Scholars have studied the concept of holy war in the Bible for well over a century. Both traditional Muslim and modern Western scholars have likewise studied the qur'?nic view of war, but little has been done to examine scriptural justification for holy war as a cross-cultural phenomenon. A comparison of biblical with qur'?nic war texts reveals that, despite historical, cultural, and geographical differences, scriptural justification for mass slaughter in war first appears for the purpose of defense but steadily evolves into (...) divinely encouraged and even divinely commanded offensive war. The differences in the evolving concept between the two scriptures and their exegesis can be explained by the different histories of two religious civilizations. (shrink)

Chow's defense of NHSTP ignores the fact that in psychology it is used to test substantive hypotheses in theory-corroborating research. In this role, NHSTP is not only inadequate, but damaging to the progress of psychology as a science. NHSTP does not fulfill the Popperian requirement that theories be tested severely. It also encourages nonspecific predictions and feeble theoretical formulations.

Born in a small town in Lithuania, Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz emigrated to the United States in 1929. A Talmudic genius and an autodidact in philosophy, Rabbi Agushewitz published three philosophical works in Yiddish. Ancient Greek Philosophy, the first published but the last to be translated into English, offers a unique blend of clear philosophical principles and a flavorful Yiddish style, which Mark Steiner's translation preserves. Rabbi Agushewitz not only explains what the early Greek philosophers said, he also amplifies their (...) arguments with creative proofs that the ancients themselves did not offer. His attempts to correlate ancient philosophical statements with monotheism will resonate with the modern religious reader. In addition to the present volume, R. Agushewitz's philosophical books are Faith and Heresy and Principles of Philosophy, both published in translation under the auspices of the Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press. His volume of Talmudic novellae on Bava Kamma, "Bi'ur Reuven," was published with approbation from both Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. These Talmudic giants differed sharply on their attitude toward the study of philosophy, but they concurred wholeheartedly on the scholarship of R. Agushewitz. (shrink)

“Israel is to blame, and not Oslo,” writes Reuven Kaminer, a longtime member of the Israeli left. The almost instinctual tendency to delegitimize the Palestinian right to determine their future on an equal basis is the source of the current tension, he explains, arguing that the conflict continues today because Israel, backed by the United States - which has repeatedly proven not to be an “honest broker” - refuses to recognize the just national rights of the Palestinian people.

Is it true that the suffering associated with chronic illness can be controlled in all but a few intractable cases? The bio-ethical literature gives the impression that suffering is primarily pain and that a competent physician should be able to control suffering. This perception jibes neither with my forty years of clinical experience nor with suffering as depicted in novels. Using Kenaz' novel,The Way to the Cats as a starting point, I argue that, with regard to suffering and illness, fiction (...) is closer to reality than professional literature, and suffering is far more than pain. I content that the control of suffering is a modern myth. This argument applies equally well to the control of non-insulin dependent diabetes. Patient selection, duration of follow-up, remembering what we want to remember, bias, self-fulfilled prophecy, and asking the wrong questions are offered as partial explanation for the gap between perception and reality. The complexity of suffering and the elusiveness of its control should be honestly recognized. (shrink)

Reuven Leigh provides the first in-depth introduction to the pioneering philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn. Bringing him into dialogue with key continental philosophers Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva, this book reveals how Schneersohn's views anticipated many prominent themes in 20th-century thought. Shalom Schneersohn (1860-1920) was the fifth Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. He was a traditional, kabbalistic thinker and yet, beyond mysticism, he wrote extensively on speech, gender and the body. So why is he not better known? (...) Leigh begins by uncovering and contesting numerous scholarly assumptions that have operated to exclude traditional rabbinic thinkers from contemporary philosophical debates. Seeking to correct this, this book offers a close reading of Schneersohn's 1898 discourses. With the disruption of traditional binary structures being the dominant theme pervading Schneersohn's work, Leigh challenges Levinas' controversial ideas on the feminine. Examining Schneersohn on language, too, he highlights how Derridean deconstruction involves a more positive approach to presence that was already anticipated in the writings of Schneersohn. And from the disruption of the hierarchy of signification to the semiotic aspect of language and the maternal body, this book demonstrates how Schneersohn foreshadows a number of Kristeva's central philosophical concerns. A wide-ranging and inclusive volume, The Philosophy of Rabbi Shalom Schneersohn demonstrates not only how forward-thinking Schneersohn's ideas were a century ago, but how relevant they still are today. (shrink)

