Despite their growing popularity, little is known about the psychological effects of participating in past-life meditation groups in contemporary western contexts. We conducted a study to re-create some of the conditions observed in the field by facilitating a group of adults interested in exploring past life meditation. Before the session, participants completed a survey about their afterlife beliefs and associated experiences. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring meaningfulness in life and fear of death before and (...) after the session. In the sample (n = 125), just over half of the participants (52%) reported having a past life memory or vision during the session. Higher paranormal beliefs predicted reporting a past life memory or vision. We also found that having prior memories or visions of having lived before, but not the general belief in having a past life, predicted reporting having past life experiences during the session. Consistent with our predictions, participants who reported having a past life memory or vision also reported reduced existential death distress and increased meaningfulness in life following the session, compared to those who did not report these experiences. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to address the role of memory in past-life convictions. Although it is commonly accepted in the modern media - and popular western culture more generally - that people believe they have lived before because the memory contains detailed verifiable facts, little is known about how people actually reason about the veracity of their previous existence. To our knowledge, the current project is the most extensive research that probes the role of memory in (...) past life convictions. More specifically, we explore two questions. First, to what extent does memory lead to past-life belief, and is this conviction based on external validation or via the episodic sense of personal identity contained in the memory? Second, what is the conception of self on which one's current self is taken to be the same as the past-life self? -/- In what follows, we propose that memory plays an important role in convincing people that they have lived before. Fundamentally, this memory is episodic insofar as it represents the event as happened to the encoder. This memory contrasts with semantic memory - memory of facts...Further, we contend that it is the episodic sense of personal identity (rather than external validation) that typically contributes to the belief in a past life. Finally, we argue that the conception of self implicated in past-life belief is the non-trait conception. Of course, this fits naturally with the idea that the belief in a past life issues partly from the episodic sense of identity, since it is the non-trait conception of self that is implicated in the episodic sense of identity... -/- Our proposal in this chapter can be construed as a psychological extension of Reid's point in the context of past-life belief. People assume that they are the same person as someone in earlier times, despite large variations in the traits between those individuals, and they think this partly because of the testimony of their episodic memory. If our account is correct, then it makes the belief in a past life less bizarre, at least psychologically. For we are suggesting that the episodic sense of personal identity that led to your conviction that you existed at the time of your sixteenth birthday celebrations some decades ago, is also involved in other people's convictions that they existed 200 years ago. This proposal is also situated in recent cognitive approaches to the study of religion and religious experiences, which suggests that extraordinary convictions are often underpinned by the ordinary processes of social cognition (e.g. see Barrett 2000; Barrett 2007; Boyer 2001; Lawson and McCauley 1990; for reincarnation, see White Forthcoming-a,-b). (shrink)

Your concise guide to Buddhism, mindfulness, and meditation! The Everything Essential Buddhism Book is your beginner's guide to the Buddhist principles of nonviolence, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Learn about the deceptively simple truths of this enigmatic religion, including: The life of Buddha and his continuing influence throughout the world; Buddha's teachings and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism; The Noble Eightfold Path and how it should guide you; What the Sutras say about education, marriage, sex, and death; The proven physiological (...) effects of meditation; The growing impact of Buddhism on modern American culture. Also included is instruction for the many forms of Buddhist meditation, including Zen and Tibetan practices. Most important, you will learn how you can apply the tenets of Buddhism to your daily life--and achieve clarity and inner peace in the process. (shrink)

Buddhism comes up several times in The Good Place. According to Buddhism, what we think of as a “self” or “soul” is merely a convenient designator, a useful fiction, that doesn't correspond to any actual thing in the world. In The Good Place, Eleanor's entire journey to becoming a better person is predicated on the belief that she can indeed change herself for the better. If change is possible, it is because that part of the self is capable of change. (...) Buddhist equanimity does not involve ignoring the suffering of others. In fact, compassion is one of the chief virtues of Buddhism. Over the course of The Good Place, the characters transform from self‐obsessed people who don't understand the amount of harm they are causing to themselves and others into people who have come to grips with the consequences of their past deeds. (shrink)

Rebirth and the Stream of Life explores the diversity as well as the ethical and religious significance of rebirth beliefs, focusing especially on Hindu and Buddhist traditions but also discussing indigenous religions and ancient Greek thought. Utilizing resources from religious studies, anthropology and theology, an expanded conception of philosophy of religion is exemplified, which takes seriously lived experience rather than treating religious beliefs in isolation from their place in believers' lives. Drawing upon his expertise in interdisciplinary working (...) and Wittgenstein-influenced approaches, Mikel Burley examines several interrelated phenomena, including purported past-life memories, the relationship between metaphysics and ethics, efforts to 'demythologize' rebirth, and moral critiques of the doctrine of karma. This range of topics, with rebirth as a unifying theme, makes the book of value to anyone interested in philosophy, the study of religions, and what it means to believe that we undergo multiple lives. (shrink)

Notre Dame Philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have gone deep with that work in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course GOD AND THE GOOD LIFE, in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to tackle such issues as what justifies your beliefs, whether you should practice a religion, and what sacrifices you should make for others--as well as to (...) investigate what Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Murdoch have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko teach us how to reason through real-world case studies by doing the timeless work of philosophy like escaping our own caves, learning to doubt everything, asking strong questions, grasping our own purpose, and wrestling with the problem of evil and the existence of God. For at least the past 2500 years philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human--and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions. Their virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. Philosophers know that our "good life plan" is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing. In that work, we can achieve some meaningful control even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. THE GOOD LIFE is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages. (shrink)

