There was a time when moral philosophy -- particularly Christian, and even more particularly Roman Catholic, moral philosophy -- was happily conceived of as a 'science' in which virtually everything could be deduced from a limited number of absolutes. There are moral philosophers who still spend a lifetime doing just this, but their philosophy becomes increasingly inadequate to cope with the new human understandings that have broken in on the world. Absolutist language and ethics can no longer be accepted with (...) the easy assurance they once were. The author discusses the leading moral philosophers of the Anglo-Saxon School, setting out their views clearly and fairly, and criticizing always in a positive and constructive manner. Among those he discusses are A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, R.M. Hare, P.H. Nowell-Smith, C.L. Stevenson, Stephen Toulmin and J.O. Urmson. (shrink)

There was a time when moral philosophy -- particularly Christian, and even more particularly Roman Catholic, moral philosophy -- was happily conceived of as a 'science' in which virtually everything could be deduced from a limited number of absolutes. There are moral philosophers who still spend a lifetime doing just this, but their philosophy becomes increasingly inadequate to cope with the new human understandings that have broken in on the world. Absolutist language and ethics can no longer be accepted with (...) the easy assurance they once were. The author discusses the leading moral philosophers of the Anglo-Saxon School, setting out their views clearly and fairly, and criticizing always in a positive and constructive manner. Among those he discusses are A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, R.M. Hare, P.H. Nowell-Smith, C.L. Stevenson, Stephen Toulmin and J.O. Urmson. (shrink)

According to ‘orthodox’ epistemology, it has recently been said, whether or not a true belief amounts to knowledge depends exclusively on truth-related factors: for example, on whether the true belief was formed in a reliable way, or was supported by good evidence, and so on. Jason Stanley refers to this as the ‘intellectualist’ component of orthodox epistemology, and Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath describe it as orthodox epistemology’s commitment to a ‘purely epistemic’ account of knowledge — that is, an (...) account of knowledge where only truth-related factors figure in whether or not a person knows. In the first part of this paper I try to clarify the intellectualist thesis and to distinguish what I take to be its two main strains. In the remainder of the paper I then take a more critical turn and argue that even if, as a matter of fact, traditional epistemology has endorsed intellectualism in both of its strains, this is a mistake on the part of the tradition. At least one way of understanding intellectualism should be rejected and its practicalist counterpart should be accepted instead. (shrink)

In the absence of access to formal credit, informal contracts with independent investors give the small ranchers of the Lower Amazon an acceptable means through which to surmount the high investment hurdle of starting a cattle herd. These contracts – called sociedades – allow small ranchers to raise an outside investor's cattle in return for a portion of the offspring and are commonplace in the cattle production systems of the Amazon. But, notwithstanding a vast literature on cattle production in the (...) Amazon, informal contracts have been largely overlooked. This paper presents the results of a field survey and financial analysis for informal contracts on small ranches in the Lower Amazon. In the results, we suggest that informal contracts are an important means of cattle herd start-up and herd production for small ranchers. Internal rates of returns in cattle production under these contracts are in the range of –7 to –12% for the small rancher and 12% for the investor. The net present value of the contract to the small rancher ranges from –R$1219 to –R$8599 and from R$1681 to R$8845 for the investor, for a 10-year period, depending on herd size. Financial returns contracts are sensitive to the contract design – e.g., to who pays health costs – and to beef prices. The small ranchers have a negative IRR, lose money, and bear all the risk of loss, yet persist in using this form of herd development. We surmise that this is due to the non-financial benefits of cattle ownership and the lack of access to formal credit structures. In conclusion, although outside the formal economy and apparently financially unrewarding, these contracts are an important mechanism by which the small ranchers on the Amazon Floodplains create cattle herds. (shrink)

Some omissions seem to be causes. For example, suppose Barry promises to water Alice’s plant, doesn’t water it, and that the plant then dries up and dies. Barry’s not watering the plant – his omitting to water the plant – caused its death. But there is reason to believe that if omissions are ever causes, then there is far more causation by omission than we ordinarily think. In other words, there is reason to think the following thesis true.