In this volume, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein explores the development of the religious personality. He advocates a life centered on the service of God, but recognizes multiple paths to this goal. Acknowledging that both the Jewish value system and human experience are multifaceted, he examines the relevant issues from an unusually wide perspective. Rabbi Lichtenstein's essays reflect not only a staunch commitment to Halakha and a firm grounding in rigorous Torah study, but also a deep spirituality, a profound moral sensitivity, and (...) a keen awareness of both the challenges and opportunities of modernity. While being enlightened by Rabbi Lichtenstein's penetrating analyses and wide-ranging learning, the reader will also be inspired by the beauty of his vision of the religious life. These essays originated as lectures, and have been selected and adapted for print by Rabbi Reuven Ziegler. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists distinguish between automatic and controlled mental processes. Automatic processes are either innately involuntary or become automatized through extensive practice. For example, reading words is a purportedly automatic process for proficient readers and the Stroop effect is consequently considered the “gold standard” of automated performance. Although the question of whether it is possible to regain control over an automatic process is mostly unasked, we provide compelling data showing that posthypnotic suggestion reduced and even removed Stroop interference in highly hypnotizable (...) individuals. Drawing on a large sample of highly hypnotizable participants, we examined the effects of suggestion on Stroop performance both with and without a posthypnotic suggestion to perceive the input stream as meaningless symbols. We show that suggestion administered to highly hypnotizable persons significantly reduced Stroop interference and derailed a seemingly automatic process. (shrink)

Some machine learning models, in particular deep neural networks (DNNs), are not very well understood; nevertheless, they are frequently used in science. Does this lack of understanding pose a problem for using DNNs to understand empirical phenomena? Emily Sullivan has recently argued that understanding with DNNs is not limited by our lack of understanding of DNNs themselves. In the present paper, we will argue, _contra_ Sullivan, that our current lack of understanding of DNNs does limit our ability to understand with (...) DNNs. Sullivan’s claim hinges on which notion of understanding is at play. If we employ a weak notion of understanding, then her claim is tenable, but rather weak. If, however, we employ a strong notion of understanding, particularly explanatory understanding, then her claim is not tenable. (shrink)

This paper argues that a notion of statistical explanation, based on Salmon’s statistical relevance model, can help us better understand deep neural networks. It is proved that homogeneous partitions, the core notion of Salmon’s model, are equivalent to minimal sufficient statistics, an important notion from statistical inference. This establishes a link to deep neural networks via the so-called Information Bottleneck method, an information-theoretic framework, according to which deep neural networks implicitly solve an optimization problem that generalizes minimal sufficient statistics. The (...) resulting notion of statistical explanation is general, mathematical, and subcausal. (shrink)

