This work considers the ways in which, throughout human history, maps have defined our limits as much as charted our exploration. These images act as a kind of ghost vision – a spectral overlay of the world created and accessed as data sets, satellite imagery, and geopolitical mapping, merged in an algorithmically generated 3D mesh. This brings with it a view of the world in which complementary and competing navigational vectors collage and collide. Yet, for all its apparent hyper-modern otherness, (...) its novelty and dexterity is still oriented around and contingent upon the temporal and electromagnetic limits of our biological inheritance. (shrink)

From Luke to James, the writers of the New Testament transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of friendship into a communal ethos. This koinonia was characterized above all by the sharing of material possessions.

From Luke to James, the writers of the New Testament transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of friendship into a communal ethos. This koinonia was characterized above all by the sharing of material possessions.

In order to understand Luke’s political vision, we have first to understand the complex political situation in which Acts is written. This becomes clear in the trial of Paul, where Paul stands before a Roman tribunal but addresses a dispute arising within the Jewish community. Despite his protestations of innocence under Roman law, Paul’s response embodies an inclusive political vision that is profoundly subversive of the imperial order.

lecture 1. The world of the Greco-Roman moralists -- lecture 2. How empire changed philosophy -- lecture 3. The great schools and their battles -- lecture 4. Dominant themes and metaphors -- lecture 5. The ideal philosopher, a composite portrait -- lecture 6. The charlatan, philosophy betrayed -- lecture 7. Philosophy satirized, the comic Lucian -- lecture 8. Cicero, the philosopher as politician -- lecture 9. Seneca, philosopher as court advisor -- lecture 10. Good Roman advice, Cicero and (...) Seneca -- lecture 11. Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates -- lecture 12. Dio Chrysostom, the wandering rhetorician -- lecture 13. Dio Chrysostom, preaching peace and piety -- lecture 14. Epictetus, philosopher as school teacher -- lecture 15. Epictetus, the stoic path to virtue -- lecture 16. Epictetus, the messenger of Zeus -- lecture 17. Marcus Aurelius, meditations of the king -- lecture 18. Jews thinking like Greeks -- lecture 19. Philo, Judaism as Greek philosophy -- lecture 20. Plutarch, biography as moral instruction -- lecture 21. Plutarch and philosophical religion -- lecture 22. Plutarch on virtue and educating children -- lecture 23. Plutarch, envy, anger, and talking too much -- lecture 24. The missing page in philosophy's story. (shrink)

In the ears of his Greco-Roman audience, Luke's social teaching would have been heard with shock. In their world, the neh and the powerful despised the poor and the disadvantaged and took pains to preserve the gulf between them. Inspired by the prophetic denunciation of injustice, Luke cnticized the rich and thus transgressed against Greco-Roman values. Still, Luke's enduring contribution to Christian social ethics is greater than this: Instead of merely condemning the rich, Luke (...) forged a vision of community in which both rich and poor are spiritual equah and the social and economic inequities between them can be vigorously and conscientiously addressed. (shrink)

This article provides a map to selected topics emphasized in recent scholarship on the Gospel of Luke. Focused attention is given to Luke’s reconfiguring of space and cultural borders within the Roman Empire; horizontal and vertical inversions of status within the narrative; Luke’s presentation of the roles of women, men, and children within their social world; and this Gospel’s treatment of the theme of poverty and wealth.

Oakeshott’s memorable lectures on the history of political thought, delivered each year at the London School of Economics, will now be available in print for the first time as Volume II of his Selected Writings. Based on manuscripts in the LSE archive for 1966–67, the last year of Oakeshott’s tenure as Professor of Political Science, these thirty lectures deal with Greek, Roman, mediaeval, and modern European political thought in a uniquely accessible manner. Scholars familiar with Oakeshott’s work will recognize (...) his own ideas subtly blended with an exposition carefully crafted for an undergraduate audience; those discovering Oakeshott for the first time will find an account of the subject that remains illuminating and provocative. (shrink)

