In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:2005 International Lotus Sutra ConferenceLeo D. LefebureIn May 2005 Rissho Kosei-kai sponsored its annual conference on the Lotus Sutra for the first time in China, at the new conference center of Beijing Normal University. Chinese Buddhist scholars Zhang Fenglei and Wei Dedong of Renmin University participated, offering discussions of "Earthly Orientation of Tiantai Buddhist Doctrine" and "Zhanran's Doctrine about the Nature of Insentient Beings and Its Ecological (...) Implications," respectively. While the main focus of the discussions at the conference was on Buddhist interpretations of the Lotus Sutra in the T'ien T'ai and Tendai traditions, the organizers invited two Christian theologians, Ruben Habito and Leo Lefebure, to participate, thereby adding an interreligious dimension. An illness in his family prevented Habito from attending, but the paper he had prepared, "Ultimate Reality and Religious Praxis: The Lotus Sutra, T'ien T'ai, and Nichiren," was presented and discussed. On the morning of the first full day, Lefebure presented the paper "Wisdom, Compassion, and Charity: The Lotus Sutra and Augustine." In it he compared the rhetorical strategies of the Lotus Sutra and Augustine. The Lotus Sutra and Augustine articulate a dilemma of communication: the Sutra notes that only another Buddha can understand the wisdom of Shakyamuni Buddha, and Augustine warns that no human understanding is adequate to comprehend the mystery of God. According to the Lotus Sutra, the resolution of this difficulty comes through the use of upaya or, more specifically, upaya-kausalya, variously translated as "expedient" or "skillful" or "appropriate" means, including similes and parables. The wisdom of the Buddha that cannot be captured conceptually through pondering or analysis may nonetheless be conveyed in nonliteral form through concrete narratives, and the Lotus Sutra presents a number of celebrated examples. These narratives promise to transform human existence decisively, freeing humans from attachments and awakening them to wisdom (prajna) and compassion (karuna). Through [End Page 195] wisdom and compassion the Buddha establishes skillful means in order heal the suffering of human beings and to lead them into these virtues.During the same time that Kumarajiva and his companions were translating the Lotus Sutra into Chinese, Augustine of Hippo proclaimed that the gospel of Jesus Christ offered humans the possibility of victory over ignorance, sin, and death and supreme bliss in union with God in heaven. But he also insisted that God is strictly incomprehensible and the divine reality cannot be captured in any concept or image. Pondering and analysis cannot grasp the meaning of God, and so Augustine warned his congregation, "If you have comprehended, what you have comprehended is not God." Despite the inadequacy of all human thought and language to comprehend God, Augustine trusted that God has used finite signs, like the narratives of the Bible, to communicate the saving knowledge of God's love. Signs point to realities; even though the signs posited by God never express the divine reality adequately and literally, they can nonetheless reorient human life away from untrammeled, self-destructive desire (cupiditas) and toward the self-giving love that Augustine calls charity (caritas). The wisdom and charity of God are the origin and content of the salvific signs, whose goal is to lead humans into the wisdom and charity of God.Other papers explored the journey of the Lotus Sutra on the Silk Road (Mariko Walter), Mind/Nature in Zhanran and Zhili (Brook Ziporyn), relative and absolute subtlety in Zhiyi and Jizang (Kanno Hiroshi), interpretations of the theory of Buddha-nature (Linda Penkower and Sandra Wawrytko), later Japanese Tendai interpretations (Paul Groner and Jacqueline Stone), and the making of vows in the Lotus Sutra (Shinozaki Michio). While Lefebure's paper was the only explicitly Buddhist-Christian discussion, comparisons between the traditions ran throughout many of the conversations.On the morning of the last day of the conference, Lefebure responded to Shinozaki's paper and to many of the themes that had been circulating throughout the week. He agreed strongly with Shinozaki's insistence that "how we read the sutra, where we read it, when we read it, and for whom we read it are quite important." There is no view from nowhere or from everywhere. Our contemporary horizon increasingly includes the situation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SBCS Participation in Interfaith Coalition Conference for Global Citizens and Visit to Sogang University ReportsLeo D. Lefebure and Kunihiko TerasawaOn August 21–22, 2023, Mark Unno, Carolyn Jones Medine, Kunihiko Terasawa, Grace Song, and Leo D. Lefebure participated in the historic first in-person meeting of the ICCGC in Seoul, organized by our Won Buddhist colleagues with support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Republic of Korea (...) and the United Religions Initiative in collaboration with SBCS, Wonkwang University, and the Focolare Movement Korea. Leaders from NGSs affiliated with the United Nations, as well as Religions for Peace and Rissho Kosei-kai, also participated.Grace served as a most gracious host for the program. Before the official opening of the conference, Mark chaired a panel discussion on interfaith dialogue, and Leo chaired a session on work for peace. Leo served as co-chair of the conference and offered opening remarks welcoming former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who delivered the keynote speech on "Global Citizenship Now." Mark, Kuni, Carolyn, and Kathy Matsui participated in a panel discussion of global citizenship and the path to peace. Leo gave a talk on the role of religion in a fragmented world and participated in a panel discussion on the place of religion in education for global citizenship.After the ICCGC meeting had ended, Mark, Carolyn, Kuni, Grace, and Leo traveled to the headquarters of Won Buddhism in Iksan, where we met their Head Dharma Master Ven. Jeonsan and other leaders. Mark delivered cordial remarks on behalf of all of us in SBCS.The organizers hope to convene the next meeting of the ICCGC in Manhattan in late August 2024 in co-operation with the NGO leaders attached to the UN.Visit to Sogang University in SeoulIn August 2023, Kunihiko Terasawa and Leo D. Lefebure visited Sogang (Jesuit) University in Seoul. Bhikshu Do Sun of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, who is a doctoral student in Buddhist-Christian studies at Sogang University, graciously met Leo at the airport and accompanied him to the university, where they had dinner with Kuni and a Georgetown University graduate student, Mideum Hong, who is from Korea. Do Sun later accompanied Leo on a visit to the main Jogye Temple in Seoul and to the fine collection of Buddhist art at the National Museum of Korea. The following day, Kuni and Leo had an extended conversation with retired Archbishop Hyginus KIM Hee-joong and Sogang Professor Kim Chae Young. Archbishop Kim [End Page 237] discussed both his extensive interreligious experience with Buddhists and shamanic practitioners, and also his work for more peaceful relations between North and South Korea. The next day, Leo and Kuni met with the leaders of the Woori Theology Institute in Seoul, Balbina Lee and Paul Hwang, who discussed their interreligious efforts in pursuit of social justice and peace.On August 18 and 19, Kuni and Leo participated in a conference on How to Teach Religious Diversity at Christian Universities or Colleges, organized by Kim Chae Young. On the first day of the conference, Leo offered an overview of recent Buddhist-Christian relations in the United States, including activities of SBCS such as the 2021 Statement of Solidarity with Persons of Asian and Pacific Island Descent, and Kuni offered a presentation on interreligious dialogue figures in Japan. On the second day, Kuni spoke about Buddhist-Christian double belonging, and Leo spoke about methods in the comparative study of religion. There were participants from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints and also from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Won Buddhism, the Assemblies of God in Korea, and the Korean Council for University Education.On August 20, Kuni and Leo had an extended discussion with Seil Oh, SJ, the vice president of Sogang University for international relations. Seil Oh expressed the intense interest of Sogang University in developing international contacts, including with regard to developing Buddhist-Christian relations. SBCS members who are interested can contact Leo or Kuni for more information.kunihiko terasawa's reportA week before Leo D. Lefebure and I joined Won Buddhism's ICCGC, along with Mark Unno and Carolyn Medine... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors' IntroductionThomas Cattoi and Kristin Johnston LargenIn 2018, Buddhist-Christian Studies published the proceedings of an international conference on Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) that had been held in Pistoia in October 2017. Marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Tuscan Jesuit in Lhasa, the event explored from a variety of disciplinary perspectives the extraordinary contribution of a figure who effectively inaugurated the theological conversation between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity. (...) Desideri, however, was neither the only nor the first Catholic missionary to reach Tibet—a number of other Jesuits and a few members of other religious orders had visited the Land of Snows or even settled there before his arrival. In this issue of the journal, we are therefore glad to open this issue with the translation of another report by a missionary—this time, the author is the Capuchin Domenico da Fano, who authored his memories of his time in Tibet in 1713. The translation is by Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling—names many of our readers will recognize as the translator and the editor of Desideri's Relazione. As Luciano Petech's collection Il Nuovo Ramusio contains quite a few more reports by Italian Catholic missionaries to Asia, this may not even be the last such translation that the journal is going to publish.Continuing our long-established tradition, the first part of the issue contains a number of papers that were initially presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. For the second year in a row, because of the global health emergency, the meeting was held remotely, but the energy and the enthusiasm of both speakers and audience ensured that the sessions were both compelling and inspiring. A first set of essays touches on the relationship between Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the environmental crisis, exploring perspectives as diverse as process thought, hybridity, the interface between environmental activism and spiritual practice, and the need to listen to the environmental wisdom of the marginalized voices from