_A positive assessment of secularism and the possibilities it offers for a genuinely meaningful life without religion_ Although there is no shortage of recent books arguing against religion, few offer a positive alternative—how anyone might live a fulfilling life without the support of religious beliefs. This enlightening book fills the gap. Philip Kitcher constructs an original and persuasive secular perspective, one that answers human needs, recognizes the objectivity of values, and provides for the universal desire for meaningfulness. (...) Kitcher thoughtfully and sensitively considers how secularism can respond to the worries and challenges that all people confront, including the issue of mortality. He investigates how secular lives compare with those of people who adopt religious doctrines as literal truth, as well as those who embrace less literalistic versions of religion. Whereas religious belief has been important in past times, Kitcher concludes that evolution away from religion is now essential. He envisions the successors to religious life, where the senses of identity and community traditionally fostered by religion will instead draw on a broader range of cultural items—those provided by poets, filmmakers, musicians, artists, scientists, and others. With clarity and deep insight, Kitcher reveals the power of secular humanism to encourage fulfilling human lives built on ethical truth. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

This book demonstrates how discussions of Political Theology have been a constant feature throughout philosophical modernity and that they continue to impact contemporary political debates. By tracing the historical roots and detailing the contemporary outworking of Political Theology in Europe, it contends that this growing field requires a broader "canon" in order for it to mature. Political Theology is shown here to be about the diversity of relationships between religious beliefs and political orientations. First engaging with historical debates, chapters (...) re-examine the relationship between personal conviction and societal orientation on such topics as the will to believe, evil, individualism, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship between belief and natural science. The volume then establishes the relevance of these debates for the present day. As such, it invites engagement on the back and forth between religion and politics in a liberal democracy and a communist state, on how communitarianism relates to religious language, on the diversity of Christian and Jewish political theology, and the politics of toleration. By broadening out the field of Political Theology this book offers the reader a more nuanced understanding of its sustained influence on public life. As such it will be of interest to academics working in Political Theology, but also Theology, Philosophy and Political Science more generally. (shrink)

The Elements of Philosophy: Readings from Past and Present is a comprehensive collection of historical and contemporary readings across the major fields of philosophy. With depth and quality, this introductory anthology offers a selection of readings that is both extensive and expansive; the readings span twenty-five centuries. They are organized topically into five parts: Religion and Belief, Moral and Political Philosophy, Metaphysics and Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind and Language, and Life and Death. The product of the collaboration of (...) three highly respected scholars in their fields - Tamar Szabó Gendler, Susanna Siegel, and Steven M. Cahn - The Elements of Philosophy also includes introductions from the editors, explanatory footnotes, and a glossary. (shrink)

The Book of Common Prayer is the first introduction to Anglican belief and liturgy for many. More specifically, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 contains the traditional catechism of the Church of England, enjoining catechumens to receive training and instruction in basic doctrines and Christian living. This takes place in the contexts of the liturgy and the more comprehensive doctrinal statements of the 39 Articles of Religion. Anglican religion traditionally allowed its members to verbalise their faith in both ritual (...) and confession, thus serving the church and not so much life in the world. A revisit of the intentions of the catechism within its historical and prayer book contexts will show that it essentially expresses lasting truths of the Christian faith. In a world increasingly divorced from particular Christian expressions, the Anglican Church needs to rethink its particular use of the catechism for its continued relevance in meeting the questions and challenges Anglicans face daily. (shrink)

Dr. Jennings states that his purpose in _The Universe and Life_ is to “try to show what positive outlook on life and the world is given by the study of biological science; and how this differs, if at all, from the outlook based on physics, or from the outlook presented in some of the religions of the world.” He believes that the study of biology aids in getting a unified view of the universe and of man in his relations (...) with it, and that it helps particularly in the problems of managing life, the problems of conduct, and in the determination of our attitude toward the world. Did life always exist? Does development produce what is really new? Do feelings, ideas, and knowledge have a function in the world? Was what occurs today predictable before life came into the world? Is man indispensable to the advancement of life? Does the study of biology lead to the belief that life tends toward a goal that is already existent? Does it lead to the divine right of the aristocrat? Do individuals continue to live after the event we call death? Professor Jennings sets forth his answers to these and other provocative questions in simple and clear-cut style, and concludes that life “is progressing in the present as it has in the past. In the future it may be expected to advance as it has done in the past—to heights that no one can predict, to which no one can set limits.”. (shrink)

Writing more than a century apart, William James and Marilynne Robinson are allies in forcefully and eloquently challenging the claims and widespread appeal of scientism or positivism: the belief that scientific knowledge provides a necessary and sufficient worldview and entails the reduction of all reality, including the world of human subjects, to physical processes. Both James and Robinson are particularly concerned with and critical of the efforts of scientistic reductionism to describe the human life-world entirely in terms of the (...) prevailing science. Both distinguish sharply between scientific inquiry, an essential and crucially valuable human activity, and scientism, the promotion of a metaphysical agenda .. (shrink)

This is a wide ranging and deeply learned examination of evolutionary developmental biology, and the foundations of life from the perspective of information theory. Hermeneutics was a method developed in the humanities to achieve understanding, in a given context, of texts, history, and artwork. In Readers of the Book of Life, the author shows that living beings are also hermeneutical interpreters of genetics texts saved in DNA; an interpretation based on the past experience of the cell (cell (...) lineage, species), confronted with and incorporating present environmental clues. This approach stresses the history, not only of the digital record saved in the DNA, but also of the flesh - the cellular organization which has a direct time-continuity with the very origins of life. This book is aimed at reconciling two opposite approaches to life. The first strictly sticking to a belief that all phenomena observed in the realm of the living can be explained from laws of physics. The opposite stressing the importance of features characteristic for a given level of description. To bring both views into a common understanding, the first part gives a comparison of the two problem solving strategies. The second part surveys the development of 20th century biology, bringing to light branches that never became part of the research mainstream. The third section of the book reviews a large body of recent evidence that can be interpreted in favor of the hermeneutic arguments. (shrink)

