Ever since Bishop Stillingfleet accused John Locke of having unwittingly paved the way with his Essay for the alleged heresy promulgated in John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious, the latter two thinkers and works have been consistently joined in histories of philosophy covering the rise of natural religion in England. While scholars have generally thought that Locke got the better of the good bishop in their subsequent written exchanges initiated by the charge, they appear merely to assume that Stillingfleet correctly read (...) Toland and that Locke accepts that reading. Perhaps the most obvious piece of evidence favoring that stance is that while Locke clearly admits "above reason" doctrines, Toland dismisses them: Christianity is not mysterious! It is curious, however, that Toland scholars readily point out many concepts that Toland used as being the same as or different from Lockean notions about which many Locke scholars are admittedly perplexed. Through patient exposition of relevant texts and letters, deconstruction of scholarly works, and careful reasoning, this book shows that Toland's deviations from Locke regarding reason and faith are far more minor than anyone has concluded. Stillingfleet was correct to connect them, but was incorrect in the way that he did it. (shrink)

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book, offering a description of problems in Lockean scholarship, the book's overall argument and approach, and more. Locke scholarship tends to be compartmentalized, which is problematic since Locke was a systematic polymath. Scholarship also tends to over-simplify the intense debates in which Locke found himself. Furthermore, scholars typically fail to make a distinction between Locke's programmatic and personal views. As a result of these tendencies, some label Locke as heterodox, others as orthodox, (...) and still others try to identify him as defending a particular sect, all depending on the narrative or issue the scholar is exploring. Most Lockean scholars approach him as being religiously surreptitious, sectarian, or sincere. This book adds to the voices that think Locke was forthright in his writings. This chapter also articulates the thesis for the entire book and the theses and coherence of the following chapters. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion requires us to believe doctrines that are in violation of the law of noncontradictionor that it yields logical contradictions. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines orpropositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is animportant qualifier to the traditional line of scholarship’s (...) flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds withJan W. Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religiousdoctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction. (shrink)

It is my contention here that the chapter “Of Power,” in John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is not a metaphysical pronouncement upon the liberty-necessity debates but more along the lines of what those like James Harris portray it to be: a description of our experience of freedom of the will. It is also prescriptive since it is descriptive of the right use of the will. My claims are based upon two key pieces of evidence that are responses to (...) William Molyneux’s oft noted critique of the first edition of the chapter: 1) an admission by Locke in his correspondence: at least part of the reason he is attempting to avoid metaphysical pronouncements is that trying to reconcile divine and human agency is too difficult; and 2) the theological message of “Of Power”—the truly free agent is reasonable, and the truly reasonable agent will have her eyes fixed on the afterlife, thus aiming for herself to be a slave and determined, therefore, by her ever-cultivated desire for righteousness and not by her fleshly desires—and his development of it throughout the chapter eludes sectarian categorization by the avoidance of theological issues that are not unrelated to the metaphysical question of human free agency. To frame his chapter otherwise makes him out to be a theological novice or, perhaps, unconcerned with the religious background of his readership. (shrink)

