In "Ordinary Morality Implies Atheism" (2009), I argued that traditional theism threatens ordinary morality by relieving us of any moral obligation to prevent horrific suffering by innocent people even when we easily can. In the current issue of this journal, Jerome Gellman attempts to rescue that moral obligation from my charge that theism destroys it. In this reply, I argue that his attempted rescue fails.

From the mid 1990s to the early 2000s there has been a debate between Jerome Gellman and Evan Fales regarding the epistemic status of mystical religious experience. Gellman argues that mystical religious experiences provide some justification for the belief that God exists when taken in conjunction with a variety of other experiential evidence. Fales takes a naturalistic approach and argues that instances of mystical theistic experiences are only tools by which the mystic attempts to gain greater social status. In (...) this article I summarize the debate and go on to raise three objections to Fales’ naturalistic account: that any naturalistic explanation would fail to account for the richness and variety of all mystical religious experiences; that if there were a naturalistic account for each and every mystical religious experience across time then the list of naturalistic explanations would be so exhaustive that it would seem arbitrary that no theistic explanation is included; and that the brand of reductionism put forth by Fales only shows that, at best, it would not be reasonable for external observers to take my mystical religious experience as evidence for God’s existence, but that this should make absolutely no difference to the experiencer. (shrink)

Jerome (Yehudah) Gellman’s paper, “Perceiving God,” presented at the Henle Conference at St. Louis University, April 2008, evaluates a couple of arguments that attempt to establish the existence of God on the basis of individual religious experience. I can send his paper if anyone is interested. The following are my comments on his paper.

Jerome Gellman has recently disputed my claim that a naturalistic explanation for mystical experiences is available, a better explanation than any current attempt to show that God is sometimes perceived in those experiences. Gellman argues (i) that some mystics do not 'fit' the sociological explanation of I. M. Lewis; (ii) that the sociological analysis of tribal mysticism cannot properly be extended to theistic experiences; and (iii) that mystical experiences merit prima facie credence, so the burden of proof falls on (...) the naturalist. I reply (i) that the alleged counter-examples either do fit Lewis's explanation or are too poorly known to judge; (ii) that Lewis's theory, supplemented by recent neurophysiological findings, provides a strong explanation for all mystical experiences; and (iii) that the burden of proof, if there is one, now falls on the theist. (shrink)

Jerome Gellman argues in Experience of God that there is “some” reasonable application of the canons of rationality to the facts concerning apparent experiences of God “on which it is reasonable to believe that God exists and not reasonable to believe that God does not exist”. The book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter sets the conceptual groundwork, discussing the meaning and reference of “God,” what is meant by “experience of God,” and the like. Gellman’s treatment of (...) “God” as a proper name in terms of reference is especially interesting, and resurfaces at crucial turns later in the book. The main argument, appealing to a modified and extended version of Richard Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity, is given in the second chapter. The remaining chapters attempt, with varying success, to answer the major objections facing this sort of argument from religious experience, including the claim that the experiential evidence for theism is outweighed or vitiated by others’ failures to experience God; the problems posed by the diversity of religious experience in different religions; the claim that the best explanations of religious experience are nonreligious; the claim that the alleged object of theistic experience is conceptually incoherent; and the relevance of the problem of evil. (shrink)

In this article I state concisely the central features of a new logical problem of evil developed elsewhere and take account of a response to this problem recently published in this journal by Jerome Gellman. I also reflect briefly on how theology can play a role in such philosophical discussions.

In recent analytic philosophy of religion, one hotly debated topic is the veridicality of religious experience. In this paper, I briefly trace how the argument from religious experience comes into prominence in the twentieth century. This is due to the able defense of this argument by Richard Swinburne, William Alston, and Jerome Gellman among others. I explain the argument's intuitive force and why the stock objections to religious experience are not entirely convincing. I expound Swinburne's approach and his application (...) of the Principle of Credulity to religious experience. Then I critically examine four major objections to Swinburne. I conclude that the argument from religious experiences is not likely to be conclusive but it should not be dismissed either. (shrink)

In this article I state concisely the central features of a new logical problem of evil developed elsewhere and take account of a response to this problem recently published in this journal by Jerome Gellman. I also reflect briefly on how theology can play a role in such philosophical discussions.