In this article I reject the claim that the responsibilities acquired by gamete providers can be transferred to their biological children's intending parents. I defend this position by first showing that arguments in defence of the transferability of responsibilities in gamete provision cases fail to distinguish between the transfer and delegation of responsibility. I then provide an argument against the transferability of responsibilities in gamete provision cases that differs from the ones offered by James Lindemann Nelson and Rivka Weinberg. Though (...) I conclude that gamete providers have inalienable responsibilities towards their biological offspring, I note that the precise ethical and policy implications this has for gamete provision remain somewhat unclear. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:WORKING WARFARE AND ITS RESTRICTIONS IN THE JEWiSH TRADITION Reuven Kimelman Brandeis University The test case for any political theory of checks and balances is war. It also tests the outer limits of the ethical deployment of power. I. Types of Wars The Jewish ethics of war focuses on two issues: its legitimation and its conduct. The Talmud classifies wars according to their source oflegitimation. Biblically mandated wars (...) are termed mandatory (milhemet mitzvah or milhemet hovah). Wars undertaken at the discretion of the Sanhédrin are termed discretionary (milhemet reshut). There are three types of mandatory wars: Joshua's war of conquest againstthe seven Canaanite nations, the war againstAmaleq, anddefensive wars against an already launched attack. Discretionary wars are usually expansionary efforts undertaken to enhance the political prestige of the government or to secure economic gain. The first type of mandatory war is only of historical interest as the Canaanite nations lost their national identity already in ancient times. This ruling, which appears repeatedly in rabbinic literature, is part ofa tendency to blunt the impact of the seven-nations policy. The Bible points out that these policies were not implemented even during the zenith of ancient Israel's power (Kings 9:20; 2 Chr 8:7-9; see also Judges 1:21-33, Ps 106:34). Indeed, an ancient Midrash explicitly excludes the possibility of transferring the seven-nations ruling to other non-Jewish residents of the Land ofIsrael. Maimonides is just as explicit in emphasizing that all trace 44Reuven Kimmelman of them has vanished. By limiting the jurisdiction of the seven-nations ruling to the conditions ofancient Canaan it was effectively removed from the postbiblical ethical agendaand vitiated as aprecedent forcontemporary practice. The second category ofmandatory war, against Amaleq, has also been rendered operationally defunct by comparing them with the Canaanites, or by postponing the battle to the immediate premessianic struggle, or by viewing them as a metaphor for genocidal evil. The two remaining categories, reactive defensive wars (which are classified as mandatory) and expansionary wars (which are classified as discretionary) remain intact. So, for example, King David's response to the Philistine attackaredesignated mandatory, whereashis wars "to expandthe border of Israel" are designated discretionary. Intermediate wars such as preventive, anticipatory, or preemptive defy so neat a classification. Not only are the classifications debated in the Talmud, but commentators disagree on the categorization of the differing positions in the Talmud. The major clash occurs between the eleventh century Franco-German scholar Rashi and the thirteenth century Franco-Provencal scholar Meiri. According to Rashi, the majority position considers preemptive action to be discretionary whereas the minority position expounded by Rabbi Judah considers it to be mandatory. According to Meiri, a preemptive strike, against an enemy who it is feared might attack or who is already known to be preparing for war is deemed mandatory by the majority ofthe rabbis, but discretionaryby Rabbi Judah. Accordingly, Rabbi Judah defines a counterattack as mandatory only in response to an already launched attack. A similar reading of Maimonides also limits the mandatory classification to a defensive war launched in response to an attack. With these distinctions between mandatory and discretionary wars in mind, we should be able to investigate the Jewish concerns with the problematics ofwarby focusing on preemptive strikes, declarations ofwar, ethics of warfare, and draftability. II. Preemptive Strikes as Self-Defense Not only Machiavellians view the security and survival ofthe state as nonnegotiable. National self-defense is as much amoral right as is personal self-preservation. Whereas it is clear that offensive war cannot be subsumed under the inalienable right of self-defense, the moral status of pre-emptive attacks is not as clear. Is the moral category of self-defense Working Warfare and Its Restrictions in the Jewish Tradition 45 limited to an already launched attack? The majority talmudic position, according to Rashi, and that of Rabbi Judah, according to Meiri, would answer in the affirmative. Their position is seconded by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherentright ofindividual ofcollective self-defense ifan armed attack occurs against a member." The minority position of Rabbi Judah, according to Rashi, and the... (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the cognitive role of diagrammatic movements in the theater. Based on the recognition of a theatrical work’s inherent ability to provide new insights concerning reality, the article concentrates on the way by which actors’ movements on stage create spatial diagrams that can provide new insights into the spectators’ world. The suggested model of theater’s epistemology results from a combination of Charles S. Peirce’s doctrine of diagrammatic reasoning and David Lewis’s theoretical account of the truth (...) value of counterfactual conditionals. I argue that in several theatrical works – in particular those whose central image is dominated by movements – the relation of what Lewis names “comparative overall similarity” between the fictional and the actual world is based on diagrammatic homology. The cognitive process involved in deciphering them is, hence, based on diagrammatic reasoning. The main emphasis of the analysis is on the previously unnoticed but important cognitive role of observation in the theater: the idea that observation takes an active role in the reasoning process that enables the spectators to form new knowledge about their actual world. Samuel Beckett’s plays Quad and Come and Go serve here as case studies. (shrink)

