"Plato's Gift to Christianity is a book for all who seek to understand the beauty and depth of the Christian faith: for family discussions of values, virtues, and happiness; for educators who teach about the founding of Western Civilization and its basis of ethics; and especially for the Christian clergy who are not familiar with the Greek Classical and Platonic influence upon the making of Christianity. Dr. Ehrlich has presented here a most comprehensive study on the Platonic teachings adopted (...) by the New Testament and Early Church." --. (shrink)

Contents/Inhalt: Preface. Vorwort. Abbreviations/Siglen. I. JASPERS ON WORLD PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY/JASPERS ÜBER WELT-PHILOSOPHIE UND WELTGESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE. Nekrolog von Karl Jaspers selbst verfaßt. Obituary by Karl Jaspers himself. Karl JASPERS: Weltgeschichte der Philosophie - Zweites Buch: Geschichte der Gehalte: Einleitung. Karl JASPERS: World History of Philosophy - Second Volume: History of the Substantive Contents of Philosophic Thought. Introduction. II. INTRODUCTION/EINLEITUNG. Leonard H. EHRLICH: Opening Remarks. Introduction of Jeanne Hersch, Honorary President of the Conference. Jeanne HERSCH: Von (...) der Wirkung einer "philosophia negativa". III. LEGACY AND TASK. VERMÄCHTNIS UND AUFGABE. Leonard H. EHRLICH: Ausblick: Vernunft, Geist, Geschichte. Sawako HANYU: the Concept of the "Encompassing" in World Philosophy. Andreas RINOFNER: Periechontologie und Weltgeschichte der Philosophie. Systematische Bemerkungen zu einem aufschlußreichen Verhältnis. Richard WISSER: Projekt und Vision einer "Weltgeschichte der Philosophie" und "Weltphilosophie" als Folgen der "Grundverfassung" von Karl Jaspers. IV. DIMENSIONS OF COMMUNICATION/RÄUME DER KOMMUNIKATION. Andreas CESANA: Grenzen der Rationalität und Kommunikation. Brenio ONETTO-BÄCHLER: Existentielle Kommunikation bei Jaspers. Czes_awa PIECUCH: Es ist gleichgültig, wer die Wahrheit ausspricht. Über die Uneigennützigkeit der existentiellen Kommunikation. Oswald O. SCHRAG: Existence, Existenz, and Social Organization. Vladimir KATASONOV: The Gadfly, Stinging the Sluggish Horse: The Socratic Mission of Jaspers's Philosophy. V. COMMUNICATIVE WORLD HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY/KOMMUNIKATIVE WELTGESCHICHTE DER PHILOSOPHIE. Albrecht KIEL: Die Weisen des Umgreifenden, die der Mensch ist: Wege zu Jaspers' Periechontologie. Maria Luisa BASSO: K. Jaspers - N. Berdiaeff: une confrontation entre deux philosophies de l'histoire. Convergence et divergence d'affirmations. Inigo BOCKEN: Kommunikation und Mutmaßung. Versuch eines Vergleichs zwischen Jaspers' Idee einer Philosophie der Kommunikation und Nikolaus von Kues' Kunst der Mutmaßungen. Boles_aw ANDRZEJEWSKI: Jaspers' Stellung zur Romantik im Lichte seiner Sprachphilosophie. Endre KISS: Karl Jaspers' Auslegung Nietzsches als eines Metaphysikers der Immanenz. Danièle MOYAL-SHARROCK: Genie et Folie selon Jaspers. Milan UZELAC: The World and Existence. Pablo LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ: Das Studium der Philosophie als Studium der Weltgeschichte der Philosophie. VI. COMMUNICATIVE WORLD PHILOSOPHY: EAST AND WEST/KOMMUNIKATIVE WELTPHILOSOPHIE: OST UND WEST. Wonjae LEE: Karl Jaspers und das Weltproblem des interreligiösen Dialogs. Silvia MARZANO: Comunicazione mondiale, kantismo e frattura dell'essere in Karl Jaspers. Una "terza via" fra Occidente e Oriente? Indu SARIN: Jaspers's Quest for Existential Communication. Mohammed MARUF: Jaspers and Iqbal on Self, Freedom and Communication. Subhadr PANYADEEP: Ich und Nicht-Ich bei Jaspers und im Buddhismus. Kazuteru FUKUI: Das Wesen des Buddhismus und Jaspers' Philosophie. Yukio MASUBUCHI: Jaspers und Nishida. Eine Theorie des "Topos" in der Lehre von der Kommunikation. Hans SANER: Weltphilosophie und Globalkultur im interkulturellen Vergleich mit den Konzepten "Weltmusik" und "Weltkunst". Gerhard RAUCHE: The Paradox of " Das Scheitern " as a World Formula. VII. COMMUNICATIVE WORLD PHILOSOPHY: FREEDOM AND TOLERANCE/KOMMUNIKATIVE WELTPHILOSOPHIE: FREIHEIT UND TOLERANZ. Anna MASÓ-MONCLÚS: Libertad y autoridad en Hannah Arendt y Karl Jaspers. Otmar KLEIN: "Weltverabsolutierung" und Verantwortungsverlust. Kurt SALAMUN: Grenzen der Toleranz. Zum Offenheits- und Toleranzparadigma in der Philosophie von Karl Jaspers. Giorgio PENZO: Politik als Ethos und das Problem der Freiheit bei Jaspers. Gerhard KNAUSS: Von der Weimarer Republik zur Weltpolitik. Wandlungen in Jaspers' Auffassung und Wertung der Politik von der Heidelberger Frühschrift "Die geistige Situation der Zeit" bis zu den Basler Spätschriften. Hermann-Josef SEIDENECK: Freiheit und Wiedervereinigung auf dem Prüfstand. Prognose und Ergebnis unter dem Blickwinkel von existentieller Kommunikation im Welthorizont. Appendix/Anhang. (shrink)