The Elements of Philosophy: Readings from Past and Present offers an extensive collection of classic and contemporary readings, organized topically into five main sections: Religion and Belief, Moral and Political Philosophy, Metaphysics and Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind and Language, and Life and Death. Within these broad areas, readings are arranged in clusters that address both traditional issues--such as the existence of God, justice and the state, knowledge and skepticism, and free will--and contemporary topics--including God and science, just war (...) theory, vegetarianism, and time travel. Carefully chosen selections from a wide range of pre-20th-century philosophers are paired with writings from more than fifty leading contemporary philosophers and thinkers. The traditional philosophers represented range from Plato and Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and A.J. Ayer; the contemporary philosophers include Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Hilary Putnam, Robert Nozick, Judith Jarvis Thomson, John Rawls, Bernard Williams, and Susan Wolf. Also included are selections from linguist Noam Chomsky, physicist Albert Einstein, and psychologist William James. Edited by a team of scholars who are also highly esteemed instructors, The Elements of Philosophy is uniquely student-friendly. A team of undergraduate philosophy majors played a central role in helping to select topics, choose readings, and identify terms likely to require clarification. In response to their suggestions, the volume includes detailed introductions to each section, explanatory footnotes that define unfamiliar terms and concepts, an extensive glossary, and a guide to further resources. A companion Instructor's Manual, available on CD, offers article summaries, suggested essay questions, reading guides, model handouts, and sample syllabi. One of the most extensive and expansive anthologies available, The Elements of Philosophy is an ideal choice for both general and targeted introductory philosophy courses. (shrink)

Rear-view mirrors are not normal scientific equipment, nor are philosophers all that keen to recall a partly embarrassing past. But looking back can cure a self-induced narrowing of the modern scientific mind and help us to renew a sense of where, if anywhere, we might feel we belong in the world. Today, a centuries-long belief in the primacy of a first-personal perspective has given way to an opposite view that what passes through the conscious mind has little to do (...) with who we are and what we are doing. A lifelong campaigner for the first-personal perspective, Alastair Hannay presents here a powerful and historically framed case for restoring faith in its status as a provider of important truths about ourselves. (shrink)

Most Chinese religious practice and belief in times past, and even throughout much of the Chinese world today, falls into the still current category of superstition. Assessing the ethical notions that tend to obtain within this vast area of religious life is not easy, but it needs to be done for practical reasons, not least because the legal consequences of moral actions arising from the body of beliefs concerned are starting to come before courts outside China itself. (...) Once the assumptions of a very different worldview affirming the existence of an unseen spirit world are taken into account, the deeds of believers in this worldview can be discussed from the point of view of ethics. Philosophers might do well to pay more attention to this topic. (shrink)

On first reading Les Mots, it was as much of a surprise to note that references to religion and belief were both so frequent and so central to Sartre's unconventional autobiography as it was to learn that the famous Christian missionary Albert Schweitzer was his cousin. Further readings and analyses have reinforced my view that the language of belief plays a critical part in the text. These questions of belief and the references to religion that appear frequently in Les Mots (...) have received less attention. It could be said that these references are merely illustrative of Sartre's attempt to explain himself to himself and to us, and function as any metaphor would. But such a suggestion would fail to account for the many references to religion and belief and to explain why they are so tightly interlinked. We will argue that closer attention to these subjects provides significant insight into the work. Sartre, it would appear, uses a religious template, rather than an existentialist or a Marxist one, to understand his life's project, his past and his present. We will therefore investigate the nature of this use of the language of belief as a religious template and evaluate its significance. (shrink)

On first reading Les Mots, it was as much of a surprise to note that references to religion and belief were both so frequent and so central to Sartre's unconventional autobiography as it was to learn that the famous Christian missionary Albert Schweitzer was his cousin. Further readings and analyses have reinforced my view that the language of belief plays a critical part in the text. These questions of belief and the references to religion that appear frequently in Les Mots (...) have received less attention. It could be said that these references are merely illustrative of Sartre's attempt to explain himself to himself and to us, and function as any metaphor would. But such a suggestion would fail to account for the many references to religion and belief and to explain why they are so tightly interlinked. We will argue that closer attention to these subjects provides significant insight into the work. Sartre, it would appear, uses a religious template, rather than an existentialist or a Marxist one, to understand his life's project, his past and his present. We will therefore investigate the nature of this use of the language of belief as a religious template and evaluate its significance. (shrink)

The subject of this research is the new age beliefs, which can be considered as individual religiosity. The aim of the research is to measure the relationship between new age beliefs and the level of religious knowledge and religiosity of individuals. As it is known, classical secularization theorists predicted that religious, mythological and similar supernaturalist structures will gradually lose their importance with the modernization process. Accordingly, religion will not only lose its decisive influence on social institutions, but will (...) also withdraw from the life of the individual to a significant extent. However, it can be said that although established religion relatively has lost its decisive role in directing life in (post)modern societies in comparison to the past, it still continues to exist in different forms as an important social institution. In other words, it can be stated that religiosity takes on different forms in societies where institutional religion has weakened. In this context, it is seen that new forms of religiosity emerged in Western societies after 1960. Concepts such as new religions, new religious movements, new age movement or new age spirituality have been put forward to describe these forms of religiosity in the tradition of sociological research. It has been determined that similar religious structures have begun to gain visibility in our modernizing country. The subject is investigated from different angles in many sub-disciplines of social science. In this context, the current research, which was designed in a quantitative design, was conducted with 382 university students studying in Bursa. In the study, a negative correlation was found between giving subjective importance to religion and new age beliefs. (shrink)

Most Chinese religious practice and belief in times past, and even throughout much of the Chinese world today, falls into the still current category of superstition. Assessing the ethical notions that tend to obtain within this vast area of religious life is not easy, but it needs to be done for practical reasons, not least because the legal consequences of moral actions arising from the body of beliefs concerned are starting to come before courts outside China itself. (...) Once the assumptions of a very different worldview affirming the existence of an unseen spirit world are taken into account, the deeds of believers in this worldview can be discussed from the point of view of ethics. Philosophers might do well to pay more attention to this topic. (shrink)