This essay argues that Locke’s presentation of justification and the soteriological framework in which it is placed in The Reasonableness of Christianity is broad enough to encompass all “Christian” views on the topics except antinomian ones. In other words, the focus of the treatise is not Locke’s personal views of justification and the broader doctrine of salvation but an ecumenical statement of them. Locke’s personal conclusions on certain theological issues discussed in the opening pages of The Reasonableness of Christianity has (...) led most to assume that the soteriological discussion that follows reveals Locke’s own personal theological position despite clear indications of his ecumenical intent in The Reasonableness of Christianity and elsewhere. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion requires us to believe doctrines that are in violation of the law of noncontradiction or that it yields logical contradictions. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines or propositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is an important qualifier to the traditional (...) line of scholarship’s flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds with Jan W. Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religious doctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the 1729 Dissertation on Liberty and Neces­sity should be attributed to Anthony Collins. This was the prevailing view until the publication of James O’Higgins’s 1970 biography of Collins. Since then, most have followed Collins’s modern-day biographer in denying that Collins penned the Dissertation. After reviewing O’Higgins’s six reasons for rejecting Collins as the author, I respond to the substantive issues in what follows. Part I is a historical positioning of the Clarke-Collins liberty-necessity debate where (...) I discuss the debate’s context, Collins’s methods and disposition, and timeline issues pertinent to ascribing authorship of the Dissertation to Collins. Part II is a demonstration of the fittingness of the Dissertation as Collins’s response to the earlier debate regarding liberty and necessity he had with Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the 1729 Dissertation on Liberty and Neces­sity should be attributed to Anthony Collins. This was the prevailing view until the publication of James O’Higgins’s 1970 biography of Collins. Since then, most have followed Collins’s modern-day biographer in denying that Collins penned the Dissertation. After reviewing O’Higgins’s six reasons for rejecting Collins as the author, I respond to the substantive issues in what follows. Part I is a historical positioning of the Clarke-Collins liberty-necessity debate where (...) I discuss the debate’s context, Collins’s methods and disposition, and timeline issues pertinent to ascribing authorship of the Dissertation to Collins. Part II is a demonstration of the fittingness of the Dissertation as Collins’s response to the earlier debate regarding liberty and necessity he had with Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

In this essay, the author outlines his re-construction of Spinoza’s ontological monism by re-presenting the system of Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata , in an “intuitive” model of the Perfect Diamond, called NATURADEUS. So, for example, ordo et connexio idearum et rerum , is presented to the inner eye in the forms of two parallel structures, of rays and of facets within the NATURADEUS, respectively. The conceptual background of the proposed model is mostly analytic, the author essays to develop some ideas (...) of Jonathan Bennett’s Spinoza’s metaphysics (especially “transattributive mode identity”), with strong emphasis on ethical issues of ontological monism or pantheism. This essay is written as a dialogue between master Bruno and his student John (physically absent at the moment). More philosophical dialogues of this kind can be found on the author’s web page and in his book Four Seasons (in Slovenian, 2002). (shrink)

Memory represents a key psychological process. It allows us to recall things from the past which may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are intrinsically personal, subjective, and internal, yet without the primary capacity of memory, other important activities such as speech, perception, concept formation, and reasoning would be impossible. The range of different aspects of memory is huge, from our vocabulary and knowledge about language and the world to our personal histories, skills (...) such as walking and talking, and the more simple memory capacities found in lower animals. Amongst the diversity of memory processes, the principal focus in this volume is the long-term representation of complex associative human memory. This refers to the permanently stored representation of individual items and events. The books in the Oxford Debates in Psychology series aim to provide students and researchers with a stimulating, self-contained, and balanced summary of the various theoretical and empirical positions that shape the most controversial and contested areas of research. Memory: Systems, Process, or Function? presents a a debate about the cognitive architecture of the human long-term memory system. The individual chapter authors represent some of the leading researchers and theorists in the field. Each chapter concentates upon the central theoretical question of how long-term memory can best be conceptualized. In particular, is long-term memory best regarded as comprising multiple independent systems, as a processing framework which can be tapped via different levels of processing, or as a complex fnction which can be used in a flexible and task-appropriate manner? The authors of each chapter present their own answers to this and related research questions. The book concludes with an integrated synopsis and appraisal of the different facets of this fascinating debate. (shrink)

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition (...) has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered. (shrink)

We examined the affective consequences of everyday attention lapses and memory failures. Significant associations were found between self-report measures of attention lapses , attention-related cognitive errors , and memory failures , on the one hand, and boredom and depression , on the other. Regression analyses confirmed previous findings that the ARCES partially mediates the relation between the MAAS-LO and MFS. Further regression analyses also indicated that the association between the ARCES and BPS was entirely accounted for by the MAAS-LO and (...) MFS, as was that between the ARCES and BDI-II. Structural modeling revealed the associations to be optimally explained by the MAAS-LO and MFS influencing the BPS and BDI-II, contrary to current conceptions of attention and memory problems as consequences of affective dysfunction. A lack of conscious awareness of one’s actions, signaled by the propensity to experience brief lapses of attention and related memory failures, is thus seen as having significant consequences in terms of long-term affective well-being. (shrink)