Scepticism has been the driving force in the development of Greco-Roman culture in the past, and the impetus for far-reaching scientific achievements and philosophical investigation. Early Jewish culture, in contrast, avoided creating consistent representations of its philosophical doctrines. Sceptical notions can nevertheless be found in some early Jewish literature such as the Book of Ecclesiastes. One encounters there expressions of doubt with respect to Divine justice or even Divine involvement in earthly affairs. During the first centuries of the common era, (...) however, Jewish thought, as reflected in rabbinic works, was engaged in persistent intellectual activity devoted to the laws, norms, regulations, exegesis and other traditional areas of Jewish religious knowledge. An effort to detect sceptical ideas in ancient Judaism, therefore, requires a closer analysis of this literary heritage and its cultural context. This volume of collected essays seeks to tackle the question of scepticism in an Early Jewish context, including Ecclesiastes and other Jewish Second Temple works, rabbinic midrashic and talmudic literature, and reflections of Jewish thought in early Christian and patristic writings. Contributors are: Tali Artman, Geoffrey Herman, Reuven Kiperwasser, Serge Ruzer, Giuseppe Veltri, Cana Werman, and Casten Wilke. (shrink)

From a social science perspective, a major purpose of religion is to organize the behavior of the community of believers in order to maximize its success as a collective. The underlying premise of this lecture is that religious authority will sanction violence and aggression when they are assessed to be an effective means of realizing the goals of the collective. Conversely, when violence and aggression become unhelpful or counter- productive for realizing community goals they are forbidden. This phenomenology of religion (...) and violence is applied to the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to demonstrate that none of these religions is inherently more or less apt to engage in violence. Their use of belligerent and irenic behaviors are more profoundly influenced by historical context and social needs than by theology. (shrink)

Abraham Joshua Heschel's oeuvre deals with the continuum of Jewish religious consciousness from the biblical and rabbinic periods through the kabbalistic and Hasidic ones with regard to God's concern for humanity. The goal of this study is to show how such a “Nachmanidean” reading has partially displaced the discontinuous “Maimonidean” reading promoted by Yehezkel Kaufman, Ephraim Urbach, and Gershom Scholem. The result is that Heschel's understanding of the development of Jewish theologizing is more influential now than it was during his (...) lifetime. This study traces the growth of that development and explores how Heschel became the scholar-theologian who most succeeded in bridging the gap between scholarship and constructive theology. (shrink)