Past life regression therapy is used by some physicians in cases with some mental diseases. Anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and gender dysphoria have all been treated using life regression therapy by some doctors on the assumption that they reflect problems in past lives. Although it is not supported by psychiatric associations, few medical associations have actually condemned it as unethical. In this article, I argue that past life regression therapy is unethical for two basic (...) reasons. First, it is not evidence-based. Past life regression is based on the reincarnation hypothesis, but this hypothesis is not supported by evidence, and in fact, it faces some insurmountable conceptual problems. If patients are not fully informed about these problems, they cannot provide an informed consent, and hence, the principle of autonomy is violated. Second, past life regression therapy has the great risk of implanting false memories in patients, and thus, causing significant harm. This is a violation of the principle of non-malfeasance, which is surely the most important principle in medical ethics. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to reassess the relationship between norms and life by drawing on the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem, particularly some of his unpublished lectures about teratology and sexual determination. First, we discuss the difficulties Canguilhem identified in the introduction of life and sexuality as objects of philosophical reflection. Second, we reassess Canguilhem’s understanding of normativity as rooted in life and the axiological activity of the living. Third, we analyze how Canguilhem drew from (...) class='Hi'>past and contemporary teratology to conceive of the notions of anomaly and abnormality. Finally, we reconstruct Canguilhem’s analysis of a case of hermaphroditism, highlighting how he presented it as evidence that sexual determination is the result of a normative choice. One of the key contributions of the paper to scholarly literature on Canguilhem is a better understanding of his notion of choice, which was considered not the conscious and intentional act of a subject but rather an axiological activity of the living. We conclude by positioning Canguilhem’s concept of normativity and his belief that norms are produced by the living in relation to the naturalist/normativist divide in medicine. (shrink)

This essay will suggest that Gandhi’s true/real politics can be best understood in terms of the integrity of his ideas. This integrity refers to the fact that Gandhi was a man of integrity but more importantly to the fact that there was an integrity between his ideas and practice and between his ideas themselves. The continuities that we read in Gandhi—between politics and religion, politics religion and morality, the human being and nature and the past and present—can best be (...) unpacked if one were to understand this integrity. This essay will argue that one way to understand it would be to see that Gandhi’s arguments in economics, politics, religion, and even aesthetics drew from his fundamental moral convictions. Accordingly, the first part of this essay will suggest that Gandhi’s politics was premised on his integrity, i.e. on the idea that a human being ought to live an undivided life integrated around and by a commitment to his/her fundamental moral beliefs. The second part of the essay will argue then that a truly meaningful philosophical critique of Gandhi’s politics would only be one which could demonstrate how and where Gandhi’s politics failed to remain integrated with his fundamental moral convictions, i.e. which demonstrated how the integrity between Gandhi’s ideas themselves and between his ideas and practice broke so to say. In this context, the second section of the essay will bring in and philosophically examine Ajay Skaria’s, (Skaria, 2016) argument that satyagraha as a religion of the question (always seeking the truth which the satyagrahi did not know) involved the use of force and the imposition of the thekana/proper on the other. The essay will discuss this critique with a view to examine if it demonstrates that Gandhi’s practice disrupted his integrity both of his character and that between his ideas. (shrink)

The History of Islam, which makes use of the Qur’ān, ḥadīth and many auxiliary sources, did not ignore the different elements that would shed light on the events of the periods it studied. At this point, the poem draws attention as an important source containing much data on the history of the prophets, sīrat, genealogy, and socio-cultural life. Umayya b. Abū l-Ṣalt (d. 8/630) is an important poet who has witnessed both the Jāhilī Period and the Islamic period, and (...) has poems containing the above-mentioned themes. There are different opinions about his belief status. In this context, there are discourses that consider him as Christian, Jewish, Hanīf, and monotheist. However, although it is a fact that Umayya was a ḥanīf in Jāhilī Period, his oppositional attitude with the advent of Islam is another fact. In the historical sources, there are many poems which are attributed to Umayya and contain different subjects. When these poems are examined, especially the poems that deal with the belief of oneness and the hereafter; it is seen that the creation of the world, the lives of past tribes and prophets, sīrat, some cultural elements, elegy, praise, and lineage were also handled by him. However, when the content and style of Umayya's poems, especially about the lives of the prophets, are examined, there are doubts as to whether these poems belong to him. For example, his poem about the story of Adam is as follows: “And they all prostrated to Adam by His permission / Only the damned, the sinner, and the expelled refused it /The Lord of the servants said to Iblis: / Get out of there fired, cursed and vilified.” When compared with the verses of the Qur'ān, it is seen that the information presented by Umayya about the story of Adam does not contradict with the information in the Qur'ān. “It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis; He refused to be of those who prostrate.” “(Allāh) said: "Get thee down from this: it is not for thee to be arrogant here: get out, for thou art of the meanest (of creatures).” In Umayya's poems, the story of Noah is discussed in with more details: “In the evening the flood was sent and the water overflowed. / There was no container to hold it. / He swims like an arrow seeking revenge. / And crossing the sea. / Everything began to speak with a miracle. / And the crow responded to the rooster's trust with treason. / After seven days the dove was sent / That; was unafraid of dangers and showed courage. / It was said, let's search the earth / Can you find a dry place with a water source in its furthest part? / Flew away fast. / Then he brought a cluster of black sticky mud on it.” In the poems of Umayya, in which he talks about the stories of the Prophet, many words and stories that the Arabs do not know are used. The story of the crow, rooster, and pigeon in this poem is one such example. It is said that Umayya was influenced by the old books and the words of the People of the Book in the story about the crow, the rooster, and the pigeon. Because, although there are differences in the details, it is seen that this issue is mentioned in the Torāh. Cevād Ali, who touches on this issue, states that “if it is true that these poems belong to him” and says that the available data is evidence that Umayya met with the People of the Book and knew the content of their books. While evaluating this issue, Behcet Abdulagafur referred to the 49th verse of the Surah Hūd and he emphasized two possibilities, pointing out that the story was not known to people before, including the Prophet Muḥammad: Umayya recited them from the Qur'ān and sang his poems according to the Qur'ān. However, this is a low probabilirty. Or, this poem does not belong to him and was later made up for him. He saw the second option more strongly and said that the poem did not resemble Umayya's style as a reason. The Prophet avoided a wholesale approach and evaluated Umayya's poems according to their content. Because while approving some of his poems, he also banned his poems that he sang as a lament for the polytheists killed in Badr, which did not comply with the Islamic understanding. The Prophet said about him: “His poetry became a Muslim, but his heart denied it.” Thus, while revealing that the content of Umayya's poems is generally suitable for Islam, he also stated that he was not a Muslim. At the same time, he banned his poems that were against Islam. (shrink)