People may exhibit two kinds of modifications when demonstrating action for others: modifications to facilitate bottom‐up, or sensory‐based processing; and modifications to facilitate top‐down, or knowledge‐based processing. The current study examined actors' production of such modifications in action demonstrations for audiences that differed in their capacity for intentional reasoning. Actors' demonstrations of complex actions for a non‐anthropomorphic computer system and for people (adult and toddler) were compared. Evidence was found for greater highlighting of top‐down modifications in the demonstrations for the (...) human audiences versus the computer audience. Conversely, participants highlighted simple perceptual modifications for the computer audience, producing more punctuated and wider ranging motions. This study suggests that people consider differences in their audiences when demonstrating action. (shrink)

In Contentious Rituals, Jonathan S. Blake focuses on Protestant parades in the streets of Northern Ireland and why people choose to participate in them. Drawing on rich interviews, survey data, and ethnographic observations, Blake presents a new look at the conflict in Northern Ireland and offers findings that illuminate contested symbols everywhere.

The Babylonian Talmud has reached us in multiple versions in medieval manu- scripts, early printed editions, and in citations in the works of medieval and early modern scholars. The field of Talmud criticism has developed criteria for working with these materials and the scholar E. S. Rosenthal famously theorized about the implications of textual variants for the history of the Talmud’s redaction. Tractate Temurah of the Babylonian Talmud received special attention due to the frequency and, at times, unique usage of (...) the term, lishana ’aḥarina, meaning “alternative textual reading,” found in it. In Temurah the term lishana ’aḥarina does not only signal a difference in formulation, as in other tractates of the Talmud, but some- times also seems to introduce a separately redacted text of the tractate that was integrated into a widespread and known base text. (shrink)