This article traces the meaning of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον in available Roman-Egypt papyri, the LXX, early-Jewish literature, and Greek writings to determine the meaning of πανδοχεῖον [inn] used in Luke 10:34. It is argued that a lexical study of κατάλυμά and πανδοχεῖον and available information on travel in the ancient world indicate that there is no evidence for the so-called non-commercial inns in the ancient world and that commercial inns and innkeepers, in principle, were all 'bad'. In conclusion, (...) the implications of this understanding of πανδοχεῖον and πανδοκεύς for the possible intended meaning of the parable are discussed, a conclusion that begs further research regarding the identity of the protagonist in the parable. (shrink)

The article presented a panegyric reading of the Sermon on the Plain in the Malawian context. It observed that, unlike its Matthean counterpart, the Sermon holds an insignificant place in African hermeneutics. Based on the Sermon’s structure and content the article proposed the Greco-Roman panegyric, whose function was to inculcate commonly held values, as a framework for reading of the Sermon. It argued that when read in its original context as a Greco-Roman panegyric, the Sermon’s radical stance on (...) poverty and riches had significant implications for African and Malawian socio-economic realities. It brought into light the complicated relationships between the poor and rich both among Luke’s original audience and the contemporary Malawian context. The panegyric reading of the Sermon also had a significant bearing on the application of the ubuntu philosophy in socio-economic interrelationships in Malawi. The article posited that the socio-economic inequalities in Malawi caused by corrupt, cronyism and nepotism not only challenge the majority Christian status of the nation but also the foundations of the African values of ubuntu. As a panegyric, the Sermon therefore challenges Malawian Christians to rethink their values and the relationship between the rich and the poor.Contribution: The article provides a new perspective to the interpretation of the Sermon on the Plain in African context. Against the background of its apparent neglect in African hermeneutics, the article underscores the relevance of the Sermon on the Plain to -socio-economic discourse in Malawi in particular and Africa in general. (shrink)

The term “diaspora” is nowadays used in connection with many different groups and peoples. Greek-speaking Judaism provides early models of diasporic self-consciousness and techniques for political and cultural survival, including forms of quiet resistance available to the un-empowered. This essay examines the impact of the diaspora on the evolving self-understandings of what it means to be Jewish, with both ethnic and religious elements. The writings of Josephus and Philo, Paul and Luke-Acts reveal striking religious diversity and a lively awareness (...) of the role of ruling powers in the formation and flourishing of a people in diaspora. (shrink)

Halakhah and ethics in the Jesus tradition -- Matthew's divorce texts in the light of pre-rabbinic Jewish law -- Let the dead bury their dead : Jesus and the law revisited -- James, Israel, and Antioch -- Natural law in Second Temple Judaism -- Natural law in the New Testament? -- The Noachide commandments and New Testament ethics -- The beginning of Christian public ethics : from Luke to Aristides and Diognetus -- Jewish and Christian public ethics in the (...) early Roman Empire. (shrink)

The 1994 Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis of Pope John Paul II focuses mainly on the argument from Scripture. It states that women cannot be ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church because Jesus consciously and in harmony with God’s will only chose men to be his apostles. In this article we confront the arguments and presuppositions of this way of reason with the results of historical-critical exegesis. We arrive at the conclusion that the letter’s identification of the apostles with the (...) Twelve takes as historical the theology of apostleship found in Luke and neglects Paul’s views on apostleship as well as thee evidence of women’s involvement in ministry in the Pauline churches. In a second part this study pursues the question why, according to Ordinatio sacerdotalis, the Twelve had to be men. While the letter does not take any explicit stand on this issue, we come to the conclusion that it implicitly presupposes a theological difference between men and women. (shrink)

A consideration of the concept of repentance both theologically and in law. Penance generally refers to repentance or contrition for sin. It refers, more particularly in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, to a sacrament, or an outward sign of an inward grace. In these traditions, the authority for regarding penance a sacrament is scriptural: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When He had said this, He breathed on them; and He said to them: Receive (...) ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20:21–23). In both traditions this is ordinarily interpreted as Christ's grant of power to the apostles in keeping with his own acts of explicitly forgiving sin (Matthew 9:2–8; Luke 5:20, 7:47; Revelation 1:5). St. Augustine affirms that the church has the power to “forgive all sins” and urges the faithful to reject those who would deny it. St. Ambrose rejects the Novatianists, who believe the power to forgive sin lies with Christ alone, with the observation that “the Church obeys Him in both respects, by binding sin and by loosing it; for the Lord willed that for both the power should be equal” (De Poenitentiae, I, ii,6). (shrink)