Somewhere in the mists of the past, we somehow picked up the idea of an afterlife from our culture. So, where did this idea come from in the first place? The problem is not that there aren’t any plausible theories to explain it; the problem is that there are too many. Some claim that the belief in an afterlife is wishful thinking; others that it’s a way of encouraging socially desirable behavior; and others still that it represents ancient people’s (...) best effort to explain strange phenomena such as dreams. More recently, it has been suggested that afterlife beliefs are the handiwork of evolution by natural selection, or byproducts of various evolved psychological capacities. According to one approach, afterlife beliefs are products of natural selection, but not natural selection operating on genes or any other biological entities. Instead, afterlife beliefs are products of natural selection operating among ideas or memes. -/- 1. A Plethora of Theories - 1.1 Wishful Thinking - 1.2 Social Glue - 1.3 Social Control - 1.4 Primitive Science -- 2. Evolving an Afterlife - 2.1 A Spandrel in the Works - 2.2 Afterlife Beliefs as Selfish Memes -- 3. Why Go There? (shrink)

In a style that is both philosophically sophisticated and accessible to general readers, Robert Almeder introduces readers to the vigorous debate in the scientific community about the possibility of personal survival after death. He argues that belief in some form of personal survival is as empirically justifiable as our belief in the past existence of dinosaurs. Drawing on 21 of the best case studies in reincarnation, apparitions of the dead, ostensible possession, out-of-body experiences, and trance mediumships, Death and Personal (...) Survival offers a comprehensive discussion of the best empirical evidence in each of these areas and refutes alternative explanations offered by sceptics. (shrink)

"Based on field research data collected and analyzed over the past seventeen years, the Maryknoll Institute of African Studies has categorized cultural knowledge into fifteen themes and thirty-five domains. The themes are the major values, symbols and ideas that bring wholeness and coherence to a culture. The themes explain the nature of life, the nature of creation, the nature of evil, etc. Underneath and within these themes are thirty-five cultural domains, that is, specific activities, rituals, attitudes and happenings (...) that make up the ordinary events in the lives of human beings, from birth to death and beyond ... The book is divided into fifteen chapters, one for each foundational theme"--Intro., p. [1]. (shrink)

Much of the writing of and about the twelfth-century rabbi, philosopher, and theologian Moses Maimonides is addressed to an elite audience of philosophers and intellectuals. Here, Ralph Lerner's exploration of Maimonides' popular writings reveals that the education of the common man was one of the great teacher's chief concerns. Lerner describes the brilliant and sometimes wily ways in which Maimonides sought to break through the despair and superstition that gripped the Jewish people's minds, without sacrificing the dignity and core of (...) his message. These writings—presented here in uncommonly accurate, mostly new translations—also reveal that Maimonides was willing to risk the scorn of his contemporaries to enlighten both his own and future generations. By addressing the writings of Maimonides' disciples, including Shem Tov ben Joseph Ibn Falaquera in the mid-thirteenth century and Joseph Albo in the fifteenth century, Lerner shows how this technique was passed on. In striking contrast to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Maimonides' enlightenment is premised on the inequality of understandings and other differences between the elite and the common people. Instead of scorning the past, Lerner shows, Maimonides' enlightenment invests it with a new and ennobling dignity. A valuable reference for students of political philosophy and Jewish studies, Lerner's elegantly written book also brings to life the richness and relevance of medieval Jewish thought for all those interested in the Jewish tradition. (shrink)

What is your purpose in life? This simple question motivates some of our most life-altering decisions, deeply-held beliefs, and profound emotions, as well as the choices we make every single day. How we derive meaning from our existence is crucial to finding happiness, developing relationships, and building societies. In On Purpose, Paul Froese brings together data from large national and international surveys with interviews that illuminate the ways in which people from all walks of life grapple (...) with their continuous search for reason, truth, sense, success, happiness, and-ultimately-transcendence. Froese argues that the desire to connect with something larger than oneself is a universal urge, manifested most directly, but far from solely, in religious communities. Written in vivid, accessible prose, On Purpose takes the reader on a journey through the complexities and consequences of life's most important question. From the start, Froese admits that the answer to the question is deceptively simple: our purpose is whatever we imagine it to be. But what we imagine our purpose to be depends on innumerable factors beyond our control: our wealth, race, education level, upbringing, past experiences, and community. Froese argues that one's surroundings serve as a kind of soil that can either nurture purpose or foster meaninglessness. Framing the book around six key questions, Froese refuses to collapse the meaning of life into a single authoritative answer, as self-help gurus do. Instead, he deconstructs each question to reveal the social pathways that guide people to distinctive answers.Through lively, engaging storytelling that mixes data and analysis with literary and historical examples of the quest for purpose, Froese sheds new light on a timeless and all-too-human quandary. The moral of the book is not that life has some ultimate meaning or no meaning at all, but rather that creating a purpose-driven life has always been a collective project. (shrink)

