This paper explores Thomas Aquinas’ and Richard Swinburne’s doctrines of simplicity in the context of their philosophical theologies. Both say that God is simple. However, Swinburne takes simplicity as a property of the theistic hypothesis, while for Aquinas simplicity is a property of God himself. For Swinburne, simpler theories are ceteris paribus more likely to be true; for Aquinas, simplicity and truth are properties of God which, in a certain way, coincide – because God is metaphysically (...) simple. Notwithstanding their different approaches, some unreckoned parallels between their thoughts are brought to light. (shrink)

We introduce and study the framework of compact metric structures and their associated notions of isomorphisms such as homeomorphic and bi-Lipschitz isomorphism. This is subsequently applied to model various classification problems in analysis such as isomorphism ofC*-algebras and affine homeomorphism of Choquet simplices, where among other things we provide a simple proof of the completeness of the isomorphism relation of separable, simple, nuclearC*-algebras recently established by M. Sabok.

The book of Aristarchus of Samos, On the distances and sizes of the sun and moon, is one of the few pre-Ptolemaic astronomical works that have come down to us in complete or nearly complete form. The simplicity and cleverness of the basic ideas behind the calculations are often obscured in the reading of the treatise by the complexity of the calculations and reasoning. Part of the complexity could be explained by the lack of trigonometry and part by the (...) fact that Aristarchus appears unwilling to make some simplifications that could be simply taken for granted. But an important part of the complexities is due to some unnecessary inconsistencies, as recently discovered by Berggren and Sidoli (Arch Hist Exact Sci 61:213–254, 2007). In the first part of this paper, I will try to show that some of these inconsistencies are just apparent. But the complexity of the calculations and reasoning is not the only reason that could disturb a reader of the treatise. The great inaccuracy—even for the measurement methods and instruments available at those times—of one of the three input values of the treatise is really astonishing. In the sixth and last hypothesis, Aristarchus states that the moon’s apparent size is equal to 2∘\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$^{\circ }$$\end{document}, while the correct value is one-fourth of that. Some attempts have been made in order to explain such a big value, but all of them have problems. In the second part of this paper, I will propose a new speculative but plausible explanation of the origin of this value. (shrink)

Part 1. Lecture 1. What is big history? ; Lecture 2. Moving across multiple scales ; Lecture 3. Simplicity and complexity ; Lecture 4. Evidence and the nature of science ; Lecture 5. Threshold 1, Origins of Big Bang cosmology ; Lecture 6. How did everything begin? ; Lecture 7. Threshold 2, The first stars and galaxies ; Lecture 8. Threshold 3, Making chemical elements ; Lecture 9. Threshold 4, The earth and the solar system ; Lecture 10. The (...) early earth, a short history ; Lecture 11. Plate tectonics and the earth's geography ; Lecture 12. Threshold 5, Life -- Part 2. Lecture 13. Darwin and natural selection ; Lecture 14. The evidence for natural selection ; Lecture 15. The origins of life ; Lecture 16. Life on earth, single-celled organisms ; Lecture 17. Life on earth, multi-celled organisms ; Lecture 18. Hominines ; Lecture 19. Evidence on hominine evolution ; Lecture 20. Threshold 6, What makes humans different? ; Lecture 21. Homo sapiens, the first humans ; Lecture 22. Paleolithic lifeways ; Lecture 23. Change in the Paleolithic Era ; Lecture 24. Threshold 7, agriculture -- Part 3. Lecture 25. The origins of agriculture ; Lecture 26. The first agrarian societies ; Lecture 27. Power and its origins ; Lecture 28. Early power structures ; Lecture 29. From villages to cities ; Lecture 30. Sumer, the first agrarian civilization ; Lecture 31. Agrarian civilizations in other regions ; Lecture 32. The world that agrarian civilizations made ; Lecture 33. Long trends, expansion and state power ; Lecture 34. Long trends, rates of innovation ; Lecture 35. Long trends, disease and Malthusian cycles ; Lecture 36. Comparing the world zones -- Part 4. Lecture 37. The Americas in the later Agrarian Era ; Lecture 38. Threshold 8, the modern revolution ; Lecture 39. The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500-1350 ; Lecture 40. The Early Modern Cycle, 1350-1700 ; Lecture 41. Breakthrough, the Industrial Revolution ; Lecture 42. Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900 ; Lecture 43. The 20th century ; Lecture 44. The world that the modern revolution made ; Lecture 45. Human history and the biosphere ; Lecture 46. The next 100 years ; Lecture 47. The next millennium and the remote future ; Lecture 48. Big history, humans in the cosmos. (shrink)

