Christian Metaphysics - Made in the Image of God is a book for those that seek a deeper understanding in knowing who God is, and how we as human beings relate to him physically, emotionally, and spiritually in a metaphysical way, both now and in the future.

Internalism about normative reasons is the view that an agent’s normative reasons depend on her motivational constitution. On the assumption that there are reasons for emotion I argue that externalism about reasons for emotion entails that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated and internalism about reasons for emotion is implausible. If the arguments are sound we can conclude that all rational agents have reasons to be morally motivated. Resisting this conclusion requires either justifying internalism about reasons for (...) emotion in a way hitherto unarticulated or giving up on reasons for emotion altogether. (shrink)

Most philosophers of emotion endorse a compound account of the emotions: emotions are wholes made of parts; or, as I prefer to put it, emotions are mental states that supervene on other (mental) states. The goal of this paper is to ascertain how the intentionality of these subvening members relates to the intentionality of the emotions. Towards this end, I proceed as follows. First, I discuss the problems with the account Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson offer of the intentionality of (...) the emotions; I argue their account is fundamentally misguided by virtue of being motivated by a misunderstanding of the nature of propositional attitudes. Second, I argue against Peter Goldie's claim that an affective component of an emotion contributes to its intentionality. Third, I offer my own compound account of emotions. I argue (1) emotions are mental states that supervene on other mental states, (2) the mental states that constitute the subvenience base of emotion can have nonconceptual and/or conceptual representational content, and (3) an emotion's intentionality supervenes on (but is often not identical to) the intentionality of only one of its subvening members, specifically, the evaluative representation. (shrink)

Defenders of compatibilism occupy one of two camps: those who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and those who deny this. Those compatibilists who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise are interested in defending a reading of ‘can’ such that one can do otherwise even if determinism is true. By contrast, those compatibilists who think that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise tend to join incompatibilists in denying that (...) determinism is compatible with the ability to do otherwise. The primary goal of this paper is to fight for the first camp and against the second camp. The secondary goal is to draw greater attention to a relatively overlooked aspect of the debate about alternative possibilities: that giving up on alternative possibilities might mean giving up on much of morality. (shrink)

Defenders of compatibilism occupy one of two camps: those who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise, and those who deny this. Those compatibilists who think that free will requires the ability to do otherwise are interested in defending a reading of ‘can’ such that one can do otherwise even if determinism is true. By contrast, those compatibilists who think that free will does not require the ability to do otherwise tend to join incompatibilists in denying that (...) determinism is compatible with the ability to do otherwise. The primary goal of this paper is to fight for the first camp and against the second camp. The secondary goal is to draw greater attention to a relatively overlooked aspect of the debate about alternative possibilities: that giving up on alternative possibilities might mean giving up on much of morality. (shrink)

Conception has a prominent role to play in Thomas Reid’s philosophy of mind, as is apparent from his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (EIP henceforth). The present investigation concerns Reid’s explanation of how objects (be they real or nonexistent) are conceived. According to him, conception functions in two different ways: it is either an ingredient in another act of thinking, such as perception or memory, or it is exercised by itself, sometimes about objects that do not (...) (and will never) exist. Fictional objects can be remembered, but to do so the mind needs an initial, independent grip on them, which can only be achieved by an exercise of “bare conception”. (shrink)

The North American landscape has changed considerably since European settlement, and ecological restorationists are responding to these changes by attempting to restore “natural” areas to their presettlement conditions. Through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this work details the physical and conceptual reconstruction of the oak savanna ecosystem. The construction of the “oak savanna” is shown to be more than the creation of a new classification of nature; it is the remaking of a natural community in situ. The “creation story” (...) of the oak savanna is told through the examination of the contested creations of the scientific claim, the expertise to make such a claim, and of nature itself. Finally, the implications of this research for environmental science and the place of the constructivist sociologist are discussed. (shrink)

This article examines the connections between a theory of redemption as indebtedness and the wider political/economic realities of indebtedness. In order to illustrate the argument the author demonstrates why it is necessary to even question the roots of theories since they too carry a wider agenda. The author contrasts a debt economy with an economy of love.

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

Australia has recently experienced what many regard as its greatest judicial crisis. The appointment of Timothy Carmody QC as Chief Justice of Queensland in 2014 emerged from a process that was tainted by the state government’s willingness to break confidences gained in the course of consultation for the appointment. Equally, a strongly negative and heterodox reaction to the appointment by the whole Queensland Supreme Court bench meant that, together, politicians and judges brought on a collapse of the traditional ethics surrounding (...) judicial appointments. Nevertheless, the extreme circumstances of the Carmody affair suggest that, where judges have a legitimate concern that a judicial appointment might put a fundamental constitutional value like judicial independence at risk, a court may be justified in publically expressing concern about the appointment. (shrink)

"A second major aspect of this work is Yalom's desire to use the lens of Latin American literature - particularly magical realism - to delve into Mexican culture and history.

