A review of Michael Zimmerman's wonderful book, _Living with Uncertainty_. Among other things, I argue that there might be something wrong with combining possibilism and perspectivism.

Description: Since its inception, the discussion surrounding Open Theism has been dominated by polemics. On crucial philosophical issues, Openness proponents have largely been devoted to explicating the underlying framework and logical arguments supporting their perspective against competing theological and philosophical perspectives. As a result, very little constructive work has been done on the interconnections between Open Theism and the natural sciences. Given the central place of sciences in today's world, any perspective that hopes to have a broad impact must necessarily (...) address such disciplines in a sustained and constructive manner. To date such engagements from the Openness perspective have been rare. God in an Open Universe addresses this deficiency. This book demonstrates that Open Theism makes a distinctive and highly fruitful contribution to the conversation and constructive work occurring between philosophy, theology, and the sciences. The various essays explore subjects ranging from physics to prayer, from special relativity to divine providence, from metaphysics to evolution, and from space-time to God. All who work at the intersection of theology and the sciences will benefit greatly from these essays that break new ground in this important conversation. Endorsements: ""These essays present what is, in my view, the most promising development in theological thinking in our time, and they do so in a way that is both scholarly and accessible. The book is a must for anyone interested in Christian faith and in science."" -Keith Ward University of Oxford ""Open theists affirm the same openness of the future that religious believers assume when they pray and almost all humans assume when they act. The open future is intuitive; but can it be rigorously defended? God in an Open Universe shows that it can. Open theism has always been an attractive view of God; now it becomes a philosophically rigorous one as well. -Philip Clayton Claremont School of Theology About the Contributor(s): William Hasker is Profesor Emeritus of Philosophy at Huntington University. He is the author of numerous articles and five books, including The Emergent Self and The Triumph of God Over Evil. Thomas Jay Oord is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Defining Love and Creation Made Free. Dean Zimmerman is Professor in the philosophy department at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is editor or co-editor of several books, including (with Peter van Inwagen) Persons: Human and Divine. (shrink)

During the past several years, numerous studies have been conducted regarding advance directives for health care). Studies have examined how many individuals have executed advance directives, who is more likely to execute such directives, and whether factors such as education, income, race, religiosity, or family status affect the likelihood of having executed an advance directive or one's willingness to do so. Studies have also investigated the effectiveness of different educational strategies aimed at increasing the number of individuals who execute these (...) documents. Finally, a number of researchers have looked at the implementation of advance directives.Although we now have a better understanding of some of these issues, one area that has been virtually ignored is the reliability, validity, and overall user friendliness of the advance directive forms themselves, and, in particular, of the statutory advance directive forms. (shrink)

Interstices of the Sublime represents a powerful theological engagement with psychoanalytic theory in Freud, Lacan, Kristeva and Zi zek, as well as major expressions of contemporary Continental philosophy, including Deleuze, Derrida, Marion, and Badiou. Through creative and constructive psycho-theological readings of topics such as sublimation, schizophrenia, God, and creation ex nihilo, this book contributes to a new form of radical theological thinking that is deeply involved in the world. Here the idea of the Kantian sublime is read into Freud and (...) Lacan, and compared with sublimation. The sublime refers to a conflict of the Kantian faculties of reason and imagination, and involves the attempt to represent what is intrinsically unrepresentable. Sublimation, by contrast, involves the expression and partial satisfaction of primal desires in culturally acceptable terms. The sublime is negatively expressed in sublimation, because it is both the "source" of sublimation as well as that which resists being sublimated. That is, the Freudian sublime is related to the process of sublimation, but it also distorts or disrupts sublimation, and invokes what Lacan calls the Real. The effects of the sublime are not just psychoanalytic but, importantly, theological, because the sublime is the main form that "God" takes in the modern world. A radical postmodern theology attends to the workings of the sublime in our thinking and living, and provides resources to understand the complexity of reality. This book is one of the first sustained theological readings of Lacan in English. (shrink)