Although well established in developed countries, Ethics review boards in the academia, and specifically for social and behavioral sciences (SBS) research, is a relatively new, and still a controversy inducing endeavor. This study explores the establishment and functioning of ERBs in Israeli academia, serving as a case study for the challenges and progress made in ensuring ethical research practices in non-medical related spheres. A purposeful sample of 46 participants was selected, comprising ERB current or past members and SBS researchers, who (...) each interacted extensively with ERB’s evaluation processes. The participants came from all eight research universities of Israel, as well as seven large public and private academic colleges. Open, semi structured In-depth interviews were conducted in order to facilitate a critical reflective stance among the various participants, exploring their experiences, behaviors and the meanings they assign to ERB processes. Our research revealed two major themes. The first is the developmental trajectories in the construction processes of ERBs in Israel, comprised of the following stages: Initiation, expansion, opposition, and acceptance and assimilation. The second was a typology of participation throughout the ERBs’ construction process. Inspired by Merton’s strain theory, this typology includes conformists, ritualists, ideologists, control-freaks, and insurgents. The findings expose a unique perspective into the initiation, establishment, and development of ERBs, which can shed light on the role of ERBs in general, as well as point out how resistance to ERBs, as well as the different reasons for championing them, affected not only ERBs form and their legitimacy, but also their interaction with researchers. (shrink)

The Institute of Medicine has recently endorsed arguments put forward by John Appleby calling for mandatory sex selection against female offspring in the initial trials of mitochondrial replacement techniques. In this paper I argue that, despite this endorsement, the reasons offered by Appleby for mandatory sex selection are inadequate. I further argue that plausible revisions to Appleby's arguments still fail to convincingly defend such an intrusive policy. While I remain neutral about whether intending parents making use of mitochondrial replacement techniques (...) ought to have access to sex selection, I conclude that to date the case for mandatory sex selection has not been satisfactorily made. (shrink)

Ranging over central issues of morals and politics and the nature of freedom and authority, this study examines the role of value-neutrality, rights, equality, ...

We outline a framework for analyzing episodes from the history of science in which the application of mathematics plays a constitutive role in the conceptual development of empirical sciences. Our starting point is the inferential conception of the application of mathematics, recently advanced by Bueno and Colyvan. We identify and discuss some systematic problems of this approach. We propose refinements of the inferential conception based on theoretical considerations and on the basis of a historical case study. We demonstrate the usefulness (...) of the refined, dynamical inferential conception using the well-researched example of the genesis of general relativity. Specifically, we look at the collaboration of the physicist Einstein and the mathematician Grossmann in the years 1912--1913, which resulted in the jointly published ``Outline of a Generalized Theory of Relativity and a Theory of Gravitation,'' a precursor theory of the final theory of general relativity. In this episode, an independently developed mathematical theory, the theory of differential invariants and the absolute differential calculus, was applied in the process of physical theorizing aiming at finding a relativistic theory of gravitation. We argue that the dynamical inferential conception not only provides a natural framework to describe and analyze this episode, but it also generates new questions and insights. We comment on the mathematical tradition on which Grossmann drew, and on his own contributions to mathematical theorizing. We argue that the dynamical inferential conception allows us to identify both the role of heuristics and of mathematical resources as well as the systematic role of problems and mistakes in the reconstruction of episodes of conceptual innovation and theory change. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Significant Interests and the Right to KnowReuven Brandt (bio)1. IntroductionDaniel Groll's book Conceiving People (2021) attempts a novel and insightful defence of why individuals ought to choose open over anonymous gamete donation, barring any special circumstances. In broad strokes, the overall argument proceeds by defending three main claims: (1) that failing to disclose to children that they are donor-conceived is morally problematic, (2) that children who are informed that (...) they are donor-conceived (either intentionally by their social parents or otherwise) are likely to have a worthwhile, significant, subjective interest1 in having knowledge about their gamete donor(s), and (3) that parents have a duty to advance their children's worthwhile subjective significant interests. Groll's account departs from other criticisms of anonymous gamete donation in that it does not rest on the view that knowledge about one's genetic progenitors is essential to self-knowledge, identity formation, or other elements of wellbeing for creatures like us. The view thus attempts to avoid the pitfalls plaguing other criticisms of anonymous gamete donation, which tend to rely on controversial (and likely false) claims of genetic essentialism and/or genetic exceptionalism.Groll's thesis rests on the much more modest (and likely correct) claim that seeking information about one's genetic progenitors is one of many permissible, fruitful, and valuable routes to identity formation. According to Groll, it just so happens that a large portion of donor-conceived individuals aware of the absence of biological ties to one or more social parents choose this route to identity formation. And this empirical fact combined with plausible views about parents' obligations to promote their offspring's wellbeing gives prospective pro-creators strong reason to choose open donors over anonymous donors.Although many aspects of the picture Groll paints are attractive, I remain unconvinced that the overall argument succeeds. My criticism of the argument is multipronged. I am skeptical that failing to disclose to a child that they were donor-conceived and/or failing to disclose information to a child that they are [End Page 201] likely to find important violates the parental duty to build intimate relationships with one's offspring. This shifts the force of Groll's argument to the empirical claim that donor-conceived children are likely to have a significant subjective interest in knowing information about their biological relations. As I will show, the empirical evidence for this claim is not as strong as Groll presumes. In the absence of a deontic argument for disclosure, Groll must provide more robust empirical evidence that anonymous gamete donation is likely to result in off-spring with their weighty interests frustrated, or else argue that the risk is not worth taking. These are not fatal flaws but show that more empirical and normative work needs to be done to defend this line of argument.A more serious set of worries arise in response to Groll's claim that the interest that donor-conceived individuals have in genetic information is likely to be significant. Little is said about what constitutes a significant interest, except that interests fall along a linear spectrum and that the significance of an interest is a factor of "the space, so to speak, it takes up in a person's mental economy (do they think about it a lot?) and the extent to which they organize their lives around it" (2021, 63). My worries here are three-fold. First, it is unclear whether the empirical data support the claim that donor-conceived individuals are likely to have an interest in genetic knowledge that is significant in the sense that it occupies a large portion of their mental energy and is a locus around which they organize their lives. Second, there is scant discussion about whether an interest can become morally problematic (and so no longer worthwhile on Groll's account) if it is given too much weight. I will argue that a plausible reading of Groll's account requires that we treat overvalued interests as no longer worthwhile. Consequently, Groll's argument risks presuming the kind of genetic chauvinism—the view that genetic knowledge is essential to wellbeing—that he seeks to reject. Third, if... (shrink)