: Fodor was passionately unwilling to compromise. Of his several commitments, I focus here on informational atomism. Fodor staunchly rejected semantic holism for two conspiring reasons. He took it to threaten his commitment to the nomic character of psychological explanation. He also took it to pave the way towards relativism, which he found deeply offensive. In this paper, I reconstruct the strands of Fodor’s commitment to the computational version of the representational theory of mind that led him to informational atomism. (...) I take issue with three features of informational atomism. First, I argue that it deprives content from its expected causal role in psychological explanation. Secondly, I take issue with Fodor’s claim that only informational atomism can meet the requirements of the principle of compositionality. Finally, I argue that informational atomism yields a bloated or unwieldy category of nomic properties. Keywords: Informational Atomism; Representational Theory of Mind; Psychological Explanation; Principle of Compositionality; Jerry A. Fodor Fare i conti con l’atomismo informazionale: uno dei lasciti di Jerry Fodor Riassunto : Fodor è stato fortemente maldisposto al compromesso. Tra le molte cose di cui si è occupato, intendo qui concentrarmi sull’atomismo informazionale. Fodor ha coerentemente rifiutato l’olismo semantico per due ragioni convergenti. Lo vedeva come minaccia per il suo impegno verso il carattere nomico della spiegazione psicologica e come porta aperta verso il relativismo, cosa che considerava profondamente minacciosa. In questo lavoro, intendo riprendere le fila dell’impegno di Fodor verso la versione computazionale della teoria rappresentazionale della mente che lo ha portato all’atomismo informazionale, chiarendo tuttavia che non sono d’accordo con tre aspetti dell’atomismo informazionale. In primo luogo, mostrerò come questo sottragga al contenuto il suo ruolo causale nella spiegazione psicologica. In secondo luogo, non sono d’accordo con l’affermazione di Fodor per cui solo l’atomismo informazionale possa soddisfare i requisiti del principio di composizionalità. Illustrerò infine come l’atomismo informazionale ceda il passo a un insieme di proprietà nomiche ampio o difficile da gestire. Parole chiave: Atomismo informazionale; Teoria rappresentazionale della mente; Spiegazione psicologica; Principio di composizionalità; Jerry A. Fodor. (shrink)