the Global South. The second section explores different facets of the exchange between Japanese Buddhism and Christianity. Two contributions map the contribution of the Jesuit scholar and practitioner William Johnston, SJ (1925–2010), who played an important role in laying the foundations of dialogue between Japanese Zen and Catholic Christianity; another piece—also presented at the SBCS meeting in November 2021—addresses the fraught question of different responses to US nationalism during the Japanese-American conflict in World War II, while a final essay introduces us to the way women practitioners respond to [End Page vii] challenging aspects of Shin Buddhist teachings. The third and the last section of the first part includes four essays that sketch the contours of a number of interreligious encounters; one explores monastic obedience in Franciscan spirituality and Theravada Buddhism, one touches on the spirituality of victim souls and the Tibetan practice of gcod, and a final one brings into conversation Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and Lonergan.In 2016, members of the Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures at Ryukoku University started an interreligious project under the title "Conversations in Comparative Theology: Shin Buddhism, Christianity, Islam." The goal was to organize a series of events where a few scholars from these three traditions would present papers on shared themes and discuss points of shared concerns. This initiative led to a series of four meetings that concluded in 2019. Thanks to Dennis Hirota and Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Buddhist-Christian Studies is glad to publish a series of eight essays that emerged from these conversations. Readers will notice that some of these essays are of an interreligious nature, but do not actually discuss the intersection of Buddhism and Christianity. In line with the policy adopted with the publication of the proceedings from the 2019 Lotus Sutra seminar organized in Tokyo by Risshō-Kōsei-Kai, the editors decided to publish all the contributions from these events, so as to make sure that the proceedings of these important interreligious exchanges would all be available in the same place.On January 22, 2022, the Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn reached the end of his life. Thich Nhat Hahn had devoted his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 119-122 [Access article in PDF] The Lotus Sutra and Process Philosophy Philip E.Devenish Rissho Kosei-kai In 1994, Rissho Kosei-kai began to sponsor an annual summer conference to which international scholars were invited to discuss and explore the Lotus Sutra. Some of the earlier conferences focused on themes such as "The Lotus Sutra and Ethics" and "The Lotus Sutra and Social Responsibility." (...) These conferences have encouraged a more widespread understanding of the Lotus Sutra among Western scholars and, as a result, a greater exposure to the Lotus Sutra on the part of students in the universities where these scholars teach. An additional feature of the conferences is the exposure of these scholars to Rissho Kosei-kai as a significant religious organization in modern Japan.This year's conference involved eleven scholars, six from the United States and five from Japan. It was held at Bandaiso, Rissho Kosei-kai's retreat center, about four hours north ofTokyo by bus. Its theme was"The Lotus Sutra andProcess Thought." Process thought is a kind of philosophical thinking developed primarily in America over the last century that shares certain features with the basic point of view expressed in the Lotus Sutra.The Lotus Sutra is not primarily a philosophical or theological text, but rather a religious one. It focuses less on analyzing reality than on coming to terms with it, responding to it, and also on changing it. However, a religious text always presupposes concepts and ideas that it employs in order to express its intuitions about what is important in life. Professor Gene Reeves, the organizer of this and the previous conferences in the series, has shown in his writings that Lotus Sutra Buddhism shares with process thought several basic commitments. One is to what he calls "a philosophy of integration" of teachings and practices, of people with nature, and of wisdom, compassion, and practice. Another is their shared "philosophy of becoming," according to which everything that exists depends on the basic process of causal relations, which makes it possible for anything at all to exist. Lotus Sutra Buddhism and process philosophy also agree that all individual realities exhibit a basic character of creativity and that creativity characterizes ultimate reality, whether this is understood in some sense as "the Buddha" or as "God." Moreover, both movements teach the possibility of religious salvation for all people as well as an ethics grounded in universal respect and compassion.Many of the participants in the conference expressed their conviction that process [End Page 119] thought, as it is developed particularly in the writings of the philosophers Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Charles Hartshorne (b. 1897), and John Dewey (1859-1952), provides an especially clear and rich articulation of these themes and that Lotus Sutra Buddhists have much to gain from the study of this philosophy. At the same time, there was equally deep appreciation for the type of Lotus Sutra Buddhism given social and religious expression in Rissho Kosei-kai and, in particular, for its stress on the practice of "appropriate" or "skillful" means (upaya).Professor Joseph Grange, of the University of Southern Maine, drew attention to the overall consonance of the Lotus Sutra and Whitehead's later writings in overcoming dualism in thought and life. Professor Steve Odin, of the University of Hawai'i, discussed the ways both Lotus Sutra Buddhism and Whitehead formulate an interrelational vision of reality wherein each event is a microcosmic reflection of a macrocosmic whole, especially in the doctrine of the Lotus Sutra tradition of ichinen sanzen, or "three thousand realms in one thought." The present author, an independent scholar, focused on the convergence of the two movements of thought in the religious and ethical notions of peace and compassion.Professor Yoshitaka Goh, of the Japan Biblical Seminary, stressed the specifically historical character of human salvation, in which the past shapes the possibilities for our lives in the present. Professor Warren Frisina, from Hofstra University, New York, analyzed the relations between knowledge and action in the Lotus Sutra and the thought of John Dewey, showing that each... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Ninth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:"Hope: A Form of Delusion? Buddhist and Christian Perspectives"Elizabeth J. Harris, President of the NetworkCan we hope in a world that is shot through with suffering? Should hope be shunned as a form of attachment? Should we affirm our hope or let go of it? And, if we embrace hope, what should we hope for and what can inspire us? (...) Between sixty and seventy people, from sixteen countries, came together to address questions such as these at the ninth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies, held in glorious weather at Liverpool Hope University in England, between 30 June and 4 July 2011.At the heart of the conference were ten keynote presentations on five crucial aspects of the theme of hope: "Hope and the Critique of Hope," "Hope in Pastoral Situations," "Embodiments of Hope," "Hope in Situations of Hopelessness: Engaged Buddhism and Liberation Theology," and "Eschatologies of Hope." Dr. Sybille Fritsch-Oppermann (Church of Southern Hesse) gave the introductory lecture, which suggested that hope can be seen both as a utopian ideal within and beyond living religions, and a working hypothesis, through which humans can strive toward truth and transcendence.Each theme was addressed from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective, followed by a plenary to enable dialogue between the speakers, and between speakers and participants. Addressing the first theme, "Hope and the Critique of Hope," from a Buddhist perspective, Richard Gombrich (Balliol College, Oxford) robustly argued that hope was not a category relevant to Theravada Buddhism, distinguishing between hope and confidence, and hope and expectation. Werner Jeanrond (Glasgow University), taking the Christian perspective, suggested that a critical theology of hope—an inter-hope dialogue—is necessary, within a critique of other key concepts such as salvation, faith, and love. [End Page 135]Within the session titled "Hope in Pastoral Situations," Dr. Hiroshi Munehiro Niwano (Rissho Kosei-kai, Japan) focused on Rissho Kosei-kai's pastoral work, most movingly its response to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Notto Thelle (Oslo University), speaking from a Christian viewpoint, sensitively explored pastoral situations caused by life experiences that seem to question and make a mockery of hope, drawing on decades of Buddhist-Christian encounter. Peggy Morgan (Mansfield College, Oxford), addressing the third theme, "Embodiments of Hope," concretized her brief by focusing on a contemporary embodiment of hope capable of emboldening Christians: Rosemary Radford Ruether and her listening dialogue with Buddhism. Mitsuya Dake (Ryukoku University, Japan), on the other hand, chose Amida Buddha as his empowering embodiment of the wisdom, compassion, and non-dualism that lies at the heart of Buddhism, focusing on Shinran's understanding.The theme "Hope in Situations of Hopelessness" was opened to the public in an evening session. Sallie King (James Madison University, USA), using examples such as the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka and the Dalai Lama's peace work, argued that Buddhism is "loaded" with hope, from an Engaged Buddhist perspective. Buddhist hope, at one level, is an amalgam of acceptance, lawful change, and effort. At another level, it is the conviction that everyone has the potential to change and that truth has power. Sathianathan Clarke (Wesley Theological College, Washington, D.C.) movingly examined Dalit liberation theology, suggesting that hope within this context could be seen as a proxy topos that extends faith into life, an alter-wisdom where love can enrich life, and an energy, a verb, leading to transformative action.Addressing the last theme, "Eschatologies of Hope," Anthony Kelly (Australian Catholic University) recognized a contemporary crisis of hope and, distinguishing between hope as an emotion and hope as a virtue, explored a paradox: that Christian hope is rooted in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus but that this event is described in a varied rhetoric of negations. Justin Ritzinger (Oberlin College, USA), noting that endings are hard to find in Buddhist literature, examined the coming of Maitreya, the future Buddha, as a possible candidate for a Buddhist eschaton. He concluded that the similarities