In contemporary Nigerian society, the evolving trends in Christian religious culture suggest that neoliberal (social) mind-set is influencing certain practices in many Churches. The objective of this paper is to examine how the above-mentioned contemporary culture influences current religious landscape. The sociological concept of commodification was adopted as a way of ‘reading’ this religious context. The research methodology combines theoretical and ethnographic approaches to this study. The research findings show that neoliberal mind-set is influencing how religious commodification shapes the characteristics (...) of Nigerian Christian marketplace. (shrink)

In contrast to film, theater, and literature, audiences typically sing along with popular songs. This can encourage a first-person mode of engagement with the narrative content. Unlike mere spectators, listeners sometimes imagine acting out the content when it is recited in the first-person. This is a common mode of engaging with popular music. And it can be uniquely morally problematic. It is problematic when it involves the enjoyment of imaginatively doing evil. I defend a Moorean view on the issue: It (...) is wrong to enjoy evil whether real or merely fiction. I develop my position through an examination of the controversially song "Mind of a Lunatic" (1990) by the Houston based rap group Geto Boys. (shrink)

Spirituality connotes praxis informed by religious or faith convictions. This can transform the individual and society at large. Christian spirituality is centered on how a person’s relationship with the God of Jesus Christ informs and directs one’s approach to existence and engagement with the world. The ecosystem concerns humanity and relationship with it is invariably influenced by faith or religious informed praxis. The reality of climate change is convincing many people that humankind’s common homeland needs to be treated with care (...) and respect if created beings are to have a congenial habitat now and in the future. This article avers that Christian spirituality can contribute to eco-friendly behavior through re-formation of the behavior of people and emboldening their goodwill as regards the responsibility of all towards the care of the earth. Finally, this research proffers a three-fold model of eco-spirituality - scriptural, selfcontrol, and sacramental approaches to the earth – as a contribution towards stemming the tide of ecological assaults on creation. Textual analysis is the method used in this research. (shrink)

Beyond reasonable doubt, the influence of Western culture and civilizations has enervated traditional African family systems, and their functions as providers of social welfare. Hitherto, traditional African family and clan by extension served as the plausible medium by which Africans proffered solutions to those social, economic and other existential problems found within their communities. However, measuring and evaluating the successes of the various social welfare programs organized by the family and clan was a difficult task to achieve. It seems the (...) services rendered merely controlled the social problems but did not improve the standard of living of the victims. This paper seeks to critically analyse the traditional African family system and its role as a provider of social welfare and argues that it can complement the Western models towards holistic social integration. Thus this work adopts the theory of change as a tool for understanding how Western models of social welfare should be integrated with traditional African approaches to care for the ‘weak’ in the society. Advocating for a paradigm shift from the modern models of providing social welfare to the traditional African family and clan model is consequent upon the claim that the latter is more embracing in approach. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman is the strongest proponent of the natural-duty theory of political obligations and argues that his version of the theory can satisfy the key requirement of ; namely, justifying to members of a state the system of political obligations they share in. Critics argue that natural-duty theories like Wellman's actually require well-ordered states and/or their members to dedicate resources to providing the goods associated with political order to needy outsiders. The implication is that natural-duty approaches weaken the particularity requirement (...) and cannot justify to citizens the systems of political obligation they share in. I argue that the critics’ diagnosis of natural-duty approaches is correct, whereas the proposed implication is false. I maintain that 1) only natural-duty approaches can justify political obligations, and that 2) weakening the particularity requirement contributes to the theory's ability to justify a range-limited system of political obligations among compatriots. (shrink)

A key consequence of globalisation is the integrative approach to reality whereby emphasis is placed on interdependence. Religion being an expression of human culture is equally affected by this cultural revolution. The main objective of this paper is to examine how religious affiliation, among Christians, influences attitudes towards the application of psychological sciences to the assuagement of human suffering. The sociological theory of structural functionalism was deployed to explain attitudinal appraisal. Ethnographic methodology, through quantitative analysis of administered questionnaire, was also (...) used. The study reveals that religious tenets largely shape attitudinal appraisal and redefine the borders of globalisation’s metanarratives. (shrink)