Riassunto: Lo statuto della psicologia come scienza speciale è l’oggetto del dibattito pluridecennale intercorso tra Jerry Fodor e Jaegwon Kim. La questione epistemologica delle leggi delle scienze cognitive si intreccia inestricabilmente con riflessioni di tipo metafisico sul dilemma mente-corpo: se Fodor ammette la validità delle leggi psicologiche, considerate irriducibili alle leggi della fisica, il fisicalismo riduzionista di Kim esclude invece tale possibilità. Così, il dialogo tra i due paradigmi funzionalisti delinea una serie di snodi problematici relativi sia allo status (...) delle proprietà mentali, come alla possibilità di una scienza che possa aprirsi alla inter-specificità, o alla trasversalità delle strutture di implementazione. Centrale, nel dibattito, è la nozione di realizzabilità multipla: tale argomento, che viene addotto a sostegno di un certo grado di autonomia del mentale, viene da Kim giudicato, invece, essenzialmente aporetico. Parole chiave: Filosofia della mente; Scienze cognitive; Realizzabilità multipla; Funzionalismo; Fisicalismo riduzionista Fodor, Kim and the autonomy of cognitive sciences: The status of psychology as a special science is the main topic of the debate between two of the most important philosophers of mind in our times: Jerry Fodor and Jaegwon Kim. The epistemology of psychological laws is inextricably intertwined with the metaphysical quarrel over the mind-body problem. Fodor argues for the validity of psychological laws and their irreducibility to physical ones, whereas Kim’s reductive physicalism rules out their validity. Therefore, the dialogue between these two functionalist paradigms covers a range of open questions concerning the status of mental properties within a physicalist framework, as well as questions concerning the possibility of cross-species cognitive sciences. The notion of multiple realization is a pivotal point in this debate: it should indicate that the mind enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, yet Kim judges it to be aporetic in nature. Keywords: Philosophy of Mind; Cognitive Sciences; Multiple Realization; Functionalism; Reductive Physicalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that in addition to the familiar approach using formal contexts, there is now a need in artificial intelligence to study contexts as social constructs. As a successful example of the latter approach, I draw attention to 'interpretation' (in the sense of literary theory), viz. the reconstruction of the intended meaning of a literary text that takes into account the context in which the author assumed the reader would place the text. An important contribution here comes from Wendell (...) Harris, enumerating the seven crucial dimensions of context: knowledge of reality, knowledge of language, and the authorial, generic, collective, specific, and textual dimensions. Finally, two recent approaches to interpretation, due to Jon Barwise and Jerry Hobbs, are analyzed as useful attempts which also come to grips with the notion of context. It must be noted that there has been a considerable body of contributions connecting linguistic structure with social context. For example, anthropological linguistics, from Bronislaw Malinowski onwards, has underlined the cultural context of discourse as essential to meaning. This viewpoint became prominent with the emergence of the ethnography of speaking in anthropology. Thus, conversation analysis represents a consistent formal effort to contribute to an analysis of the nature of context. While this paper emphasizes and reviews the literary theory approach, it makes various contacts with works of the latter kind (e.g., the landmark contributions of Erving Goffman, John Gumperz, William Hanks, John Heritage, Dell Hymes, et al.) in order to deliver a more balanced and complete study of the dimensions of context. (shrink)

Journalistic practice and professionalism across the globe are characterized by certain universals as well as unique particularities. In most post-colonial societies, the ethical philosophies and professional ethos of journalists reflect the tension between the commitment to integrity and social responsibility, shared by journalists worldwide, and the contextual interpretation and application of these principles. This article examines the ethics and ethos of development journalism as a philosophically, culturally, and historically evolving professional ideology. It surveys the ethical landscape of development journalists and (...) shows how development journalists balance the dialectic of a universalist ethical philosophy and a relativistic professional ethos. (shrink)