to Christian eschatology are superficial, with the exception of a contemporary reinvention of the Maitreyan tradition in China.In addition to invited keynote speakers, a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:22nd Niwano Peace Prize Commemorative AddressTokyo, November 5, 2005Hans KüngThere are dreams that never come true, and on the other hand one can experience realities in life which one would never have dreamt of. Indeed, when I first traveled to Japan as a young professor in 1964 and later when I visited Rissho Kosei-kai headquarters and had the privilege to meet founder Nikkyo Niwano in 1982, it (...) never came to my mind that I might once stand here as a laureate of the prestigious Niwano Peace Prize. This prize is an extraordinary honor for me and I am deeply grateful to the Niwano Peace Foundation for having selected me as this year's laureate. I consider this distinction as a threefold encouragement:1. For me personally as an acknowledgment of my life-long activities for ecumenism among the Christian churches and for dialogue among religions.2. For the Global Ethic Foundation for intercultural and interreligious research, education, and encounter, of which I am the president.3. For all those around the world who strive for a global ethic as a basis of harmony among human beings and thus a more peaceful world.I receive this prize precisely for my efforts to promote a global ethic and I would therefore like to recall some of its dimensions. Certainly you are all aware that:4 Global Ethic is not a new ideology or superstructure.5 It will not make the specific ethics of the different religions and philosophies superfluous; it would be ridiculous to consider Global Ethic as a substitute for the discourses of the Buddha, the sayings of Confucius, the Bhagavadgita, the Torah, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Qur'an.6 Global Ethic is nothing but the necessary minimum of common values, standards, and basic attitudes. In other words, a minimal basic consensus relating to binding values, irrevocable standards, and moral attitudes that can be affirmed by all religions despite their undeniable dogmatic or theological differences and should also be supported by nonbelievers. [End Page 203]This consensus is formulated in the Declaration Toward a Global Ethic (Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago 1993). The Global Ethic as presented in the Chicago Declaration is based on two principles without which no human community or society can survive. First, what is common to all human beings is their humanity, and therefore "Every human being should be treated humanely," according to his or her inalienable human dignity, a foundation also of universal human rights. This principle still remains very formal and therefore the declaration recalls a second principle, "which is found and has persisted in many religious and ethical traditions of humankind..." This is known as the "Golden Rule" of reciprocity: "What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others," or, in positive terms, "What you wish done to yourself, do to others." It is striking to discover that this basic rule of human behavior appears already in the Analects of the Chinese master Confucius, five centuries BCE, and can indeed be found, in slightly differing formulations, in the teachings of all religions.1 In the scriptures of Buddhism it reads: "A state that is not pleasant or delightful to me must be so for him also; and a state which is not pleasant or delightful for me, how could I inflict that on another" (Samyutta Nikaya).These guidelines of humane behavior exist in all religions and also in nonreligious ethics and can therefore form the basis for a humanist ethic, in the sense that it should be acceptable for all human beings. A Buddhist leader at the Chicago Parliament told me that through the four directives he could hear the voice of the Buddha. He certainly thought of the four precepts formulated in the Dhammapada (183): "I vow to abstain from killing living beings. I vow to abstain from taking what is not given. I vow to abstain from sexual misconduct. I vow to abstain from lying" (a fifth precept—"I vow to abstain from taking intoxicants"—does not encounter consensus among religions; it only occurs in Buddhism and some other religions and is therefore not included in the Global... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:2005 International Lotus Sutra ConferenceLeo D. LefebureIn May 2005 Rissho Kosei-kai sponsored its annual conference on the Lotus Sutra for the first time in China, at the new conference center of Beijing Normal University. Chinese Buddhist scholars Zhang Fenglei and Wei Dedong of Renmin University participated, offering discussions of "Earthly Orientation of Tiantai Buddhist Doctrine" and "Zhanran's Doctrine about the Nature of Insentient Beings and Its Ecological (...) Implications," respectively. While the main focus of the discussions at the conference was on Buddhist interpretations of the Lotus Sutra in the T'ien T'ai and Tendai traditions, the organizers invited two Christian theologians, Ruben Habito and Leo Lefebure, to participate, thereby adding an interreligious dimension. An illness in his family prevented Habito from attending, but the paper he had prepared, "Ultimate Reality and Religious Praxis: The Lotus Sutra, T'ien T'ai, and Nichiren," was presented and discussed. On the morning of the first full day, Lefebure presented the paper "Wisdom, Compassion, and Charity: The Lotus Sutra and Augustine." In it he compared the rhetorical strategies of the Lotus Sutra and Augustine. The Lotus Sutra and Augustine articulate a dilemma of communication: the Sutra notes that only another Buddha can understand the wisdom of Shakyamuni Buddha, and Augustine warns that no human understanding is adequate to comprehend the mystery of God. According to the Lotus Sutra, the resolution of this difficulty comes through the use of upaya or, more specifically, upaya-kausalya, variously translated as "expedient" or "skillful" or "appropriate" means, including similes and parables. The wisdom of the Buddha that cannot be captured conceptually through pondering or analysis may nonetheless be conveyed in nonliteral form through concrete narratives, and the Lotus Sutra presents a number of celebrated examples. These narratives promise to transform human existence decisively, freeing humans from attachments and awakening them to wisdom (prajna) and compassion (karuna). Through [End Page 195] wisdom and compassion the Buddha establishes skillful means in order heal the suffering of human beings and to lead them into these virtues.During the same time that Kumarajiva and his companions were translating the Lotus Sutra into Chinese, Augustine of Hippo proclaimed that the gospel of Jesus Christ offered humans the possibility of victory over ignorance, sin, and death and supreme bliss in union with God in heaven. But he also insisted that God is strictly incomprehensible and the divine reality cannot be captured in any concept or image. Pondering and analysis cannot grasp the meaning of God, and so Augustine warned his congregation, "If you have comprehended, what you have comprehended is not God." Despite the inadequacy of all human thought and language to comprehend God, Augustine trusted that God has used finite signs, like the narratives of the Bible, to communicate the saving knowledge of God's love. Signs point to realities; even though the signs posited by God never express the divine reality adequately and literally, they can nonetheless reorient human life away from untrammeled, self-destructive desire (cupiditas) and toward the self-giving love that Augustine calls charity (caritas). The wisdom and charity of God are the origin and content of the salvific signs, whose goal is to lead humans into the wisdom and charity of God.Other papers explored the journey of the Lotus Sutra on the Silk Road (Mariko Walter), Mind/Nature in Zhanran and Zhili (Brook Ziporyn), relative and absolute subtlety in Zhiyi and Jizang (Kanno Hiroshi), interpretations of the theory of Buddha-nature (Linda Penkower and Sandra Wawrytko), later Japanese Tendai interpretations (Paul Groner and Jacqueline Stone), and the making of vows in the Lotus Sutra (Shinozaki Michio). While Lefebure's paper was the only explicitly Buddhist-Christian discussion, comparisons between the traditions ran throughout many of the conversations.On the morning of the last day of the conference, Lefebure responded to Shinozaki's paper and to many of the themes that had been circulating throughout the week. He agreed strongly with Shinozaki's insistence that "how we read the sutra, where we read it, when we read it, and for whom we read it are quite important." There is no view from nowhere or from everywhere. Our contemporary horizon increasingly includes the situation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Word and Silence in Buddhist and Christian TraditionsDonald MitchellThe following official statement was written by Buddhist and Christian participants at the end of a very successful encounter at the Asirvanam Benedictine Monastery near Bangalore, India, from July 8 to13, 1998. The conference was organized by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) and was attended by its president, Cardinal Francis Arinze, along with the PCID secretary, Archbishop Michael (...) Fitzgerald, and Fr. Machado, the PCID official for Asia. The conference proceedings will be published in the PCID journal, Pro Dialogo.Buddhist participants included Ven. Dr. Yifa from Fokuangshan in Taiwan, Ven. Bhaddarita Panna Dipa from the World Buddhist Meditation Center in Myanmar, Ven. Geshe D. Namgyal from the Drepung Loseling Monastery representing His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dr. Asanga Tilakratne of the Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies in Sri Lanka, Dr. Michio Shinozaki, dean of the Rissho Kosei-Kai Seminary in Japan, and Prof. Yasuaki Nara of Komazawa University in Japan.Christian participants included Fr. Franco Sottocomola of the Seimeizen Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Japan, Fr. Valence Mendis of the National Seminary in Sri Lanka, Fr. Augustine Okumuru, OCD, of Japan, Prof. Donald W. Mitchell of Purdue University, Sr. Iona Misquitta, OSB, and Sr. Teresita D’Silva, OSB, both of the Shanti Nilayam Abbey in Bangalore, and Prof. Michael Fuss of the Gregorian University in Rome.Concluding Statement1. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue organized its second international colloquium at the Asirvanam Benedictine Monastery in Bangalore, India, from July 8 to 13, 1998. A small number of Buddhists and Christians from India, Tibet/India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States were invited for a dialogue on the theme of “Word and Silence in Buddhist and Christian Traditions.” This event encounter was in response to a desire expressed at the Pontifical Council’s First Colloquium that was held from July 31 to August 4, 1995, at the Fo Kuang Shan Buddhist Monastery in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. At the end of that first dialogue, the participants expressed the desire to [End Page 187] meet again in a Christian monastery in order to contribute to the deepening of the modern encounter between Buddhism and Christianity.2. The agenda of the meeting included four major topics: Buddhist Enlightenment and Christian Revelation, Sacred Texts in the Buddhist and Christian Traditions, Meditation and Contemplation in Buddhism and Christianity, and Anatta/ Sunyata and Kenosis. The papers were presented on these four topics in a way that fostered the dialogue process itself. In this process, all participants shared and explored their views of the place of word and silence in their respective traditions leading to a greater sense of mutual understanding and appreciation. This meeting proceeded by each side expressing what its own traditions believe, teach, and celebrate. The following points indicate some of the areas that were explored in the dialogue.3. The authority of the early sacred Buddhist texts was decided during the six great Buddhist Councils called for at different periods of time by the Buddha’s disciples after passing into Parinirvana. Theravada Buddhism accepts only the teachings of the Buddha that were declared authoritative during these councils. This early canon includes the discourses of the Buddha (Sutta), the rules for the monastic order (Vinaya), and the higher philosophical teachings (Abhidhamma). While Mahayana Buddhism accepts this early canon, it also accepts and emphasizes other sacred texts, called Sutras, which they believe were also taught by the Buddha. Within Mahayana there arose another tradition called Vajrayana that accepts the canons of both Theravada and Mahayana and adds a new literature called the Tantras, which present Buddhist esoteric teachings. Common to these traditions are the precepts for living the teachings of the Buddha and the authoritative commentaries of the particular traditions. These sacred texts describe the path that leads to the liberation from suffering and the nature and qualities of that supreme condition.In the Catholic tradition of Christianity, it is the teaching authority of the Church that has faithfully received the revealed and inspired texts and has determined their canonicity. The canon of Sacred Scripture consists of two sections: the Old Testament, written in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 13-30 [Access article in PDF] Peace and Nonviolence from a Mahayana Buddhist Perspective: Nikkyo Niwano's Thought Michio T. Shinozaki Rissho Kosei-kai Nikkyo Niwano, the founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, taught a perspective on peace and nonviolence that I would like to explore from a Mahayana Buddhist point of view. Niwano's understanding of peace and violence and his "road" to peace are discussed. (...) The first section explores his understanding of peace as harmony at four different levels. The second section deals with the issue of the causes of violence on different levels and the precept of not-killing. The third section focuses on nonviolent action and the Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful as a model of nonviolent action. Also, the vision for overcoming hatred and violence is discussed within the context of the pacifist argument. The fourth section focuses on problems of harmony in terms of diversity and universal altruism, on the value of open forums in decision-making processes, and on Niwano's theological grounding for interreligious cooperation as a road to peace.Rissho Kosei-kai (RKK) is a Japanese Buddhist organization founded in Tokyo in 1938 by Nikkyo Niwano (1906-1999) and the late Mrs. Myoko Naganuma (1899-1957). The name "Rissho Kosei-kai" means society for establishing the true Dharma and the perfecting of selves through mutual exchange. RKK is a nonmonastic Buddhist group that draws much of its inspiration from the Lotus Sutra and claims to have six million members, largely in Japan.Nikkyo Niwano was born on November 15, 1906, in a small, poor village near Tokamachi in Nigata prefecture, which has heavy snow in winter. He was raised in a large family under one roof with another family. His harmonious and peaceful personality was the product of such circumstances. 1 He went to Tokyo to work at seventeen and took various jobs--at a rice shop, a charcoal dealer, a Japanese pickle dealer, and a milk delivery shop. In 1926, he was discharged after completing three years of naval service. He says of this experience, "One of the greatest harvests from my military experience was the reinforcement of my philosophy of nonviolence." 2 He was confident that the philosophy of nonviolence was applicable in the situation of the everyday event of military corporal punishment. [End Page 13]Upon coming to Tokyo, a new spiritual journey began with becoming acquainted with various folk religions, and he joined Reiyö-kai, practicing reverence to one's ancestors. After the founding ofRKK, Niwano received orders to report for military duty twice, in 1941 and 1945, but he was disqualified from serving in the army, so he had no battlefield experience. 3 Niwano and Naganuma were imprisoned in 1943, because the police regarded her inspirational guidance as a false and wicked religion. This was the time of the Peace Preservation Law under which religions and religious ideas were suppressed. 4Niwano preferred "not quarreling and harmony" to strife.When the faith and activities of RKK were criticized regularly for almost a month in 1956 by the nationwide newspaper TheYomiuri Shimbun,and when Soka Gakkai attacked RKK as a wicked religion and tried to start a campaign to abolish it, Niwano called them the "Yomiuri bodhisattva" and "Gakkai bodhisattva," as they could lead members to improvement and reflection on their motives and behavior. 5From inside RKK, Niwano was severely criticized and experienced being ostracized by Myoko Naganuma's ardent followers, who tried until 1957 to have her become president of RKK or establish a separate organization. He regarded this as a time for him to be tolerant and forbearing through reflecting on himself and not blaming others, and he later warmheartedly accepted his former opponents.Robert Kisala refers to Rissho Kosei-kai as follows: "After the Second World War, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano, whose activities centered around a big metropolitan urban city, advocated strengthening the solidarity of the family and local community in modern society and devoted himself to religious cooperation in order to solve social issues at an international level." 6An... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural HistorySteven HeineJapanese Buddhism: A Cultural History. By Yoshiro Tamura. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Co., 2000. Pp. 232. Paper $14.95.Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural History is a recent English translation of a work by Yoshiro Tamura originally published in Japan in the late 1960s. Tamura, who died in 1989, was one of the most prominent scholars of Japanese Buddhist studies of his era and was probably (...) best known for his major study of "New" Kamakura era Buddhist figures, including Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren. In that book Tamura executed a very sophisticated textual analysis of the often overt but sometimes subtle distinctions in doctrinal positions of the leading Kamakura Buddhist thinkers in their respective appropriations of Tendai original-enlightenment thought (hongaku shisō), which was a dominant ideology and a major influence on those who may have departed from or criticized its contents. Tamura's approach to Buddhist studies, with its emphasis on analyzing the textual tradition, has perhaps been superceded for many scholars by the approaches of such figures as Kuroda Toshio, Amino Yoshihiko, and Sasaki Kaoru, who have examined medieval Buddhism from a sociohistorical perspective. Also, some of Tamura's other writings may be questioned for espousing a standpoint that could be associated with nihonjinron (Japanese exceptionalism) theory by highlighting the distinctiveness of Buddhist practices in the context of the Japanese cultural tradition.A focus in this book on Japanese cultural uniqueness for understanding Buddhism in Japan seems indicated by the subtitle and by the back-cover copy, which refers to the way "Japan's Buddhism and the nation's cultural matrix are so inextricably linked that it is impossible to explicate the one without understanding the other." However, the work itself does not really delve into nihonjinron territory, but rather offers a conventional historical approach, with some exceptions, including chapter 4 on "The Japanese Response," which discusses Japanese poetic expressions of Buddhist doctrine.The contents of the book were originally published in a Kosei monthly magazine under the title "Hyakuman nin no Bukkyō-shi" (A history of Japanese Buddhism for a million readers) and then in book form by Kadokawa Shoten under the title Nihon Bukkyō-shi nyūmon (An introductory history of Japanese Buddhism). Since the original publication date was thirty-five years ago and the book does not represent cutting edge scholarship at this point, it can best be evaluated for its possible usefulness as a general survey in the classroom. The key question is whether this would make ideal required reading for an advanced undergraduate course on Japanese Buddhism.The book's main advantage is also its weakness, that is, the attempt to cover over fifteen hundred years and every major period in a little over two hundred pages. On the one hand, all of the major schools and thinkers are introduced, ranging from [End Page 125] pre-Nara trends through the formation of classical and medieval sects as well as early modern sociopolitical conditions to contemporary new religious movements. The book is a reliable reference guide that offers a snapshot of important events, leading figures, and doctrinal themes in a way that is evenhanded and objective, including the explanation of Nichirenist new movements such as Risshō Kosei-kai. For that reason it can be highly recommended.On a close reading, however, the deficiency of this approach becomes clear. For example, chapter 3 dealing with the development of early Buddhist temples in Japan tries to show a progression from Asuka-dera through Shitennō-ji and Hōryū-ji to Yakushi-ji, but the discussion in the narrative does not sufficiently flesh out what the diagram on page 41 is trying to illustrate about unfolding trends in iconography and scriptural exegetical studies.Also, the sections on such topics as Eizon and the revival of the Ritsu school during the Kamakura era and the role of the danka system in the Tokugawa era are a bit confusing and misleading in their brevity. Page 93 in chapter 8 on "The Founders of Kamakura Buddhism" refers to a "definite philosophical development" between the teachings of Hōnen, Nōnin, and Eisai, in the late twelfth century, and the thirteenth-century founders of... (shrink)

