This chapter contains sections titled: The Epistemology of Religion and Conflicting Truth‐Claims The Relation Between Religions Works cited.

This book offers a radical reformulation of the pluralist position in 'English School' theory, providing an account of world politics that is normatively progressive and rooted in the significance of multiple community membership to human lives.

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: any successful analysis of models must target sets (...) of models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z. (shrink)

This paper explores some variants and aspects of multi-quantificational criteria of existence, examining these in the context of the debate between monism and pluralism in analytical philosophy. Assuming familiarity with the findings to date, we seek to apply to these the newly introduced concepts of “substitution” and “substitutional model”. Possible applications of formal theories involving multiple types of existential quantifier are highlighted, together with their methods of construction. These considerations then lead to a thesis asserting the irrelevance (...) of both multi-quantificational criteria and assumptions involving quantificational ontology to the debate between monism and pluralism in ontology. Many quantifiers cannot properly distinguish different modes of existence–as we aim to show by furnishing a general method for constructing counter-examples to any theory that assumes that different types of existential quantifier correspond to different modes of existence. (shrink)

Scientific inquiry is typically focused on particular questions about particular objects and properties. This leads to a multiplicity of models which, even when they draw on a single, consistent body of concepts and principles, often employ different methods and assumptions to model different systems. Pluralists have remarked on how scientists draw on different assumptions to model different systems, different aspects of systems and systems under different conditions and defended the value of distinct, incompatible models within science at any given (...) time. Paraconsistentists have proposed logical strategies to avoid trivialization when inconsistencies arise by a variety of means. Here we examine how chunk and permeate, a simple approach to paraconsistent reasoning which avoids heterodox logic by confining commitments to separate contexts in which reasoning with them is taken to be reliable while allowing ‘permeation’ of some conclusions into other contexts, can help to systematize pluralistic reasoning across the boundaries of plural contexts, using regional climate models as an example. The result is a kind of unity for science—but a unity achieved by the constrained exchange of specified information between different contexts, rather than the closure of all commitments under some paraconsistent consequence relation. (shrink)

Multiple realization was once taken to be a challenge to reductionist visions, especially within cognitive science, and a foundation of the “antireductionist consensus.” More recently, multiple realization has come to be challenged on naturalistic grounds, as well as on more “metaphysical” grounds. Within cognitive science, one focal issue concerns the role of neural plasticity for addressing these issues. If reorganization maintains the same cognitive functions, that supports claims for multiple realization. I take up the reorganization involved in (...) language dysfunctions to deal with questions concerned with multiple realization and neural plasticity. Beginning with Broca’s case for localization and the nineteenth century discussion of “reorganization,” and returning to more recent evidence for neural plasticity, I argue that, in the end, there is substantial support for multiple realization in cognitive systems; I further argue that this is wholly consistent with a recognition of methodological pluralism in cognitive science. (shrink)

A plurality of approaches to foundational aspects of mathematics is a fact of life. Two loci of this are discussed here, the classicism/constructivism controversy over standards of proof, and the plurality of universes of discourse for mathematics arising in set theory and in category theory, whose problematic relationship is discussed. The first case illustrates the hypothesis that a sufficiently rich subject matter may require a multiplicity of approaches. The second case, while in some respects special to mathematics, raises issues (...) of ontological multiplicity and relativity encountered in the natural sciences as well. (shrink)

In this paper I first briefly outline the difficulty of maintaining a realistic interpretation of religious discourse in the context of religious pluralism. Then I present two attempts to reconcile religious realism and pluralism. The first is John Hick’s proposal, the second the 'internalist pluralism' developed by Victoria Harrison on the basis of Putnam's internal realism. I point out the weaknesses of these theories. Finally, I outline my own proposal, based on a slightly different interpretation of internal (...) realism than Harrison’s internalist pluralism, namely by using the pragmatic aspects of Putnam's thought. He argues that pragmatic-realistic pluralism avoids the weaknesses of Hick’s and Harrison’s conceptions while at the same time sharing their strengths. (shrink)