Modern technology offers the ability to prolong life by supporting physiologic processes in dying patients who would have succumbed more peacefully to their illnesses in the past. We prolong life, but witness the pain and suffering that our interventions cause. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, the process of making end-of-life decisions is inherently difficult and emotionally trying. The caregiver, family member or friend is faced with making heart-wrenching decisions for loved ones where the line between (...) support and cruelty may feel blurred.This is the nature of ethical dilemmas that arise when core ethical principles collide, necessitating the establishment of the primacy of one over the other. It is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Helping a Muslim Family to Make a Life–and–Death Decision for Their Beloved Terminally Ill FatherBahar BastaniI live in a city in the Midwest with a population of around two million people. There are an estimated 2,000 Iranians living in this city, the vast majority of which belong to Shia sect of Islam. [End Page 190] However, the vast majority is also not very religious. Over the past (...) two decades that I have been living in this city, professionally in the capacity of a physician and university faculty at a school of medicine, and socially as one of the community leaders with a particular role in religious matters, I have acquired the trust of my community. Following one of my yearly routine travels to my homeland, Iran, I had just returned to work when I received a phone call from one of the Iranian community members. He informed me that his father was very ill and was hospitalized, and that the physicians had introduced the idea of stopping life support. The family was experiencing a significant emotional, moral and religious dilemma as to whether they could consent to this. I was requested by the patient’s children to help them make the right decision.I requested that the oldest son, who had called me, to ask the three other siblings and their mother to be present at the bedside of the patient that night, so that we could discuss the matters face–to–face. That same night, all requisite family members and myself gathered at the bedside of this 88–year–old husband and father, who had developed multi–organ failure, which commenced with an infection following a heart valve replacement, followed by bacteremia and sepsis. Moreover, the patient was hypotensive, had developed respiratory failure requiring intubation and artificial ventilation, and had also developed hematologic coagulation abnormalities secondary to sepsis. Because of the sepsis, hypotension, and multiple drugs, including antibiotics and vasopressors, his kidneys had also failed, and there was a need to start hemodialysis if his life was to be maintained. After speaking with the intensive care physicians who were taking care of this elderly gentleman, it became clear to me that further care was futile, and there was absolutely no hope for him to recover from his multiple organ failure. I presented all the facts that I had acquired to the family members, and expressed my own viewpoint that I agreed with those physicians and that further care of their beloved, terminally ill husband and father was futile and only extended his dying. My assurances made it easier for the family members, particularly for his four sons who were present, to come to the decision to withdraw life support. After I informed the intensive care physicians of the family’s decision, the patient was heavily sedated with morphine, and the intravenous fluids, antibiotics, vasopressors, and the ventilator machine were all stopped. Over the next several minutes, the patient developed agonal breathing, his blood pressure dropped to zero, and his heart stopped. During the last few minutes of his life, I held the hands of the family members, we all prayed Islamic prayers to bless his soul while departing from his body. The next day, I supported the family with funeral services that included the Islamic prayers for the dead, the ceremonial religious washing of the body of the deceased, and the ceremonial religious burial.The dilemma that this family faced was multi-factorial: (1) the children had spent all of their adult life in America, and were unfamiliar with Islamic end of life and funeral traditions; (2) they had been asked by their father’s physicians to make a decision regarding the withdrawal of life support, which posed a moral and ethical dilemma; (3) they did not know whether it was religiously acceptable to withdraw life support; and (4) they did not know what type of funeral service would be acceptable to the religious beliefs of their deceased father.My presence as a trusted community leader, physician and religious leader was reassuring to the family members that the decision to stop life support for their loved one with a terminal illness and multiple organ... (shrink)

An accessible introduction to core concepts in evolution for lay readers, which shows that random events have played a critical role in the development of life -/- Critical historical events–or “turning points”–have shaped evolution and continue to have a decisive effect on individual lives. This theme is explored and explained in this lucid, accessible book for lay readers. The author argues that, although evolution is the result of unpredictable events, these events have profound influences on subsequent developments. Life (...) is thus a continuous interplay between unforeseeable events and their decisive consequences. -/- As one example, the author cites the fusing of two chromosomes, which differentiated the human species from our closest animal relatives about 4 to 5 million years ago. This event was not predictable, but it had a profound effect on the evolution of our species thereafter. By the same token, certain unpredictable circumstances in the past enabled only Homo sapiens to survive to the present day, though we now know that other human-like species also once existed. -/- The author contrasts such scientific concepts grounded in solid evidence with prevalent misconceptions about life: specifically, the religious notion that there is a plan and purpose behind life, the widespread perception that intelligent design governs the workings of nature, the persistent belief in destiny and fate, and the attribution of an overly deterministic role to genes. -/- This excellent introduction for laypersons to core ideas in biology goes a long way toward dispelling such misconceptions and presents current scientific research in clearly understandable, jargon-free terms. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. The (...) vast majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. The (...) vast majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