Imagine I hold up a Granny Smith apple for all to see. You would thereby gain justified beliefs that it was green, that it was apple, and that it is a Granny Smith apple. Under classical foundationalism, such simple visual beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning your experience. Under dogmatism, some or all of these beliefs are justified immediately by your experience and not by reasons you possess. This paper argues for what I call the looks (...) view of the justification of simple visual beliefs. According to the looks view, such beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning how the relevant things look. Unlike under classical foundationalism, under the looks view as I develop it, these reasons are public. They are public with respect to both their content and possession: with respect to content, they are not about ourselves and our experiences, and with respect to their possession, many people can have the very same looks-related reasons. (shrink)

Introduction -- Tending the dark fire: the Boehmian notion of drive -- The night-side of nature: the early Schellingian unconscious -- The speculative psychology of dissociation: the later Schellingian unconscious -- Schellingian libido theory.

To accept ‘pragmatic encroachment’ is to take the view that whether you are in a position to know is in part a function of practical stakes. This position strikes many as not just unorthodox but extremely implausible. According to Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath (F&M), however, the best account of the prima facie oddity of certain utterances incorporates just such a pragmatist maneuver. In reaching this conclusion, F&M begin with Trent Dougherty and Patrick Rysiew’s (D&R’s) theory as the best (...) on offer (2009a: 63/2009b: 20), but go on to raise objections to D&R’s recent account of the relevant oddity in purely pragmatic (i.e., extra-semantic) terms and to develop it in directions quite inimical to the general outlook established in D&R 2009 and D&R forthcoming. In this brief note, we reply to F&M’s objections and show that their development in the direction of interest-relativism is ill-founded: the relevant phenomena provide no grounds for budging on the issue of pragmatic encroachment. In addition, in the course of meeting F&M’s objections, an original account of certain Moore-paradoxical sentences is given, and the issue of how probable a proposition needs to be to be known is addressed. The result is a quite general defense of a commonsense, evidence-based approach to the relevant phenomena (quite apart from a defense of D&R). (shrink)

In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig?s advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results (...) to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge?the debate between contextualists and their rivals. (shrink)

Розкрито сутність поняття «рейтинг». Доведено значущість рейтингової оцінки для суб’єктів фінансового ринку, зокрема для страхових компаній, потенційних страхувальників, інвесторів та кредиторів.

In the academic year 1920-1921 at the University of Freiburg, Martin Heidegger gave a series of extraordinary lectures on the phenomenological significance of the religious thought of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The publication of these lectures in 1995 settled a long disputed question, the decisive role played by Christian theology in the development of Heidegger’s philosophy. The lectures present a special challenge to readers of Heidegger and theology alike. Experimenting with language and drawing upon a wide range of now (...) obscure authors, Heidegger is finding his way to Being and Time through the labyrinth of his Catholic past and his increasing fascination with Protestant theology. A Companion to Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religious Life is written by an international team of Heidegger specialists. (shrink)

In this book, the second in the Heart of Christian Faith series, Alister E. McGrath provides an exploration of how we can best understand God using analogies, illustrations, and stories. This short, accessible guide also provides a pastoral and spiritual consideration of the difference that our belief in God makes to the way in which we think about ourselves and our world. With future volumes to examine other core Christian principles, McGrath’s new series will define “mere Chrisitianity” to (...) a new generation for many years to come. (shrink)

This article offers a fresh assessment of the views of the American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould on the relation of science and religion. Gould is best known for his celebrated notion of “nonoverlapping magisteria,” which is often seen in somewhat negative terms as inhibiting dialogue. However, as a result of his critique of the unificationist approach to knowledge developed in Edward O. Wilson's Consilience, Gould later made increased use of the more positive notion of a “consilience of (...) equal regard,” which recognized the porous nature of disciplinary divides and the propriety of interdisciplinary dialogue. Gould's final views on the relation of science and religion, set out in The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox, published after his death, affirms the distinctiveness and autonomy of science and religion on the one hand, while encouraging their constructive dialogue and productive interaction on the other. This should now be seen as Gould's definitive statement on this question. (shrink)

Mark Balaguer has written a provocative and original book. The book is as ambitious as a work of philosophy of mathematics could be. It defends both of the dominant views concerning the ontology of mathematics, Platonism and Anti-Platonism, and then closes with an argument that there is no fact of the matter which is right.