Stephen Darwall's understanding of what kind of life is a good life, good for the person whose life it is, belongs in the same family as, among others, Scanlon's and mine. It is a family of views about well-being which descends from Aristotle, and Darwall has much of interest to say about the good life, and particularly about Aristotle's views on the subject. Many of the observations central to his position seem to me cogent, and are shared by other writers. (...) These include three important propositions: 1. that a good life, one which is good for those whose life it is, is not necessarily the same as a life which they think is good for them, nor does it necessarily consist in their desires being satisfied, nor in the satisfaction of any subset of their desires . 2. that people aim or intend to do what is worth doing, to have relationships worth having, and engage in goals worth pursuing, and so on, and that all of these, and their combination, are distinct from having a good life , and 3. that what makes the well-being of people worth pursuing, to the extent that it is, what provides reasons for those same people and for others to protect or promote it, is that people are valuable in themselves. (shrink)

Gambling and Speculation takes the long, historic perspective of its controversial subject. The book offers not only a better understanding of the recent "gambling craze," but also a fundamental inquiry into human nature and the structure of societies. The Brenners argue that the negative image of gamblers and of speculators stems from prejudice, whose roots are in the distant, forgotten past. Legal scholars have frequently confused gambling with speculation and the anti-gambling laws were, at times, erroneously interpreted as implying the (...) prohibitions of contracts in futures and insurance markets. One consequence of all this confusion was that during this century both in the United States and England, the legislation and law on betting and gambling became ambiguous. The authors touch on this issue and make policy recommendations: to abolish restrictions on the industry, diminish the states' role in selling lotteries, and, at the same time, make legal distinctions capable of helping the tiny percentage of players who might be "addicted.". (shrink)

Reuven Brandt on parental responsibility and gamete donation.

Reuven Brandt on anonymity and mitochondrial donation.