The role of Alfred Kinsey, America's most influential sexologist, in the cultural revolution of sex and gender during the past fifty years remains as unquestionable as it has been controversial. This admiring biography argues that Kinsey also qualifies as an authentic great man of science in the tradition of Darwin. Kinsey's expert authority was recently challenged by James Jones, who claimed in his 1997 biography that Kinsey's terrible personal secrets—homosexuality and masochism—plagued his life and ruined his science. Jonathan (...) Gathorne‐Hardy sets out to repair Kinsey's reputation by defending him against this “Kenneth Starr school of biography” . The author seeks to rescue Kinsey's achievement from the stigmatizing charge that it was flawed because it subordinated science to subjectivity.Gathorne‐Hardy emphasizes Kinsey's methodological creativity and his interviewing genius. During his early career, when he worked on gall wasps, Kinsey's science developed as a practice of scrupulous collection, observation, and documentation. Even in graduate school, he was dubbed “get a million Kinsey,” and his belief in sheer quantity—as well as quantification—was just as apparent when he turned his attention to human sexuality. In 1938 Kinsey taught a course on marriage at Indiana University, where he spent his entire working life. Limited to married or engaged students and faculty, the course covered reproductive physiology, contraception, and a host of other sexual topics in explicit detail. Kinsey also used the course to gather data about his students' sex lives. The thousands of sexual histories collected at the Institute for Sex Research in later years—7,985 by Kinsey alone—attest to his scientific commitment to behavior as the only legitimate basis for a science of sex.The behavioral unit of analysis chosen by Kinsey was the orgasm—or “outlet,” as Kinsey called it. Because it was countable, the theory went, it was objective. Kinsey's ethic of measurement resulted in interviews involving at least 350 standard questions, whose answers were recorded in a custom code designed to fit on a single sheet of paper divided into 287 squares. Among the ironies of Kinsey's method was the fact that his sex histories measured linguistic rather than sexual behavior. What Kinsey actually compiled was a huge cache of stories, not direct observations of sexual behavior. Kinsey, who gathered more sexual stories than any other person alive, systematically aimed to eradicate all quirks and complexities in order to produce a statistical portrait of population‐wide behavior. Meanings might be historically important, but numbers, not narratives, would yield truth. The easy use of “human males” and “human females” in the titles of Kinsey's famous reports suggests how universal his scientific claims were—and also how devoid of temporal and cultural particularity.The resulting conception of human sexual nature is probably best represented in Kinsey's six‐point scale, where behavioral possibilities ranged from exclusively homosexual at one pole to exclusively heterosexual at the other. Diversity emerged as the premier fact about sexual behavior. While this placed men and women uncomfortably close to their primate cousins on an evolutionary map, making human sexual exceptionalism objectively unsustainable, it also produced a reformist sensibility that rooted its demand for toleration in the powerful evidence of natural facts. It is difficult to overstate how shocking Kinsey's picture of polymorphous sexuality was in a culture devoted to either/or binaries and prone to harsh judgments about deviation from norms. Kinsey's contribution was to point out the gap between ideology and behavior . That lots of people did lots of things at odds with professed sexual morality was, for some, a welcome relief and call to revolution. For others, it was a reason to hate Kinsey and blame him for changes in the realm of gender and sexuality already well under way by midcentury.No biographies can save scientific heroes from the fatal charge that their methods and findings were bound up in their lives, or they would not be biographies worth reading. This attests to the stubborn endurance of the psychoanalytic paradigm. Kinsey despised Freud for passing off philosophy as science. Yet because of the conventions of post‐Freudian biography, Gathorne‐Hardy must explore exactly those dimensions of Kinsey's life and character that Freud embraced but that Kinsey himself would never have admitted into the precincts of science. His childhood illnesses and struggles with an overbearing father, his rage against religion, fondness for music, charismatic yet autocratic style, and his own anguished sexuality are keys to puzzling out not only a life in science, but a life.Gathorne‐Hardy can hardly ignore evidence that Kinsey's own sexual appetites were diverse—“bisexual” is this author's preferred designation—or that his enterprise in sex research involved experimentation: the mostly married male members of Kinsey's team were expected to engage in sexual activities with one another and one another's wives. Kinsey's wife Clara was a confidant and supporter from the start. Their loving marriage was also an open marriage. Mac was a participant‐observer in the world of sex research. She had a series of affairs with Kinsey's colleagues and even changed the bedsheets during energetic sessions of sexual cinematography that took place in the attic of their home. Yet the Kinseys also shielded their children from their own unorthodox sexual practices.This biography concludes by suggesting that Kinsey died tragically in 1957, convinced that his enemies had the upper hand. Kinsey was wrong. The diversity he championed has become a theoretical staple in the human and life sciences as well as a practical goal in social policies related to gender, race, and sexuality. However unfinished it may be, it is difficult to imagine Kinsey's revolution being reversed in either science or society. (shrink)

Archetypal medicine and past life therapy have received only scant attention in mainstream medical and psychological literature. Nonetheless, the epistemological and practice assumptions underlying Alfred Ziegler's model of archetypal medicine are highly congruent with those of past life therapy and both proffer salient alternatives to traditional reductionistic practice in psychotherapy and medicine. This paper explores the manner in which both seek to understand the meanings embedded in "health" and "illness" through a metaphorical interpretation of symptoms. Dualistic (...) thinking gives way to unitary consciousness as we begin to understand symptomatology in the larger scheme of a human being's entire lived experience. The transcendent, psychospiritual work of past life therapy is viewed in integrated partnership with archetypal medicine in healing the whole person rather than merely assessing symptoms in isolation and remediating them through mechanistic techniques and external applications of treatments. (shrink)

Context: Philosophical and - more recently - empirical approaches to the study of mind have recognized the research of lived experience as crucial for the understanding of their subject matter. Such research is faced with self-referentiality: every attempt at examining the experience seems to change the experience in question. This so-called “excavation fallacy” has been taken by many to undermine the possibility of first-person inquiry as a form of scientific practice. Problem: What is the epistemic character and value of reflectively (...) acquired phenomenological data? Can the study of experience, despite the excavation fallacy, rely on the act of reflection on lived experience and make sense and use of its results? Method: Through a philosophical discourse, informed by empirical first-person inquiry, we explore the experiential structure of the act of reflection and the formation of the corresponding belief about past experience. Results: We present a provisional first-person model of the experiential dynamics of retrospective reflection, in which the reflective act is characterized as enaction of belief about past experience that co-determines - rather than distorts - its results. From a constructivist perspective on the inevitable interdependence between the act of observing and the observed, the excavation “fallacy” is recognized as an intrinsic characteristic of reflection. Reflection is described as an iterative, self-referential process, guided by a context- and subject-specific horizon of expectations. Implications: Knowing the characteristics of the formation of beliefs about experience is essential for understanding first-person data and for the possibility of their acquisition and use in scientific practice, particularly in the context of second-person approaches to the study of experience. Constructivist content: We relate the proposed understanding of reflection to constructivist epistemology and argue that constructivism provides an epistemological foundation for the empirical study of experience more suitable than the traditional epistemological objectivism of cognitive science. We suggest that the constructive nature of the process of reflection calls for a collaboration between the fields of constructivism, phenomenology, and first-person research, and points towards the potential for their mutual enrichment. (shrink)

Abstract: A person who remembers having done something has a belief that she did it from having done it. To have a belief that one did something from having done it is to believe that one did the action on the (causal) basis of having done it, where this belief (in order for one to have it) need not be (causally) based even in part on any contributor to the belief other than doing the action. The notion of a contributor (...) to a belief (as opposed to a mere facilitating cause of the belief) is explicated through a series of examples. The account of having a belief that one did something from having done it is then deployed in criticising Ginet's account of ‘memory connection’, in assessing Martin and Deutscher's causal theory of remembering, in indicating how diachronic justification functions in a nontraditional theory of memory, and in setting forth one type of psychological connectedness which, according to advocates of a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, may be employed (noncircularly) in formulating the theory, and which, according to opponents of the theory, provides a target for criticising the theory. (shrink)

Ethical Life sets out to act as a guide for those of us who want to better understand ethics. It offers answers to the two simplest and yet most difficult questions facing individuals who have fallen into the perplexities of contemporary life: Why be ethical, and how?