According to Richard Swinburne, the principle of simplicity is of great importance to theory choice scenarios and theoretical changes in the sciences. In particular, he holds that the theory choice criterion of fit with background evidence can be reduced to the criteria of simplicity and of yielding the data. We will, however, rebut this reduction thesis and show that three central aspects of theoretical change (confirming power of empirical data, reliability of experimental methods, and truth of new theoretical (...) proposals) cannot be adequately reconstructed if simplicity is regarded as a key criterion of theory choice. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Ahead of Print. Given a structure [math] and a stably embedded [math]-definable set [math], we prove tameness preservation results when enriching the induced structure on [math] by some further structure [math]. In particular, we show that if [math] and [math] are stable (respectively, superstable, [math]-stable), then so is the theory [math] of the enrichment of [math] by [math]. Assuming simplicity of [math], elimination of hyperimaginaries and a further condition on [math] related to the behavior of (...) algebraic closure, we also show that simplicity and NSOP1 pass from [math] to [math]. We then prove several applications for tame expansions of weakly minimal structures and, in particular, the group of integers. For example, we construct the first known examples of strictly stable expansions of [math]. More generally, we show that any stable (respectively, superstable, simple, NIP, NTP2, NSOP1) countable graph can be defined in a stable (respectively, superstable, simple, NIP, NTP2, NSOP1) expansion of [math] by some unary predicate [math]. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the expansions of algebraic structures and their fit in Shelah’s classification landscape.The first part deals with the expansion of a theory by a random predicate for a substructure model of a reduct of the theory. Let T be a theory in a language $\mathcal {L}$. Let $T_0$ be a reduct of T. Let $\mathcal {L}_S = \mathcal {L}\cup \{S\}$, for S a new unary predicate symbol, and $T_S$ be the $\mathcal {L}_S$ -theory that axiomatises the (...) following structures: $$ consist of a model $\mathscr {M}$ of T and S is a predicate for a model $\mathscr {M}_0$ of $T_0$ which is a substructure of $\mathscr {M}$. We present a setting for the existence of a model-companion $TS$ of $T_S$. As a consequence, we obtain the existence of the model-companion of the following theories, for $p>0$ a prime number: • $\mathrm {ACF}_p$, $\mathrm {SCF}_{e,p}$, $\mathrm {Psf}_p$, $\mathrm {ACFA}_p$, $\mathrm {ACVF}_{p,p}$ in appropriate languages expanded by arbitrarily many predicates for additive subgroups;• $\mathrm {ACF}_p$, $\mathrm {ACF}_0$ in the language of rings expanded by a single predicate for a multiplicative subgroup;• $\mathrm {PAC}_p$ -fields, in an appropriate language expanded by arbitrarily many predicates for additive subgroups.From an independence relation in T, we define independence relations in $TS$ and identify which properties of are transferred to those new independence relations in $TS$, and under which conditions. This allows us to exhibit hypotheses under which the expansion from T to $TS$ preserves $\mathrm {NSOP}_{1}$, simplicity, or stability. In particular, under some technical hypothesis on T, we may draw the following picture : Configuration $T_0\subseteq T$ Generic expansion $TS$ $T_0 = T$ Preserves stability $T_0\subseteq T$ Preserves $\mathrm {NSOP}_{1}$ $T_0 = \emptyset $ Preserves simplicityIn particular, this construction produces new examples of $\mathrm {NSOP}_{1}$ not simple theories, and we study in depth a particular example: the expansion of an algebraically closed field of positive characteristic by a generic additive subgroup. We give a full description of imaginaries, forking, and Kim-forking in this example.The second part studies expansions of the group of integers by p-adic valuations. We prove quantifier elimination in a natural language and compute the dp-rank of these expansions: it equals the number of independent p-adic valuations considered. Thus, the expansion of the integers by one p-adic valuation is a new dp-minimal expansion of the group of integers. Finally, we prove that the latter expansion does not admit intermediate structures: any definable set in the expansion is either definable in the group structure or is able to “reconstruct” the valuation using only the group operation.prepared by Christian d’Elbée.E-mail: [email protected]: https://choum.net/~chris/page_perso. (shrink)