New Testament scholars have argued that Luke-Acts presents an apologetic historiography and political propaganda which portrayed Roman officials as saviours of the world. The problem with the discourse on the apologetic historiography and political propaganda in Luke-Acts is that the presence of various forms of oppression behind and in the text becomes hidden. Thus, it is pertinent to highlight the reality of oppression as well as the prophetic voice that responded to them, as illustrated by the text (...) of Acts 27. In this article, Lucky Dube’s Mickey Mouse freedom song is employed as a hermeneutical tool to unlock the meaning of Acts 27, and to argue that whereas Acts 27 contains an apologetic narrative, Paul’s prophetic voice is equally evident in the chapter. From an African liberationist perspective, lessons are therefore drawn from Acts 27 regarding the liberationist prophetic voice of Paul. In the end, this article sees Paul’s prophetic voice as an embodiment of both resilience and resistance in the face of imperialism and chains. (shrink)

Many scholars argue that Justin is either inconsistent or confused in his view of the Spirit in relation to the Logos. The most decisive section in this discussion is 1Apol. 33, where Justin appears to confuse the titles and unify the functions of the Logos and the Spirit. This essay argues that this apparent confusion is conditioned by Justin’s particular christological reading of Isaiah 7:14 in order to meet the demands of his own understanding of the apostolic faith. The interpretation (...) of Isaiah 7:14 is a unique case with multiple external hermeneutical pressures imposing upon his exegesis, including those coming from competing Jewish exegesis, Greco-Roman mythology, and Marcionite interpretations. At the same time, Justin reads scripture within his own Christian community. Justin’s exegesis of Isaiah 7:14 attempts to account for these external pressures by focusing upon the particular Lukan terminology of ‘Power’ rather than ‘Spirit’ in Luke 1:35, which downplays the function of the Spirit in the incarnation in order to demonstrate that the Logos has come in power. This exegetical move exposes him to binitarian allegations, but does not suggest that Justin is, in fact, a binitarian. What this suggests, however, is that in 1Apol. 33 Justin actually resists confusing the Logos and the Spirit even when a text uses the language of ‘Spirit’, because his exegetical concern is focused on the Logos coming in power. Justin’s exegetical treatment of Isaiah 7:14 and Luke 1:35 reflects the way he is reasoning through the textual and theological complexities of the christological interpretation of scripture and does not suggest that he confuses the functions of the Logos and the Spirit. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary work of philosophy and biblical studies, New Testament scholar C. Kavin Rowe explores the promise and problems inherent in engaging rival philosophical claims to what is true. Juxtaposing the Roman Stoics Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius with the Christian saints Paul, Luke, and Justin Martyr, and incorporating the contemporary views of Jeffrey Stout, Alasdair McIntyre, Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Pierre Hadot, and others, the author suggests that in a world of religious pluralism there is (...) negligible gain in sampling from separate belief systems. This thought-provoking volume reconceives the relationship between ancient philosophy and emergent Christianity as a rivalry between strong traditions of life and offers powerful arguments for the exclusive commitment to a community of belief and a particular form of philosophical life as the path to existential truth. (shrink)

This book explores a neglected philosophical question: How do groups of interacting minds relate to singular minds? Could several of us, by organizing ourselves the right way, constitute a single conscious mind that contains our minds as parts? And could each of us have been, all along, a group of mental parts in close cooperation? Scientific progress seems to be slowly revealing that all the different physical objects around us are, at root, just a matter of the right parts put (...) together in the right ways: How far could the same be true of minds? This book argues that we are too used to seeing the mind as an indivisible unity and that understanding our place in nature requires being willing to see minds as composite systems, simultaneously one conscious whole and many conscious parts. In thinking through the implications of such a shift of perspective, the book relates the question of mental combination to a range of different theories of the mind (in particular panpsychism, functionalism, and Neo-Lockeanism about personal identity) and identifies, clarifies, and addresses a wide array of philosophical objections (concerning personal identity, the unity of consciousness, the privacy of experience, and other issues) that have been raised against the idea of composite minds. The result is an account of the metaphysics of composition and consciousness that can illuminate many different debates in philosophy of mind, concerning split brains, collective intentionality, and the combination problem, among others. (shrink)