As patient autonomy expands, a highly controversial issue has emerged. Should the advance directives of refusing life-saving treatments or requesting euthanasia of persons with dementia who express changed minds or are often in a happy state be fulfilled? There are two autonomy-related positions. The mainstream position in philosophical discussions supports the priority of ADs based on precedent autonomy. Buchanan and Brock, and Dworkin represent this view. The other position supports the priority of PWDs’ current wishes based on minimal autonomy (...) represented by Jaworska. By rethinking the theoretical and practical challenges of the two positions and their arguments respectively, the paper concludes that in such a scenario, the priority of ADs is morally indefensible, and it is also challenging to establish minimal autonomy defend the moral priority of PWDs’ current wishes. For PWDs whose past values, beliefs, and preferences fade away but who retain apparent intrinsic sentience of well-being, a modified defined quality-of-life approach serves as another reasonable basis in their medical decision-making, and the ADs and the QoL should be further merged to reduce the uncertainty of the grey zone. (shrink)

A contemporary philosophy of religion that offers a phenomenology of love. What is to be done at the end of metaphysics? Joeri Schrijvers’s contemporary philosophy of religion takes up this question, originally posed by Reiner Schürmann and central to continental philosophy. The book navigates the work of thinkers who have addressed such metaphysical concerns, including Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, Peter Sloterdijk, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacques Derrida, and more recently John D. Caputo, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Martin Hägglund. Notably, (...) Schrijvers engages both those who would deconstruct Christianity and those who remain within this tradition, offering an option that is “between:” between Christianity and atheism, between progressive and conservative, between faith and belief. Ultimately, Schrijvers confronts the end of metaphysics with a phenomenology of love and community, arguing for the radical primacy of togetherness. “Joeri Schrijvers’s book is a tour de force, ranging over a wide spectrum of contemporary thinkers in order to negotiate the distance between religion and religionlessness, God and Godlessness, ontotheology and its overcoming. The result is a nuanced and careful study that repays close study.” — John D. Caputo, Syracuse University “Among the many lusters of Joeri Schrijvers’s Between Faith and Belief is a beautiful recovery of Ludwig Binswanger’s phenomenology of love. Discussion of postmetaphysical theology is arid without philosophically informed and creative talk of love, and Binswanger’s is a voice that has been missing from the conversation for far too long. To put Binswanger into dialogue with Caputo and Nancy, in particular, is at once fascinating and nourishing.” — Kevin Hart, University of Virginia. (shrink)

This essay distinguishes between propositional belief and faith and considers the relationship between these two forms of belief, arguing that faith is not an entirely separate form of belief from propositional assent and that it does require a minimal cognitive content. The essay then goes on to consider beliefs about, and faith in, life after death and develops a metaphorical account of this faith using an Aristotelian concept of the soul as a form of life together with (...) a theological understanding of the death of Jesus in the New Testament. It is argued that the truth claims of assertions about life after death are beyond evidential support, but there are strong reasons for doubting the literal truth of such assertions. Faith in life after death however can be considered rational and truth-seeking. The essay concludes that semantic agnosticism is the proper attitude towards belief in life after death and justifies this position against two possible objections. (shrink)

Awareness that moral beliefs and practices have changed across time threatens our confidence in our current moral beliefs: if past moral beliefs turned out to be wrong, how can we be sure ours aren't likewise mistaken? In this paper, I set up four desiderata for a successful theory of moral progress: it must allow us to judge that progress has occurred, avoid the image of increasing correspondence towards ahistorical truthmakers, allow for revision in belief, and yet (...) not be disobligating. Rorty's pragmatist account of moral progress delivers on the first three, but at the cost of failing to meet the fourth: it drains moral beliefs of their categorical force. I then outline K.E. Løgstrup’s understanding of the relation between the ‘ethical demand’ and changing, socially mediated norms. While Løgstrup does posit an unchanging ground of normativity - the "ethical demand" to act for the sake of the other whose welfare is in our hands – he also thinks that changing social norms are an indispensable part of ethical life. I argue that Løgstrup's discussion of the ‘refraction’ of the ethical demand through changing social norms provides resources for an account of moral progress that fulfils these four desiderata. (shrink)

This study operationally defines Buddhist belief in merit , Buddhist religiousness and examines their relationships with life satisfaction. Four hundred Buddhist merit makers at a temple in Bangkok participated in the study. LISREL models show that Buddhist belief in merit predicts Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction, and Buddhist belief in merit mediates the relationship between Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction. The different conceptualizations of Buddhist religiousness and life satisfaction and their difference with reference to the future (...) and the present are discussed. Buddhist religiousness-life satisfaction nexus is then examined against western religiousness-life satisfaction relationship. (shrink)

In this issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Schneiderman and colleagues critique a recent multi-society policy statement—developed by the American Thoracic Society and endorsed by four other organizations—entitled “Responding to Requests for Potentially Inappropriate Treatment in Intensive Care Units”. The focus of Schneiderman’s critique is the Multiorganization Policy Statement’s choice of the term “potentially inappropriate” to describe a class of interventions that clinicians should resist providing for patients near the end of life, even when patients or their families (...) request or demand them.1 Schneiderman and colleagues argue that the term... (shrink)