IntroductionThe assessments of the motor symptoms in Parkinson’s disease are usually limited to clinical rating scales, and it depends on the clinician’s experience. This study aims to propose a machine learning technique algorithm using the variables from upper and lower limbs, to classify people with PD from healthy people, using data from a portable low-cost device. And can be used to support the diagnosis and follow-up of patients in developing countries and remote areas.MethodsWe used Kinect®eMotion system to capture the spatiotemporal (...) gait data from 30 patients with PD and 30 healthy age-matched controls in three walking trials. First, a correlation matrix was made using the variables of upper and lower limbs. After this, we applied a backward feature selection model using R and Python to determine the most relevant variables. Three further analyses were done using variables selected from backward feature selection model, movement disorders specialist, and all the variables from the dataset. We ran seven machine learning models for each model. Dataset was divided 80% for algorithm training and 20% for evaluation. Finally, a causal inference model using the DoWhy library was performed on Dataset B due to its accuracy and simplicity.ResultsThe Random Forest model is the most accurate for all three variable Datasets followed by the support vector machine. The CIM shows a relation between leg variables and the arms swing asymmetry and a proportional relationship between ASA and the diagnosis of PD with a robust estimator.ConclusionsMachine learning techniques based on objective measures using portable low-cost devices are useful and accurate to classify patients with Parkinson’s disease. This method can be used to evaluate patients remotely and help clinicians make decisions regarding follow-up and treatment. (shrink)

In recent years the doctrine of divine simplicity has become a topic of interest in the philosophical theological community. In particular, the modal collapse argument against divine simplicity has garnered various responses from proponents of divine simplicity. Some even claiming that the modal collapse argument is invalid. It is our contention that these responses have either misunderstood or misstated the argument, and have thus missed the force of the objection. Our main aim is to clarify what the (...) modal collapse argument in fact says, and explain why the recent responses do not succeed. In order to argue our case, we will proceed in several steps. First, we aim to systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, articulate the Christian conviction that God is free to create any feasible world or no world at all. Third, argue that divine simplicity suffers a modal collapse and thus undermines God's freedom. Fourth, respond to potential objections to modal collapse. Fifth, we offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

In The City of God, XI, 10, St Augustine claims that the divine nature is simple because ‘it is what it has’ (quod habet hoc est). We may take this as a slogan for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (DDS), a doctrine which finds its way into orthodox medieval Christian theological speculation. Like the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has seemed obvious and pious to many, and incoherent, misguided, and repugnant to others. Unlike the doctrine of God's (...) timeless eternality, the DDS has received very little critical attention. The DDS did not originate with Augustine, but I am not primarily concerned with its pedigree. Nor am I concerned to ask how the doctrine interacts with trinitarian speculation. I will have my hands full as it is. In Section I of this paper I shall provide a rough characterization of the DDS, indicate its complexity, and focus on a particular aspect of the doctrine which will exercise us in the remainder of the paper, namely, the thesis that the divine attributes are all identical with each other and with God. In section n I shall discuss Alvin Plantinga's recent objections to Aquinas' version of the DDS. I shall then offer a more detailed presentation of what I take to be Aquinas' version (section III), and recast it in terms of a theory of attributes which is significantly different from Plantinga's (section IV). Although the recasting of the doctrine will enable me to rebut Plantinga's objections (section v), it by no means solves all the problems of the DDS. In section vi I shall discuss the chief lingering problem facing a defender of the DDS. (shrink)

According to a doctrine widely held by most medieval philosophers and theologians, whether in the Muslim or Christian world, there are no metaphysical distinctions in God whatsoever. As a result of the compendious theorizing that has been done on this issue, the doctrine, usually called the doctrine of divine simplicity, has been bestowed a prominent status in both Islamic and Christian philosophical theology. In Islamic philosophy some well-known philosophers, such as Ibn Sina (980–1037) and Mulla Sadra (1571–1640), developed this (...) doctrine through a metaphysical approach. In this paper, considering the historical order, I shall first concentrate on Ibn Sina’s view. Then I shall turn to the theory of divine simplicity of Thomas Aquinas (1225?–1274), as the most developed and comprehensive version of the medieval theories in Christian world. Finally, I will return to Islamic philosophy and explore the more complicated and mature account of the doctrine as it was introduced by Mulla Sadra according to his own philosophical principles. (shrink)