Epistemic modals are standardly taken to be context-dependent quantifiers over possibilities. Thus sentences containing them get truth-values with respect to both a context and an index. But some insist that this relativization is not relative enough: `might'-claims, they say, only get truth-values with respect to contexts, indices, and—the new wrinkle—points of assessment (hence, CIA). Here we argue against such "relativist" semantics. We begin with a sketch of the motivation for such theories and a generic formulation of them. Then we catalogue (...) central problems that any such theory faces. We end by outlining an alternative story. (shrink)

It is a recurring mantra that epistemic must creates a statement that is weaker than the corresponding flat-footed assertion: It must be raining vs. It’s raining. Contrary to classic discussions of the phenomenon such as by Karttunen, Kratzer, and Veltman, we argue that instead of having a weak semantics, must presupposes the presence of an indirect inference or deduction rather than of a direct observation. This is independent of the strength of the claim being made. Epistemic must is therefore quite (...) similar to evidential markers of indirect evidence known from languages with rich evidential systems. We work towards a formalization of the evidential component, relying on a structured model of information states (analogous to some models used in the belief dynamics literature). We explain why in many contexts, one can perceive a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker who uses must. (shrink)

In his paper “What is a Context of Utterance?”, Christopher Gauker argues that the phenomenon of informative presuppositions is incompatible with the “pragmatic” view of presuppositions as involving requirements on the common ground, the body of shared assumptions of the participants in a conversation. This is a surprising claim since most proponents of this view have in fact dealt with informative presuppositions by appealing to a process called presupposition accommodation. Gauker’s attack shows the need to clarify the nature of this (...) process. (shrink)