This chapter surveys elements of non-human cognition to explore ways to think across the boundary that is usually asserted between living and machinic intelligence, mainly drawing on the work of Catherine Malabou and N. Katherine Hayles. Many continental philosophers follow Martin Heidegger in his sceptical approach to modern technology, even if Heidegger advocates for a more authentic retrieval of Greek techne. Here, however, this chapter engages with Catherine Malabou’s recent book, Morphing Intelligence, to see how she conjoins a biological model (...) of neuroplasticity to a machinic conception of artificial intelligence. Malabou argues that the science of epigenetics applies to both living organisms and machines. Although her earlier work focuses more on biology and the living brain, Malabou comes to view AI in more plastic terms as well. She claims that a better understanding of automatism views plasticity in both neurological and cybernetic terms. These forms of plasticity not only are shaped but also shape material, machinic, and biological form in new and generative ways. Plasticity is not simply malleability, but a kind of programmativity that embodies a kind of metamorphosis. Hayles’s work helps supplement Malabou’s insights. In her book Unthought, Hayles demonstrates how cognition operates beyond consciousness in both organic and machinic terms. The expansion of cognition beyond its restriction to human consciousness allows a better, more plastic, ecology within which to think about all these various forms of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. (shrink)

_Secular Theology_ brings together new writings by some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers on the viability of secular theology. Critically assessing Radical Orthodoxy and putting American radical theology in context, it provides new resources for philosophical theology. Themes covered include postmodern theology, ethics, psychoanalysis, the death of God and medieval theology.

This series relates past thought from the history of Western theological traditions to areas of contemporary concern in fresh, innovative, and constructive ways.

"Us-and-Them fiction" of any sort has never particularly interested me. … Identity is basically a synonym for category, and while categories make language possible, they make problems in life—especially when your try to assign subjects to them. People almost never fit, or never fit for long.In a 2015 interview with Cecilia D'Anastasio, Samuel Delany shares his motivations for writing science fiction from his position as a queer black man. Despite his trepidation about the limiting "categories" within "us-and-them-fiction," and the dangers (...) of essentialist identity politics, Delany notes that his experiences are embedded in each of his texts—even when the protagonists are heterosexual, Asian, Native American, or... (shrink)

This article analyzes news coverage of mass murders in Time and Newsweek for the period 1984 to 1991 for evidence of disproportionate, perhaps politically motivated coverage of certain categories of mass murder. Discusses ethical problems related to news and entertainment attention to mass murder, and suggests methods of enhancing the public's understanding of the nature of murder.

This article investigates the role of the body in Jean-Luc Nancy’s powerful essay Corpus, and critiques it from the standpoint of Agamben’s biopolitics. For Nancy, the body becomes the privileged site of both existence and sense in a way that threatens to obscure the logic of exceptional decision that Agamben takes from Carl Schmitt. As an alternative to Nancy’s understanding of the body, we can see in Deleuze a series of bodies that works in parallel to a series of sense (...) or language, where sense and body do not get collapsed into each other. At the same time, contemporary continental philosophy resists the idealistic separation of thinking and embodiment. Deleuze calls this relation between sense and body a cut, but we could also consider a parallax, following Slavoj Zizek. Finally, African-American historian of religion Charles H. Long’s work complements some of Deleuze’s insights in a more explicitly postcolonial context. (shrink)