In The City of God , XI, 10, St Augustine claims that the divine nature is simple because ‘it is what it has’ . We may take this as a slogan for the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity , a doctrine which finds its way into orthodox medieval Christian theological speculation. Like the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, the DDS has seemed obvious and pious to many, and incoherent, misguided, and repugnant to others. Unlike the doctrine of God's timeless eternality, (...) the DDS has received very little critical attention. The DDS did not originate with Augustine, but I am not primarily concerned with its pedigree. Nor am I concerned to ask how the doctrine interacts with trinitarian speculation. I will have my hands full as it is. In Section I of this paper I shall provide a rough characterization of the DDS, indicate its complexity, and focus on a particular aspect of the doctrine which will exercise us in the remainder of the paper, namely, the thesis that the divine attributes are all identical with each other and with God. In section n I shall discuss Alvin Plantinga's recent objections to Aquinas' version of the DDS. I shall then offer a more detailed presentation of what I take to be Aquinas' version , and recast it in terms of a theory of attributes which is significantly different from Plantinga's . Although the recasting of the doctrine will enable me to rebut Plantinga's objections , it by no means solves all the problems of the DDS. In section vi I shall discuss the chief lingering problem facing a defender of the DDS. (shrink)

What is the proper task of Kantian ethical theory? This paper seeks to answer this question with reference to Kant's reply to Christian Garve in Section I of his 1793 essay on Theory and Practice . Kant reasserts the distinctness and natural authority of our consciousness of the moral law. Every mature human being is a moral professional—even philosophers like Garve, if only they forget about their ill-conceived ethical systems and listen to the voice of pure practical reason. Normative theory, (...) Kant argues, cannot be refuted with reference to alleged experience. It is the proper task of the moral philosopher to emphasize this fact. The paper also discusses Kant's attempts to clarify his moral psychology, philosophy of value and conception of the highest good in the course of replying to Garve's challenge. Key Words: Christian Garve • ethical theory and practice • Immanuel Kant • moral psychology • theory of value. (shrink)

The traditional notion of divine simplicity is frequently misunderstood. Philosophers of religion who defend it and theologians who dismiss it agree on its Greek, rather than biblical, heritage. On the contrary, a particularly Christian account of divine simplicity, as reflected for example in Thomas, maintains a Creator‐creature distinction as understood in light of Trinity and Incarnation. Stump and Kretzmann's discussion of simplicity appears to follow Aquinas, but misses the character of this distinction, and so treats a human (...) idea of “the simple” instead of Thomas's living source of being. The true modern follower of Thomas on simplicity is not Stump and Kretzmann, but Barth. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that a false assumption drives the attraction of philosophers to a divine command theory of morality. Specifically, I suggest the idea that anything not created by God is independent of God is a misconception. The idea misleads us into thinking that our only choice in offering a theistic ground for morality is between making God bow to a standard independent of his will or God creating morality in revealing his will. Yet what is God (...) is hardly independent of him, and in coupling a perfect being theology with the doctrine of divine simplicity we discover that God’s “reason” is God. Accordingly, obeying the truths of goodness that we humans speak of as contained in the divine wisdom hardly impugns the divine sovereignty. By modifying divine command ethics to give primacy to God’s love or justice, thinkers such as Robert M. Adams, Philip L. Quinn, and Edward J. Wierenga admit the repugnance of this picture in spite of their verbal allegiance to divine command ethics. Accordingly, they implicitly concede that basing morality on God’s sheer power should not be the preferred option for the Christian theist. (shrink)

There has been a recent revival of interest in the doctrine of divine simplicity in systematic and philosophical theology, following decades of intense reflection on the tri-personhood of the Christian God. While recent studies have produced a greater appreciation of patristic and scholastic theologies, they have not yet engaged in dialogue with proponents of the trinitarian revival that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century in anything other than polemical terms. This book offers a theological defense of (...) the doctrine of divine simplicity through careful reading of both exemplary historical theologians and Robert W. Jenson, an important American contributor to the trinitarian revival. After tracing continuities and discontinuities amongst select historical theologians, the book approaches Jenson with a multivalent account of divine simplicity. The result is a more nuanced interpretation of Jenson’s theology, an account of divine simplicity that responds to perceived problems, and new constructive proposals for divine simplicity in trinitarian theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay’s aim is to demonstrate how recent defenses of divine simplicity have failed to address the prevailing challenge of analogical language, and thereby render much of their argumentation for simplicity’s appropriateness in Christian theology null-and-void. For this task, three book-length works published within the last few years are examined: Steven Duby’s Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account, D. Stephen Long’s The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy, and Jordan Barrett’s Divine Simplicity: A Biblical (...) and Trinitarian Account. The first section briefly details what each author understands divine simplicity to characterize, and how that characterization involves the pivotal denial of God belonging to any genus. The second section addresses the extent to which each author provides an answer as to how one can analogically speak of a simple God. Finally, the third section critiques the kinds of analogical positions found in Thomas Cajetan’s influential De Nominum Analogia, showing that they do not provide a sufficient analogical framework to ground intelligible propositions or inferences about a simple God, which thereby places the original three authors’ defenses in danger of serious incoherence. (shrink)