Cancer is a paradigmatic case of a complex causal process; causes of cancer operate at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, and the respects in which these causes act and interact are diverse. There are, for instance, temporal order effects, organizational effects, structural effects, and dynamic relationships between causes operating at different temporal and spatial scales. Because of this complexity, models of cancer initiation and progression often involve deliberate choices to focus on one time scale, one causal pathway, or (...) one aspect of cancer’s dynamics. As in most of biology, modeling cancer involves simplification and idealization. At the same time, theoretical perspectives inform the construction of these models. Such perspectives might involve viewing cancer ‘as’ a genetic disease, metabolic disease, stem cell disease, an infectious disease, or a disease of tissue disorganization. This paper will argue that purportedly competing theoretical views of cancer are not at odds, but can be viewed as mutually informative. Models are most often developed in the service of asking very specific questions, and this requires limiting our view of the phenomena to a specific temporal or spatial scale, a particular cause, or a particular outcome, dynamic, or pattern. Thus, while some models may seem at odds, often they are simply concerned with different questions, or, they are complementary and mutually informative. I hope to bring this case to bear on debates among philosophers of science over perspectivism and realism, as well pluralism about the aims and scope of scientific theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evaluation of Implicit AnthropologiesJochen Fahrenberg (bio) and Marcus Cheetham (bio)Keywordsmind-body, philosophical assumptions, human natureThe three commentaries and the reviewer’s notes contain valuable reflections and expand on number of important points. There is general agreement that surprisingly little is known about psychologists’, psychotherapists’, clinicians’, and other professionals’ philosophical assumptions about human nature. It is conceivable that these implicit anthropologies represent a potential source of bias in research and practice (...) and that further research is therefore justified.Doctor Walach emphasizes the pluralism of world views, which is evident in the questionnaire response patterns. The findings contradict the assumption that monism, immanence, and a scientific worldview are predominant preconceptions. Instead, psychology students mostly favor ontological or methodological dualism, and con-firm that they have spiritual beliefs or indeed some belief in paranormal phenomena. From this, Dr. Walach extends his thought-provoking perspective to folk psychology, as opposed to mainstream psychology, and reflects on the influence of individual beliefs on scientific culture. It is especially from this perspective that the investigation of certain key concepts and belief systems should be given every encouragement.Doctors Wells and Rackley were particularly interested in the implicit anthropologies of clinicians. They are inclined to attribute individual differences in understanding and interaction with patients to “psychological” traits or to momentary experience rather than to philosophical beliefs. The latter view was supported by the majority of students in our investigation. With respect to psychotherapists and clinicians, our article contained only a short reference to the interviews conducted by Wider. The majority of the forty-two professionals taking part in this pilot study assumed that there may be such differential biases in their fields, but they conceded that the momentary clinical condition and pragmatic necessities would often override such biases. An empirical investigation to differentiate psychological, pragmatic–clinical, and philosophical factors and the associated bias would be an ambitious project; very careful interviews and perhaps participant observation would be necessary. But before undertaking such a study, further descriptive studies and the development of testable hypotheses are required.Doctor Brendel referred to the intricacies of the mind–body problem. We agree that many of the recent philosophical writings show nonreductive physicalism to be among the highly favored conceptions. (We do not know whether this discourse represents the majority opinion of philosophers, psychologists, clinicians, or even neuroscientists.) [End Page 213] The inclusion of this specific conception in the multiple-choice item list would require the inclusion of a specific vocabulary and some definitions that are controversial, even among the proponents of nonreductive physicalism. We decided to restrict the wide spectrum of concepts to five categories. Doctor Brendel goes on to voice explicit support for the conceptualization proposed by Horgan, who recommended a pragmatic approach and the use of double vocabularies. He suggests that context-related features in a given instance would suffice for selecting the most appropriate explanation. It is, however, conceivable that close examination of the decision process would reveal criteria containing or stemming from philosophical assumptions.Doctor Walach makes reference to the complementarity principle, which has a certain intellectual appeal when cross-category relationships are considered, and is not restricted to the domain of physics. Compared with a double-language dualism, the complementarity principle postulates that both frames of reference are fundamentally different in categories, exhaustive within their specific explanation scheme, but are essentially incomplete if, for example, brain and consciousness are viewed as a whole.Pertinent methodological aspects were already addressed in the article and endnote. However, the appropriateness of a questionnaire with which to assess philosophical standpoints will continue to be met with concern and require careful consideration. It is clear that there is no other practical method for gathering in a population like first-year students of psychology representative data about ontological beliefs, religious attitudes, or assumptions on human nature.Doctors Wells and Rackley noted discrepancies in the response to two items relating to spiritual existence after death and the cessation of consciousness with biological death. The two statements seem to be contradictory and the observed inconsistencies point to possible misunderstandings, response tendencies, context-dependent effects, or other shortcomings well-known in research using personality questionnaires. However, the assumed postmortal existence... (shrink)

The Architectonics of Meaning is a lucid demonstration of the purposes, methods, and implications of philosophical semantics that both supports and builds on Richard McKeon's and other noted pluralists' convictions that multiple philosophical approaches are viable. Watson ingeniously explores ways to systematize these approaches, and the result is a well-structured instrument for understanding texts. This book exemplifies both general and particular aspects of systematic pluralism, reorienting our understanding of the realms of knowing, doing, and making.

Animal welfare has a long history of disregard. While in recent decades the study of animal welfare has become a scientific discipline of its own, the difficulty of measuring animal welfare can still be vastly underestimated. There are three primary theories, or perspectives, on animal welfare - biological functioning, natural living and affective state. These come with their own diverse methods of measurement, each providing a limited perspective on an aspect of welfare. This paper describes a perspectival pluralist account of (...) animal welfare, in which all three theoretical perspectives and their multiple measures are necessary to understand this complex phenomenon and provide a full picture of animal welfare. This in turn will offer us a better understanding of perspectivism and pluralism itself. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are the result of enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices in the cognitive niche. Cognitive practices are embodied and normatively constrained ways to interact with epistemic resources in the cognitive niche in order to complete a cognitive task. The emerging predictive processing perspective offers new functional principles and conceptual tools to account for the cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily components that give rise to cognitive practices. According to this emerging perspective, many (...) cases of perception, action, and cognition are realized by the on-going minimization of prediction error. Predictive processing provides us with a mechanistic perspective that helps investigate the functional details of the acquisition of cognitive practices. The argument of this paper is that research on enculturation and recent work on predictive processing are complementary. The main reason is that predictive processing operates at a sub-personal level and on a physiological time scale of explanation only. A complete account of enculturated cognition needs to take additional levels and temporal scales of explanation into account. This complementarity assumption leads to a new framework—enculturated predictive processing—that operates on multiple levels and temporal scales for the explanation of the enculturated predictive acquisition of cognitive practices. Enculturated predictive processing is committed to explanatory pluralism. That is, it subscribes to the idea that we need multiple perspectives and explanatory strategies to account for the complexity of enculturation. The upshot is that predictive processing needs to be complemented by additional considerations and conceptual tools to realize its full explanatory potential. (shrink)

At its core, this study understands its central term, poiesis as the process of forming new styles of sense-making and multiple modes of thought. Such plural styles deserve notice so far as they give readers alternate ways of organizing experience and interpersonal relations: they provide new worlds, in fact. The epithet "New-world" poiesis, then, is in one respect redundant, since new worlds are revealed through the "poetic" process itself. But the title also refers to current and past historical encounters (...) between an "old-world" Anglo-American mindset and its "others"---encounters between worlds that over time have qualified, tested, strengthened, and fractured each other. ;Poets who generate and interweave new worlds provide a context for maintaining a central debate within discussions of complexity in contemporary U.S. poetics. Assuming that lyric poetry can reasonably be expected to represent and to some extent transform experiences and perceptions of reality, the question arises as to what kind of experiences and worlds should be represented and/or transformed. On one hand, critics find that the role of the contemporary lyric is expressive, that is, most suited to approaching the internal conscious states or the social conditions of a person or group. On the other hand, as a fragmentary, associative use of language, lyric poetry shows the workings of language itself, a system of meaning concerned mainly with its own, ongoing re-organization. ;This debate between poetic language as providing either coherence or change---a debate that currently enjoys critical esteem and claims an increasing amount of attention from critics, poets, and anthologists---assumes that as complexity increases in poetic experimentation, the capacity for the poem to represent social relations diminishes. Poems that examine the surface texture of language, its critics claim, dissolve most often into a "play of words." Gathered into rival camps that it seems could hardly disagree more radically, the terms of the argument appear in the form of a debate between social identity and complex meaning systems. ;Detailing more specific versions of this debate, my project investigates four intellectual environments into which plural-world poetries have introduced complex lyric treatments of experience in order to distort dominant, established views: subjecting historical; cultural; linguistic; and urban discussions to a "deep pluralism." What I've found is that in the richest instances, long lyric poems that provide plural worlds allow for both resonance and wonder, both coherent sources of personal expression or social affiliation and an ability to appreciate multiple styles and to move across identities and ways of naming the real. Each aspect to the other is usually said to be incommensurate, and yet, at the right level of abstraction, or plurality, meaningful social distinctions can be made with minimal exclusionary consequences. (shrink)

Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are (...) more often strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. (shrink)

There is a growing understanding that modern slavery is a phenomenon ‘hidden in plain sight’ in the home countries of multinational firms. Yet, business scholarship on modern slavery has so far focussed on product supply chains. To address this, we direct attention to the various institutional pressures on the UK construction industry, and managers of firms within it, around modern slavery risk for on-site labour. Based on a unique data set of 30 in-depth interviews with construction firm managers and directors, (...) we identify two institutional logics as being integral to explaining how these companies have responded to the Modern Slavery Act: a market logic and a state logic. While the institutional logics literature largely assumes that institutional complexity will lead to a conciliation of multiple logics, we find both complementarity and continued conflict in the logics in our study. Though we identify conciliation between aspects of the market logic and the state logic, conflict remains as engagement with actions which could potentially address modern slavery is limited by the trade-offs between the two logics. (shrink)

Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are (...) more often strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. Key Words: explanatory pluralism • social science • explanatory depth • explanatory breadth • mechanism. (shrink)

The One remains, the many change and pass;Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,Stains the white radiance of Eternity,Until Death tramples it to fragments.At its widest, ‘pluralism’ signifies simply the variety of life, the teeming multitude of forms and entities, the many different properties that living beings manifest. Life is not everywhere the same but impressively differentiated, and without it eternity would be all of a piece, uniform. That is enough for life to (...) stain the white radiance of eternity. But within the multiplicity of specifically human life there are not merely differences. There are tensions, oppositions, conflicts. In contemporary philosophical debate ‘pluralism’ then comes to signify one problematic aspect of this. Groups of people have perhaps always subscribed to very different values, and in consequence favoured very different forms of behaviour from one another, at least on a global scale. But the groups are no longer geographically separated: we live in distinct but overlapping cultures, and get in one another's way to a far greater extent than previously. Shelley's ordered image of the dome may then seem inappropriate, and it may seem unnecessary for death to trample it to fragments. Life is already fragmented, and the practical problem facing us as living creatures is to go beyond the fragments, to achieve at least a modus vivendi in the light of all our differences and incompatibilities even if not the orderliness and cohesion of a dome. Somehow, we have to live together. That is a practical problem which confronts us at every level, as members of families, neighbourhoods, departments, countries and increasingly simply as members of a world-wide human race. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a proof-theoretic defence of meaning-invariant logical pluralism. I argue that there is a relation of co-determination between the operational and structural aspects of a logic. As a result, some features of the consequence relation are induced by the connectives. I propose that a connective is defined by those rules which are conservative and unique, while at the same time expressing only connective-induced structural information. This is the key to stabilizing the meaning of the (...) connectives across multiple determinations of the consequence relation. (shrink)

The mental system of an individual usually generates a reality-model that includes a self-model and a world-model as fundamental components. Exceptional experiences (ExE) can be classified as subjectively experienced anomalies in the self-model or the world-model or in the relation of both. Empirical studies show significant correlations between specific patterns of ExE and socially and clinically relevant variables. In order to examine the ontological status of anomalous phenomena a psychophysical approach is presented in which the principle of complementarity is (...) of fundamental importance. Applying a generalized quantum theory to psychosocial and psychophysical systems, complementary aspects such as autonomy versus reliability or novelty versus confirmation are identified as possible local and global variables. The findings indicate that entanglement correlations could play a role in the occurrence of ExE and that specific psychological interventions can dissolve them. (shrink)

Nancy Chodorow, in her groundbreaking book _The Reproduction of Mothering_, quite simply changed the conversation in at least three areas of study: psychoanalysis, women's studies, and sociology. In her latest book, _Individualizing Gender and Sexuality_, she examines the complexity and uniqueness of each person's personal creation of sexuality and gender and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings her well-known theoretical agility, wide-ranging interdisciplinarity, and clinical experience to every chapter, advocating for (...) the clinician's openness, curiosity, and theoretical pluralism. The book begins with reflections on Freud's _Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality_, followed by considerations of Melanie Klein and Stephen Mitchell, as well as on her own work and on the postmodern turn in psychoanalytic gender theory. Subsequent chapters address contemporary clinical-cultural issues such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters elaborate on the multiple ingredients and the personal affective, conflictual, and defensive constellations and processes that create sexuality and gender in each individual. Ending with a chapter on homosexualities as compromise formations, Chodorow deepens her account of clinical individuality and sex-gender transference-countertransference while bringing her readers back to Freud and to the many strands that followed, as she consolidates a consistent line of interest in sexuality and gender, theory and practice, sustained over a lifetime. (shrink)

While discussing critical individuality as oneof the main goals of liberal education, theemphasis has usually been on direct educationalmeasures. Much less attention has been given tothe social preconditions for its development.This paper discusses the societal aspect of thequestion by employing the notion of spherepluralism. The attempt is to point out someways in which the diversified nature of societycan be employed in its full potential for thedevelopment of critical individuality. Thearticle aims to outline a form of spherepluralism, which is based on (...) structuraldifferentiation, cultural diversity, communalvitality, confessional pluralism andcross-communal criticism. The suggestion isthat the critical potential of sphere pluralismpresupposes a proper balance between sphereautonomy and inter-sphere criticism as well asthat between social construction of meaning andobjective-structural constraints. (shrink)

