This essay uses the global impact of the Coronavirus as a heuristic semiotic for exploring the future of the church. Unlike the pandemic of 1918, which left few dents on the world's economic, social, and cultural systems, almost all the nations of the world have passed laws and implemented procedures that are only comparable to world wars in their impact on entire populations. Nations are acting in unison, but not in unity. This post-COVID, post-Corona world is the 'time that is (...) given' to the church. But it will not be a post-pandemic world. We may become COVID-proof, but we will never be pandemic-proof. There is no pre-COVID reset. There is only risk assessment from natural extinction risks to existential dangers of our own creation that are catching up to us. Disruption is the new status that is never quo; stability is the new abnormality; global cataclysm is the ever-present peril. The only way to prepare for a future of constant 'the end of the world as we know it?' moments is by developing a high Contextual Quotient, and deepening our Contextual Intelligence so we can choose 'the next right thing' in a world of volcanic volatility. CONTRIBUTION: This essay frames the semiotics of a missional ecclesiology in the COVIDian wake from the hermeneutics of blessings not curses. What virtues might we expect to come out of a virus that is fast-forwarding the future, virtues that will shape the contours of Christianity. What if the pandemic is a shock treatment that is putting the world, and the church, back in a new and better equilibrium? What if there are goldmines on the other side of the landmines and minefields? (shrink)

Four principal papers and a total of 43 peer commentaries on the evolutionary origins of morality. To what extent is human morality the outcome of a continuous development from motives, emotions and social behaviour found in nonhuman animals? Jerome Kagan, Hans Kummer, Peter Railton and others discuss the first principal paper by primatologists Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal. The second paper, by cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm, synthesizes social science and biological evidence to support his theory of how our hominid (...) ancestors became moral. In the third paper philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argue that an evolutionary understanding of human nature allows sacrifice for others and ultimate desires for another's good. Finally Brian Skyrms argues that game theory based on adaptive dynamics must join the social scientist's use of rational choice and classical game theory to explain cooperation. (shrink)

El autor se pregunta por el sentido de la religión en nuestro mundo, en la Modernidad. Nuestro mundo —el moderno— se caracteriza por la libertad en el núcleo del ser humano, la razón crítica como el árbitro de lo que hay que afirmar o no, y la historia, el proceso, el dinamismo visto en el corazón de la vida humana y la sociedad. Pero, más que nada, la Modernidad mundializada siente una creciente necesidad de estar en diálogo con quienes piensan (...) de modo diferente a nosotros. Esta necesidad de diálogo nos interpela agudamente cuando, como en el caso de la religión, el diálogo debe versar sobre cuestiones cruciales en la comprensión que el ser humano tiene de sí mismo y de su entorno. (shrink)

I argue that racism is a form of necro-being entrapped in necro-tragedy. Necro-being, as I present it, is a condition that kills and prevents persons from being born. I defend a conception of tragedy: absolute necrotragedy; absolute irredeemable suffering in a non-moral universe. Explanations of racism are commonly subject to anomalies, for example, volitional accounts offer special desiderata to account for institutional racism; conversely for institutional accounts. I offer a way to see racism, given the existence of a vast array (...) of kinds of racism: a descriptive actuarial approach. The account is intended to avoid the quandaries and anomalies of ‘explanation.’ I use rational-intentional explanations (including accounts by Jorge Garcia and Charles Mills) and social kind racial realism as inadequate explanations and examples of explanations with anomalies. These accounts also help demonstrate that logical systems of racism are inadequate. All such accounts explain racism as a coherent system and offer correlative reasons for its wrongness. I consider death, mortality, morbidity, and irredeemable misery as primary indicators of racism across an array of types of racism globally: racial necro-being. (shrink)

A new era has emerged in research on entheogens largely due to clinical trials conducted at Johns Hopkins University and similar studies sponsored by the Council for Spiritual Practices. In these notes and queries, I reflect on implications of these developments for psychological studies of religion and on what this research may mean for Christian churches in the United States. I conclude that the aims and methods of this research fit well within Jamesian efforts of contemporary psychology of religion to (...) assess religious practices by their fruits for life. Furthermore, some communitarian religious concerns that religious experiences occasioned by entheogens pose risks to the integrity of religious community are shown to be largely unfounded. However, it is suggested that certain risks for religious life posed by all investigations/interventions by knowledge experts—in particular, the colonization of the religious life world and the commodification of its practices—also attend these developments for Christian churches. Additionally, risks of individual harm in the use of entheogens appear to be significant and, therefore, warrant earnest ethical study. (shrink)

Les parlers poitevins nord-occidentaux (Noirmoutier, Marais nord vendéen) présentent une variation allophonique complexe du vocalisme. On peut distinguer plusieurs niveaux de diphtongaison qui rendent ces variétés particulièrement intéressantes pour l’analyse phonologique. L’étonnante diversité des formes phonétiques en surface peut cependant se réduire à deux grandes catégories de noyaux vocaliques, simples (monophtongues) et complexes (monophtongues longues et diphtongues sous-jacentes). Les premières sont sujettes à des contraintes d’expression liées à l’atérité, ou laxité, tandis que les deuxièmes alternent des voyelles tendues avec des (...) diphtongues décroissantes ou fermantes dans l’oral spontané. Cette contribution traite principalement de comment une enquête sur la structure phonologique d’une variété dialectale peut durer vingt ans, en faisant alterner diverses approches et divers angles de vue sur les données : transcription phonétique, spectrographie acoustique, analyse phonologique tendant à devenir une enquête phonologique amenée à remettre en cause ses prémisses et ses instruments d’observation des faits de parole pour aboutir à une description de la langue. (shrink)

