The use-mention distinction is elaborated into a four-way distinction between use, formal mention, material mention and pragmatic mention. The notion of pragmatic mention is motivated through the problem of monsters in Kaplanian indexical semantics. It is then formalized and applied in an account of schemata in formalized languages.

Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem is sometimes said to refute mechanism about the mind. §1 contains a discussion of mechanism. We look into its origins, motivations and commitments, both in general and with regard to the human mind, and ask about the place of modern computers and modern cognitive science within the general mechanistic paradigm. In §2 we give a sharp formulation of a mechanistic thesis about the mind in terms of the mathematical notion of computability. We present the argument from (...) Gödel’s theorem against mechanism in terms of this formulation and raise two objections, one of which is known but is here given a more precise formulation, and the other is new and based on the discussion in §1. (shrink)

This book is a running commentary of Tarski’s momentous monograph ‘The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages’, published in Polish in 1933, with special focus on discrepancies...

A key to modern studies of 18th century Western philosophy, the Treatise considers numerous classic philosophical issues, including causation, existence, freedom and necessity and morality. This abridged edition has an introduction which explain's Hume's thought and places it in the context of its times.

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In _The Formation of Reason_, philosophy professor David Bakhurst utilizes ideas from philosopher John McDowell to develop and defend a socio-historical account of the human mind. Provides the first detailed examination of the relevance of John McDowell's work to the Philosophy of Education Draws on a wide-range of philosophical sources, including the work of 'analytic' philosophers Donald Davidson, Ian Hacking, Peter Strawson, David Wiggins, and Ludwig Wittgenstein Considers non-traditional ideas from Russian philosophy and psychology, represented by Ilyenkov and (...) Vygotsky Discusses foundational philosophical ideas in a way that reveals their relevance to educational theory and practice. (shrink)

This volume offers a carefully argued, compelling theory of bioethics while eliciting practical implications for a wide array of issues including medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death. The authors' dual-value theory features mid-level principles, a distinctive model of moral status, a subjective account of well-being, and a cosmopolitan view of global justice. In addition to ethical theory, the book investigates the nature of harm and autonomous action, personal identity theory, and the (...) 'non-identity problem' associated with many procreative decisions. Readers new to particular topics will benefit from helpful introductions, specialists will appreciate in-depth theoretical explorations and a novel take on various practical issues, and all readers will benefit from the book's original synoptic vision of bioethics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

This is the second volume of philosophical essays by one of the most innovative and influential philosophers now writing in English. Containing thirteen papers in all, the book includes both new essays and previously published papers, some of them with extensive new postscripts reflecting Lewis's current thinking. The papers in Volume II focus on causation and several other closely related topics, including counterfactual and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, causation, explanation, perception, free will, and rational (...) decision. Throughout, Lewis analyzes global features of the world in such a way as to show that they might turn out to supervene on the spatiotemporal arrangement of local qualities. (shrink)

I provide a fairly systematic analysis of when quantities that are variant under a dynamical symmetry transformation should be regarded as unobservable, or redundant, or unreal; of when models related by a dynamical symmetry transformation represent the same state of affairs; and of when mathematical structure that is variant under a dynamical symmetry transformation should be regarded as surplus. In most of these cases the answer is `it depends': depends, that is, on the details of the symmetry in question. A (...) central feature of the analysis is that in order to draw any of these conclusions for a dynamical symmetry it needs to be understood in terms of its possible extensions to other physical systems, in particular to measurement devices. (shrink)

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the Western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The fourteen chapters in Moral Vision are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and encourage students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The (...) book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics. (shrink)

In Phenomenology and the Problem of History. David Carr examines the paradox involving Husserl's transcendental philosophy and his later historicist theory.

Abstract Gene-selectionists define fundamental terms in non-standard ways. Genes are determinants of difference. Phenotypes are defined as a gene’s effects relative to some alternative whereas the environment is defined as all parts of the world that are shared by the alternatives being compared. Environments choose among phenotypes and thereby choose among genes. By this process, successful gene sequences become stores of information about what works in the environment. The strategic gene is defined as a set of gene tokens that combines (...) ‘actor’ tokens responsible for an effect with ‘recipient’ tokens whose replication is thereby enhanced. This set of tokens can extend across the boundaries of individual organisms, or other levels of selection, as these are traditionally defined. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s10539-012-9315-5 Authors David Haig, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Journal Biology and Philosophy Online ISSN 1572-8404 Print ISSN 0169-3867. (shrink)