Soul belief is a universal of human culture and belief in multiple souls is common, especially in pre-modern traditions. This essay illustrates how a three-folded structure appears in the soul concepts of Mongolian shamanistic traditions. The reported accounts of the three souls among various Mongolian ethnic groups are somewhat divergent — especially in their consciousness-related attributes — which may reflect the cultural bias of data collectors, inconsistencies between data providers, and the evolution of these concepts due to historical events, (...) socio-economic changes, and external cultural influences. Despite these confounding effects, the soul concept of Mongolian shamanism is similar in its pluralism to the beliefs of many other cultures. Mongolian Indigenous concepts and their descriptions reveal key elements of consciousness. Although these soul concepts evoke spiritual interpretations, they nevertheless reflect aspects of an innately-disposed mindset which extends conceptualizations of consciousness beyond mind-body dualism. (shrink)

In Europe the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in food production has so far failed to gain wide public approval. Ordinary people are concerned about issues not covered by the existing regulation, including usefulness and unnaturalness. In response, particularly to worries about unnaturalness, biotechnologists have suggested that inserted genes should derive only from the plant itself, or from close relatives. This paper examines public perceptions of these so-called ‘cisgenic crops’ and asks whether the public shares the idea that they (...) are less unnatural and thus more acceptable than transgenic plants. Using five focus group interviews, we identified five lines of argument about naturalness with a bearing on the assessment of cisgenic crops as well as GM crops in general. The paper concludes that, depending on perceptions of naturalness, some people would agree that cisgenic crops are more acceptable than their transgenic counterparts. The finding that ordinary people value different aspects of naturalness may be relevant to a broader audience than just those interested in gene technology. It cautions against a simplistic interpretation of what counts as ‘natural’. (shrink)

The publication of "The Practice of Liberal Pluralism" by Willam Galston has appeared as an event of first importance regarding contemporary theory about the relation between pluralism and liberalism. William Galston’s theory has had a visible evolution: in "Liberal Purposes", the main object is a critique of neutralism and a defence of perfectionist liberalism, whereas "Liberal Pluralism" main concern was to draw the limits of state intervention. This evolution is the object of numerous questions in the following (...) discussion. "The Practice of Liberal Pluralism" operates an interesting synthesis on this point. Galston defines himself as a liberal pluralist such as Berlin, but although he acknowledges that conflict between values can be tragic, he minimizes this aspect in the following discussions, and considers the possibility of having prima facie duties. One of the main arguments for the defence of value pluralism is its capacity to explain the complexity of the moral universe. Galston endorses a political pluralism, which means that the sources of authority are multiple. Galston’s liberalism is very tolerant regarding non-liberal communitarian practices, although this tolerance is based on the defence of an exit right, which is a fundamental notion in his theory. In the following discussion, Galston proposes how to understand this right of exit in an adequate manner. (shrink)

Recent significant research in a number of disciplines centers around the concept of the sense of agency. Because many of these studies cut across disciplinary lines there is good reason to seek a clear consensus on what ‘sense of agency’ means. In this paper I indicate some complexities that this consensus might have to deal with. I also highlight an important phenomenological distinction that needs to be considered in any discussion of the sense of agency, regardless of how it gets (...) defined, and I offer some critical comments on some current models tied to the notion that the sense of agency has an ambiguous phenomenology. (shrink)

Reasoning about underlying causal relations drives responsibility judgments: agents are held responsible for the outcomes they cause through their behaviors. Two main causal reasoning approaches exist: dependence theories emphasize statistical relations between causes and effects, while transference theories emphasize mechanical transmission of energy. Recently, pluralistic or hybrid models, combining both approaches, have emerged as promising psychological frameworks. In this paper, we focus on causal reasoning as involved in third-party judgements of responsibility and on related judgments of intention and control. In (...) particular, we used a novel visual paradigm to investigate the combined effects of two well-known causal manipulations, namely omission and pre-emption, on these evaluations. Our findings support the view that people apply a pluralistic causal reasoning when evaluating individual responsibility for negative outcomes. In particular, we observed diminished responsibility when dependence, transference, or both fail, compared to when these mechanisms are upheld. Responsibility judgement involves a cognitive hybrid of multiple aspects of causal reasoning. However, important differences exist at the interindividual level, with most people weighting transference more than dependence. (shrink)

This volume, an assemblage of essays previously published in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, conveniently and strategically brings together some of the trenchant interpretations and analyses of the salient, structural aspects of the philosophy of the Yijing. They reveal how the ancient Classic offers a graphically vivid and conceptually dynamic dramaturgy of the ways in which the natural world works in conjunction with the human one. Its cosmological architectonics and philosophical worldview continue to have enormous purchase on our current (...) imagination, even though readerly imperatives and responses have rendered this classic into a text of multiple significances, catering to pluralistic readerships and clienteles. Nonetheless, the essays in this volume lay bare some of the original authorly visions and insights of the Yijing, clearly showing that their apparent truthfulness to our cosmic and human conditions inspire philosophical and even theological questions. The Yijing's authorial designs of the eight trigrams and hexagrams, which encapsulate the primordial state of homo-cosmic phenomena and situations, together with the yin-yang forces and the dao, are taken for granted as integers in a grand universal equation, factored out to represent a ceaselessly changing cosmos in which heaven, earth and humanity commingle, such that the whole and unity can be found in the individual and the opposite, and vice versa. (shrink)