Introduction -- Fallibilism -- Contextualism -- Knowledge and reasons -- Justification -- Belief -- The value and importance of knowledge -- Infallibilism or pragmatic encroachment? -- Appendix I: Conflicts with bayesian decision theory? -- Appendix II: Does KJ entail infallibilism?

Publisher's description: The New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics is a must-have resource for professors and students, pastors and laypersons - in short, for any Christian who wishes to understand or develop a rational explanation of the Christian faith in the context of today's complex and ever-changing world. Including hundreds of articles that cover key topics, historic figures and contemporary global issues relating to the study and practice of Christian apologetics, this handy one-volume resource will make an invaluable addition to any (...) Christian library. The dictionary is divided into two parts: Part one offers a series of introductory essays that set the framework for the dictionary. These essays examine the practice and importance of Christian apologetics in light of theological, historical and cultural concerns. Part two builds on these essays to present numerous alphabetized articles on individuals, ideas, movements and disciplines that are vital to a rational explanation of the Christian faith. Both essays and articles are written by leading Christian philosophers and theologians. Together, they form an indispensable resource for Christians living in today's pluralistic age. (shrink)

James McGrath's contribution to the proceedings of the first global conference of the Cyberworlds, Virtual Reality project, which took place from Monday 11 August - Wednesday 13 August 2003, in Prague, as part of the At the Interface conference series.

This essay explores the efforts of forensic pathologists in the United States to establish the intellectual and social territory of their specialty, both inside and outside of medicine, and to control the institutional context of its practice. This process pitted forensic pathologists againstpowerful political machines for control of the coroner's office, where the application of medical knowledge legitimized social policy; against the legal profession for control of the application of forensic science in the courts; and against fellow members of the (...) American medical profession for control of entry to the specialty. (shrink)

While most scholarship in religious studies focuses on the past and present, the study of what the future may hold in store for religion deserves attention. Studying the treatment of religious themes and characters in science fiction provides one way of accomplishing this objective. From the possibility of time travel to key events in the history of religion, to the possibility of acquiring godlike attributes by technological or other futuristic means, science fiction regularly touches on topics such as the nature (...) and universality of truth or the nature of personhood and of divinity in ways that can be deeply theological, even if the authors of the tales are not theologians or even religiously inclined. In stories about contact with extraterrestrial sentient life forms, sci-fi tales can explore questions about diversity in the values and ideas we hold, but on a much larger scale than that provided by our own planet. Yet these stories reflect the convictions and concerns human beings currently have about our ability to understand one another and our sometimes seemingly incommensurable commitments. Such stories provide natural conversation partners for present-day religious communities. The study of such literature and film provides insight into how major conceptual and ethical questions are being explored and wrestled with even today. (shrink)

There is pragmatic encroachment on some epistemic status just in case whether a proposition has that status for a subject depends not only on the subject's epistemic position with respect to the proposition, but also on features of the subject's non-epistemic, practical environment. Discussions of pragmatic encroachment usually focus on knowledge. Here we argue that, barring infallibilism, there is pragmatic encroachment on what is arguably a more fundamental epistemic status – the status a proposition has when it is warranted enough (...) to be a reason one has for believing other things. (shrink)

In Born to Wonder, Alister McGrath, a prolific Oxford scholar, scientist, and theologian, explores the deepest mystery at the heart of life itself. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. Yet here we are, living in this strange world of space and time, trying to work out what it's all about before the darkness closes in and extinguishes us. We are adrift on a misty, grey sea of ignorance, seeking a sun-kissed island of certainty, on which (...) we might hope to find clear answers to our deepest and most poignant questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? And what is it about us that makes us want to ask these questions? As far as we know, we're the only species on earth that asks these questions, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. From time to time, all of us find ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of awe or mystery, often when confronted with the beauty of nature, whether it is a mountain stream or the vast expanse of ocean waters. That is when we see a flicker of a grander vision of reality, perhaps lying beyond the horizons of our experience. It is as if, for only a moment, a veil is removed, and we catch a half-glimpsed sight of a promised land, waiting to be mapped and explored. This sense of wonder fuels much of humanity's creativity and its search for understanding. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

Epistemology has long mesmerized its practitioners with numerous puzzles. What can we know, and how can we know it? In Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction, Alvin Goldman, one of the most noted contemporary epistemologists, and Matthew McGrath, known for his work on a wide range of topics in the field, have joined forces to delve into these puzzles.