The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the ‘wisdom of crowds’. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises – voter independence – is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that ‘large crowds are infallible’. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, ‘large crowds are fallible but better than small groups’. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation (...) and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (‘indistinguishable’) voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We also prove a more general and simpler such jury theorem. (shrink)

At first glance, this is an entirely unremarkable kind of sentence. It is easy to find naturally occuring exponents. Its meaning is also clear: taking the A train is a necessary condition for going to Harlem. Hence the term “anankastic conditional”, Ananke being the Greek protogonos of inevitability, compulsion and necessity.

Why are some conditionals subjunctive? It is often assumed that at least one crucial difference is that subjunctive conditionals presuppose that their antecedent is false, that they are counterfactual (Lakoff 1970). The traditional theory has apparently been refuted. Perhaps the clearest counter-example is one given by Alan Anderson (1951: 37): If Jones had taken arsenic, he would have shown just exactly those symptoms which he does in fact show. A typical place to use such a subjunctive conditional would be in (...) the course of an argument that tries to bolster the hypothesis that Jones did in fact take arsenic. But then it would of course be self-defeating to presuppose that the hypothesis is false. Thus, something else must be going on. (shrink)

1 This paper has been presented at the workshop “Time and Modality: A Round Table on Tense, Mood, and Modality”, Paris, December 2005, at a CUNY linguistics colloquium in May 2006, and at the 6th Workshop on Formal Linguistics in Florian´opolis, Brazil, August 2006. We thank the audiences at those presentations, in particular Orin Percus, Tim Stowell, Marcel den Dikken, Anna Szabolcsi, Chris Warnasch, Roberta Pires de Oliveira, Renato Miguel Basso, and Ana M¨uller. We thank Noam Chomsky, Cleo Condoravdi, and (...) Irene Heim for very helpful conversations about this material. We thank Bridget Copley for sharing with us her recent manuscript “What Should Should.. (shrink)

For the first time a uniform compositional derivation is given for quantified sentences containing exceptive constructions. The semantics of exceptives is primarily one of subtraction from the domain of a quantifier. The crucial semantic difference between the highly grammaticized but-phrases and free exceptives is that the former have the Uniqueness Condition as part of their lexical meaning whereas the latter are mere set subtractors. Several empirical differences between the two types of exceptives are shown to follow from this basic lexical (...) difference. (shrink)