Climatology is a paradigmatic complex systems science. Understanding the global climate involves tackling problems in physics, chemistry, economics, and many other disciplines. I argue that complex systems like the global climate are characterized by certain dynamical features that explain how those systems change over time. A complex system's dynamics are shaped by the interaction of many different components operating at many different temporal and spatial scales. Examining the multidisciplinary and holistic methods of climatology can help us better understand the nature (...) of complex systems in general. -/- Questions surrounding climate science can be divided into three rough categories: foundational, methodological, and evaluative questions. "How do we know that we can trust science?" is a paradigmatic foundational question (and a surprisingly difficult one to answer). Because the global climate is so complex, questions like "what makes a system complex?" also fall into this category. There are a number of existing definitions of `complexity,' and while all of them capture some aspects of what makes intuitively complex systems distinctive, none is entirely satisfactory. Most existing accounts of complexity have been developed to work with information-theoretic objects (signals, for instance) rather than the physical and social systems studied by scientists. -/- Dynamical complexity, a concept articulated in detail in the first third of the dissertation, is designed to bridge the gap between the mathematics of contemporary complexity theory (in particular the formalism of "effective complexity" developed by Gell-Mann and Lloyd [2003]) and a more general account of the structure of science generally. Dynamical complexity provides a physical interpretation of the formal tools of mathematical complexity theory, and thus can be used as a framework for thinking about general problems in the philosophy of science, including theories, explanation, and lawhood. -/- Methodological questions include questions about how climate science constructs its models, on what basis we trust those models, and how we might improve those models. In order to answer questions about climate modeling, it's important to understand what climate models look like and how they are constructed. Climate model families are significantly more diverse than are the model families of most other sciences (even sciences that study other complex systems). Existing climate models range from basic models that can be solved on paper to staggeringly complicated models that can only be analyzed using the most advanced supercomputers in the world. I introduce some of the central concepts in climatology by demonstrating how one of the most basic climate models might be constructed. I begin with the assumption that the Earth is a simple featureless blackbody which receives energy from the sun and releases it into space, and show how to model that assumption formally. I then gradually add other factors (e.g. albedo and the greenhouse effect) to the model, and show how each addition brings the model's prediction closer to agreement with observation. After constructing this basic model, I describe the so-called "complexity hierarchy" of the rest of climate models, and argue that the sense of "complexity" used in the climate modeling community is related to dynamical complexity. -/- With a clear understanding of the basics of climate modeling in hand, I then argue that foundational issues discussed early in the dissertation suggest that computation plays an irrevocably central role in climate modeling. "Science by simulation" is essential given the complexity of the global climate, but features of the climate system--the presence of non-linearities, feedback loops, and chaotic dynamics--put principled limits on the effectiveness of computational models. This tension is at the root of the staggering pluralism of the climate model hierarchy, and suggests that such pluralism is here to stay, rather than an artifact of our ignorance. Rather than attempting to converge on a single "best fit" climate model, we ought to embrace the diversity of climate models, and view each as a specialized tool designed to predict and explain a rather narrow range of phenomena. Understanding the climate system as a whole requires examining a number of different models, and correlating their outputs. This is the most significant methodological challenge of climatology. -/- Climatology's role contemporary political discourse raises an unusually high number of evaluative questions for a physical science. The two leading approaches to crafting policy surrounding climate change center on mitigation (i.e. stopping the changes from occurring) and adaptation (making post hoc changes to ameliorate the harm caused by those changes). Crafting an effective socio-political response to the threat of anthropogenic climate change, however, requires us to integrate multiple perspectives and values: the proper response will be just as diverse and pluralistic as the climate models themselves, and will incorporate aspects of both approaches. I conclude by offering some concrete recommendations about how to integrate this value pluralism into our socio-political decision making framework. (shrink)

Illustrations: Numerous Colour and 15 B/w Illustrations Description: The volumes of the PROJECT OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE IN INDIAN CIVILIZATION aim to discover the central aspects of India's heritage and present them in an interrelated manner. In spite of their unitary look, these volumes recognize the difference between the areas of material civilization and those of ideational culture. The Project is not being executed by a single group of thinkers, methodologically uniform or ideologically identical in their (...) commitments. Rather, contributions are made by different scholars of diverse ideological persuasions and methodological approaches. The Project is marked by what may be called 'methodological pluralism'. In spite of its primarily historical character, this project, both in its conceptualization and execution, has been shaped by scholars drawn from different disciplines. It is the first time that an endeavour of such unique and comprehensive character has been undertaken to study critically a major world civilization. History of art, unlike that of science, is not an accumulation of facts. It comprises concurrences and overlappings cutting across the linearity of time. Based on this premise the essays in this volume delve into the discourse as also forms of creativity in the Indian tradition in terms of both the perennial and the ephemeral aspects of aesthetic experience. The essays form four groups dealing with (a) core concepts which permeate the discourse on aesthetic theories, and having ramifications in many other disciplines and domains; (b) The Rasa theory in the framework of classical philosophical traditions of Vedanta, Mimamsa, Samkhya, and Kashmir Saivism, and (c) the comprehension of the foundational concepts of aesthetic theory, namely, Rasa and Dhvani from the perspectives of Indian thought traditions addressing also music, dance and the visual arts. There is no clear-cut demarcation between the four groups of essays though in their own framework they illustrate a transition from the discourse (sastra) to practice (prayoga) i.e., from theorizing on the nature of aesthetic experience to the process of concretizing it into forms of music, dance, architecture, and painting. The contributions highlight the fact that the history of Indian aesthetic tradition comprises various textual and performing traditions that have flourished in the Indian subcontinent. What we have is not a single history but multiple histories based on various philosophical and methodological approaches adopted by art historians. Some of these histories pertain to the technical details of a given art form, and some with the changes that have occurred in the evolution and development these forms. While some historical accounts focus on the relevant biographical details of the artists, some art histories focus on the social, cultural, political, and even the economic conditions of civilization that determine the nature of an art form. Considering the multi-dimensional and multi-level complexities of Indian civilization and culture, the contributions to this volume have investigated into a number of factors which are directly and indirectly relevant for comprehending the complexities of the Indian aesthetic tradition. (shrink)

Philosophy of Science, understood as a special philosophical discipline, was born only at the beginning of the twentieth century as part of the effort for overcoming the “foundational crisis” that had affected especially mathematics and physics. Therefore, it was conceived as an investigation about the features and reliability of scientific knowledge and for a few decades was deeply marked by the philosophical approach of logical empiricism. This cognitive point of view persisted also when, after Kuhn’s work, the attention focused on (...) the scientific activity in order to understand scientific change and a sociological model replaced the view that empirical adequacy and logical consistency are the factors that determine the change of scientific theories. Ethical, social and political considerations regarding science ware considered inappropriate and potentially dangerous since they violate the alleged “neutrality of science” with respect to values. Nevertheless, the strict intertwining of science and technology in contemporary “technoscience” has produced a wide debate regarding the practical aspect of technoscientific activity that has the intrinsic features of a philosophical debate. Therefore, it is natural and advisable that the entire wealth of the philosophical disciplines be called to contribute to the specific complex discourse of the Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