In the final years of his life, Emanuel Swedenborg wrote _True Christianity_, an opus that served both to contextualize his theology within contemporary Christianity and to serve as a road map for the new spiritual age that would follow. This second volume covers topics such as freedom of choice, repentance, the transformation of a person’s inner being during spiritual awakening, the rites of baptism and the Holy Supper, and the second coming of the Lord. This new translation is part of (...) the New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg, an ongoing project to render Swedenborg’s theological works in clear, contemporary language that reflects the simple and engaging style of the original Latin. The portable edition contains the text of the New Century Edition translation, but not the annotations or other supplementary materials found in the deluxe edition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 189-193 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture. By Anne M. Blackburn. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. x + 241 pp. Buddhist Learning is an important study of the emergence of the Siyam Nikaya (monastic order) in eighteenth-century Kandy, Sri Lanka's last Buddhist kingdom (which fell to the British only in 1815). Blackburn focuses on educational institutions (...) in her account, but frames it also to address larger issues in the study of Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts and history.An introductory chapter sets forth Blackburn's three central arguments (4): colonial and postcolonial scholarly constructions of Sri Lankan Buddhist "tradition" obscure the eighteenth-century phenomena that she reconstructs; the idea of "textual communities," developed in dialogue with contemporary scholarship on medieval European Christianity, provides a useful tool for analyzing those phenomena; [End Page 189] thus analyzed, the early Siyam Nikaya turns out to represent an innovative "reformulation" of Sri Lankan Buddhism, made possible by the establishment of the order itself, its systematization of monastic education, and the development of a bilingual commentarial genre for use within that system.Chapter 2 provides nonspecialists "at least a glimpse of the larger social context in which the emerging Siyam Nikaya participated" (23), with brief sketches of Sri Lankan Buddhist history, the structure and politics of the Kandyan court, the organization of monasticism prior to the rise of the Siyam Nikaya, and the presence of non-Buddhist religious leaders in Kandyan society. Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of Sri Lankan monastic education prior to 1730, then analyzes three stages in the emergence of distinctive Siyam Nikaya educational institutions (the early career of founder Valivita Saranamkara [1698-1778]; the late 1730s creation of a prototypical educational institution at Niyamakanda; and the 1753 importation of higher ordination [ upasampada ] from Thailand/formal establishment of the Siyam Nikaya, respectively), the history of royal patronage of these institutions, their new curriculum, its implementation and administration, its impact on monastic identity and lay-monastic relations, and the relationship of monastic erudition to prestige and patronage.Chapter 4 surveys Siyam Nikaya histories to argue that the order's rise was attended by "an innovative discourse on monasticism" that bolstered its authority by depicting its education-based interpretation of monastic virtue as "natural and desirable Buddhist practice" (105). Though these histories employed the rhetorical trope of decline and revival, their emphasis on Buddhist learning "signals a moment of profound change in Lankan Buddhism" (76-77), because they provided a charter for the new Nikaya while creating a perception that Siyam Nikaya monks practiced the best form of Buddhist monasticism. When imbibed by members of the royal court, this assured these monks steady patronage and prestige over their rivals, called ganinnanses, whom they directly and indirectly attacked. Chapter 5 zeroes in on Saranamkara and his Sararthadipani, a bilingual (Sinhala and Pali) commentary on the "four recitation sections" (catubhanavara) of protective (paritta) texts in Pali. This monumental work and the genre of bilingual commentaries (called sutra sannayas ) that it inspired, Blackburn maintains, were central to Saranamkara's claim to authority and created a distinctive monastic identity for Siyam Nikaya monks. Through close analysis of selected passages from Sararthadipani, Blackburn reveals the inner workings of bilingual commentary, particularly insofar as it allowed Saranamkara and his disciples to demonstrate their proper command of the classic Pali texts.In chapter 6 Blackburn argues that the sutra sannayas produced "a new Buddhist textual community" united in its reading and/or hearing of them. Exploring the ways in which Sararthadipani and the other sutra sannayas "constrained" readers to accept Saranamkara's vision of proper monasticism (such as direct instructions to readers and rhetorical structures), but recognizing that they also left open (in their use of simile, metaphor, and illustrative stories) the possibility of "less constrained" and "resistant" readings, Blackburn suggests that the genre extended the Siyam Nikaya's program beyond the small circle of Saranamkara's disciples to transform Sri Lankan monasticism [End Page 190] more generally. Moreover, she argues that given... (shrink)

In a series of important papers published roughly twenty years ago, Professor Robert Cooter developed a comprehensive economic theory of moral norms. He explained the value of those norms, described the process by which norms are adopted, and offered a set of predictions regarding the circumstances under which an individual will choose to adopt a particular moral norm. This brief Article applies behavioral law and economics and hedonic psychology to expand upon Professor Cooter’s path-breaking theory. In particular, understanding welfare in (...) hedonic terms — rather than preference-satisfaction terms — suggests a multitude of further situations in which individuals will justifiably seek to internalize moral norms. The hedonic approach to welfare then further suggests an enhanced role for the government to play in encouraging the adoption of welfare-enhancing norms. Cooter’s theory, combined with modern understandings of welfare and human behavior, thus offers powerful predictive and prescriptive possibilities. (shrink)

Nonhuman primates represent an important reservoir for the transmission of new infectious diseases to humans. While several working groups and international agencies have grappled with the ethics of xenotransplantation, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics have recently published a comprehensive and far-reaching series of recommendations that, while not eliminating the infectious disease risks, have nonetheless detailed the major points for concern and have developed a rational approach to minimizing these risks. This report should serve as the blueprint from which to proceed (...) with xenotransplantation. (shrink)