Contemporary Nigerian society is in its doldrums as regards the culture of violence and distrust among peoples from various ethnic groups that make-up this nation. To an extent, religio-political reasons are fueling this culture of violence and distrust. The thrust of this paper is that: Christian military chaplains are stakeholders as promoters of peace and mutual co-existence in Nigeria with regard to controlling the culture of violence and disunity. The core of this thesis remains Jesus’ convictions concerning non-resistance to the (...) evil one as documented in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 38-42, and His life as the Peace-Builder. Therefore, contemporary Nigerian context calls for Christian military chaplains to be more conscious that being messengers of peace and promoters of peaceful coexistence in our country, they have ethical responsibility to build bridges to harmony. Since Christ (God) is love, the chaplains should rediscover the poetics of testimony as a principle for building and reconstructing paths that lead to mutual co-existence in view of encouraging the reign of justice, unity, and peace in Nigeria. (shrink)

As is usually the case with what I work on, I read some stuff I liked. I 1 read an article on comics by Greg Hayman and Henry Pratt and some work on 2 videogames,GrantTavinor’sreallyexcellentworkonthattopic. Ifoundthematerial interesting and I thought I had something to say about it. That’s what usually motivates me and that’s what did in these cases. With comics, my interest in the medium played a big role. I was a child collector of Marvel. I got turned on (...) to independent and alternative comics about ten years ago by a good friend who’s a successful comics artist and that played a role in my writing about comics. (shrink)

Festival is a performative dimension of cultural praxis that strengthens bonds of cohesion in society. Festivals are also an integral part of religious praxis. They have the potentiality of bringing its adherents and non-adherents together thus creating and sustaining social communion among them. This reality of sustaining social communion confirms an important function of religion in society with particular reference to its social integrative effects. Therefore, this article assesses how religious festival, Christmas, fosters social integration among Igbos in Nigeria. On (...) a related note, many Igbos, see Christmas festival as unique occasion for them to visit their communities; attend meetings of their associations and/or town unions and consolidate family ties. These are opportunities for building social integrations, otherwise denoted as social communion in this research. This work makes use of critical analysis of relevant texts and questionnaire survey methods as means of gathering materials and data for this research. In view of understanding how Christmas festival aids social communion among the Igbo ethnic group, the theories of structural functionalism, social capital and social integration are being utilised as theoretical frameworks for this study. Finally, this study avers that religious festival cements social communion between the Igbos in Calabar Metropolis and their ancestral communities. (shrink)

Religion constitutes an important element in every society as regards coping with the demands as well as vicissitudes of life. Mental health issues are becoming a recurrent decimal in societies overwhelmed by stress and other social factors. This paper examines how the presence of religious beliefs affects how some Christians respond to cases that have to do mental health. At the same time, it surveys how a near absence of religious attitude, that is, clinical medicine approach to mental health issues (...) betters the state of those suffering from these psychopathologies. This work sees participatory partnership approach as an effective means of correcting unhealthy biases that prevent a better understanding of mental health care. Sociological theory of structural functionalism will be used in assessing how religion can reinvent itself in areas that are associated with mental health. Ethnographic methodology through quantitative analysis of administered questionnaire is used as a research tool for this research. Three persons were also interviewed. The research findings show that religion is a crucial agent of socialization that can change how religious beliefs impact on mental health and there is need for medical professionals to collaborate with pastoral agents. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

This paper investigates how Edward Pusey, a nineteenth century Anglican clergy and scholar responded to Edward Manning’s claim that the Church of England is not an authentic church. This led the former to write his Eirenicon, as an intellectual justification and a response to apostolicity and catholicity of the Anglican faith. Eirenicon is an example in rigorous dialogue on religious faith claims. The ecumenical rapprochement suggested by Pusey is very insightful: emphasis on the elements that unites Roman Catholics and Anglicans (...) as rooted in traditions of the Apostolic Church. After more than 152 years, this work seeks for the relevance of Pusey’s Eirenicon in contemporary Roman Catholic–Anglican faith relationship. -/- . (shrink)