In response to Lisa Sideris's provocative new book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge and the Natural World and in conversation with voices from feminist technoscience, this article challenges the deracinated wonder of new cosmology encounters in two senses. First, by tracing how it is uprooted from critical perspectives on scientific knowledge production. And second, by contending deracinated wonder is ripped from cultural and historical contexts thus erasing embodied inequalities. Deracinated wonder attached to uncritical forms of science, I argue, solidifies new cosmology (...) as an investment in white environmentalism by directing religion and ecology away from pluralities of encounter and the affective weight of environmental degradation and environmental racism. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between medical technology and liminal states of “undeath” as presented in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and the real-life case of Jahi McMath, who was maintained on life support for over four years following a diagnosis of brain death. Through this juxtaposition, “Valdemar” comes to function as a modern fable, an uneasy herald of medical technology’s potential to create liminal states between life and death. The ability to transgress these boundaries bears a (...) cost, however: both Valdemar and Jahi McMath lose the autonomy to direct their respective narratives. Yet, their utterances “from beyond the grave” highlight the precarious nature of their position and the ethical concerns therein. Poe’s literary performance of “undeath” therefore serves to caution real-life cases in which life support is used to sustain an individual reported to be brain-dead. Such application of life-sustaining technology complicates the fundamental binary of life/death, allowing its subjects to resist textual closure. Even as Poe’s work represents an imaginative interrogation of the scientific enterprise, this nineteenth-century story holds a mirror to contemporary medical practice, inviting a reconsideration of the ethics, language, and power relations surrounding the fraught relationship between death and medical technology. (shrink)

Drawing on findings from an original national survey experiment, we unpack Americans’ views on the employment of mothers and fathers with young children. This study provides a fuller account of contemporary attitudes than is available from surveys such as the General Social Survey. After seeing vignettes that vary the circumstances in which married mothers, single mothers, and married fathers make decisions about paid work and caregiving, the respondents’ views swing from strong support to deep skepticism about a parent’s work participation, (...) depending on the parent’s specific job conditions and family circumstances. When a mother, whether married or single, is satisfied with her job and her family depends on her income, respondents overwhelmingly support the option to work. Conversely, when a father is dissatisfied with his job and the family does not depend on his income, respondents generally support the option to stay home. These findings provide insight regarding the “gender stall” thesis by showing that Americans’ views depend heavily on the circumstances they believe parents are facing. This more nuanced view highlights the importance of social context in the allocation of paid work and caregiving for both mothers and fathers. (shrink)

Kierkegaard verwendet den Salto mortale als Metapher für den Glauben. Aber was für eine Bewegung ist der Salto mortale genau? Diese Frage wird im ersten Teil anhand der Beschreibungen, die Arcangelo Tuccaro – selbst ein Akrobat, aber auch erster Akrobattheoretiker Europas – von dieser Bewegung gibt, beantwortet. Im zweiten und dritten Teil wird aufgezeigt, inwiefern die Metapher des Salto mortale und die konkurrierende Metapher des Augenblicks in den Texten Kierkegaards Sprachbilder für den Glauben sind, also: Welche Auffassung des Glaubens kann (...) diesen Bildern entnommen werden? Und wie verhalten sich die beiden Metaphern zueinander? Im vierten Teil wird der jacobischen Provenienz der Metapher des Salto mortale nachgegangen: Bereits Jacobi verwendet in einer sehr ähnlichen Weise wie Kierkegaard diese akrobatische Bewegung als Bild für den Glauben. Trotz dieser Nähe verspottet Kierkegaard Jacobi in seiner Nachschrift, indem er die jacobische Vorlage wiederverwendet und ironisch verzerrt. Der letzte Teil ist der Auseinandersetzung mit der Sekundärliteratur gewidmet und bettet diese Arbeit in die philosophische und theologische Kierkegaard-Forschung ein. (shrink)

Cheng Man-ch’ing (1901–1975) is as responsible as anyone for the wide popularity of taijiquan in the West. While his stature as a master and teacher of taijiquan is legendary, he is less well-known as a philosopher. Yet Cheng wrote a number of philosophical commentaries on Chinese classics that shed light on his understanding of taijiquan. In this paper I propose that a consideration of Cheng’s philosophical reflections shows him to be a twentieth century Neo-Confucian who saw taijiquan as a key (...) component of the overall aim of moral self-cultivation. In transmitting taijiquan to his fellow Chinese and to the West, Cheng was attempting to convey traditional Chinese thought and action as expressed in Neo-Confucian moral ideals. For Cheng, taijiquan was more than a martial art or physical exercise; it was a way of life. (shrink)