This book fills a gap in the literature on the Precautionary Principle by placing the principle within the wider context of precautionary reasoning and uses philosophical arguments and case studies to demonstrate when it does—and does not—apply. The book invites the reader to take a step back from the controversy surrounding the Precautionary Principle and consider the overarching rationales for responding to threats to the environment or public health. It provides practical guidance and probing insight for the intended audience, including (...) scholars, students, journalists, and policymakers. (shrink)

Human beings seek to transcend limits. This is part of our potential greatness, since it is how we can realize what is best in our humanity. However, the limit-transcending feature of human life is also part of our potential downfall, as it can lead to dehumanization and failure to attain important human goods and to prevent human evils. Exploring the place of limits within a well-lived human life this work develops and defends an original account of limiting virtues, which are (...) concerned with recognizing proper limits in human life. The limiting virtues that are the focus are humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty, and they are explored in relation to four kinds of limits: existential limits, moral limits, political limits, and economic limits. These virtues have been underexplored in discussions about virtue ethics, and when they have been explored it has not been with regard to the general issue of the place of limits within a well-lived human life. The account of the limiting virtues provided here, however, is intended as a counter to other prominent approaches to ethics: namely, autonomy-centered approaches and consequentialist (or maximizing) approaches. This account is also used to address a number of important contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, distributive justice, cosmopolitanism vs. patriotism, and the ethical status of growth-based economics. (shrink)

Stove argues that Popper and his successors in the philosophy of science, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, were irrationalists because they were deductivists. That is, they believed all logic is deductive, and thus denied that experimental evidence could make scientific theories logically more probable. The book was reprinted as Anything Goes (1998) and Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult (1998).

"Daimon Life is life-enchancing. To read it is to become richer in word." –John Llewelyn Disclosure of Martin Heidegger’s complicity with the National Socialist regime in 1933-34 has provoked virulent debate about the relationship between his politics and his philosophy. Did Heidegger’s philosophy exhibit a kind of organicism readily transformed into ideological "blood and soil"? Or, rather, did his support of the Nazis betray a fundamental lack of loyalty to living things? David Farrell Krell traces Heidegger’s political authoritarianism to (...) his failure to develop a constructive "life-philosophy"—his phobic reactions to other forms of being. Krell details Heidegger’s opposition to Lebensphilosophie as expressed in Being and Time, in an important but little-known lecture course on theoretical biology given in 1929–30 called "The Basic Concepts of Metaphysics," and in a recently published key text, Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936–38. Although Heidegger’s attempt to think through the problems of life, sexual reproduction, behavior, environment, and the ecosystem ultimately failed, Krell contends that his methods of thinking nonetheless pose important tasks for our own thought. Drawing on and away from Heidegger, Krell expands on the topics of life, death, sexuality, and spirit as these are treated by Freud, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Irigaray. Daimon Life addresses issues central to contemporary philosophies of politics, gender, ecology, and theoretical biology. (shrink)

Using Kierkegaard's later religious writings as well as his earlier philosophical works, David Gouwens explores this philosopher's religious and theological thought, focusing on human nature, Christ, and Christian discipleship. He helps the reader approach Kierkegaard as someone who both analysed religion and sought to evoke religious dispositions in his readers. Gouwens discusses Kierkegaard's main concerns as a religious and, specifically, Christian thinker, and his treatment of religion using the dialectic of 'becoming Christian', and counters the interpretation of his religious (...) thought as privatistic and asocial. Gouwens appraises both the edifying discourses and the pseudonymous writings, including the particular problems posed by the latter. Between foundationalism and irrationalism, Kierkegaard's ideas are seen to anticipate the end of 'modernity', while standing at the centre of the Christian tradition. (shrink)

One of the foremost scientists and thinkers of our time, David Bohm worked alongside Oppenheimer and Einstein. In _Science, Order and Creativity_ he and physicist F. David Peat propose a return to greater creativity and communication in the sciences. They ask for a renewed emphasis on ideas rather than formulae, on the whole rather than fragments, and on meaning rather than mere mechanics. Tracing the history of science from Aristotle to Einstein, from the Pythagorean theorem to quantum mechanics, (...) the authors offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks to creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself. _Science, Order and Creativity_ looks to the future of science with elegance, hope and enthusiasm. (shrink)

