Proceedings of the first annual conference of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University.

In Religion, Emergence, and the Origins of Meaning , Paul Cassell uses ‘emergence theory’ to explain why religion is so meaningful to individuals and central to social life, going beyond the foundational explanations of Émile Durkheim and Roy Rappaport.

The works of Paul Grice collected in this volume present his metaphysical defence of value, and represent a modern attempt to provide a metaphysical foundation for value. The collection includes Grice's three previously unpublished Carus Lectures on the conception of value, a section of his 'Reply to Richards' (previously published in Grandy and Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality, Oxford, 1986), and 'Method in Philosophical Psychology' (Presidential Address delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, 1975).

Paul Feyerabend recommended the methodological policy of proliferating competing theories as a means to uncovering new empirical data, and thus as a means to increase the empirical constraints that all theories must confront. Feyerabend's policy is here defended as a clear consequence of connectionist models of explanatory understanding and learning. An earlier connectionist "vindication" is criticized, and a more realistic and penetrating account is offered in terms of the computationally plastic cognitive profile displayed by neural networks with a recurrent (...) architecture. (shrink)

Humanistiskt minimum, av Paul Lindblom.--Kristen humanism, av Georg Landberg.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This is the twenty-ninth volume in This World, a series on religion and public affairs. It focuses on theological and moral questions of deep significance for our time. The lines of division separating secular and religious outlooks, modernity and postmodernism, and romantic and classical styles of thought are some of the topics treated in this volume. Additional features are an exchange of opinions and a position paper intended to generate further discussion. This ongoing series of volumes seeks to provide a (...) wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. Theologies and Moral Concern include the following major contributions: "Distinctions of Power: How Church and State Divide America" by Brian Mitchell; "Beyond the Impasses: Making Moral Sense of Abortion" by Anthony Matteo; "Are Religions Ever Traditional" by Jacob Neusner; "Philosophical Issues in Darwinian Theory" by Kenneth T. Gallagher; "Monotheism and Skepticism" by Aryeh Botwinick; "Defining Romantic Theology" by Gerhard Spiegler; and "The YMCA and Suburban America" by Clifford Putney. In addition, the volume features a dialogue between Michael A. Weinstein and Paul Gottfried on what constitutes the proper role for liberal arts education in contemporary American society as well as a position paper titled "The Pitfalls of Political Correctness" by Lawrence Nannery. Theologies and Moral Concern is part of an annual survey of religion and public life which aims to provide relevant information and ideas about significant issues of the day. It is directly pertinent to understanding the connection between religion and the state. This particular volume, coming at a time of intense public scrutiny of fundamentalism, evangelicism, and new religious movements generally, should have special appeal for political scientists, American studies specialists, sociologists, and those involved in the creation of public policy. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un texto de Paul Ricoeur, traducido por el profesor Jorge Enrique González, con motivo de la publicación de este número conmemorativo de Cuadernos de Filosofía Latinoamericana. El texto presenta la importancia de la hermenéutica como medio teórico para la interpretación de los textos, capaz de proyectarse al campo prácticpo de las ciencias sociales.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1974, given by Paul Ricoeur, a French philosopher.

A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal liability (...) and punishment rules reflect lay intuitions of justice – "empirical desert" – as a means of enhancing the system's moral credibility. In a recent article, Christopher Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein (SBR) report seven sets of studies that they argue undermine these claims of empirical desert and moral credibility and instead support SBR's proposed distributive principle of "individual prevention," a view that focuses on an offender's future dangerousness rather than on his perceived desert. -/- The idea that there is a relationship between the criminal law's reputation for justness and its crime-control effectiveness did not originate with Robinson and his co-authors. Rather, it has been a common theme among a wide range of punishment theory scholars for many decades. A particularly important conclusion of recent Robinson studies, however, is their confirmation that this relationship is a continuous one: even small nudges in moral credibility can produce corresponding changes in the community's deference to the criminal law. This is important because it shows that even piecemeal changes or changes at the margin – as in reforming even one unjust doctrine or procedure – can have real implications for crime-control. SBR's studies, rather than contradicting the crime-control power of empirical desert, in fact confirm it. Further, SBR's studies do not provide support for their proposed "individual prevention" distributive principle, contrary to what they claim. -/- While SBR try to associate their principle with the popular "limiting retributivism" adopted by the American Law Institute in its 2007 amendment of the Model Penal Code, in fact it is, in many respects, just the reverse of that principle. With limiting retributivism, the Model Code's new provision sets desert as dominant, never allowing punishment to conflict with it. SBR would have "punishment" essentially always set according to future dangerousness; it is to be constrained by desert only when the extent of the resulting injustices or failures of justice is so egregious as to significantly delegitimize the government and its law. This ignores the fact that even minor departures from justice may have an important cumulative effect on the system as a whole. What SBR propose – essentially substituting preventive detention for criminal justice – promotes the worst of the failed policies of the 1960s, where detention decisions were made at the back-end by "experts," and conflicts with the trend of the past several decades of encouraging more community involvement in criminal punishment, not less. (shrink)

In place of an abstract. Jeff Bernard was not afraid of complexity. The last essay of his that I read and published was ‘10 theses on perception in terms of work. A Rossi-Landian/Wittgensteinian point of view’, a title which promised thinking of some considerable sophistication — and delivered with dividends. It was accompanied by a figure in a pdf file that my co-editor and me struggled to understand until well after a few readings and close re-readings of the essay. Away (...) from strictly intellectual ruminations, Jeff devoted considerable time to pondering human relations. Fuelled by cigarettes and alcohol, with me opting solely for the latter, he would regale friends late into the night with stories of communication and miscommunication, understandings and misunderstandings, feuds and reconciliations, cultural differences and affinities, conflicts and alliances, among the large number of members of our semiotic web. As far as I remember, these stories were always furnished with Jeff’s wry smirk, a communication acting to distance him from the sometimes unregistered pettiness of the protagonists’ doings and a self-extrication from the malice that their demands and arguments might have invited. Jeff always did his best; he often poured oil on troubled waters. I do not believe he ever let anyone down. He evinced a particular ability in observing and recognizing the interests and motivation of others — simpleissues, but requiring an analytic and sympatico mind. He kept his head while others lost theirs. He sometimes put their heads back on for them. Hence this short essay in the complex field of Jeff’s beloved sociosemiotics, dealing with the two apparently ‘uncomplex’ issues of my title, issues that are always close at hand. This essay is an attempt to ensure that he, likewise, is never far away. (shrink)

Theologian N. T. Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God offers a biblical response to the problem of evil without attempting to “solve” the issue, but to shed light on the problem from a Christian theological perspective. This essay affirms Wright’s approach, but notes the need for greater clarity of the ontological language related to evil. The essay also seeks further answers to questions regarding animal suffering and the fall as well as the role of force in preventing gross (...) evils and restoring peace. (shrink)

The reshaping of much scientific research around computational methods is not just a technological curiosity. It results in a significant reshaping of conceptual and representational resources within science in ways with which many traditional philosophical positions are ill-equipped to cope. Some illustrations of this are provided and a consequence for the roles of science and the arts is noted.