I argue, however, that on the assumption that free will is incompatible with determinism, reflections on the character of our experiences do not provide good support for the claim that we ever act freely. (shrink)

Many proponents of libertarian freedom assume that the free choices we might make have particular objective probabilities of occurring. In this paper, I examine two common motivations for positing such probabilities: first, to account for the phenomenal character of decision-making, in which our reasons seem to have particular strengths to incline us to act, and second, to naturalize the role of reasons in influencing our decisions, such that they have a place in the causal order as we know it. I (...) argue, however, that neither introspective reflection nor the metaphysics of causation gives us reason for thinking there are such particular objective probabilities of our free choices. (shrink)

This paper publishes for the first time 132 conjectures by Nicolaus Heinsius on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1‒4. The value and possible motivations of each proposal are briefly assessed.

Popper conceived an experiment whose analysis led to a result that he deemed absurd. Popper wrote that his reasoning was based on the Copenhagen interpretation and therefore invalidated it. Many authors who have examined Popper's analysis have found in it various technical flaws which are briefly summarized here. However, the aim of the present article is not technical. My concern is to redress logical flaws in Popper's argument: the terminology he uses is ambiguous, his analysis involves counterfactual hypotheses, and it (...) violates Bohr's complementarity principle. Therefore, the absurdity of Popper's result only confirms Bohr's approach. (shrink)

Bell inequalities are derived for any number of observers, any number of alternative setups for each one of them and any number of distinct outcomes for each experiment. It is shown that if a physical system consists of several distant subsystems, and if the results of tests performed on the latter are determined by local variables with objective values, then the joint probabilities for triggering any given set of distant detectors are convex combinations of a finite number of Boolean arrays, (...) whose components are either 0 or 1 according to a simple rule. This convexity property is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of local objective variables. It leads to a simple graphical method which produces a large number of generalized Clauser-Horne inequalities corresponding to the faces of a convex polytope. It is plausible that quantum systems whose density matrix has a positive partial transposition satisfy all these inequalities, and therefore are compatible with local objective variables, even if their quantum properties are essentially non-local. (shrink)

This dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise – in the spirit of those of Carroll and Hofstadter – argues against the idea, identified with the “traditional” interpretation of Aristotle’s “sea battle argument”, that future contingents are an exception to the Principle of Bivalence. It presents examples of correct everyday predictions, without which one would not be able to decide and to act; however, doing this is incompatible with the belief that the content of these predictions lacks a truth-value. The cost (...) of using a non-classical logic to cope with that may be too high for Stagirite’s defenders, and they would still need to explain why our ordinary predictions seem to have a binary truth-value. In the end, the paper suggests that the problem of future contingents – and of free will – is not a logical problem at all, but rather a limit on what an agent can believe before taking a decision. (shrink)

L’auteur présente trois témoignages. Le premier montre l’influence que la figure de frère Charles de Jésus a exercée sur lui et sur ceux qui l’ont accompagné en pèlerinage. Le second explique pourquoi, aux yeux de l’auteur, le Père de Foucauld peut être considéré comme un martyr de la foi et de la charité. Le troisième raconte comment, mettant ses pas dans les pas de frère Charles, l’auteur a passé presque deux ans dans un ermitage, sur l’Assekrem, dans le Hoggar. C’est (...) là qu’est née l’intuition fondatrice des Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem. (shrink)

Linear combinations of “elements of reality,” as defined by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, may not be themselves “elements of reality.” There are questions which can be formulated (and unambiguously answered) in the ordinary language of experimental physics, but cannot be represented in the mathematical framework of quantum theory in a nontrivial way.

The Purūravac-cakkiravartti-katai, “The Story of Emperor Purūravas,” is a pre-modern Tamil folk telling of the ancient Urvaśī-Purūravas legend. The classical narrative of King Purūravas of the Lunar Dynasty tells about his love affair with the celestial nymph Urvaśī, their tragic separation, and final reunion. The PCK follows the classical narrative closely, but interposes a long account of other exploits of Purūravas, which do not appear in any of the Sanskrit tellings of the story. In this supplement, which I call “The (...) Tamil Life of Purūravas,” Purūravas faces a tragic chain of unavoidable events, but eventually restores his former status through meditation and devotion. A comparative examination of the two parts of the text, that is, the classical narrative and the Tamil Life, shows that the latter generates an inverted mirror image of the fundamental notions implied in the classical narrative. The outcome of this structure is a shift in the ideological tendencies of the narrative toward a local ethos and popular religious notions. The PCK is thus shown to be a field of cultural negotiations, in which opposing ideologies contend for superiority, and its structure can be regarded as a transformative mechanism applied by local and popular cultural forms to enable appropriation of classical narrative traditions. (shrink)

The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox (1935) is reexamined in the light of Shannon’s information theory (1984). The EPR argument did not take into account that the observer’s information was localized, like any other physical object.

The proof of Bell's inequality is based on the assumption that distant observers can freely and independently choose their experiments. As Bell's inequality isexperimentally violated, it appears that distant physical systems may behave as a single, nonlocal, indivisible entity. This apparent contradiction is resolved. It is shown that the “free will” assumption is, under usual circumstances, an excellent approximation.I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.... —Deuteronomy XXX, 19.