While 'space' and 'place' appear as key concepts in the study of culture, their complexity and mutability require ever-new frameworks when approaching them critically. Including chapters by authors from different fields, career stages, and geopolitical backgrounds, the contributors in this edited collection scrutinize the changing dynamics of space and place in relation to current political, social, and environmental urgencies across the globe. With chapters investigating both real and imaginary spaces and places, the diversified discussions included in this collection provide a (...) cohesive study for disclosing latent understandings of multiple phenomena characterizing the world in which we live. From the protests in Egyptian and Turkish squares, to the power-related narratives embedded in institutional buildings, from the development of the commercial arena in Victorian and Edwardian London, to the effects of current environmental concerns on the evaluation of urban and rural locations, the volume ultimately serves as a progressive connection of fields, minds, and outlooks through an innovative, pluralistic vision. This interdisciplinary focus not only emphasizes the centrality of spaces and places when disentangling the complexities comprising our past and present, but also suggests a more pluralistic approach for exploring fundamental concepts in future spaces and places studies. (shrink)

Different notions of multiple rationalities have recently been applied to describe the phenomena of co-existence of competing rationalities in organizations. These include institutional pluralism, institutional logics, competing rationalities and pluralistic contexts. The French pragmatic sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot have contributed to this line of research with a sophisticated theoretical framework of orders of worth, which has been applied in an increasing number of empirical studies. This article explores how the order of worth framework has been applied (...) to empirical studies of organizations. First, I summarize the basic ideas of the framework, stressing the aspects of special relevance for studies of organizations. Second, I review the empirical studies focusing on the coexistence of competing orders of worth in organizations showing that the order of worth framework primarily has been related to three main themes in organizational research: non-profit and co-operative organizations, inter-organizational co-operation, and organizational change. Third, I discuss how the pragmatic, process-oriented aspect of the research program, focusing on the intertwining of values and action in various forms of ‘justification work’, has been translated into empirical studies. I argue that even if highly interesting empirical studies have begun to appear on the pragmatic aspects of the order of worth program, empirical studies of ‘justification work’ may be a potentially very promising focus for future empirical studies. (shrink)

George Crowder’s article makes an interesting contribution to the literature on value pluralism. Yet, as a commentary onmy essay (Polanowska-Sygulska, 2019c) it is entirely misconceived. Crowder’s reading of my text is inadequate, in terms of both the legal and the philosophical aspects of my argument. Having ascribed to me the belief that pluralism always favors cultural diversity against legal uniformity (a belief which I do nothold), he argues that a single uniform law may engender more value diversity (...) than a multiplicity of local legal systems. This may indeed be so, but it is notmy concern. What Isaiah Berlin aimed at more than anything else was to bring about a decent society, which at times requires the pursuit of other values to be limited. I share his approach and therefore argue that, for the sake of decency, both value diversity and cultural diversity may sometimes need to be restricted. (shrink)

Computer simulation has become important in ecological modeling, but there have been few assessments on how complex simulation models differ from more traditional analytic models. In Part I of this paper, I review the challenges faced in complex ecological modeling and how models have been used to gain theoretical purchase for understanding natural systems. I compare the use of traditional analytic simulation models and point how that the two methods require different kinds of practical engagement. I examine a case study (...) of three models from the insect resistance literature in transgenic crops to illustrate and explore differences in analytic and computer simulation models. I argue that analyzing simulation models has been often inappropriately managed with expectations derived from handling analytic models. In Part II, I look at simulation as a hermeneutic practice. I argue that simulation models are a practice or techné. I the explore five aspects of philosophical hermeneutics that may be useful in complex ecological simulation: (1) an openness to multiple perspectives allowing multiple levels of scientific pluralism, (2) the hermeneutic circle, a back and forth in active communication among both modelers and ecologists; (3) the recognition of human factors and the nature of human practices as such, including recognizing the role of judgments and choices in the modeling enterprise; (4) the importance of play in modeling; (5) the non-closed nature of hermeneutic engagement, continued dialogue, and recognizing the situatedness, incompleteness, and tentative nature of simulation models. (shrink)

Does the way we think about our personal self-complexity affect how we accept others? Researchers have offered various conceptualizations of how individuals manage their complex identities, while others have identified links between cognitive complexity and acceptance of outgroups. This paper integrates the two bodies of work by positing a route by which personal identity conflicts may lead to cognitive and cultural pluralism. For individuals committed to multiple identities perceived as conflicting, the intra-psychic experience of value conflicts may lead (...) to a recognition of self-complexity, which is then transposed from the personal domain to the social one and expressed as a pluralistic attitude towards others. This argument find support in a study of Israeli Jewish Orthodox psychoanalytic therapists who belong to what they perceive as non-pluralistic religious groups, yet express value pluralism, which they attribute to their complex identities. One of the educational implications of this study is that facilitating engagement with internal complexity, multiple identities and personal value conflicts may promote pluralistic thinking for individuals in religious societies. (shrink)

This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.

The challenges, resulting from modernity’s secularized results, to philosophy mainly present as the following three aspects. First, whether philosophy also undergoes a similar secularizing process? Whether metaphysics should be abandoned, and enters into a “post-philosophy age”? In such a transformingprocess, how philosophy can find a right position for itself? Second, the challenge from the issue of monistic /pluralistic in modernity studying is the most central one. In order to answer the issue philosophically, it needs us to reconsider deeply the (...) concepts of “one and multiple”, “universal and particular” as well as theirrelations. This indicates not only that philosophy has to do explanations, but also that philosophy has to offer grounds for explanations. Thirdly, is philosophy of language able to become a paradigm for cognition? Can it have universality when the philosophical paradigm, abstracted from reflections on language,applies to explain things? Although the results of “linguistic turn” in 20th century enrich our understanding of language, but if philosophy wants to provide new grounds for knowledge, society and culture, then it ought to go out the circle of philosophy of language, and to find its new base. (shrink)