L'esprit des Lumières du xvii-xviiie siècle, celui de la raison, de la science, de l'humanisme et du progrès - par opposition à l'obscurantisme, a conduit à l'émergence de connaissances scientifiques disruptives - même en ce qui concerne les fondements de la Société - et indiscutables pour quiconque fait appel à sa raison. Il a ainsi induit de nombreuses transformations dans tous les secteurs de la Société.Aujourd'hui, les technologies numériques, par l'observation de phénomènes invisibles - qui seraient impossibles sans elles - (...) ont déjà induit une multitude de pratiques perturbatrices. Comme cet effet et ses inévitables implications continuent de s'accélérer dans le futur, leur intégration dans la progression de la Société et de l'entreprise est maintenant absolument impérative.Ce livre a pour objet de faire ressortir l'intelligence de la progression de la Société ou de l'entreprise en permettant à l'intelligence du vivre ensemble (Sciences humaines), à l'intelligence des solutions (Sciences exactes) et à l'intelligence de l'artificiel (Sciences de l'ingénieur, y compris le numérique), de se relier entre elles par l'intelligence informationnelle des services. Une telle connexion est établie grâce à la science des services. Elle constitue la base des Lumières informationnelles. (shrink)

Comparisons of Japan with Western countries have long been used to explore the relationship between technology and culture. In the 1950s and 1960s such work sought to determine if technological imperatives were diminishing cultural differences. In the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s many sought to identify aspects of Japanese culture that might lie at the root of Japan’s technological successes. This article argues that we should now undertake more micro and more systematic comparative studies that are more directly grounded in (...) theory. Studies concentrating on engineers and the practice of engineering would seem to be an especially promising starting point. (shrink)

In The Healer's Power, Howard Brody placed the concept of power at the heart of medicine's moral discourse. Struck by the absence of “power” in the prevailing vocabulary of medical ethics, yet aware of peripheral allusions to power in the writings of some medical ethicists, he intuited the importance of power from the silence surrounding it. He formulated the problem of the healer's power and its responsible use as “the central ethical problem in medicine.” Through the prism of power he (...) refracted a wide range of ethical problems, from informed consent to truth-telling, from confidentiality to futility, from the physician's fantasies to the physician's virtues. At times this prism shed new light on old problems, enabling us to see from an unexpected angle the elements of which the problem was composed. At other times it exposed issues of ethical significance that had been neglected in the bioethics literature. (shrink)

Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze.

THE MORAL SCEPTIC IS ONE WHO BELIEVES MORALITY CANNOT BE\nJUSTIFIED AND THEREFORE THERE ARE GOOD REASONS FOR BEING\nSUSPICIOUS OF IT, AND FURTHER, THAT ONE WHO CONTINUES TO\nMAINTAIN A MORAL POSITION IS BEING UNREASONABLE. THE AUTHOR\nMAINTAINS THAT EVEN THOUGH THE CONCEPT OF JUSTIFICATION\nDOES NOT APPLY, THE SCEPTIC IS MISTAKEN IN DRAWING THE\nCONCLUSIONS HE DOES. THE SCEPTIC CONTENDS THAT IN THE\nABSENCE OF REASONS, IT IS UNREASONABLE TO BELIEVE. IT IS\nCONCLUDED THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REASON US FROM MORALITY\nINTO SCEPTICISM. (STAFF).

Provides a firm theoretical grounding for the increasing movement of cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists and their students beyond the laboratory, in an ...

Whether or not there is a natural inclination to want freedom, and whether or not slaves (modern or ancient) are living in violation of such a natural inclination has been debated by scholars for centuries. David Walker’s APPEAL provides a starting point for an argument that settles the issue: given my interpretation of Walker’s naturalism and his approach to existential agency, slaves have a duty to insurrect even if there is no empirical evidence that a natural inclination exists. And they (...) have this duty even if they are likely to fail. Neither instrumentalist nor consequentialist reasoning provide a slave compelling reasons to rebel; all consequences of rebellion are almost certain to be deleterious and it is not unreasonable for persons to be subservient under conditions of slavery. I depict, and use Walker’s depiction of, slavery to defend his approach to naturalism and liberation; an approach arguably beneficial to how we should see contemporary slavery. (shrink)

Imagination and Chance illuminates the different philosophical projects that animate Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and Derrida’s deconstruction. Basic concepts in Ricouer such as discourse, metaphor and symbol, and tradition are examined, and texts by Derrida including “White Mythology,” Introduction to Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry, and “The Double Session” are analyzed. The book also includes a previously untranslated round table discussion between Ricoeur and Derrida.