Ralph Ellis discusses inspiration in important philosophical and psychological ways, and this response to his essay both appreciates and amplifies his discussion and its conclusions by framing them in terms of sublimation and speech, using insights from the work of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. Inspiration is not derived from another plane of existence, but refers to tbe creation of human meaning and value. Inspiration as a form of sublimation conceives sublimation as a process of substitution that avoids (...) elevating a phenomenon from a lower material to a higher spiritual level, and speech can be seen as a complex form of inspiration that forms along what Deleuze calls a plateau. Speech as inspiration is both physiological breath and productive of cognitive and emotional significance. I conclude with abrief consideration of inspiration as speech in Cormac McCarthey’s novel The Road. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers by Henry Somers-HallClayton CrockettSOMERS-HALL, Henry. Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 264 pp. Cloth, $99.99Henry Somers-Hall's book examines how French philosophers in the twentieth century develop a logic of thinking based on sense that is both influenced by but also counters Kant's paradigm (...) of thinking, which is based on judgment. Beginning with Kant and German idealism, including the German responses to Kant in the work of Hölderlin, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, this book then carefully draws out the ways that Bergson, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze all work against this understanding of thinking as judging by showing how our experience and our thought precede the categories of judgment.In chapter 1, Somers-Hall carefully sets out Kant's model of thinking and shows how the categories of philosophical thought are fundamentally based on how we judge our sensible intuitions. Judgment is at the center of Kant's thought, and this is apparent in the Critique of Pure Reason, including the famous Transcendental Deduction. Our knowledge has a legislative function in relation to objects, and conscious synthesis takes the form of a judgment. Despite their criticisms of Kant, later German idealists do not fundamentally depart from this modality of judgment that takes place at the center of their philosophy. Even though they put Kant's concepts in motion, it remains a structure of judgment that is understood as dynamic.Chapter 2 turns to Bergson, to show how his emphasis on immediate experience precedes categorical judgement. Bergson distinguishes between temporal and spatial multiplicities, and argues that temporal multiplicities that are expressed in terms of duration underlie the spatial ones that contribute to judgment. Duration is a deeper experience of time that is associated with life. Somers-Hall in chapter 3 examines Sartre's writings on imagination to show how consciousness is a pure relation and an affective mode of thinking that underlies the categorial mode of judgment.Most of these French philosophers develop their accounts of noncategorial sense in either explicit or implicit relation to Kant's philosophy. Merleau-Ponty is no exception, and in chapter 4 we see how it is the organization of perception that gives sense to the world, and this precedes and generates "our reflective categories of judgement." Judgment emerges out of perception, although Merleau-Ponty grounds perception in the embodied person. Derrida does not ground sense or [End Page 365] thinking in a body, but looks for noncategorial grounds that make possible "surface structures of thinking." In chapter 5, Somers-Hall elaborates Derrida's famous nonconcept of différance, which underlies and makes possible our concepts of voice and writing that appear to be oppositions but in fact are not because they rely on each other. Différance is not a concept; it is prior to conceptual determination, and it "operates as an 'origin' that has none of the traits of the structure of judgement."Foucault relies on Kant for his three epistemes of resemblance, representation, and the human being, modern man. Chapter 6 shows how Foucault is concerned in both his archaeology and his genealogy with opening up the structures of power that make any juridical ordering possible. Here a productive biopower works beneath what we recognize more explicitly as "juridico-discursive power" in both positive and negative ways that escape the grasp of a philosophy that is solely based on judgment.In chapter 7 Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze's concept of intensity underlies all forms of representational judgment. Intensity operates according to a process of differentiation that produces a logic of sense, which we miss when we grasp onto a "dogmatic image of thought" that "prevents a genuine encounter with the world [that] conditions us to understand it in terms of unified subjects who make sense of the world in terms of judgements." We think in response to a shock or an encounter with something in the world that forces us to think and to make sense. We form judgments retroactively, by reducing differences to... (shrink)

This chapter discusses the connection between postmodernism and natural theology. It argues that, in a narrow sense, we need to get beyond the limits of a postmodernism obsessed with language and culture to the exclusion of nature, which is partly the consequence of its American reception and engagement by philosophers, social scientists, and literary theorists who have applied post-structuralism to the contemporary American academy, with its strong methodological divide between the humanities and the natural sciences. In a broad sense, postmodern (...) and post-structuralist insights and ideas are still vitally relevant to re-conceptualizing nature in various ways, including theological ones. Here both complexity theories and postmodern ideas deform traditional notions of theology, so that a postmodern natural theology would not be a traditional or neo-orthodox form of theology, but a more radical and open form of theological questioning and understanding. (shrink)