However, as in other disciplines, academic recognition can in turn entrench static and powerful meta-theories and narratives about professional ethos and ...

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

There is a difference between an object's being good simpliciter and an object's being good of its kind, and the vast majority of philosophers have supposed that it is the former variety of goodness that is relevant to ethics. I argue that one may be a meta-ethical realist while employing the notion of good of a kind to the exclusion of good simpliciter; I call such a view kindism. I distinguish between two varieties of kindism, explicate the details of one (...) of those varieties, and defend kindism against possible objections. (shrink)

The view that dominated the last century claims that ethical thought requires thinking of some things – e.g. pleasure, knowledge, virtue – as good “full stop,” or good simpliciter . Traditional Consequentialists, for instance, argue that moral evaluations of acts, motives, etc . are grounded in facts about the simple goodness of that which those things bring about. Similarly, some rational intuitionists think that claims about what one has reason to do are grounded in facts about what is good simpliciter (...) . Such a view gives rise to a set of semantic, metaphysical, and epistemological puzzles about the nature of good simpliciter . I argue that an Aristotelian approach to ethics reveals that ethical thought does not requires good simpliciter , that Aristotelian positions avoid charges of metaphysical and epistemological queerness, and that it gives a straightforward semantic analysis of key moral terms, e.g. morally good/bad and morally right/wrong. I then distinguish between two varieties of Aristotelianism. (shrink)

Nietzsche, Genealogy, In the preface of On the Genealogy of Morality (GM), Nietzsche tells us the third treatise of his book is an “interpretation” of the aphorism placed at the beginning of that treatise. Much work – primarily by John Wilcox, Maudemarie Clark, and Christopher Janaway – has gone into proving that the aphorism is not the quotation from Zarathustra placed at the beginning of the treatise, but that it is Section 1 (perhaps minus the last few lines) of the (...) third treatise. I am in agreement on this point. But it seems the limited work that has been done on explaining in what sense the third treatise is an interpretation of the first aphorism is fundamentally misguided. In particular, we do not have a grasp of what Nietzsche means by ‘interpretation’. This ought to strike us as a significant hole in the literature, for it leaves misunderstood the longest of the three treatises that comprise what is widely regarded as Nietzsche’s most important and extended analysis of morality. -/- The goal of this paper is to fill that lacuna by illustrating 1) the inadequacies of a theory of what Nietzsche means to be doing in the third treatise, 2) what the right – that is, Nietzsche’s – understanding of ‘interpretation’ is, 3) how we ought to approach the third treatise, and 4) the particular impacts this approach has on our reading of the third treatise. In the course of proving these theses other influential readings of Nietzsche are challenged, in particular those concerning Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power and his perspectivism. (shrink)

Althaus-Reid describes her work, Indecent Theology, as a reflection on sexuality from the perspective of an Argentinian liberation theology, critical queer theory and a theology of camp self-disclosure. As such, it is a diasporic, postcolonial theology concerned to critique accepted ideas of essentialism and to question theology's status as a universal discourse. Althaus-Reid responds to the suggestions and criticisms of the panel members and views her ongoing project as one of doing queer theology from a 'non-vanilla' Argentinian perspective (...) and with a vision for queer holiness in theology. (shrink)

This article considers the various emergence of an explicitly recognized right to life in papal teaching and the canon law of the last century and a quarter. The Church's opposition to abortion is deeply embedded within the tradition and law of the Church. It was, however, only in recent times, since the middle twentieth century, really, that the Church began to speak explicitly of a right to life. This paper explores the consequences for papal thought of this explicit recognition of (...) rights. By speaking of a right to life, the Church has moved beyond the abortion debate to embrace a variety of other concerns. This is not to say that abortion does not remain important. Direct participation in abortion is a crime at canon law that results in automatic excommunication. But the language of rights has allowed the Church to address such matters as the protection of refugees; the moral requirement of adequate health care; the odious use of child-soldiers; and the use of economic embargoes that have the effect of destroying the civilian infrastructure (and public health systems) of entire societies. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on ethical governance, which speaks to the infrastructure, processes, and practices that decrease the probability of performing ethically wrong actions and ethically bad outcomes resulting from relatively innocent actions. The ethics consultant can help spot gaps or other insufficiencies in ethical infrastructure, process, and practice. Ethics consulting consists in engaging in a due diligence process for ethical risk. The goal is to identify possible sources of ethical risk both in terms of features of the product and the (...) ways it may or may not be used, and to recommend feature changes and best practices for ethical deployment and use of the product. Ethics consulting more generally can be seen as aimed at either doing a bunch of good or avoiding a bunch of bad. Ethical challenges often arise in business because of competing assumptions and commitments that create seemingly irresolvable tensions or obscure the potentially bad consequences of particular decisions. (shrink)

