ABSTRACT Sixteenth-century English Protestants struggled with the legacy left them by the Lutheran reformation: a strict disjunction between inward and outward that hindered the development of a robust theology of worship. For Luther, outward forms of worship had more to do with the edification of the neighbour than they did with pleasing God. But what exactly did ‘edification’ mean? On the one hand, English Protestants sought to avoid the Roman Catholic view that certain elements of worship held an intrinsic spiritual (...) value; on the other hand, many did not want to imply that forms of worship were spiritually arbitrary and had a merely civil value. Richard Hooker developed his theology of worship in response to this challenge, seeking to maintain a clear distinction between the inward worship of the heart and the outward forms of public worship, while refusing to disassociate the two. The result was a concept of edification which sought to do justice to both civil and spiritual concerns, without, pace Peter Lake and other scholars, conceding an inch to a Catholic theology of worship. (shrink)

This article assesses Jerome Zanchi’s theory of natural law in relation to that of Richard Hooker’s by arguing three theses. First, Zanchi’s view of natural law is generally Thomistic, but he expands upon it in a manner similar to his contemporaries, thereby providing further evidence against the increasingly discredited narrative of a Protestant voluntarism dominating early Reformed scholastic thought. Second, Zanchi’s commitment to the Reformed doctrine of total depravity does not represent as drastic a departure from Thomas as might (...) first appear. Third, Hooker’s disagreement with Zanchi on this last point does not, as often argued, result from his own diluted commitment to total depravity, but denotes a more coherent and elegant way of reaching the same Reformed Thomistic synthesis. The historical record suggests that Hooker’s approach proved more influential than Zanchi’s. (shrink)

Organized by Richard Kearney and Joseph S. O’Leary, the 1979 Colloquium Heidegger et la question de Dieu was of critical importance for the development of phenomenology of religion in France. This special issue introduces the event and its ensuing publication to the English-speaking world. The editors’ historical and thematic contextualizing essay is followed by contributions from six leading philosophers. Richard Kearney sets the stage by updating his original foreword, while Jean-Yves Lacoste presents the central moments in the history (...) of Heidegger’s complicated relationship to Christian thinking. Paul Ricoeur’s “Introductory Note” delivers a well-known challenge to Heidegger in a piece whose brevity belies its impact. Finally, three participants of the 1979 Colloquium, Joseph S. O’Leary, Jean Greisch, and Jean-Luc Marion, reflect back on the significance of this event and its role in developing their own groundbreaking work. The special issue closes with a brief reflection on where we find ourselves in philosophy today. (shrink)

When is a belief justified? There are three families of arguments we typically use to support different accounts of justification: arguments from our intuitive responses to vignettes that involve the concept; arguments from the theoretical role we would like the concept to play in epistemology; and arguments from the practical, moral, and political uses to which we wish to put the concept. I focus particularly on the third sort, and specifically on arguments of this sort offered by Clayton Littlejohn in (...) Justification and the Truth-Connection and Amia Srinivasan in ‘Radical Externalism’ : 395–431, 2018) in favour of externalism. I counter Srinivasan’s argument in two ways: first, I show that the internalist’s concept of justification might figure just as easily in the sorts of structural explanation Srinivasan thinks our political goals require us to give; and I argue that the internalist’s concept is needed for a particular political task, namely, to help us build more effective defences against what I call epistemic weapons. I conclude that we should adopt an Alstonian pluralism about the concept of justification. (shrink)

You'd never know Athens was locked in a life-or-death struggle from the tranquil and leisurely philosophical discussion that unfolds through the pages of the Republic...Plato's masterpiece continues to inform our questions and our thinking when it comes to being, truth, beauty, goodness, justice, community, the soul, and more." -From Dr. Littlejohn's Introduction. On the way back from a festival, Socrates is waylaid by some friends who compel him to go home with them. There he and his companions engage in a (...) long discussion about whether it is worse to suffer evil or to commit it. Far from being dry or abstract, Plato's dialogue is full of practical questions about the nature of justice, education, power, and virtue, and it ends with two of the most vivid myths ever devised by man. This Canon Classic is translated clearly by Benjamin Jowett, and unlike all other works of philosophy, it's actually fun to read. The Canon Classics series presents the most definitive works of Western literature in a colorful, well-crafted, and affordable way. Unlike many other thrift editions, our classics are printed on thicker text stock and feature individualized designs that prioritize readability by means of proper margins, leading, characters per line, font, trim size, etc. Each book's materials and layout combine to make the classics a simple and striking addition to classrooms and homes, ideal for introducing the best of literary culture and human experience to the next generation. This Worldview Edition features an introduction divided into sections on The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. (shrink)