The immense distance between God and creatures is a core statement of Gregory of Nyssa’s thought, which makes it distinctive not only in theology, but also in cosmology, anthropology, and spiritual doctrine. For him, the main distinction between beings that articulates all reality is not that of intelligible and sensible, but the one between infinite God and creatures. This paper, dealing with some selected texts regarding the creation of man, points out the main roots of Gregory’s theism: a high comprehension (...) of God’s transcendence and a proper philosophy of time and creation. From here, Gregory’s understanding of the hierarchy of beings as a non-dialectic unity of creation supported by a transcendent participation in God, and his articulation of Eternity and Time within the unique creative action of God, could be seen as a deep Christian comprehension of reality that is still intriguing for contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

This paper argues that (1) Richard Swinburne’s general account of the simplicity of empirical hypotheses fails because it involves a deeply problematic notion of postulating a property, while there is a wide range of hypotheses where the assessment of simplicity rests entirely on the number and kinds of postulated properties, (2) Swinburne’s main argument in ’The Christian God’ for the simplicity of theism, the one based on considerations about pure limitless intentional power, is significantly weaker than he (...) seems to believe. The paper does not draw a conclusion about whether theism is simple. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Augustine Aquinas.

This article discuss the origin of the Byzantine Cultural Model, influenced by the patristic anthropologic perspective, which discerns that present-day man is notgeneric man, but is at an intermediate stage, between a lost condition and one that could be attained. A dimension of the Eastern Christian understanding of man that is less known nowadays is related to the theme of the garment of skin. This is connected with another one, the theme of the simplicity of the mind.

Javanese people have unique characteristics and traditions that make them appealing for research. One of the unique things of the Javanese tradition called bancaan is that it is aimed at appreciating children. Bancaan is a simple banquet of gratitude on the occasion of a child’s birthday by inviting their playmates to pray together for their good. This tradition is rich in the value of hospitality but began to disappear as influences of current development overtake. Given this reality, this study discovered (...) Christian values of hospitality in the bancaan tradition. This discovery is based on a survey by Lee Roy Martin and Michele Hersberger. This research is based on the paradigm of qualitative research. Data collection was conducted by examining the literature and studying the Bible. The problem was analysed using interactive analysis, revealing Christian hospitality values in the bancaan tradition. The values showed are as follows: bancaan is open to everyone in nature despite their backgrounds, bancaan is a form of interaction of hospitality in simplicity and bancaan is a form of regeneration of hospitality values to the child.Contribution: This manuscript provided an overview of one form of Javanese culture, which was then linked to the principles of hospitality from Jesus. This culture was a form of Javanese culture towards children’s appreciation. It is hoped that this manuscript contributes to the preservation of Javanese bancaan culture. (shrink)

One of the most difficult and perplexing tenets of classical theism is the doctrine of divine simplicity. Broadly put, this is generally understood to be the thesis that God is altogether without any proper parts, composition, or metaphysical complexity whatsoever. For a good deal more than a millennium, veritable armies of philosophical theologians – Jewish, Christian and Islamic – proclaimed the truth and importance of divine simplicity. Yet in our own time, the doctrine has enjoyed no such support. (...) Among many otherwise orthodox theists, those who do not just disregard it completely explicitly deny it. However, in a couple of recent articles, William E. Mann has attempted to expound the idea of divine simplicity anew and to defend it against a number of criticisms. He even has gone so far as to hint at reaffirming its importance, suggesting that the doctrine may have a significant amount of explanatory power and other theoretical virtue as part of an overall account of the nature of God, by either entailing or in other ways providing for much else that traditional theists have wanted to say about God. In this paper, I want to take a close look at Mann's formulation of the doctrine and at a general supporting theory he adumbrates in his attempt to render more plausible, or at least more defensible, various of its elements and implications. As Mann has made what is arguably the best attempt to defend the doctrine in recent years, I think that such an examination is important and will repay our efforts. (shrink)

