During the last decades evolutionary science has made significance progress in the elucidation of the process of human evolution and especially of human behavioral characteristics. These themes were traditionally subjects of inquiry in philosophy and theology. Already Darwin suggested an evolutionary and biological basis for moral sense or conscience, and answered Kant’s question about the origin of the moral rules postulated by philosophers. This article reviews the current status of such investigations by natural scientists, biologists and psychologists, and compares their (...) models for explanation of human moral behavior with those postulated by philosophers. Today natural scientists postulate cooperation as the third element of evolutionary process after mutations and natural selection. They seem to fully confirm the intuition of philosophers. The thesis on the fundamental status of cooperation in the entire animal world leads to a belief concerning dialogue: dialogue, rooted in a sense in cooperation, is a primary men’s capability, being emerged from the biological essence of humans. Thus the examination of cooperation reveals inter alia biological foundations of dialogue. (shrink)

An exploration of the legacy of Michael Servetus to the development of a new type of theological inquiry which ultimately helped lead to the development of critical biblical studies.

This book presents a critical evaluation of the doctrine of the Trinity, tracing its development and investigating the intellectual, philosophical and theological background that shaped this influential doctrine of Christianity. Despite the centrality of Trinitarian thought to Christianity and its importance as one of the fundamental tenets that differentiates Christianity from Judaism and Islam, the doctrine is not fully formulated in the canon of Christian scriptural texts. Instead, it evolved through the conflation of selective pieces of scripture with the philosophical (...) and religious ideas of ancient Hellenistic milieu. Marian Hillar analyzes the development of Trinitarian thought during the formative years of Christianity from its roots in ancient Greek philosophical concepts and religious thinking in the Mediterranean region. He identifies several important sources of Trinitarian thought heretofore largely ignored by scholars, including the Greek middle-Platonic philosophical writings of Numenius and Egyptian metaphysical writings and monuments representing divinity as a triune entity. (shrink)

Creationism is an ancient worldview that was incorporated into ancient religious doctrines and survived in the western world due to its domination by religious institution such as the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Slowly, with the development of democratic political systems and science, the church lost its power of dominance over intellectual enterprises, and evolution became accepted by the majority as the inherent process in nature. Nevertheless, creationism is still very much alive among various fundamentalist churches and their organizations in the (...) United States. This article discusses the premises of the creationist movement, its varieties, and confronts it with the basic premises, characteristics, and modus operandi of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

A survey essay exploring Nietzsche's intellectual trajectory and especially his notion of the ascetic ideal and its implications for atheism.

This paper is a short introduction to Habermas’s life and philosophy. It outlines his views on society, religion, morality and politics. It begins with his ‘methodological pragmatism’ which emphasizes the performative and intersubjective role of language. This rejects the “philosophy of consciousness” and sees society as a medium in which we live. Society is not an aggregate of individuals or a unity but a complex, multifarious, intersubjective structure with many different overlapping spheres. Habermas is essentially a social scientist and his (...) concern about society refers to the problem of how a social order and integrity can be maintained in a modern democratic and secular society. He believes that religion will survive a long time and is unsure whether philosophy will ever triumph over religion but is convinced that it can deal with our religious heritage with more sensitivity than hitherto. Habermas proposes a moral discourse theory based on the universalizability of social norms. In his political system, he combines the ideal of liberal democracy based on human rights with the ideal of republicanism based on popular sovereignty. He is nevertheless critical of some aspects of liberalism. Overall, Habermas foresees the danger to modern society to social groups that feel themselves to be alienated and marginalized from the mainstream. (shrink)

This paper traces the philosophical sources of one of the central Christian doctrines concerning deity-the doctrine of the Trinity - from the classical Greek period through to Justin Martyr (114¬ 165 C.E.). A key figure in this continuous line of thought is the Greek Middle Platonic philosopher Numenius of Apamea (fl. ca 150 C.EJ, who followed the Platonic tradition of Xenocrates of Chalcedon (d. 314 B.C.E.).

Creationism is an ancient worldview that was incorporated into ancient religious doctrines and survived in the western world due to its domination by religious institution such as the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Slowly, with the development of democratic political systems and science, the church lost its power of dominance over intellectual enterprises, and evolution became accepted by the majority as the inherent process in nature. Nevertheless, creationism is still very much alive among various fundamentalist churches and their organizations in the (...) United States. This article discusses the premises of the creationist movement, its varieties, and confronts it with the basic premises, characteristics, and modus operandi of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

This paper traces the philosophical sources of one of the central Christian doctrines concerning deity-the doctrine of the Trinity - from the classical Greek period through to Justin Martyr (114¬ 165 C.E.). A key figure in this continuous line of thought is the Greek Middle Platonic philosopher Numenius of Apamea (fl. ca 150 C.EJ, who followed the Platonic tradition of Xenocrates of Chalcedon (d. 314 B.C.E.).