This paper attempts to illuminate and interpret the contradictory portrait of God as both seen and unseen in the Torah. Thus Moses is commanded not to look on the face of God yet also praised for having spoken to God “face to face". We seek ways to reconcile the contradictory portraits of God through the use of the term “doubled-mindedness” in the theology of Jerome Gellman, in the logic of “thirdness” in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics, and in the use of (...) both particle and wave models in Einstein’s physics of light. The paper concludes by disusing the practical consequences of theological double-mindedness for the religious life and the philosophical meaning of redemption as the time when the contradiction of the unseen and seen God is resolved. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is rarely discussed in the philosophy of religion. In 2009, however, Jerome Gellman broke the silence, publishing an article in which he argued that the source of Sartre’s atheism was neither philosophical nor existential, but mystical. Drawing from several of Sartre’s works – including Being and Nothingness, Words, and a 1943 review entitled ‘A New Mystic’ – I argue that there are strong biographical and philosophical reasons to disagree with Gellman’s conclusion that Sartre was a ‘mystical atheist’. (...) Moreover, I question the likelihood of drawing any definitive conclusions regarding the sources of Sartre’s ambiguous atheism. (shrink)

I have argued previously (in this journal) that the reality of pervasive religious pluralism obligates a believer to attempt to establish her perspective as the correct one. In a recent response, Jerome Gellman maintains that the believer who affirms a ‘religious epistemology’ is under no such obligation in that she need not subject her religious beliefs to any ‘rule of rationality’. In this paper I contend that there do exist some rules of rationality (some epistemic obligations) that must be (...) acknowledged-and satisfied-within all epistemic systems (including all religious epistemic systems) and that for this reason Gellman’s critique of my position fails. (shrink)

This paper presents a general computational treatment of how mammals are able to deal with visual objects and environments. The model tries to cover the entire range from behavior and phenomenological experience to detailed neural encodings in crude but computationally plausible reductive steps. The problems addressed include perceptual constancies, eye movements and the stable visual world, object descriptions, perceptual generalizations, and the representation of extrapersonal space.The entire development is based on an action-oriented notion of perception. The observer is assumed to (...) be continuously sampling the ambient light for information of current value. The central problem of vision is taken to be categorizing and locating objects in the environment. The critical step in this process is the linking of visual information to symbolic object descriptions; this is calledindexing, from the analogy of identifying a book from index terms. The system must also identifysituationsand use this knowledge to guide movement and other actions in the environment. The treatment focuses on the different representations of information used in the visual system.The four representational frames capture information in the following forms: retinotopic, head-based, symbolic, and allocentric. The functional roles of the four frames, the communication among them, and their suggested neurophysiological realization constitute the core of the paper. The model is perforce crude, but appears to be consistent with all relevant findings. (shrink)

" In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the ...

_Examines John Dewey’s ideas in the context of evolutionary theory._.

A theory that treats language not as an abstract symbol system but as a function of our brains and experience, integrating recent findings from biology, ...