William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific (...) practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.Keywords: Inductivism; Experiment; Theory; Methodology; Electromagnetism. (shrink)

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

The emphasis on general distributive principles in the climate justice literature has left significant gaps regarding the problem of weak climate governance. The main contribution of this chapter is to show how normative theory can contribute to addressing the apparent political incapacity to respond to the threat of climate disruption. The chapter argues that a set of six underlying obstacles to effective climate change politics can serve as a framework around which ‘non-ideal’ normative theorizing about climate politics can be organized. (...) Policies and other tactics to mediate the six obstacles are shown to raise distinct normative issues in need of deeper analysis. (shrink)

I investigate whether degreed beliefs are able to play the predictive, explanatory, and modeling roles that they are frequently taken to play. The investigation focuses on evidence—both from sources familiar in epistemology as well as recent work in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—of variability in agents' apparent degrees of belief. Although such variability has been noticed before, there has been little philosophical discussion of its breadth or of the psychological mechanisms underlying it. Once these are appreciated, the inadequacy of degrees (...) of belief becomes clear. I offer a theoretical alternative to degrees of belief, what I call the filter theory. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

All adherents of hard determinism face a number of steep challenges; those with traditional religious commitments face still further challenges. In this paper I treat one such further challenge. The challenge, in brief, is that given hard determinism, it’s very difficult to say why God couldn’t, and why God wouldn’t, just immediately and directly realize the final end of creation. I develop the challenge, and a number of solutions, through the work of the medieval Jewish philosopher, Hasdai Crescas. After arguing (...) that Crescas is indeed a hard determinist, and showing that he forecloses all the easy solutions to our challenge, I piece together from his work two solutions. They both start from the assumption that the purpose of creation is creaturely love of God. Each then lays down a constraint on proper love of God, which can be satisfied only if God demands of us to realize some state of affairs other than loving Him. (shrink)

The analogy between gustatory taste and critical or aesthetic taste plays a recurring role in the history of aesthetics. Our interest in this article is in a particular way in which gustatory judgments are frequently thought to be analogous to critical judgments. It appears obvious to many that to know how a particular object tastes we must have tasted it for ourselves; the proof of the pudding, we are all told, is in the eating. And it has seemed just as (...) obvious to many philosophers that aesthetic judgment requires first-person experience. In this article we argue that, despite its initial appeal, the claim that gustatory and critical judgments are analogous in this way is mistaken. The two sorts of judgments are, as a matter of fact, similar in their epistemology, but earlier theorists have got things entirely backward—neither gustatory judgment nor aesthetic judgment requires first-hand acquaintance with their objects. Our particular focus in this article is on arguing that first-person experience is not required to know how an item of food or drink tastes. In fact, there are a wide variety of ways in which we can acquire this knowledge. (shrink)

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy offers an alternative mode of engagement for public philosophy, in which the public can play a participatory role. We organized two public events on the aesthetics of coffee that explored this alternative mode of engagement. The first event focuses on issues surrounding the communication of taste. The second event focuses on issues concerning ethical influences on taste. -/- In this paper, we report back on these two events which explored the possibility of doing experimental philosophical aesthetics as public (...) philosophy. We set the stage by considering the significance and current state of efforts in public philosophy, and by introducing the emerging sub-discipline of experimental philosophical aesthetics. Then, we discuss the research and outreach aspects of the two events on the aesthetics of coffee. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the prospects and potential pitfalls of experimental philosophy as public philosophy. (shrink)