This open access book is a superb collection of some fifteen chapters inspired by Schroeder-Heister's groundbreaking work, written by leading experts in the field, plus an extensive autobiography and comments on the various contributions by Schroeder-Heister himself. For several decades, Peter Schroeder-Heister has been a central figure in proof-theoretic semantics, a field of study situated at the interface of logic, theoretical computer science, natural-language semantics, and the philosophy of language. -/- The chapters of which this book is composed discuss the (...) subject from a rich variety of angles, including the history of logic, the proper interpretation of logical validity, natural deduction rules, the notions of harmony and of synonymy, the structure of proofs, the logical status of equality, intentional phenomena, and the proof theory of second-order arithmetic. All chapters relate directly to questions that have driven Schroeder-Heister's own research agenda and to which he has made seminal contributions. The extensive autobiographical chapter not only provides a fascinating overview of Schroeder-Heister's career and the evolution of his academic interests but also constitutes a contribution to the recent history of logic in its own right, painting an intriguing picture of the philosophical, logical, and mathematical institutional landscape in Germany and elsewhere since the early 1970s. The papers collected in this book are illuminatingly put into a unified perspective by Schroeder-Heister's comments at the end of the book. Both graduate students and established researchers in the field will find this book an excellent resource for future work in proof-theoretic semantics and related areas. (shrink)

The interpretation of if -clauses in the scope of ordinary quantifiers has provoked semanticists into extraordinary measures, such as abandoning compositionality or claiming that if has no meaning. We argue that if -clauses have a normal conditional meaning, even in the scope of ordinary quantifiers, and that the trick is to have the right semantics for conditionals.

It is well known that Frege's system in the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent. Frege's instantiation rule for the second-order universal quantifier makes his system, except for minor differences, full (i.e., with unrestricted comprehension) second-order logic, augmented by an abstraction operator that abides to Frege's basic law V. A few years ago, Richard Heck proved the consistency of the fragment of Frege's theory obtained by restricting the comprehension schema to predicative formulae. He further conjectured that the more encompassing Δ₁¹-comprehension (...) schema would already be inconsistent. In the present paper, we show that this is not the case. (shrink)

What role does audience uptake play in determining whether a speaker refuses or consents to sex? Proponents of constitution theories of uptake argue that which speech act someone performs is largely determined by their addressee’s uptake. However, this appears to entail a troubling result: a speaker might be made to perform a speech act of sexual consent against her will. In response, we develop a social constitution theory of uptake. We argue that addressee uptake can constitute a speaker’s utterance of (...) ‘no’ as a speech act of consent under some conditions, but that this does not prevent us from judging that an addressee committed rape. Second, we claim that addressee uptake is not the only form of uptake that matters—the uptake of other members of the discursive community matters too, and can override the addressee’s uptake, constituting the speaker’s utterance as the speech act it was intended to be. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a new methodology for normative theorising, which we call Directed Reflective Equilibrium. Directed Reflective Equilibrium is based on a taxonomy that distinguishes between a number of different functions of hypothetical cases, including two dimensions that we call representation and elicitation. Like its predecessor, Directed Reflective Equilibrium accepts that neither intuitions nor basic principles are immune to revision and that our commitments on various levels of philosophical enquiry should be brought into equilibrium. However, it also offers (...) guidance about how different types of cases ought to be sequenced to achieve this result. We argue that this ‘directional’ approach improves, in various ways, upon the non-directional approach of traditional Reflective Equilibrium. (shrink)

Our immediate intuition about (1) is that –ever indicates speaker’s ignorance. We hear the speaker as signaling that she doesn’t know what Arlo is cooking, while at the same time asserting that no matter what Arlo is cooking, there’s a lot of garlic in it. The FR without –ever in (2) carries no such signal of ignorance.

In theTractatus, Wittgenstein advocates two major notational innovations in logic. First, identity is to be expressed by identity of the sign only, not by a sign for identity. Secondly, only one logical operator, called “N” by Wittgenstein, should be employed in the construction of compound formulas. We show that, despite claims to the contrary in the literature, both of these proposals can be realized, severally and jointly, in expressively complete systems of first-order logic. Building on early work of Hintikka’s, we (...) identify three ways in which the first notational convention can be implemented, show that two of these are compatible with the text of theTractatus, and argue on systematic and historical grounds, adducing posthumous work of Ramsey’s, for one of these as Wittgenstein’s envisaged method. With respect to the second Tractarian proposal, we discuss how Wittgenstein distinguished between general and non-general propositions and argue that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, an expressively adequate N-operator notation is implicit in theTractatuswhen taken in its intellectual environment. We finally introduce a variety of sound and complete tableau calculi for first-order logics formulated in a Wittgensteinian notation. The first of these is based on the contemporary notion of logical truth as truth in all structures. The others take into account the Tractarian notion of logical truth as truth in all structures over one fixed universe of objects. Here the appropriate tableau rules depend on whether this universe is infinite or finite in size, and in the latter case on its exact finite cardinality.As it is obviously easy to express how propositions can be constructed by means of this operation and how propositions are not to be constructed by means of it, this must be capable of exact expression.5.503. (shrink)

Social enterprises, as typical hybrid organisations, are embedded in a plural institutional environment in which some stakeholders regard achieving social goals as fundamental, while others see economic profit as the priority. A great challenge for social enterprises is dealing with the conflicts resulting from the diverse expectations of stakeholders. Based on the existing works on organisational legitimacy and the social business model, we propose a legitimacy-based social enterprise model composed of three main phases, namely, legitimacy proposition, legitimacy strategy planning, and (...) legitimacy strategy implementation. Our model is meant to serve as an effective legitimacy-building tool for social enterprises of various kinds. (shrink)

which he calls general indicatives, are correctly analysed as open indicative conditionals prefixed by universal quantifiers. So they are both analysed as (∀x)(if x gets a chance, x bungee-jumps), where x ranges over girls. This analysis is attributed to Geach.2 Barker then shows that this syntactic analysis, together with other premises, entails that the open conditional occurring under the universal quantifier has to be analysed as having the import of material implication.

Keith DeRose defends contextualism: the view that the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions vary with the context of the ascriber. Mark Richard has criticised contextualism for being unable to vindicate intuitions about disagreement. To account for these intuitions, DeRose has proposed truth-conditions for “knows” called the Gap view. According to this view, knowledge ascriptions are true iff the epistemic standards of each conversational participant are met, false iff each participant's standards aren't met, and truth-valueless otherwise. An implication of the Gap view (...) is that people with divergent standards can enter conversations and thereby render knowledge claims gappy. We characterise this as a form of trolling. We argue that trolling results in unacceptably counterintuitive implications and that this constitutes a reductio against the Gap view. We also briefly explore the implications of trolling for other contextualist views about “knows,” as well as a broader class of context sensitive expressions. (shrink)

The Federalist, justifying the Electoral College to elect the president, claimed that a small group of more informed individuals would make a better decision than the general mass. But the Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the more independent, better-than-random voters there are, the more likely it will be that the majority among them will be correct. The question thus arises as to how much better, on average, members of the smaller group would have to be to compensate for the (...) epistemic costs of making decisions on the basis of that many fewer votes. This question is explored in the contexts of referendum democracy, delegate-style representative democracy, and trustee-style representative democracy. (shrink)