In his essay ‘The Deconstruction of Christianity’, Jean-Luc Nancy identifies Christianity with the heart of the West, thus following René Girard's claim that Christianity is the religion that exposes the workings of scapegoating and mimetic violence that drive most religions and cultures. However, in On Touching, Derrida distances himself from Nancy's project, and I argue that this is precisely because he is aware that a straightforward embrace of the deconstruction of Christianity is a ruse, as it will end up in (...) a Christian victory that ultimately overcomes deconstruction. The problem, however, is that a simple opposition to Christianity is also insufficient because it gets caught in a similar trap where Christianity ultimately wins (religion will always triumph, as Lacan says). The workings of this ‘trap’ will be explored through a reading of Derrida's essay ‘What is a Relevant Translation?’ and particularly his discussion of Shylock's situation in Merchant of Venice, where Derrida recognizes the ruse of Christianity in its ability to trump Shylock's literal translation of the law, but still he ‘insist[s] on the Christian dimension’. Why? To answer this question this paper turns to another: how do we survive Christianity? (shrink)

_Secular Theology_ brings together new writings by some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers on the viability of secular theology. Critically assessing Radical Orthodoxy and putting American radical theology in context, it provides new resources for philosophical theology. Themes covered include postmodern theology, ethics, psychoanalysis, the death of God and medieval theology.

This article develops an argument about the time-image in the thought of Gilles Deleuze, and relates it to a broader Continental philosophy of technology and culture, including Kant, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Antonio Negri. After grounding a consideration of Deleuze in relation to Heidegger's thesis concerning technology, a constructive interpretation of the time-image is developed in the context of Deleuze's work. The time-image is related to Deleuze's early work on Kant's philosophy and his book Difference and (...) Repetition, as well as to his important books on cinema, in which the time-image is opposed to the movement-image. The time-image is seen to make up the heart of subjectivity, because it concerns not only external technologies, but also how the self relates to itself internally. This understanding of the time-image is then contrasted with the work of Baudrillard and Virilio. Finally, the contrast between the time-image and the movement-image is shown to possess political implications, partly with the help of Negri. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.24(3) 2005: 176-188. (shrink)

The authority of the social : a pragmatic ethos of enquiry -- Rorty and continental political thought : ontology, naturalism and history -- Theorizing after foundations : ontology, language, and heidegger -- Reconstructing naturalism : pragmatic or ontological? -- History and modernity : self-assertion and critical reflexivity -- Rorty's insights for contemporary political theory : pragmatic socio- -- Political criticism -- Pragmatic political thinking : Rorty in contemporary critical social theory -- Rorty and political theory : how pragmatism constrains and (...) enables political -- Thinking. (shrink)

In the division between analytic and continental thought, pragmatism has often been cast as a middle way. Fundamentally critical of each, it also shares resonances with both of these traditions. However, while this observation is common, remarkably little has been done to examine its truth in contemporary political thought. Drawing on recent trends in political theory, including ‘New Realism’, critical genealogical methods and a surge in pragmatic approaches, this article identifies an emerging situated turn in political thought. Emerging from several (...) major traditions in contemporary political thinking, this trend has pragmatic themes at its centre. Having identified this as a fertile opportunity for inter-methodological work across the analytic/continental divide, it then turns to the late work of Richard Rorty in order to expose his productive framework for such cross-border exchanges. Arguing for its fundamentally democratic and pluralistic nature, this analysis also exposes this framework’s weaknesses before illustrating how recent methodological exchanges between genealogy and pragmatism rectify these deficiencies while providing a viable model for future work across traditional philosophical boundaries. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712129; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 207-225.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 222-225.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

In philosophy and political theory, divisions come and go, but some persist despite being obviously problematic. The analytic and Continental divide is one such division. In political philosophy and political theory, the division has been particularly pronounced. Analytic and Continental thinkers are divided not only over substantial issues but also over the very nature of political theorising. In spite of this fundamental nature, theorists often seem to assume that, as a division, the analytic/Continental divide requires no explanation. We suggest that, (...) as a central division within political theory, and despite being acknowledged as problematic for quite some time, it has persisted because it has not been adequately examined. Once examined, the division turns out to be operationally weaker than it once was. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in engaging thinkers from the other side. This has been accompanied by a corresponding tendency, among both analytic and Continental philosophers and political thinkers, to reflect on the nature of their own tradition and ‘philosophy’. Both traditions have entered a self-conscious period of meta-reflection. Such questioning indicates the possibility of transformation within both groups, in the absence of settled frameworks and divisions. However, it is also clear that such signs are the beginning of the possibility of a new relation rather than a sign of the eclipse of the division. The continued institutional separation and the space between their respective philosophical vocabularies suggest that, while the time is ripe for work here, there is still much to be done. (shrink)