: National bioethics commissions have been critiqued for a variety of structural, procedural, and political aspects of their work. A more recent critique published by Dzur and Levin uses political philosophy to constructively critique the work of national bioethics commissions as public deliberative forums. However, this public forum critique of bioethics commissions ignores empirical research in political science and normative claims that suggest that advisory commissions can and should have diverse of functions beyond that of being public forums. The (...) present paper argues that the public forum critique too narrowly considers the roles that bioethics commissions can play in public bioethics and ignores the moral obligation of commissions to fulfill their mandates. Evaluations of commissions must consider that these institutions can serve in capacities other than those of a public deliberative forum and use additional measures to evaluate the multiple roles and successes of bioethics commissions in public policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Daoism, Practice, and Politics:From Nourishing Life to Ecological PraxisEric S. Nelson (bio)I. Daoism's Multiple ModelsManhua Li, Yumi Suzuki, and Lisa Indraccola have offered evocative insights, questions, and alternatives in their contributions concerning the arguments of Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life (Nelson 2021). The present brief response and sketch of the book will not address every point in their essays, but I will strive to reply, directly and (...) indirectly, to their primary concerns.First, it should be noted that I take a pluralistic conception of 'Daoisms' as my point of departure. This is necessary since Daoist studies have been hampered by overly ahistorical and one-sided definitions that prioritize one philosophical or religious moment (such as skepticism or mysticism) in historically complex and varied transmissions that encompass a multiplicity of texts and perspectives. Due to the fact of the plurality of incompatible kinds of Daoism in Chinese antiquity and in subsequent history, my text considers a range of early Daoist and Daoist-related perspectives in the context of their potential consequences for environmental philosophy, ethics, and politics. Consequently, my approach is primarily philosophical without limiting any text to being exclusively philosophical, religious, or rigidly committed to one perspective, which would be untrue to the sources themselves.Second, examining distinctive tendencies (modifying Graham 1989 and Liu 1994) in the Daodejing 道德經, the Zhuangzi 莊子, and related texts enables us to articulate distinctive and conflicting ecological, ethical, and political paradigms. In place of constructing a mythologizing ideological construction of 'Chinese culture' and Daoism as intrinsically 'Green', a familiar essentializing tendency that has provoked skepticism regarding the very possibility of Daoist environmental philosophy, my book provides a different 'critical Daoist' strategy. This alternative entails that Daoist exemplars can be deployed as therapeutic models in the present, while at [End Page 792] the same time confronting their ideological codifications and uses. Early Daoist sources have roamed on long intercultural journeys. The Daodejing and the Zhuangzi have provided elements for European thinking about civilization, technology, and nature from Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger (Nelson 2017) to Peter Sloterdijk's 'Euro-Taoism' (Sloterdijk 1989) to contemporary progressive Green movements (Joshi 2022) and even ecofascism (Lubarda 2020). Similarly, in the current Chinese context, Green Daoism has both critical and authoritarian ideological functions in visions of 'ecological civilization' (shengtai wenming 生態文明) (Schönfeld and Chen 2019) and fears of a 'green leviathan'. Accordingly, it is not accidental that my anarchistic and participatory democratic interpretation of one key thread, which I call 'ziranist' and clarify below, in early Daoist and Wei-Jin mysterious-learning (xuanxue 玄學) discourses, has led to the most intense discussions and controversies about this book. These include the contributions by Li, Suzuki, and Indraccola that propose questions and alternative possibilities concerning agency and responsiveness, authority and self-determination, freedom and fate, and adaptation and intervention, as well as purposive techniques and anti-purposive uselessness.Third, this hermeneutical strategy points toward the tertiary aspect of our preliminary definition of Daoism. It does not primarily name a philosophical theory or a religious worldview. It concerns shifting, overlapping, and diverging ensembles of discourse and practice. This is not the vague ahistorical idea of 'a way of life' but rather refers to how philosophy is enacted through a specific configuration of—to adopt early Greek expressions—logos as dis-course (e.g., argumentation, hermeneutics, logic, rhetoric), ethos (e.g., comportment, orientation, a way of dwelling), and praxis (practices of the self, with others, and with things and nature). Thus, the Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi collections can be analyzed textually and conceptually as having multiple threads (drawing on a variety of authors and sources) that form constellations in the received texts with better and worse historical, practical, and conceptual readings. My interpretive strategy in this discussion, which does not exclude other approaches, is that these texts express forms of practical instead of merely speculative philosophy. They are suggestive of an ethos of relational freedom, irreducible to rules and techniques, which dismantles hypostatized experiential and linguistic fixations, including moralistic fixations, in order to freely encounter the myriad things and enact and practice the dao in one's own singular way.'Critical Daoism', therefore, serves as a pluralistic, diagnostic, and practical designation... (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the doctrine that there are different ways or modes of being. In contemporary guise, it is the doctrine that a logically perspicuous description of reality will use multiple quantifiers which cannot be thought of as ranging over a single domain. Although thought defeated for some time, recent defenses have shown a number of arguments against the view unsound. However, another worry looms: that despite looking like an attractive alternative, ontological pluralism is really no different (...) than its counterpart, ontological monism. In this paper, after explaining the worry in detail, I argue that considerations dealing with the nature of the logic ontological pluralists ought to endorse, coupled with an attractive philosophical thesis about the relationship between logic and metaphysics, show this worry to be unfounded. (shrink)

Kilimanjaro is an example of what some philosophers would call a ‘vague object’: it is only roughly 5895 m tall, its weight is not precise and its boundaries are fuzzy because some particles are neither determinately part of it nor determinately not part of it. It has been suggested that this vagueness arises as a result of semantic indecision: it is because we didn’t make up our mind what the expression “Kilimanjaro” applies to that we can truthfully say such things (...) as “It is indeterminate whether this particle is part of Kilimanjaro”. After reviewing some of the limitations of this approach, I will propose an alternative account, based on a new semantic relation—multiple reference—capable of holding in a one-many pattern between a term and several objects in the domain. I will explain how multiple reference works, what differentiates it from plural reference and how it might be used to accommodate at least some aspects of our ordinary discourse about vague objects. (shrink)

We critically review themushrooming literature addressing the neuralmechanisms of moral cognition (NMMC), reachingthe following broad conclusions: (1) researchmainly focuses on three inter-relatedcategories: the moral emotions, moral socialcognition, and abstract moral reasoning. (2)Research varies in terms of whether it deploysecologically valid or experimentallysimplified conceptions of moral cognition. Themore ecologically valid the experimentalregime, the broader the brain areas involved.(3) Much of the research depends on simplifyingassumptions about the domain of moral reasoningthat are motivated by the need to makeexperimental progress. This is a (...) valuablebeginning, but as more is understood about theneural mechanisms of decision-making, morerealistic conceptions will need to replace thesimplified conceptions. (4) The neuralcorrelates of real-life moral cognition areunlikely to consist in anything remotely like a``moral module'' or a ``morality center.'' Moralrepresentations, deliberations and decisionsare probably highly distributed and notconfined to any particular brainsub-system. Discovering the basic neuralprinciples governing planning, judgment anddecision-making will require vastly more basicresearch in neuroscience, but correlatingactivity in certain brain regions withwell-defined psychological conditions helpsguide neural level research. Progress on socialphenomena will also require theoreticalinnovation in understanding the brain'sdistinctly biological form of computationthat is anchored by emotions, needs, drives,and the instinct for survival. (shrink)