In recent years, the ‘Western tradition’ has increasingly come under attack in anti-colonialist and postmodernist discourses. It is not difficult to sympathise with the concerns that underlie advocacy of historically marginalised traditions, and the West undoubtedly has a lot to answer for. Nonetheless, while arguing a qualified yes to the central question posed for this special issue, we question the assumption that the West can be neatly distinguished from alternative traditions of thought. We argue that there is fundamental implicit and (...) explicit agreement across traditions about the most difficult of issues and on standards about how to reason about them and that the ‘West’ has demonstrably learned from within and without itself. But, we question the very viability under conditions of heightened globalisation and neo-colonialism of distinguishing between thought of the ‘West’ and thought outside the West. It is time to move beyond the reified assumptions that underlie the idea of ‘Western thought’, cast as an agent with a collective purpose. (shrink)

In this paper we maintain that abductive inferential processes should be embedded to a more general outlook on human cognition. Abduction has clear a.nities to the so-called interrogative model of inquiry in which inquiry and reasoning are conceptualized as a dialogue. We think, in addition, that dialogicality must be broadened to a “trialogical” framework which means a threefold relationship with mediating artefacts where the inquirer, other inquirers , and the object of knowledge are inextricably bound up with each other in (...) long term processes of inquiry. Seen from this perspective Peirce's semeiotic pragmatism has close connections to modern ideas about distributed cognition; also to Pera's dialectical model of science, and Davidson's theory of triangulation concerning human mind, cognition, and knowledge. (shrink)

The distinction between the first-person perspective (1PP) and the third-person perspective (3PP) has been widely regarded as fundamental and rigid, and many researchers hold that genuine bodily illusions can only be experienced from the 1PP. We applied VR technology to investigate whether this mainstream view is correct. In our experiments, the participants were immersed in a VR environment in which they saw a life-sized virtual body either from the 1PP or from the 3PP. They either passively received tactile stimulations and/or (...) actively interacted with a virtual soccer ball. Our VR system created novel visuo-motor-tactile correlations between the real and the virtual world: when the participant interacted with a real plastic soccer ball, he/she would feel corresponding tactile sensations and see the avatar performing the exact same movements. We found that a clear sense of ownership over the avatar was induced not only in the 1PP condition but also in the Passive-3PP and the Active-3PP conditions. We also observed evidence suggesting that it is possible to experience one’s body-location, 1PP-location, as well as self-location, both from the 1PP and from the 3PP. Together, we demonstrate that there is in fact no fundamental gap between embodied 1PP and embodied 3PP in the virtual world. (shrink)

Our discussion is couched within a compositional implementation of the analysis of the Perfect developed by Iatridou et.al. (a version of Extended Now of McCoard 78, Dowty 72, 79). The basics.

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the broad phases of web development: the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0, are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been understood and critiqued. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in information communication technologies (ICTs). Findings – Along (...) with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the authors contend that a more complex and poststructuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical grounding for understanding its particularities. Originality/value – The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings. (shrink)

The problem of free will as it is know in Western philosophical traditions is hardly known in China. Considering how central the problem is in the West, this is a remarkable fact. We try to explain this, and we offer insights into discussions within Chinese traditions that we think are related, not historically but regarding the issues discussed. Thus we introduce four central Chinese concepts, namely: (1) xīn 心 (heart, heart-mind), (2) xìng 性 (human nature, characteristic tendencies, inborn capacity), (3) (...) mìng 命 (lifespan, fate, command, allotment, endowment), and (4) zìrán 自然 (self-so, so of itself, nature, spontaneity), and we indicate how these concepts and their discussions can be related to discussions on free will. (shrink)

Spitale, Germani, and Biller-Andorno’s (2024) PHERCC matrix sets out a useful and systematic framework for risk and crisis communication in public health emergencies. A problem in ensuring effective messaging is the extent to which the messaging environment is *quiet* or *noisy*: in other words, whether or not a message has to *compete with other messages* at the same time. I use the example of the UK’s experience during COVID-19, which was marked by tensions between the devolved regional governments—and consequently divergent (...) policy responses—which sowed confusion among the populace. More generally, if policymakers try to account for the needs of competing publics simultaneously (in order to meet the inclusivity and understandability principles), this may increase the noise problem and so actually undermine effective public health messaging. The issue of noisy messaging environments reveals a tradeoff between inclusivity and understandability versus effectiveness in risk and crisis communication. (shrink)

This paper engages with the longstanding debate over whether being exposed to a risk of harm amounts to harm itself (what I call ‘risk-harm’). The dominant view has been that those exposed to risks of harm do not suffer harm. In this paper, I defend the widely unpopular subjectivist account of risk-harm – according to which those exposed to unwanted risks of harm can suffer harm – against prominent objections that have been levied against it. The first section sets out (...) to renew and strengthen the appeal of the account in light of recent developments in the surrounding literature. The second section defends the account against arguably its most formidable objection, namely the claim that there is no such thing as risk-harm. The third section wraps up by parrying some prominent general objections, which highlight potentially undesirable upshots to accepting the existence of risk-harm. (shrink)

According to the causal account of harming, an event harms a person if and only if it causes the person to be worse off. This view has emerged as a popular alternative to the more traditional view, according to which an event harms a person if and only if the person would have been better off had the event not occurred. In this paper, my primary aim is to motivate and defend a certain variant of the causal account of harming. (...) Moreover, I also situate this variant within recent attempts to provide a unified account of harm. (shrink)

The relative clause specifies the amount/number of books referred to. It functions as a cardinality modifier. It denotes the number of books on the table. The noun books moves from the RC-internal position into the external head position. We will see that it is semantically active in both positions!

Author’s Note These notes expand on remarks in my paper “A Minimal Theory of Adverbial Quantification” about the difficulties with counting situations. In May 1997, I talked about this topic in an MIT seminar on events co-taught with Irene Heim. These are the slightly updated class notes from that seminar. I have no new thoughts on the issues, but perhaps these notes are still useful. [References still to be added – for now I just appended an old list of references (...) from some class notes.]. (shrink)

Posing the question ‘How diverse is philosophy of education in the West?’ this paper responds to two recent defences of African philosophy of education which endorse its communitarianism and oppose individualism in Western philosophy of education. After outlining Thaddeus Metz's argument that Western philosophy of education should become more African by being more communitarian, and Yusef Waghid's defence of communitarianism in African philosophy of education, we develop a qualified defence of aspects of individualism in education. Our reservations about some aspects (...) of communitarianism lead us to argue for a role for some forms of individualism in African as well as Western education. Finally, reflecting on what is at stake in this kind of comparative philosophy of education, we argue that an over-emphasis on cultural differences can distract philosophers of education from the attention they should pay to the common dangers posed across continents by the influence of global capitalism on education. (shrink)