A brief self-report scale was developed to assess everyday performance failures arising directly or primarily from brief failures of sustained attention . The ARCES was found to be associated with a more direct measure of propensity to attention lapses and to errors on an existing behavioral measure of sustained attention . Although the ARCES and MAAS were highly correlated, structural modelling revealed the ARCES was more directly related to SART errors and the MAAS to SART RTs, which have been hypothesized (...) to directly reflect the lapses of attention that lead to SART errors. Thus, the MAAS and SART RTs appear to directly reflect attention lapses, whereas the ARCES and SART errors reflect the mistakes these lapses are thought to cause. Boredom proneness was also assessed by the BPS, as a separate consequence of a propensity to attention lapses. Although the ARCES was significantly associated with the BPS, this association was entirely accounted for by the MAAS, suggesting that performance errors and boredom are separate consequences of lapses in attention. A tendency to even extraordinarily brief attention lapses on the order of milliseconds may have far-reaching consequences not only for safe and efficient task performance but also for sustaining the motivation to persist in and enjoy these tasks. (shrink)

We report a novel task designed to elicit transient attention-lapse induced alienation of agency experiences in normal participants. When attention-related action slips occur during the task, participants reported substantially decreased self control as well as a high degree of perceived agency attributed to the errant hand. In addition, participants reported being surprised by, and annoyed with, the actions of the errant hand. We argue that ALIA experiences occur because of constraints imposed by the close and precise temporal relations between intention (...) formation and a contrary action employed in this paradigm. We note similarities between ALIA experiences and anarchic hand sign and argue that, despite important differences, both ALIA experiences and AHS phenomenology reflect failures of executive control to intervene and cancel contrary affordance-driven habitual motor plans. (shrink)

Purpose Social media (SM) platforms have become major sources for generating, sharing and gathering political and election news. Although there appears to be an assumption that reliance on SM for political news consumption will continue to gain in popularity, there are reasons to believe that many Americans are retreating from using SM for political news. The purpose of this study is to examine if Americans are reducing reliance on SM for political news and to analyze why retreat may be happening. (...) Design/methodology/approach Using longitudinal panel data from Pew’s American Trends Panel study, the authors tracked 993 respondents from February of 2016 to November of 2019 to monitor their reliance on SM for political news leading up to the 2020 US presidential election. Findings The results of this study indicate that a sizeable percentage of people (about a third) are retreating from SM platforms for political news consumption and some are abandoning it altogether – people we refer to as new SM “nones.” The authors find that retreat from SM is associated with increased distrust of the information found on the platforms. Concerns about fake news, incivility on SM and information overload were unrelated to retreat from use of SM for political news consumption. Originality/value The findings of this study are novel and suggest that reliance on SM for political news by the public may have waxed, seen its zenith and may now be waning largely because of distrust in the information found on SM platforms. (shrink)

Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. By Steven D. Fraade. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, vol. 147. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xix + 627. $251.

Advocates for the professionalization of clinical bioethics argue that bioethics professionals play an important role in contemporary medicine and patient care, especially when addressing complex ethical questions that arise in the delivery of reproductive medicine. For bioethics consultants to serve effectively, they need adequate training in the medical and ethical issues that patients and clinicians will face, and they need skills to facilitate effective dialog among all parties. Because clinical ethics consultation is a “high‐stakes endeavor” that can acutely affect patient (...) care, efforts are under way to ensure that bioethics consultants have the competence to provide such guidance. Yet to date, no studies have examined whether the training of bioethics consultants meets the needs of health care professionals who are on the front lines of such issues. In fact, limited information is available on the reproductive health issues that bioethics training programs address or the degree to which these programs meet the needs of patients confronting reproductive health decisions and their clinicians. It is therefore important to answer this key question: What are the primary ethical issues encountered in reproductive medicine that currently affect patient care? Equally important, are bioethics training programs prepared to address those issues?To begin to answer these questions, we conducted parallel surveys of directors of graduate bioethics training programs and obstetrician‐gynecologists. The goal of this project is to lay the groundwork to establish a working partnership between bioethics educators and reproductive medicine practitioners to address the often troubling and frequently complex ethical issues in reproductive medicine. (shrink)

Dijkerman & de Haan (D&dH) propose a convincing model of somatosensory organization that is inspired by earlier perception-action models of the visual system. In this commentary, we suggest that the dorsal and ventral visual streams both contribute to the control of action, but in different ways. Using the example of grip and load force calibration, we show how the ventral stream can invoke stored information about the material properties of objects originally derived from the somatosensory system.