Hugh Nicholson, Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University of Chicago, has a mildly grim, highly fruitful fascination with polemics and interreligious competition. In his first book, Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, Nicholson deployed Carl Schmitt to interrogate the contemporary discipline of comparative theology and its purportedly de-politicized engagement with religious diversity. In The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism his theoretical dialogue partners have shifted from political theory to social identity theory and the cognitive science (...) of religion, and his attention has shifted from the study of diverse religious... (shrink)

The interrogation of Meletus in the Apology at 24c4–28al is not infrequently seen as a typical case of all that is intellectually and artistically dissatisfying in Plato's practice of the genre of philosophical dialogue: not only are we presented with a philosopher who makes some claim to being committed to setting a particularly stringent standard for honesty in argumentation making sophistical arguments, but we are presented also with a cardboard interlocutor who is forced by the hand of Plato to acquiesce (...) to those arguments in a fashion that is completely dissatisfying to the reader. The best anyone seems to do to save Plato from these charges of artistic incompetence and intellectual dishonesty is to appeal to such a level of historical accuracy for the text that the stupidity of Meletus' responses can be attributed to the stupidity of Meletus himself, or to point out features of the political and legal situation that might prevent Meletus from answering the questions by drawing on his true motivation—which is presumably more coherent. Taylor says of this passage:The humour of the situation is that the prosecutor cannot venture to say what he means by either of his charges without betraying the fact that, owing to the ‘amnesty’, the matters complained of are outside of the competency of the court… Hence, when Meletus is pressed to explain what he means, he has to take refuge in puerile nonsense. (shrink)

Since its birth in the mid-nineteenth century, Marxism has had a contentious relationship with religion and Christianity. From the Marxist critique of religion as the “opium of the people” to the secularism of the Soviet Union to the Catholic Church’s “Decree Against Communism, ” the two schools of thought have widely been considered incompatible. Despite this tension, many of the critiques leveled by both sides do not attack the real substance of their opponents’ ideas. As such, this paper sets out (...) to answer two questions: first, whether Christian morality and Marxist thought can be made consistent on the basis of their ideological foundations, and second, what a Christianity consistent with Marxism would look like. It finds that on the level of ideological foundation, there are important consistencies between Christian morality and Marxism. Given these consistencies, a Christianity aligned with Marxist thought is possible, and this paper will conclude by exploring Liberation Theology as a possible avenue for the actualization of that consistency. (shrink)

Non-Relational Realism is a popular solution to the Bradleyan regress of facts or truths. It denies that there is a relational universal of exemplification; for an object a to exemplify a universal F-ness, on this view, is not for a relation to subsist between a and F-ness. An influential objection to Non-Relational Realism is that it is unacceptably obscure. The author argues that Non-Relational Realism can be understood as a selective application of satisfaction semantics to predicates like ‘exemplify’, and that (...) so understood, it is not obscure. This kind of selective use of satisfaction semantics may be feasible in other contexts as a means of making theories more parsimonious. (shrink)

Disasters arising from natural hazards affect millions of people every year, killing tens of thousands and causing major economics losses. They disproportionately affect poor people and poor countries and are a threat to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. A root cause is the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards, often associated with poverty, social and economic disadvantage, environmental exploitation, and insufficient awareness, information, and political interest. Too often, disaster risk is not factored into planning and management, despite the (...) ready availability of the necessary knowledge, tools and policy frameworks to reduce the risks. Moreover it is likely that global warning will increase the number and intensity of hazard events in future. Recognizing these issues, in 2005 Governments agreed on the landmark Hyogo Framework for Action, which seeks to achieve a substantial reduction in disaster losses by 2015. Progress is slow, however, and a greatly scaled-up effort will be needed to achieve this outcome and to avoid an unnecessarily risky and dangerous future for the countless communities worldwide. (shrink)

In "Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community" Justin Reid Allison compares how the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and the Christian apostle Paul envisioned the members of their communities helping one another to grow into moral maturity. Allison establishes that Philodemus and Paul are more similar than previously noticed in their conception and practice of moral formation in community, and that these similarities offer a critical opportunity to consider important differences between the two as well. By (...) deepening the comparison to include differences alongside similarities, and to include theological and socio-economic facets of communal moral formation, Allison shows that Philodemus and Paul uniquely shed fresh light on one another's texts when understood in comparative perspective. (shrink)