There has recently been a flurry of activity in the philosophy of language on how to best account for the unique features of epithets. One of these features is that epithets can be appropriated (that is, the offense-grounding potential of a term can be removed). We argue that attempts to appropriate an epithet fundamentally involve a violation of language-governing rules. We suggest that the other conditions that make something an attempt at appropriation are the same conditions that characterize acts of (...) civil disobedience. Accounting for attempts at appropriation is thus both a linguistic and socio-political endeavor. We demonstrate how these two facets of attempts at appropriation also help us understand the communicative features of civil disobedience. (shrink)

This is a book of philosophy, written by a philosopher and intended for anyone who knows enough philosophy to have been seriously injured, antagonised, mystified or intoxicated by it. Stove is passionately polemical, a philosophical counterpart to Tom Wolfe. Setting out to deflate a few philosophical reputations, he lambastes both the dead and the living. Yet he says things that need to be said, and that others often lack the courage to say.

This paper defends the view that the asymmetry of causation can be explained in terms of probabilistic relationships between event types. Papineau first explores three different versions of the "fork asymmetry", namely David Lewis' asymmetry of overdetermination, the screening-off property of common causes, and Spirtes', Glymour's and Scheines' analysis of probabilistic graphs. He then argues that this fork asymmetry is both a genuine phenomenon and a satisfactory metaphysical reduction of causal asymmetry. In his final section he shows how this (...) reduction can account for the relevance of causal direction to human agency, and in particular for the fact that we can manipulate causes to influence their effects, but not vice versa. (shrink)

David Bohm is considered one of the best physicists of all time. He also had a deep interest in human communication and creativity. Influential in both management and communication theory in what is known 'Bohm Dialogue', On Dialogue is both inspiring and pioneering. Bohm considers the origin and very meaning of dialogue, reflecting on what gets in the way of "true dialogue". He argues that dialogue, as a radical form of exploration that allows different views to be presented, leads (...) us beyond the impasse of conflict and argument to the forming of new views. With a new foreword by Dean Rickles. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to Function, Selection, and Design, consisting of the following sections: 1. Introduction 2. The Philosophical Problem 3. Recent Prehistory: The "State of the Art" in the 1960s 4. Wright and Cummins 5. Millikan 6. The Core Consensus and the Peripheral Disagreements 7. Unconclusion.

In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and European Commission, modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging “bioeconomy” in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for sustainable economic growth. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous “bio-concepts.” Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their (...) capitalization. This article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially in the fetishization of everything “bio.” We offer an alternative view of the bioeconomy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes. (shrink)

Early 20th century debates over the possibility of ‘metaphysics’ are grounded in a set of questions and answers whose central themes are already delineated in Kant’s critical philosophy. Wittgenstein and Carnap are sympathetic to Kant’s dismissal of transcendent metaphysics, but skeptical that there could be any substantive account of the fundamental conditions of our meaning-making. By contrast, Heidegger follows Fichte and the early German Romantics in seeing answers to the problems raised by metacritique not in science, but in the non-discursive (...) forms of understanding and expression exemplified in art. This Romantic turn to art is not taken arbitrarily; it is motivated by methodological considerations that emerge within Kant’s own critical system. I take up the Kantian considerations which lead to an understanding of art as a window into the fundamental conditions of meaning-making before turning to Heidegger’s development of this line of thought. Next, I examine Carnap and Wittgenstein’s skepticism concerning the meaning of Heidegger’s philosophical terminology, focusing on what is perhaps the most problematic case: Heidegger’s talk of ‘the nothing’. I argue that this skepticism is overblown. Heidegger’s talk of the nothing is meaningful in the way that talk about figure and ground is meaningful: it serves as an ostensive indication of intersubjectively accessible structural features of our encounters with things. I conclude by drawing out the existential ramifications of the decision to speak or be silent, drawing on Audre Lorde to illustrate the place of art in making it possible for us to lead authentic lives. (shrink)

Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? In a series of ten essays David Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief, and the different forms of responsibility these forms of control generate.