This book covers the theory of our moral behavior that seems to meander throughout the history of ideas and that led eventually to scientific explanation of human moral behavior with various interpretations of the natural moral law.

Creationism is an ancient worldview that was incorporated into ancient religious doctrines and survived in the western world due to its domination by religious institution such as the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Slowly, with the development of democratic political systems and science, the church lost its power of dominance over intellectual enterprises, and evolution became accepted by the majority as the inherent process in nature. Nevertheless, creationism is still very much alive among various fundamentalist churches and their organizations in the (...) United States. This article discusses the premises of the creationist movement, its varieties, and confronts it with the basic premises, characteristics, and modus operandi of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

Judaism was a mythical, strongly tribal religion with anthropomorphic God in which the leading element was the concept of a covenant between God and the exceptional “chosen people.” Such views produced a strong emphasis on tribal unity and attitude of election and moral superiority vis-à-vis the rest of humanity. Philo must have felt inadequacy of the ancient Judaism and its limitations to compete for the minds of Hellenes with their universalistic philosophical thought. Philo represented a trend in Jewish ideology which (...) attempted, in confrontation with the Greek culture, to assert itself as a valid cosmic view to support the existence of a community. He attempted to reevaluate Hebrew ideology found in the scriptures adopting Greek metaphysical, ethical, and religious doctrines to Judaism.The focus of this article is on Philo’s introduction of the Greek concept of Logos, in the modified version of Xenocrates into Judaism. Philo developed this concept further and transformed from a metaphysical entity into an extension of a divine and transcendental anthropomorphic being and mediator between God and men. Thus Philo produced a synthesis of both Hebrew and Greek traditions developing concepts that were used for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought by providing foundations for Christianity. (shrink)

Judaism was a mythical, strongly tribal religion with anthropomorphic God in which the leading element was the concept of a covenant between God and the exceptional “chosen people.” Such views produced a strong emphasis on tribal unity and attitude of election and moral superiority vis-à-vis the rest of humanity. Philo must have felt inadequacy of the ancient Judaism and its limitations to compete for the minds of Hellenes with their universalistic philosophical thought. Philo represented a trend in Jewish ideology which (...) attempted, in confrontation with the Greek culture, to assert itself as a valid cosmic view to support the existence of a community. He attempted to reevaluate Hebrew ideology found in the scriptures adopting Greek metaphysical, ethical, and religious doctrines to Judaism.The focus of this article is on Philo’s introduction of the Greek concept of Logos, in the modified version of Xenocrates into Judaism. Philo developed this concept further and transformed from a metaphysical entity into an extension of a divine and transcendental anthropomorphic being and mediator between God and men. Thus Philo produced a synthesis of both Hebrew and Greek traditions developing concepts that were used for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought by providing foundations for Christianity. (shrink)

I this paper I give minimal axioms for the ontology of time, especially A-theories and B-theories and I derive philosophically interesting lemmas. The exercise is set-theoretical, defining all notions and indicating assumptions and philosophical points of disagreement, while being easy to translate to other formal expressions . The issue of a logic for A-theories of time is treated towards the end, where I sketch ‘copresent’ operators for capturing the idea of temporal passage. The main conclusion will be that, while circularity (...) threatens both families of theories, the growing block theory (belonging to the A-theory) is the least objectionable philosophically. (shrink)

It is quite popular nowadays to postulate various kinds of unarticulated constituents that have essential bearing on truth conditions of utterances. F. Recanati champions an elaborated version of contextualism according to which one has to distinguish two kinds of unarticulated constituents: those that are articulated at the level of the logical form of a given sentence and those that are truly unarticulated. Recanati offers a theory which explains the manner of incorporating truly unarticulated constituents into the propositions expressed. This theory (...) invokes variadic functions. The present paper shows that variadic functions are unnecessary because no constituents are truly unarticulated in the sense assumed by Recanati. An alternative explanation is offered according to which all propositional constituents are either explicitly or implicitly represented at the syntactic level. (shrink)

I aim to develop a tool for comparing theories of vagueness, using Structured Query Language. Relevant SQL snippets will be used throughout.