The World Health Organization states that depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and predicts that by 2030 the epidemic of depression raging across the world will be the single biggest contributor to the overall burden of disease of all health conditions. Yet this gloomy picture masks a number of paradoxes concerning the diagnosis and cultural interpretation of depression that appear to challenge the claimed prevalence rates on which it is based. This book's essays by some of the world's (...) leading researchers and scholars on depression explores these anomalies in detail from multidisciplinary and multicultural perspectives, and in doing so reshapes the debate on the nature of depression that is currently under way in the US and abroad. At the book's core is the exploration from the multiple perspectives of a key dilemma: is the epidemic of depression real or is it just apparent? In particular, could it be the result of criteria laid down in the official American classification system of mental disorders, the DSM, interacting with cultural changes to reshape our view of melancholy, pathologizing what were formerly normal symptoms of grief or intense sadness? The debate over the DSM's conception of depression has an international relevance, with the WHO's upcoming revisions to its International Classification of Diseases requiring coordination with the DSM. This collection of perspectives has an unprecedented international dimension, as scholars from Europe and around the world join US academics to explore a central and controversial element of contemporary psychiatric diagnosis - and one that has enormous practical implications for the future of mental health care and how we view our emotions. The book's accessible essays will make it useful to scholars, practitioners, and students across a wide range of disciplines. (shrink)

Several tasks in artificial intelligence require the ability to find models about knowledge dynamics. They include belief revision, fusion and belief merging, and abduction. In this paper, we exploit the algebraic framework of mathematical morphology in the context of propositional logic and define operations such as dilation or erosion of a set of formulas. We derive concrete operators, based on a semantic approach, that have an intuitive interpretation and that are formally well behaved, to perform revision, fusion and abduction. Computation (...) and tractability are addressed, and simple examples illustrate the main results. (shrink)

First paper introducing probabilisitic decision theory methods to AI problem solving.

Collection of essays examining the ways in which humanity is enmeshed in its surroundings.

This article explores the concept of divine revelation as presented by Blaise Pascal, examining the fundamental dichotomy between the hidden and revealed aspects of God. Beginning with the premise of human existence as inherently obscure and lost in the universe without apparent reason, the study delves into Pascal’s inquiry into the origins of human existence and the role of God as both a part of and apart from this primordial darkness. Pascal’s reflections on the incomprehensibility of man before that of (...) God highlight a foundational obscurity, setting the stage for a deeper investigation into the nature of divine revelation. The article contrasts Pascal’s perspective with traditional theological and philosophical views, particularly in relation to the manifest nature of God as commonly interpreted through natural phenomena. It further delves into Pascal’s interpretation of scriptural passages, notably Isaiah 45:15, emphasizing the notion of Deus Absconditus (Hidden God) and its critical role in understanding the paradoxical nature of divine revelation. The article examines how Pascal perceives God’s manifestation through various historical and mystical dimensions, including nature, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist, each revealing God while simultaneously concealing Him. (shrink)

L’œuvre de Michel Leiris est autobiographique de part en part. Pour interroger les spécificités de se dire-soi continu, l’article entreprend de saisir les deux formes qui sous-tendent l’écriture leirisienne dans les ouvrages et les journaux de l’ethnologue. C’est d’abord la strate qui émerge, comme principe de l’accumulation faisant des écrits successifs des sédiments dans lesquels Leiris vient saisir les lignes de force d’un sens qui ne se donne qu’après coup pour comprendre sa propre existence. Ensuite, c’est le cercle, ce retour (...) à soi dans un temps toujours recommencé par le désir d’épuiser l’écriture. Finalement, la strate et le cercle s’enchâsse dans la structure homérique de la chaîne et doit à voir ce qui construit l’œuvre de Leiris en récit épique. (shrink)

Knowledge-based programs (KBPs) are a powerful notion for expressing action policies in which branching conditions refer to implicit knowledge and call for a deliberation task at execution time. However, branching conditions in KBPs cannot refer to possibly erroneous beliefs or to graded belief, such as “if my belief that φ holds is high then do some action α else perform some sensing action β”.

Answering a question of Cifú Lopes, we give a syntactic characterization of those continuous sentences that are preserved under reduced products of metric structures. In fact, we settle this question in the wider context of general structures as introduced by the second author.

1. Argumentation consists in reasoning with conflicting information based on the exchange and evaluation of interacting arguments. It can be used for modelling dialogue (persuasion, negotiation), d...