Ammianus Marcellinus, by common consent the last great historian of Rome, rounds off his obituary notice of the emperor Constantius II with the following observation: The plain simplicity of Christianity he obscured by an old woman's superstition; by intricate investigation instead of seriously trying to reconcile, he stirred up very many disputes, and as these spread widely he nourished them with arguments about words; with the result that crowds of bishops rushed hither and thither by means of public (...) mounts on their way to synods , and while he tried to make all their worship conform to his own will, he cut the sinews of the public transport service. This is a perceptive judgement of the ecclesiastical politics of the reign of Constantius, remarkable in a pagan writer, and of exceptional significance in that it lies outside those very ‘arguments about words’ which contaminate all the Christian assessments of this emperor. Although Ammianus is unsympathetic to Constantius, he manages succinctly to grasp the basic drift of imperial policy, inherited from Constantine himself, of trying to enforce the emperor's view of doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity by the summoning of repeated episcopal councils and browbeating the bishops into agreement — thus paying lip-service to the independence of the church's judgements. To the observant outsider, this process was notable above all for the burden it placed on the cursus publicus, as the bishops went about their business around the empire now provided with official evectiones; and Ammianus' comment finds confirmation in the letter issued by eastern bishops attending one of the many councils of Constantius' reign, that at Sardica in 343, who complained of the ‘attrition’ of the transport service caused by the imperial summons. (shrink)

The Roman Catholic Church is not experiencing the best of times: here the problem of Islamization of the Christian world, and the degradation of moral values, the destruction of the institution of marriage and family. Pope Francis proclaims turn the Church back to its New Testament pattern, back to the purity and simplicity of the gospel. Here we need not rebuild the Church and even its reformation, but in the literal sense of its «pivot» back to all 180 degrees (...) to the Evangelical foundations of Apostolic Christianity. Theology women and the theology of the poor is the effective mechanism that starts the process of conversion of Catholicism to the Christianity of Jesus. (shrink)

One of the most difficult and perplexing tenets of classical theism is the doctrine of divine simplicity. Broadly put, this is generally understood to be the thesis that God is altogether without any proper parts, composition, or metaphysical complexity whatsoever. For a good deal more than a millennium, veritable armies of philosophical theologians – Jewish, Christian and Islamic – proclaimed the truth and importance of divine simplicity. Yet in our own time, the doctrine has enjoyed no such support. (...) Among many otherwise orthodox theists, those who do not just disregard it completely explicitly deny it. However, in a couple of recent articles, William E. Mann has attempted to expound the idea of divine simplicity anew and to defend it against a number of criticisms. He even has gone so far as to hint at reaffirming its importance, suggesting that the doctrine may have a significant amount of explanatory power and other theoretical virtue as part of an overall account of the nature of God, by either entailing or in other ways providing for much else that traditional theists have wanted to say about God. In this paper, I want to take a close look at Mann's formulation of the doctrine and at a general supporting theory he adumbrates in his attempt to render more plausible, or at least more defensible, various of its elements and implications. As Mann has made what is arguably the best attempt to defend the doctrine in recent years, I think that such an examination is important and will repay our efforts. (shrink)

In this study, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz argues that Basil and Gregory develop an understanding of divine simplicity which does not require that God be identical with the properties of God or that these be identical with one another. Their motivation is that they want to hold that we cannot, in all eternity, know God's essence and yet that we have knowledge of God. Radde-Gallwitz argues that, for Basil and especially Gregory, in addition to our "conceptualizations" (epinoiai), we also have knowledge (...) of propria, properties necessarily connected to God's essence.In the early chapters, Radde-Gallwitz surveys the background to the Cappadocians, beginning with the second century. He argues that in early Christianity the .. (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