Paul Feyerabend argued that theories can be faced with experimental anomalies whose refuting character can only be recognized by developing alternatives to the theory. The alternate theory must explain the experimental results without contrivance and it must also be supported by independent evidence. I show that the situation described by Feyerabend arises again and again in experiments or observations that test the postulates in the standard cosmological model relating to dark matter. The alternate theory is Milgrom’s modified dynamics. I discuss (...) three examples: the failure to detect dark-matter particles in laboratory experiments; the lack of evidence for dark-matter sub-haloes and the dwarf galaxies that are postulated to inhabit them; and the failure to confirm the predicted orbital decay of Milky Way satellite galaxies and other systems due to dynamical friction against the dark matter. In each case, Feyerabend’s criterion directs us to interpret the experimental or observational results as an indirect refutation of the standard cosmological model in favor of Milgrom’s theory. (shrink)

Modern particle physics suggests an intriguing vision of physical reality: we are to imagine the symmetries of the world as fundamental, whereas the material constituents of the world are ontologically derivative of them. This paper develops a novel ontology for non-relativistic quantum mechanics which gives precise metaphysical content to this vision.

Discovering high-level causal relations from low-level data is an important and challenging problem that comes up frequently in the natural and social sciences. In a series of papers, Chalupka etal. (2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017) develop a procedure forcausal feature learning (CFL) in an effortto automate this task. We argue that CFL does not recommend coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule in favor of it, and recommends coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule against it. We propose a new technique, (...) pragmatic causal feature learning (PCFL), which extends the original CFL algorithm in useful and intuitive ways. We show that PCFL has the same attractive measure-theoretic properties as the original CFL algorithm. We compare the performance of both methods through theoretical analysis and experiments. (shrink)

In these inspiring lectures David Bohm explores Albert Einstein’s celebrated _Theory of Relativity_ that transformed forever the way we think about time and space. Yet for Bohm the implications of the theory were far more revolutionary both in scope and impact even than this. Stepping back from dense theoretical and scientific detail in this eye-opening work, Bohm describes how the notion of relativity strikes at the heart of our very conception of the universe, regardless of whether we are physicists (...) or philosophers. (shrink)

Although Kant’s moral philosophy is often presented as a kind of secularized Christianity, Kant seems to have very little to say about forgiveness, a topic of some traditional Christian interest. This reticence is particularly striking when we consider the central role in Kant’s thought played by ideas of obligation, responsibility and guilt.

In this paper, we examine the logics of essence and accident and attempt to ascertain the extent to which those logics are genuinely formalizing the concepts in which we are interested. We suggest that they are not completely successful as they stand. We diagnose some of the problems and make a suggestion for improvement. We also discuss some issues concerning definability in the formal language.

This contribution to economic philosophy considers Marx's pronouncements on the organization of future society, and in this context re-examines the long-lasting debate triggered by Mises's argument that modern industrial production requires a system of spontaneously-formed market prices. In an undogmatic, non-technical treatment, Steele contends that both the Marxian conception of future society and the Misesian argument against its feasibility have frequently been misunderstood. The work scrutinizes the replies to Mises, and explores some of the wider issues raised by the economic (...) calculation debate. (shrink)

This book uncovers the lost history of Christianity's encounters with Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. David Albertson skillfully examines ancient and medieval theologians, particularly Thierry of Chartres and Nicholas of Cusa, who successfully reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory. David Albertson challenges modern assumptions about the complex relationship between religion and science.

Book synopsis: David-Hillel Ruben's new book pursues some novel and unusual standpoints in the philosophy of action. He rejects, for example, the most widely held view about how to count actions, and argues for what he calls a 'prolific theory' of act individuation. He also describes and argues against the two leading theories of the nature of action, the causal theory and the agent causal theory. The causal theory cannot account for skilled activity, nor for mental action. The agent (...) causalist theory unnecessarily reifies causings. He identifies an assumption that they share, and that most action theorists have assumed to be unproblematic and uncontroversial, that an action is, or entails the existence of, an event. Several different meanings to that claim are disentangled and in the most interesting sense of that claim, Ruben denies that it is true. His own alternative is simple and unpretentious: nothing informative can be said about the nature of action that explicates action in any other terms. Ruben sketches a theory of causal explanation of action that eschews the requirement for laws or generalisations, and this effectively quashes one argument for the oft-repeated view that no explanations of action can be causal, on the grounds that there are no convincing cases of laws of human action. He addresses a number of questions about the knowledge an agent has of his own actions, looking particularly at examples of pathological cases of action in which, for one reason or another, the agent does not know what he is doing. Inspiring and enlightening in its challenge to received wisdom, and in its convincing defence of some unfashionable positions, Action and its Explanation will be required reading for anyone working in this field. (shrink)

What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arrive at the definition of representational mental process as a process that (...) is the bringing into being, sustaining, modifying, or terminating of a mental representation. We conclude by outlining some benefits and applications of this approach. (shrink)

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical context and, with (...) this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book David Roberts sets out to demonstrate the centrality of the total work of art to European modernism since the French Revolution.