In this article I wish to show how care ethics puts forward a fundamental critique on the ideal of independency in human life without thereby discounting autonomy as a moral value altogether. In care ethics, a relational account of autonomy is developed instead. Because care ethics is sometimes criticized in the literature as hopelessly vague and ambiguous, I shall begin by elaborating on how care ethics and its place in ethical theory can be understood. I shall stipulate a definition of (...) care ethics as a moral perspective or orientation from which ethical theorizing can take place. This will mean that care ethics is more a stance from which we can theorize ethically, than ready-made theory in itself. In conceiving care ethics in this way, it becomes possible to make clear that, for instance, a moral concept of autonomy is not abandoned, but instead is given a particular place and interpretation. In the final part of this article I will show how ‘relational autonomy’ can be applied fruitfully in the practice of psychiatric care. (shrink)

Through Our Eyes Only? is an immensely engaging exploration of one of the greatest remaining biological mysteries: the possibility of conscious experiences in non-human animals. Dawkins argues that the idea of consciousness in other species has now progressed from a vague possibility to a plausible, scientifically respectable view. Written in an accessible and entertaining style, this book aims to show how near -- and how far -- we are to understanding what goes on in the minds of other animals. 'Her (...) approach ... is impeccable ... Her writing is highly accessible, lively and illustrative.' - Booklist on the hardback edition. (shrink)

Narrowly speaking, the correspondence theory of truth is the view that truth is correspondence to a fact -- a view that was advocated by Russell and Moore early in the 20 th century. But the label is usually applied much more broadly to any view explicitly embracing the idea that truth consists in a relation to reality, i.e., that truth is a relational property involving a characteristic relation (to be specified) to some portion of reality (to be specified). During the (...) last 2300 years this basic idea has been expressed in many ways, resulting in a rather extended family of views, theories, and theory sketches. The members of the family employ various concepts for the relevant relation (correspondence, conformity, congruence, agreement, accordance, copying, picturing, signification, representation, reference, satisfaction) and/or various concepts for the relevant portion of reality (facts, states of affairs, situations, events, objects, sequences of objects, sets, properties, tropes). The resulting multiplicity of versions and reformulations of the theory is due to a blend of substantive and terminological differences. (shrink)

Through Our Eyes Only? is an immensely engaging exploration of one of the greatest remaining biological mysteries: the possibility of conscious experiences in non-human animals. Dawkins argues that the idea of consciousness in other species has now progressed from a vague possibility to a plausible, scientifically respectable view. Written in an accessible and entertaining style, this book aims to show how near -- and how far -- we are to understanding what goes on in the minds of other animals. 'Her (...) approach... is impeccable... Her writing is highly accessible, lively and illustrative.' - Booklist on the hardback edition. (shrink)

What is animal welfare? Why has it proved so difficult to find a definition that everyone can agree on? This concise and accessible guide is for anyone who is interested in animals and who has wondered how we can assess their welfare scientifically. It defines animal welfare as 'health and animals having what they want', a definition that can be easily understood by scientists and non-scientists alike, expresses in simple words what underlies many existing definitions, and shows what evidence we (...) need to collect to improve animal welfare in practice. Above all, it puts the animal's own point of view at the heart of an assessment of its welfare. But, can we really understand what animals want? A consistent theme running through the book is that not only is it possible to establish what animals want, but that this information is vital in helping us to make sense of the long and often confusing list of welfare measures that are now in use such as 'stress' and 'feel good hormones', expressive sounds and gestures, natural behaviour, cognitive bias, and stereotypies. Defining welfare as 'health and what animals want' allows us to distinguish between measures that are simply what an animal does when it is alert, aroused, or active and those measures that genuinely allow us to distinguish between situations the animals themselves see as positive or negative. Sentience (conscious feelings of pleasure, pain, and suffering) is for many people the essence of what is meant by welfare, but studying consciousness is notoriously difficult, particularly in non-human species. These difficulties are discussed in the context of our current - and as yet incomplete - knowledge of human and animal consciousness. Finally, the book highlights some key ideas in the relationship between animal welfare science and animal ethics and shows how closely the well-being of humans is linked to that of other animals. The Science of Animal Welfare is an ideal companion for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in animal behaviour and welfare, as well as for professional researchers, practitioners and animal welfare consultants. At the same time, it is easily understandable to non-scientists and anyone without prior knowledge but with an interest in animals and the rapidly evolving science of animal welfare. (shrink)