Abstract The phenomenology of Multiple Personality (MP) syndrome is used to derive an Aristotelian explanation of the failure to achieve rational integration of mental content. An MP subject is best understood as having failed to master the techniques of integrating conative and cognitive aspects of her mental life. This suggests that in irrationality the subject may lack similar skills basic to the proper articulation and use of mental content in belief formation and control of action. The view that (...) emerges centres mind on the activity of a subject rather than a structured causal nexus. (shrink)

In this work we analyse the main interpretations of ownership in Original Institutional Economics (OIE) and their links with pragmatist psychology and psychoanalysis. We consider Thorstein Veblen's notion of ownership as a relation of possession of persons, and John R.Commons's distinction between “corporeal” and “intangible” property, that marks the shift from a material possession of goods and arbitrary power over the workers to the development of human faculties in a more participatory environment. For space reasons we do not address other (...) contributions developed both by the OIE and by the New Institutional Economics. We then consider a number of contributions of pragmatist social psychology and psychoanalysis that, although not dealing directly with the notion of ownership, can cast light not only on the private and “material“ aspects of ownership but also on its collective and “relational aspects”. The reason why we consider it useful to address different perspectives is that, as observed by the famous sociologist Karl Mannheim (1952), a landscape can be seen only from a determined perspective and without perspective there is no landscape. Hence, observing a landscape (or phenomenon) from different angles (or disciplines) can help to acquire a much clearer insight into the features of the various perspectives. And this is one of the main advantage of a pluralist approach to the study of economic and social phenomena, also aimed at overcoming the fragmentation so often present in social sciences. In this light, the interpretative theories that we address, however different in many respects, present notable complementarities, in the sense that the aspects more overlooked by some are more completely considered by the others. In our work, these different but complementary notions of ownership can help illuminate the manifold aspects of human relations, also with a view to provide a more tailored policy action for the solution of their more problematic aspects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of BeingLatimah-Parvin Peerwani ArlingtonMullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being. By Sajjad H. Rizvi. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East Series, edited by Ian Richard Netton. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xii + 222. Hardcover $135.00.In Mullā Ṣadrā and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being, Sajjad H. Rizvi focuses on tashkīk (modulation), variously translated as the systematic ambiguity, analogical gradation, or just (...) gradation of being from the perspective of Mullā Ṣadrā, comparing it with classical Islamic philosophy and contemporary Western philosophy. He states that he makes two major claims in this study. First, he argues that modulation is a hermeneutic concept that describes the threefold division of being and its gradation. Second, gradation and modulation occur in each mode of being. Each mode of being refers to a branch of Ṣadrā's philosophy: mental being is a discussion of epistemology and psychology; 'being-in-language' is critical to Sadrian semantic theory; being in re focuses on 'traditional metaphysics.' But the philosophy of Ṣadrā is not compartmentalized; being cuts across these fields and unites them. Each mode of being as modulated shares features of intensification. According to Rizvi, Ṣadrā has extended the normal understanding of modulation and of being beyond the simple division of the two realms of mental and concrete existence to bring out the semantics of being. This aspect of Islamic philosophy, according to Rizvi, has often been neglected (p. 3). [End Page 278]This study consists of an Introduction and two parts. In the Introduction, Rizvi states the problem of tashkīk as the central hermeneutic of Ṣadrian ontology. An analysis of this critical concept, according to Rizvi, facilitates our understanding of Ṣadrā's position on a wide variety of important philosophical issues such as predication, the problem of reconciling unity and plurality in being, and God-world relationship. It provides an answer to the age-old problem of the One and the many, and the median way between the ontological monism of Ibn ʿArabi and the metaphysical pluralism of Avicenna. Rizvi says that according to Ṣadrā there are four levels of being: the concept of being, its reality, its uttered manifestation (sound), and its written manifestation.Part 1 consists of two chapters. In the first chapter Rizvi outlines his methodology and some of his assumptions about the cultural history of the period and the context of Ṣadrā. The significant contention, according to Rizvi, is that a proper understanding of Ṣadrā's philosophy requires an appreciation of philosophy in the Neoplatonic traditions "as a way of life" that is often closely related to spiritual practice and religious commitment. The aim of philosophical inquiry for Ṣadrā, according to Rizvi, is therapy for the rational soul and its perfecting and development in its path of return to its origins in the One.Four methodological approaches are utilized in this study. (1) Tashkīk is seen as the central hermeneutic of Ṣadrian metaphilosophy, and not ontology; Rizvi argues that tashkīk is a central guiding principle in Ṣadrā's metaphilosophy and permeates all branches of his philosophical system. (2) The aporetic method is used in analyzing Ṣadrā's philosophy. (3) Rizvi maintains that Ṣadrā's philosophy is processual, for it represents a shift from substance to process metaphysics. (4) Ṣadrian hikmat (philosophy, wisdom) is approached as a metaphilosophical inquiry. Metaphysics is a foundational science for Ṣadrā, instrumental in the possibility of acquiring knowledge and in the construction of definitions and meaningful discourse. Hikmat, according to Rizvi, is doubly transcendent, (1) as a higher synthesis of Avicennan, Illuminationist, Sufi, and esoteric Shiʿite systematic thought, and (2) as a prophetic philosophy that claims to be derived from direct 'revelation.'The second chapter introduces the tashkīk (modulation) of being. Rizvi traces its historical development from the Aristotelian pros hen homonym to Avicenna, Nasir al-Din Tusi, and Ibn ʿArabi, and offers an account of an intensifying scale of being toward a hierarchy of being that is singular but with multiple degrees defined by their intensity, that is, in terms of scales of intensification and deliberation. He makes explicit the Neoplatonic logic of being that this implies and examines how... (shrink)