Review of the books : Murray E. Littlejohn, Imagination Now. A Richard Kearney Reader. Richard Kearney and Melissa Fitzpatrick, Radical Hospitaly. From Thought to Action. Richard Kearney, Touch. Recovering our Most Vital Sense.

. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity, existing because of histories of conflicts of interest and arising as outcomes of the complexity of social interactions in groups of long‐lived individuals with varying conflicts and confluences of interest and indefinitely iterated social interactions. Although morality is commonly defined as involving justice for all people, or consistency in the social treatment of all humans, it may have arisen for immoral reasons, as a force leading to cohesiveness within human groups (...) but specifically excluding and directed against other human groups with different interests. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of two features of the everyday task environment. First, the everyday task environment is designed, and an important part of the design is the provision of explicit information to guide the individual in the adaptation of his activity. Second, some task environments are semi‐permanent. These two features of the task environment reveal some important characteristics in the psychology of the individual. When novelty occurs, expansion in the range of behavior of the individual is guided (...) by a process of internalization of information provided in the task environment by another. Because of the semi‐permanence of home task environments, there is pay‐off in organizing behavior in terms of the particulars of those environments. The body of this paper examines these ideas from the perspective of FLOABN. FLOABN is a computational cognitive model of an individual acquiring skill at using household and office devices. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 63-78, January 2021.

Richard Sorabji presents a unique discussion of the development of moral conscience over a period of 2500 years, from the playwrights of the fifth century BCE to the present. He addresses key topics including the original meaning and continuing nature of conscience, the ideas of freedom of religion and conscience with climaxes in the early Christian centuries and the seventeenth, the disputes on absolution or 'terrorisation' of conscience, dilemmas of conscience, and moral double-bind, the reliability of conscience if it (...) is shaped by local custom, and modern opposition to the idea of conscience and its role in legislation. (shrink)

This volume guides the reader through a detailed examination of the text to an understanding of Locke’s political ideas in relation to his writings on philosophy, education, religion and economics and the influence these ideas had upon eighteenth-century political theorists. The author shows how Locke carefully constructed his political perspective as a defence of the principles of natural rights, constitutional government and popular resistance. He offers an original interpretation of the Two Treatises…, emphasizing the specific ways in which Locke’s political (...) purposes in writing the work influence his discussion of such concepts as the state of nature, property, consent and tyranny. The author discusses the historical and biographical context of the work and demonstrates how eighteenth century political thinkers developed or rejected aspects of Locke’s political theory and summarizes important recent studies of Locke’s work. (shrink)

This paper highlights the significance of sensory studies and psychophysical investigations of the relations between psychic and physical phenomena for our understanding of the development of the physics discipline, by examining aspects of research on sense perception, physiology, esthetics, and psychology in the work of Gustav Theodor Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach between 1860 and 1871. It complements previous approaches oriented around research on vision, Fechner’s psychophysics, or the founding of experimental psychology, by charting Mach’s engagement (...) with psychophysical experiments in particular. Examining Mach’s study of the senses and esthetics, his changing attitudes toward the mechanical worldview and atomism, and his articulation of comparative understandings of sensual, geometrical, and physical spaces helps set Mach’s emerging epistemological views in the context of his teaching and research. Mach complemented an analytic strategy focused on parallel psychic and physical dimensions of sensation, with a synthetic comparative approach – building analogies between the retina, the individual, and social life, and moving between abstract and sensual spaces. An examination of the broadly based critique that Mach articulated in his 1871 lecture on the conservation of work shows how his historical approach helped Mach cast what he now saw as a narrowly limiting emphasis on mechanics as a phase yet to be overcome. (shrink)

Quine rejects Peirce's theory of truth because, among other things, its notion of a limit of a sequence of theories is defective in that the notion of a limit depends on that of nearer than which is defined for numbers but not for theories. This paper shows that the missing definition of nearer than applied to theories can be supplied from within Quine's own epistemology. The upshot is that either Quine's epistemology must be rejected or Peirce's pragmatic theory of truth (...) is partially vindicated. (shrink)