The claim that the ideal of equality has a role to play in the critique of discrimination in employment and education has been rejected by a number of philosophers. Certain anti-egalitarians argue that the appeal to equality is redundant; others that egalitarianism misdirects us or fails to explain our special hostility towards discrimination. This article sketches an egalitarian conception of justice in selection and explains what is distinctive about such conceptions. Thereafter, it attempts to rebut the important objections that have (...) been raised against egalitarian accounts of discrimination. (shrink)

Christopher Southgate has made important contributions to theodicy and the theory of divine action in light of the contingency in evolution and the suffering of creation. What happens then when one thinks through the implications of contingency for Christology? One can admit that aesthetic and moral judgments are products of a contingent history and yet affirm that they really are valid. Similarly, we argue, one can acknowledge the contingency of Jesus’ existence, actions, and subsequent impact and still maintain that his (...) will was uniquely united with the divine will. Following a critical engagement with the recent work of Keith Ward, we argue that a high Christology is compatible with the actual contingencies of evolutionary and social history, without the necessity of interventionist divine action. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi was perhaps the most important emergence theorist of the middle of the 20th century. As the key link between the British Emergentists of the 1920s and the explosion of emergence theory in the 1990s, he played a crucial role in resisting reductionist interpretations of science and keeping the concept of emergence alive. Polanyi’s position on emergence is described and its major strengths and weaknesses are analyzed. Using Polanyi as the foundation, the article surveys the major contemporary options in (...) thephilosophy of mind and defends a particular understanding of the relationship of mental properties to brain states. (shrink)

This chapter offers an account of political or citizenship education. It argues that a central feature of citizenship education in a liberal society is the development of a sense of justice, and the virtues of civility and reciprocity that are constitutive of that sense. The discussion begins with the analysis of Brighouse’s consent-based objections to the shaping of political motivations. An alternative political motivation model is defended, which draws on Rawls’s account of the natural duty of justice. The aims of (...) political education, with respect to the skills, attitudes and values of liberal citizens, are briefly discussed. Education for justice rejects the view that political education should seek to cultivate a sense of nationality. The aims of political education in the context of questions about global justice are considered. Certain educational issues that arise in the non-ideal world from the point of view of developing a sense of justice are addressed. (shrink)

Policy-makers must allocate scarce resources to support constituents’ health needs. This requires policy-makers to be able to evaluate health states and allocate resources according to some principle of allocation. The most prominent approach to evaluating health states is to appeal to the strength of people’s preferences to avoid occupying them, which we refer to as decision utility metrics. Another approach, experienced utility metrics, evaluates health states based on their hedonic quality. In this article, we argue that although decision utility metrics (...) face a number of significant problems, the appropriate response to these problems is not to replace them with experienced utility metrics. Rather, decision utility metrics should be employed in conjunction with experienced utility metrics. Specifically, respondents to decision utility surveys should be provided with the results of experienced utility metrics in an effort to make their decisions better informed and more robust to the deficiencies of decision utility metrics. Ultimately, this approach would improve quality-adjusted life year calculations and enhance the decision-making of policy-makers in allocating resources to support constituents’ health needs. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * A Neuroscientific Theory of Cognition: The Global Workspace Model * The Burden of Proof and the Loss of Innocence * The Harshest Attack on Freedom and Consciousness: Daniel Dennett * A More Radical Entailment? * Consciousness as an Emergent Property * Conclusion * Notes.

God Beyond Orthodoxy: Process Theology for the 21stcentury.