Les disciplines historiques, littéraires et philosophiques font un emploi abondant des catégories historiographiques. Parmi celles-ci, les termes en ismes sont très fréquents pour référer à une doctrine, un courant artistique, une idéologie ou des événements spécifiques. On fait cependant remarquer que ces désignations posent de nombreux problèmes d’interprétation. En particulier, que l’origine exacte d’une catégorie est souvent méconnue et que sa signification est plus équivoque qu’on ne le croit habituellement. La formation d’un terme en isme s’explique souvent dans un contexte (...) polémique et sert à condamner ou critiquer plutôt qu’à comprendre une pensée, un mouvement ou des faits historiques. Les catégories d’athéisme, de classicisme ou de féminisme en sont de bons exemples. Le présent volume vise à contribuer à l’étude critique des catégories historiographiques et des notions en isme en s’attardant à l’époque moderne (XVI e XVIII e siècles). Il s’agit d’un moment clef de l’histoire européenne pendant laquelle nombre de ces notions apparaissent ou pour laquelle l’historiographie en a fait un emploi abondant. Les chapitres en examinent la valeur théorique par rapport à une origine ou des usages, et déterminent de quelles manières elles contribuent à l’interprétation de l’histoire, de la littérature ou de la philosophie, de la Renaissance jusqu’à la Révolution française. (shrink)

First published in 1848, Christian Discourses is a quartet of pieces written and arranged in contrasting styles. Parts One and Three, "The Cares of the Pagans" and "Thoughts That Wound from Behind--for Upbuilding," serve as a polemical overture to Kierkegaard's collision with the established order of Christendom. Yet Parts Two and Four, "Joyful Notes in the Strife of Suffering" and "Discourses at the Communion on Fridays," are reassuring affirmations of the joy and blessedness of Christian life in a world of (...) adversity and suffering. Written in ordinary language, the work combines simplicity and inwardness with reflection and presents crucial Christian concepts and presuppositions with unusual clarity. Kierkegaard continued in the pattern that he began with his first pseudonymous esthetic work, Either/Or, by pairing Christian Discourses with The Crisis, an unsigned esthetic essay on contemporary Danish actress Joanne Luise Heiberg. (shrink)

First published in 1848, Christian Discourses is a quartet of pieces written and arranged in contrasting styles. Parts One and Three, "The Cares of the Pagans" and "Thoughts That Wound from Behind--for Upbuilding," serve as a polemical overture to Kierkegaard's collision with the established order of Christendom. Yet Parts Two and Four, "Joyful Notes in the Strife of Suffering" and "Discourses at the Communion on Fridays," are reassuring affirmations of the joy and blessedness of Christian life in a world of (...) adversity and suffering. Written in ordinary language, the work combines simplicity and inwardness with reflection and presents crucial Christian concepts and presuppositions with unusual clarity. Kierkegaard continued in the pattern that he began with his first pseudonymous esthetic work, Either/Or, by pairing Christian Discourses with The Crisis, an unsigned esthetic essay on contemporary Danish actress Joanne Luise Heiberg. (shrink)

Singularites: le mot ne se dit pas tant des individus que des relations qui les lient contingentement au monde. Car l'harmonie universelle n'est pas si performante que le laisse entendre son auteur, sur des questions fondamentales pour la coherence du Systeme - en particulier celle du mal, reprise au siecle d'apres dans un leibnitianisme reste incompris. On concluerait a l'echec, si la loi d'harmonie n'etait capable d'engendrer des relations qui, en ecart a son fonctionnement ordinaire, la modulent diversement, l'inflechissent, l'enrichissent, (...) pour produire localement des effets de cohesion inesperes aux lieux memes ou elle restait inoperante. Mais, pour reperer ces endroits singuliers, il faut plonger dans le labyrinthe sous-jacent au reseau: prendre en compte le multiple dans ses varietes, les personnages qui tissent le monde choisi et racontent son histoire, les choses humaines en ce qu'elles ont d'irreductibilite au rationalisme - et qui pourtant sont, par la suffisance des raisons, le comble de la rationalite. Intervient alors, pour la connaissance, un autre modele que la demonstration more geometrico, embleme ordinaire de l'Age classique: l'Ars rationis des juristes, arpenteurs de la contingence et mathematiciens du plausible, maitres d'une technique d'argumentation ou la philosophie apprend que les sciences humaines peuvent aussi atteindre a la plus grande certitude. (shrink)