J. A. Gray et al. have recently argued that synaesthesia can be used as a counterexample to functionalism. They provide empirical evidence which they hold supports two anti-functionalist claims: disparate functions share the same types of qualia and the effects of synaesthetic qualia are, contrary to what one would expect from evolutionary considerations, adverse to those functions with which those types of qualia are normally linked. I argue that the empirical evidence they cite does not rule out functionalism, rather the (...) reverse. The fact that the effects of synaesthesia are adverse shows that understanding synaesthetic experiences requires a concept of dysfunction, which in turn presupposes a functionalist account. Such an account, moreover, shows how tokens of the same types of qualia can be associated with different causal histories, thus disarming their first objection. (shrink)

EVENTS CONSIST IN THE INSTANTIATION OF PROPERTIES IN SUBSTANCES. TWO WORDS WHICH RIGIDLY DESIGNATE PROPERTIES, PICK OUT THE SAME PROPERTIES, NOT JUST BECAUSE THE TWO PROPERTIES HAVE THE SAME CAUSES OR EFFECTS, BUT IF AND ONLY IF THE WORDS MEAN THE SAME. IT FOLLOWS THAT HAVING A RED AFTER IMAGE AND HAVING C-FIBRES FIRE ARE DIFFERENT PROPERTIES. ALTHOUGH THE INSTANTIATION OF TWO DIFFERENT PROPERTIES IN A SUBSTANCE MAY CONSTITUTE THE SAME EVENT, THAT WILL BE SO ONLY IF (IN GOLDMAN’S TERMINOLOGY) (...) THE INSTANTIATION OF THE ONE LEVEL-GENERATES THE INSTANTIATION OF THE OTHER. THIS DOES NOT HOLD IN THE CASE OF MENTAL AND BRAIN EVENTS. (shrink)

In contrast with some recent theories of infinitesimals as non-Archimedean entities, Leibniz’s mature interpretation was fully in accord with the Archimedean Axiom: infinitesimals are fictions, whose treatment as entities incomparably smaller than finite quantities is justifiable wholly in terms of variable finite quantities that can be taken as small as desired, i.e. syncategorematically. In this paper I explain this syncategorematic interpretation, and how Leibniz used it to justify the calculus. I then compare it with the approach of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis, (...) as propounded by John Bell. I find some salient differences, especially with regard to higher-order infinitesimals. I illustrate these differences by a consideration of how each approach might be applied to propositions of Newton’s Principia concerning the derivation of force laws for bodies orbiting in a circle and an ellipse. “If the Leibnizian calculus needs a rehabilitation because of too severe treatment by historians in the past half century, as Robinson suggests (1966, 250), I feel that the legitimate grounds for such a rehabilitation are to be found in the Leibnizian theory itself.”—(Bos 1974–1975, 82–83). (shrink)

Richard J. Arneson version 7/27/99 Is having a disability more like being a member of a racially stigmatized group or like lacking a talent? Both analogies might be apt. The Americans with Disabilities Act stresses the former analogy. The framing thought is that people with disabilities are objects of prejudice and prejudiced behaviors which wrongfully exclude them from participation in important social practices such as the labor market. Think for example of a blind person whose job applications are always (...) automatically rejected because she is blind and without any consideration of her aptitude for this or that specific job. Such a person suffers wrongful discrimination and is denied equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Review(s) of: A priesthood imprisoned: A crisis for the church, by John E. Ryan, (Bayswater, VIC, Coventry Press, 2017), pp. 126, $24.95.

ZHMUD. L. (2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

The article investigates and defends central elements of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Davidson’s coherentist attacks on Quine’s empiricismare dismissed. The view is advocated that sensory experience plays an essential epistemic role, and that, therefore, the study of perception must be taken seriously in the theory of knowledge. The author rejects, however, Quine’s behavioristic conception of experience as stimulation of sensory receptors and instead argues for a richer conception, according to which an experience is a sensory state of things appearing in certain (...) ways to us. Finally, it is shown that this standpoint allows us to acknowledge a given element in experience without falling victim to a myth. (shrink)