The twelfth-century Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi, has often been compared to the thirteenth-century Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. In this essay, I explore the similarities between these two thinkers, focusing on their respective accounts of the metaphysical foundations of moral self-cultivation. I suggestthat both philosophers play similar roles within their respective traditions and share similar aims. In general, both philosophers seek to appropriate ideas of rivalintellectual traditions in order to extend the moral vision of their home traditions, and both hope to (...) achieve their goals without denying the primary orientationsof those traditions. Zhu Xi and Aquinas are shown to employ similar strategies, and to make use of similar metaphysical principles, to unite the humanistic andspiritual dimensions of moral self-cultivation into one synthetic vision. I will conclude by offering some reflections on the following questions: (1) what can the Neo-Confucian and the Thomist ethical traditions learn from one another? And (2) what can those of us engaged in inter-cultural philosophical and religiousdialogue learn from the masters of these traditions? (shrink)

When understood as a potential resolution for the epistemological impasse between psychology and religion, Hebrew wisdom presents a model for dialogue. Noting that wisdom exhibits a special interest in human dispositions and behavior, the authors compare Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and Adlerian psychology with Proverbs and uncover a biblical, empirical approach to psychology which indirectly incorporates the religious dimension.

Jerry Fodor is one of the leading philosophers of mind and language in the world today. He is best known for his work developing two theses which give theirnames to his books The Modularity of Mind and The Language of Thought. He teaches philosophy at Rutgers and at the CUNY Graduate Center.

David Hume's philosophy is notoriously naturalistic. It is an attempt to give an account of man and his world relying only on evidence which can be gleaned from sense observation and introspection. Whatever can be inferred from this evidence is a proper philosophical conclusion.

Three negative affective dispositions—anger, anxiety, and depression—are hypothesized to increase physical disease risk and have been the subject of epidemiological studies. However, the overlap among the major negative affective dispositions, and the superordinate construct of trait negative affectivity are only beginning to be tested. Presented here is a narrative review of recent prospective studies that simultaneously tested anger, anxiety, depression, and trait NA as risk factors for cardiac outcomes. Anxiety and depression emerged as independent risk factors for premature heart disease (...) in population studies of persons nominally healthy at baseline, and for recurrence/mortality among patients with existing heart disease. General trait NA also was a cardiac risk factor in population samples. (shrink)

Hume? Yes, David Hume, that's who Jerry Fodor looks to for help in advancing our understanding of the mind. Fodor claims his Treatise of Human Nature as the foundational document of cognitive science: it launched the project of constructing an empirical psychology on the basis of a representational theory of mind. Going back to this work after more than 250 years we find that Hume is remarkably perceptive about the components and structure that a theory of mind requires. Careful (...) study of the Treatise helps us to see what is amiss with much twentieth-century philosophy of mind, and to get on the right track. You don't have to know much about Hume to enjoy this inventively argued, provocative, and stimulating defence of the representational theory of mind, which is looking increasingly hard to resist. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls argues that the doctrine of heaven is ripe for serious reconsideration. He contends not only that the orthodox view of heaven can be defended from objections commonly raised against it, but also that heaven is a powerful resource for addressing persistent philosophical problems, not the least of which concern the ground of morality and the meaning of life. Walls shows how heaven is integrally related to central Christian doctrines, particularly those related to salvation, and tackles the (...) difficult problem of why faith in Christ is necessary to save us from our sins. In addition, heaven is shown to illumine thorny problems of personal identity and to be an essential component of a satisfactory theodicy. Walls goes on to examine data from near-death experiences from the standpoint of some important recent work in epistemology and argues that they offer positive evidence for heaven. He concludes that we profoundly need to recover the hope of heaven in order to recover our very humanity. (shrink)