First published in 1848, Christian Discourses is a quartet of pieces written and arranged in contrasting styles. Parts One and Three, "The Cares of the Pagans" and "Thoughts That Wound from Behind--for Upbuilding," serve as a polemical overture to Kierkegaard's collision with the established order of Christendom. Yet Parts Two and Four, "Joyful Notes in the Strife of Suffering" and "Discourses at the Communion on Fridays," are reassuring affirmations of the joy and blessedness of Christian life in a world of (...) adversity and suffering. Written in ordinary language, the work combines simplicity and inwardness with reflection and presents crucial Christian concepts and presuppositions with unusual clarity. Kierkegaard continued in the pattern that he began with his first pseudonymous esthetic work, Either/Or, by pairing Christian Discourses with The Crisis, an unsigned esthetic essay on contemporary Danish actress Joanne Luise Heiberg. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite the vast (...) differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

The avowed simplicity of thomasius' practical philosophy conceals its real complexity. His treatment of reason and will, Moral and political obligation, And freedom and authority particularly bears this out. The impact of his political philosophy was to transmute the operative ethos of absolutism by demonstrating that while absolute power was possible, Absolute authority was an absurdity.

The perception of meaningful patterns in random arrangements and unrelated events takes place in our everyday lives, coined apophenia, synchronicity, or the experience of meaningful coincidences. However, we do not know yet what predicts this phenomenon. To investigate this, we re-analyzed a combined data set of two daily diary studies with a total of N = 169 participants (mean age 29.95 years; 54 men). We investigated if positive or negative affect (PA, NA) predicts the number of meaningful coincidences on the (...) following day (or vice versa). By means of a cross-lagged multilevel modelling approach (Bayesian estimation) we evaluated with which of two theoretical assumptions the data are more in line. First, if meaningful coincidences are facilitated by a broader and more flexible thinking style, PA should positively predict meaningful coincidences at the following day. However, if the experience of meaningful coincidences signifies a strategy to cope with negative feeling states, NA should predict the experience of meaningful coincidences during the following day. In favour of a more flexible thinking style, we found that PA predicted the number of perceived coincidences the following day. We did not find any effect for NA, and therefore, no evidence arguing for the coping mechanism hypothesis of meaningful coincidences. (shrink)

The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk (like Pascal's Mugging), and intolerably paradoxical in cases like the St. Petersburg and Pasadena games. In this paper I show that, under certain conditions, stochastic dominance reasoning can capture most of the plausible implications of expectational reasoning while avoiding most of its pitfalls. Specifically, given sufficient background uncertainty (...) about the choiceworthiness of one's options, many expectation-maximizing gambles that do not stochastically dominate their alternatives "in a vacuum" become stochastically dominant in virtue of that background uncertainty. But, even under these conditions, stochastic dominance will not require agents to accept options whose expectational superiority depends on sufficiently small probabilities of extreme payoffs. The sort of background uncertainty on which these results depend looks unavoidable for any agent who measures the choiceworthiness of her options in part by the total amount of value in the resulting world. At least for such agents, then, stochastic dominance offers a plausible general principle of choice under uncertainty that can explain more of the apparent rational constraints on such choices than has previously been recognized. (shrink)

At its heart, The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment is a plea not to take doubt at its word—a plea for the return of a vanished philosophical intelligence..

Franciscus de Prato hat sich immer wieder mit der Philosophie Ockhams auseinandergesetzt. Diese Arbeit zeigt auf, wie bedeutsam fur beide Philosophen die Sprachtheorie ist. Der Angelpunkt ist dabei die Annahme entweder eines Satzes im Geiste oder einer Proposition, die aus Dingen besteht. Diese Entscheidung wirkt sich dann auf verschiedenste Gebiete der Philosophie aus. Am Beispiel der Kategorienlehre wird dies deutlich: Kategorien sind Aussagbares. In Satzen aussagbar sind aber fur Ockham nur mentale Begriffe, keine Dinge. Also ist fur ihn die Kategorienordnung (...) keine Ordnung von extramentalen Dingen, sondern nur von mentalen Zeichen. Anders Franciscus: Fur ihn sind Gegenstande, nicht Zeichen primar aussagbar. Also ist fur ihn die kategoriale Ordnung eine reale Hierarchie. Welches Licht wirft diese Auseinandersetzung auf das Verstandnis der Philosophie Ockhams und der des Franciscus? Weitaus wichtiger als der universalientheoretische Unterschied zwischen Nominalismus und Realismus ist fur beide Denker ihre satztheoretische Ausrichtung. Ausgezeichnet mit dem Preis an Studierende der Ruhr-Universitat Bochum. (shrink)