The unity of consciousness has so far been studied only as a relation holding among the many experiences of a single subject. I investigate whether this relation could hold between the experiences of distinct subjects, considering three major arguments against the possibility of such ‘between-subjects unity’. The first argument, based on the popular idea that unity implies subsumption by a composite experience, can be deflected by allowing for limited forms of ‘experience-sharing’, in which the same token experience belongs to more (...) than one subject. The second argument, based on the phenomenological claim that unified experiences have interdependent phenomenal characters, I show to rest on an equivocation. Finally, the third argument accuses between-subjects unity of being unimaginable, or more broadly a formal possibility corresponding to nothing we can make sense of. I argue that the familiar experience of perceptual co-presentation gives us an adequate phenomenological grasp on what between-subjects unity might be like. (shrink)

The article investigates the appearance of the double expressions δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosúne) - ὁσιότης (hosiótes) [justice - godliness] and δικαιοσύνη - εὐσεβέια (eusebéia) [justícia - piety] in texts of the New Testament written around the year 80 to 90 d. C., and discusses its functions and meanings in a double perspective: first, as an integration of a classic expression of the Greek-Roman world of civic and religious duties by the church after the end of the expectation of the proximity of (...) the parousia; second as an Christian interpretation of those duties, and as support of the introduction of new attitudes, both in the religious setting as in the public sphere. Seen together it is suggested that this double movement - integrate and reread - can serve as inspiration for the construction of a public theology today. (shrink)

I argue that there are non-trivial objective chances (that is, objective chances other than 0 and 1) even in deterministic worlds. The argument is straightforward. I observe that there are probabilistic special scientific laws even in deterministic worlds. These laws project non-trivial probabilities for the events that they concern. And these probabilities play the chance role and so should be regarded as chances as opposed, for example, to epistemic probabilities or credences. The supposition of non-trivial deterministic chances might seem to (...) land us in contradiction. The fundamental laws of deterministic worlds project trivial probabilities for the very same events that are assigned non-trivial probabilities by the special scientific laws. I argue that any appearance of tension is dissolved by recognition of the level-relativity of chances. There is therefore no obstacle to accepting non-trivial chance-role-playing deterministic probabilities as genuine chances. (shrink)

David DeGrazia’s stated purposes for Taking Animals Seriously are to apply a coherentist methodology to animal ethics, to do the philosophical work necessary for discussing animal minds, and to fill in some of the gaps in the existing literature on animal ethics.

The use of social media as a recruitment tool for research with humans is increasing, and likely to continue to grow. Despite this, to date there has been no specific regulatory guidance and there has been little in the bioethics literature to guide investigators and institutional review boards faced with navigating the ethical issues such use raises. We begin to fill this gap by first defending a nonexceptionalist methodology for assessing social media recruitment; second, examining respect for privacy and investigator (...) transparency as key norms governing social media recruitment; and, finally, analyzing three relatively novel aspects of social media recruitment: the ethical significance of compliance with website “terms of use”; the ethics of recruiting from the online networks of research participants; and the ethical implications of online communication from and between participants. Two checklists aimed at guiding investigators and IRBs through the ethical issues are included as appendices. (shrink)

I discuss the apparent discrepancy between the qualitative diversity of consciousness and the relative qualitative homogeneity of the brain's basic constituents, a discrepancy that has been raised as a problem for identity theorists by Maxwell and Lockwood (as one element of the ‘grain problem’), and more recently as a problem for panpsychists (under the heading of ‘the palette problem’). The challenge posed to panpsychists by this discrepancy is to make sense of how a relatively small ‘palette’ of basic qualities could (...) give rise to the bewildering diversity of qualities we, and presumably other creatures, experience. I argue that panpsychists can meet this challenge, though it requires taking contentious stands on certain phenomenological questions, in particular on whether any familiar qualities are actual examples of ‘phenomenal blending’, and whether any other familiar qualities have a positive ‘phenomenologically simple character’. Moreover, it requires accepting an eventual theory most elements of which are in a certain explicable sense unimaginable, though not for that reason inconceivable. Nevertheless, I conclude that there are no conclusive reasons to reject such a theory, and so philosophers whose prior commitments motivate them to adopt it can do so without major theoretical cost. (shrink)

When asked to describe wartime atrocities, terrorist acts, and serial killers, many of us reach for the word 'evil'. But what does it really mean? Luke Russell defends a new account of the nature of evil action and persons. Although the concept of evil is extreme and often misused, it has a legitimate place in contemporary secular moral thought.