This book explores how changes that occurred around 1989 shaped the study of the social sciences, and scrutinizes the impact of the paradigm of neoliberalism in different disciplinary fields. The contributors examine the ways in which capitalism has transmuted into a seemingly unquestionable, triumphant framework that globally articulates economics with epistemology and social ontology. The volume also investigates how new narratives of capitalism are being developed by social scientists in order to better understand capitalism's ramifications in various domains of knowledge. (...) At its heart, Beyond Neoliberalism seeks to unpack and disaggregate neoliberalism, and to take readers beyond the analytical limitations that a traditional framework of neoliberalism entails. (shrink)

The paper deals with the ethical-moral dimension of Popper’s critical rationalism, which is the less analyzed aspect of his philosophy. Critical rationalism is not without assumptions. As a life attitude, it is actualized on the basis of one’s moral preferences based rather on assumptions than on critical reasonableness. Critical rationalism does not exclude logical argumentation and reasoning, but the adoption of them is predominantly the result of an individual moral decision and choice, based, paradoxically enough, on an irrational belief in (...) reason. The author considers this attitude to be productive, as it emphasizes individual moral responsibility. Nobody is able to persuade us about the relevance of what we don’t want to adopt and apply. Thus we find ourselves in the sphere of personal morality. (shrink)

At a time when the formerly strictly separated roles of citizen and consumer are arguably blurry, and when once powerful social institutions increasingly must yield to new social forces based on heightened knowledgeability and historically unprecedented wealth, it is likely that the economy of modern society is also subject to implicit changes. In this article, we argue that traditional theories of the market are increasingly losing their basis for analysing economic relationships as purely rational acts of exchange and utility maximization. (...) Instead, what can be witnessed is an increase in the influence of values and norms on markets, guiding our attention to how deeply embedded economic action is in modern culture. We put forward the idea of a moralization of markets, which has begun to change our conceptions and theories regarding what is at stake in a modern economy fundamentally. We conclude that in the future, production processes and standards, codes of conduct and consumer reasoning will become all the more important for doing business in Western knowledge societies. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a popular view about the nature of propositions, commonly known as the Russellian view of propositions. Alvin Plantinga has dubbed it, or more precisely, a crucial consequence of it, Existentialism, and in his paper “On Existentialism” (1983) he has presented a forceful argument intended as a reductio of this view. In what follows, I describe the main relevant ingredients of the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. I present a relatively simple response Russellians (...) might want to make to Plantinga’s anti-existentialist argument. I then explore one aspect of this response—one that leads to some rather curious consequences for the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. (shrink)

This book disassembles the moral assessment of business practices into its constituent parts to identify and clarify the four key concepts that form the basis of important moral disagreements in business: ‘personhood,’ ‘ownership,’ ‘harm,’ and ‘consent.’ ‘Moral bottom lines’ are those fundamental concepts in business ethics that ultimately account for our most resilient moral claims and unsurpassable convictions, and exploring them provides essential insights into the grounds on which we disagree in business ethics. This analysis is useful for students in (...) business school looking to understand fundamental moral disagreements in business and for practitioners interested in connecting practice with their own moral intuitions. The book also challenges scholars of business ethics by arguing that we can reduce business ethics disagreements to these four issues. "This is the most refreshing book on business ethics to appear in a long time. By focusing on 'personhood,' 'ownership,' 'harm,' and 'consent,' Eabrasu brings a new level of clarity and insight into disagreements on business ethic issues. Rather than reaching for an artificial utopian resolution, he embraces the challenge of explaining why we disagree. This is a must-read for serious business ethic scholars."Nicolas CapaldiLoyola University New OrleansLegendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics. (shrink)

In some recent articles, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is a myth: when it comes to the mind-body problem, the only serious options are reductionism, eliminativism, and dualism.[1] And when it comes to reductionism, Kim is inclined to regard a functionalist theory of the mind as the best available option—mostly because it offers the best explanation of mind-body supervenience. In this paper, I will discuss Kim’s views about functionalism. They may be contended on two general grounds. First, some (...) functionalists will object to being classified as reductionists. Second, Kim argues for a version (or a reading) of functionalism, conceptualized functionalism, that makes it rather similar to the “old” mind-body identity theory it was designed to replace. Moreover, Kim’s conceptualized functionalism turns out to be a somewhat surprising brand of reductionism—a reductionism with some eliminativist cut-outs and, possibly, some dualist leftovers. At the end of the paper I propose a construal of the more standard version of functionalism that obviates Kim’s argument for switching-over to his conceptualized version. (shrink)