Hannah Arendt’s account of imperialism has become an unlikely source of inspiration for scholars invested in anti-colonial and postcolonial critique. However, the role of settler colonialism in her thought has come under far less scrutiny. This essay reconstructs Arendt’s account of settler-colonization. It argues that Arendt’s republican analysis of imperialism hinges on her notion of the boomerang effect, which is absent in settler-colonial contexts. Arendt recognized some of the distinctive features of settler expansionism but reproduced many of the ideologies that (...) sustain practices of settler-colonial conquest. This interpretation sheds light on the promises and limits of contemporary retrievals of Arendt’s analysis and critique of imperialism by foregrounding the specificity of settler colonialism as an axis of ongoing colonial violence. (shrink)

Metaphysical indeterminacy in the context of quantum mechanics is often motivated by the eigenstate-eigenvalue link. However, the sparse view of Glick illustrates why it has no such implications. Other links connecting quantum states and property ascriptions—such as those associated with the GRW theory—may introduce indeterminacy, but such indeterminacy may be viewed as merely representational and is susceptible to familiar treatments of vagueness. Thus, I contend that such links fail to provide a compelling motivation for quantum metaphysical indeterminacy.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is often criticized for his account of the fusions of horizons as the ideal resolution of dialogue. I argue that in fact it is an excellent account of the successful resolution of dialogue, but only in light of a proper understanding of what Gadamer means by 'horizon' and how then horizons are fused. I do this by showing how Gadamer is drawing on the technical sense of 'horizon' found in Edmund Husserl's and Martin Heidegger's phenomenologies. In the process (...) I show why a prominent criticism of Gadamer's account of the fusion of horizons, a criticism presented most forcefully by E. D. Hirsch, is mistaken. (shrink)

David Johnson seeks to overthrow one of the widely accepted tenets of Anglo-American philosophy -- that of the success of the Humean case against the rational ...

David Thomas takes a close look at the United Kingdom during the 1970s to examine the emergence of “electroculture.” Mapping class struggle, dispossession, and state violence onto a history of oil, Thomas makes the case that labor politics and energy politics are deeply intertwined.

Fondée sous les auspices du père de notre modernité philosophique Descartes, puis consolidée par des penseurs aussi importants que Leibniz, Bolzano ou Husserl, la mathesis universalis paraît représenter à elle seule l'ambitieux programme du « rationalisme classique ». Des philosophes tels que Husserl, Russell, Heidegger ou Cassirer ont pu s'accorder en ce point. Le développement de la « science moderne » aurait porté ce grand « rêve dogmatique » pour mener vers son terme le destin de la métaphysique occidentale. Pourtant (...) les recherches historiques récentes ont montré que l'idée de « mathématique universelle » existait bien avant Descartes, que ce dernier ne revendiquait d'ailleurs aucune rupture sur ce point et que sa réflexion se situait même assez clairement dans l'héritage des Anciens. Comment dès lors justifier que les Anciens, avec lesquels le programme des Classiques était censé rompre, aient pu déjà se préoccuper de « mathématique universelle »? Plus simplement encore, de quoi se préoccupaient donc ces philosophes sous ce concept? Le regain d'intérêt pour la mathesis universalis à la fin du XIXe siècle n'avait-il pas conduit paradoxalement à la perte de son sens comme problème? Cette étude a pour but de suivre ces questions jusqu'à leur origine et de montrer leur importance dans le dialogue entre mathématique et philosophie. Pages de début Remerciements Introduction La constitution de la « mathématique universelle » comme problème philosophique I. Aristote II. « Mathématique universelle » et théories mathématiques : Aristote, Euclide, Epinomis III. Le moment néo-platonicien Vers la science de l'ordre et de la mesure IV. La renaissance de la mathématique universelle V. La mathesis universalis cartésienne Conclusion Annexe I. La quaestio de scientia mathematica communi Annexe II. Essai bibliographique sur la mathesis universalis chez Descartes etLeibniz Bibliographie Index nominum Pages de fin. (shrink)

Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the symbolism attached (...) to particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration. (shrink)