Paul Draper has recently developed an account of intrinsic probability according to which a theory’s intrinsic probability is determined by its modesty and coherence. He employs this account in an argument that Source Physicalism (SP) and Source Idealism (SI) are equally intrinsically probable. Since SP and SI are not exhaustive, and Theism is one very specific version of SI, it follows that the intrinsic probability of Theism is very low. I argue here that considerations of fundamentality show that more work (...) needs to be done to defend the claim that P (SP) = P(SI). (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)

John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty.

The starting point in the development of probabilistic analyses of token causation has usually been the naïve intuition that, in some relevant sense, a cause raises the probability of its effect. But there are well-known examples both of non-probability-raising causation and of probability-raising non-causation. Sophisticated extant probabilistic analyses treat many such cases correctly, but only at the cost of excluding the possibilities of direct non-probability-raising causation, failures of causal transitivity, action-at-a-distance, prevention, and causation by absence and omission. I show that (...) an examination of the structure of these problem cases suggests a different treatment, one which avoids the costs of extant probabilistic analyses. (shrink)

Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Segal 1989). Music cognition is an area in the (...) cognitive sciences that has received little attention from philosophers, though it has relatively recently been thrown into the externalist spotlight (Cochrane 2008, Kruger 2014, Kersten forthcoming). Given that individualism can be thought of as a kind of paradigm for research on cognition, we provide a brief overview of the field of music cognition and individualistic tendencies within the field (sections 2 and 3) before turning to consider externalist alternatives to individualistic paradigms (section 4-5) and then arguing for a qualified form of externalism about music cognition (section 6). (shrink)

Extended cognition holds that cognitive processes sometimes leak into the world (Dawson, 2013). A recent trend among proponents of extended cognition has been to put pressure on phenomena thought to be safe havens for internalists (Sneddon, 2011; Wilson, 2010; Wilson & Lenart, 2014). This paper attempts to continue this trend by arguing that music perception is an extended phenomenon. It is claimed that because music perception involves the detection of musical invariants within an “acoustic array”, the interaction between the auditory (...) system and the musical invariants can be characterized as an extended computational cognitive system. In articulating this view, the work of J. J. Gibson (1966, 1986) and Robert Wilson (1994, 1995, 2004) is drawn on. The view is defended from several objections and its implications outlined. The paper concludes with a comparison to Krueger’s (2014) view of the “musically extended emotional mind”. (shrink)

In Making Things Happen, James Woodward influentially combines a causal modeling analysis of actual causation with an interventionist semantics for the counterfactuals encoded in causal models. This leads to circularities, since interventions are defined in terms of both actual causation and interventionist counterfactuals. Circularity can be avoided by instead combining a causal modeling analysis with a semantics along the lines of that given by David Lewis, on which counterfactuals are to be evaluated with respect to worlds in which their antecedents (...) are realized by miracles. I argue, pace Woodward, that causal modeling analyses perform just as well when combined with the Lewisian semantics as when combined with the interventionist semantics. Reductivity therefore remains a reasonable hope. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for multiple clinical trials at the same institution to recruit concurrently from the same patient population. When the relevant pool of patients is limited, as it often is, trials essentially compete for participants. There is evidence that such a competition is a predictor of low study accrual, with increased competition tied to increased recruitment shortfalls. But there is no consensus on what steps, if any, institutions should take to approach this issue. In this article, we argue (...) that an institutional policy that prioritises some trials for recruitment ahead of others is ethically permissible and indeed prima facie preferable to alternative means of addressing recruitment competition. We motivate this view by appeal to the ethical importance of minimising the number of studies that begin but do not complete, thereby exposing their participants to unnecessary risks and burdens in the process. We then argue that a policy of prioritisation can be fair to relevant stakeholders, including participants, investigators and funders. Finally, by way of encouraging and helping to frame future debate, we propose some questions that would need to be addressed when identifying substantive ethical criteria for prioritising between studies. (shrink)