For Émilie Du Châtelet, I argue, a central role of the principle of sufficient reason is to discriminate between better and worse explanations. Her principle of sufficient reason does not play this role for just any conceivable intellect: it specifically enables understanding for minds like ours. She develops this idea in terms of two criteria for the success of our explanations: “understanding how” and “understanding why.” These criteria can respectively be connected to the determinateness and contrastivity of explanations. The crucial (...) role Du Châtelet’s principle of sufficient reason plays in identifying good explanations is often overlooked in the literature, or else run together with questions about the justification and likelihood of explanations. An auxiliary goal of the article is to situate Du Châtelet’s principle of sufficient reason with respect to some of the general epistemological and metaphysical commitments of her Institutions de Physique, clarifying how it fits into the broader project of that work. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss an objection to Buck-Passing accounts of value, such as Reasons Fundamentalism. Buck-Passing views take value to be derivative of or reducible to reasons. The objection is that since there can be value in possible worlds in which there are no reasons, value must not be ontologically derivative of reasons. Thus, BP is false. In this paper, I show that by accepting a dispositionalist revision, BP can allow such worlds while maintaining that reasons are interestingly (...) prior to value, and without having to adopt any controversial metaphysics. I show this by exploring the debate over the nature of dispositions, identifying the diverse resources BP can appeal to. The paper proceeds as follows. I first explain BP. Next, I discuss a few versions of the challenge, settling on what seems to be the strongest form. Following this, I show that on many accounts of dispositions, while we should accept that particular instances of dispositions are prior to their particular manifestations, we should also accept that there is a sense in which dispositions are dependent on their manifestations. This provides BP with resources to respond to the challenge: BP can accept a dispositional revision, without committing to a theory of dispositions. Finally, I will respond to two objections. The first is about whether there are dispositions with impossible manifestations, contrary to my thesis that dispositions depend on their manifestations. The second is about whether there could be value where it would be impossible for that value to give reasons. (shrink)

Here we focus on two questions: What is the proper semantics for deontic modal expressions in English? And what is the connection between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons? Our contribution towards thinking about the first, which makes up the bulk of our paper, considers a representative sample of recent challenges to a Kratzer-style formal semantics for modal expressions, as well as the rival views—Fabrizio Cariani’s contrastivism, John MacFarlane’s relativism, and Mark Schroeder’s ambiguity theory—those challenges are thought to motivate. (...) These include the Professor Procrastinate challenge to Inheritance (the principle that ‘If ought p and p entails q, then ought q), as well as Parfit’s miners puzzle regarding information-sensitive deontic modals. Here we argue that a Kratzer-style view is able to meet all of the challenges we’ll consider. In addition, we’ll identify challenges for each of those rival views. Our overall conclusion is that a Kratzer-style semantics remains the one to beat. With this assumption in place, we then ask how we should understand the relationship between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons. Should, for example, we hold that the truth of such a statement entails the existence of a normative reason for some agent to comply? Here we argue that, in many cases, acceptance of Kratzer’s semantics for deontic modals leaves open for substantive normative theorizing the question of whether an agent has a normative reason to comply with what she ought to do. (shrink)

During the hundred years following its discovery, Adolph Harnack and, after him, his successors succeeded in giving a determined direction to Didache research. In so doing, the Didache took on a discernible identity and was valued as contributing to the pressing academic discussions of the day. During the last forty years, Harnack and his successors have been largely marginalized. As a result, the field of Didache studies has been caught up in a confusing diversity of scholarly opinions. There is no (...) single origination hypothesis, no single methodology, and no single research program to guide our way. The field of Didache scholarship is thus in disarray and unable to substantially contribute to the academic questions of our day. (shrink)

Kyle Stanford has recently given substance to the problem of unconceived alternatives, which challenges the reliability of inference to the best explanation (IBE) in remote domains of nature. Conjoined with the view that IBE is the central inferential tool at our disposal in investigating these domains, the problem of unconceived alternatives leads to scientific anti-realism. We argue that, at least within the biological community, scientists are now and have long been aware of the dangers of IBE. We re-analyze the nineteenth-century (...) study of inheritance and development (Stanford’s case study) and extend it into the twentieth century, focusing in particular on both classical Mendelian genetics and the studies by Avery et al. on the chemical nature of the hereditary substance. Our extended case studies show the preference of the biological community for a different methodological standard: the vera causa ideal, which requires that purported causes be shown on non-explanatory grounds to exist and be competent to produce their effects. On this basis, we defend a prospective realism about the biological sciences. (shrink)

In her book, Moral Status, Mary Anne Warren defends a comprehensive theory of the moral status of various entities. Under this theory, she argues that animals may have some moral rights but that their rights are much weaker in strength than the rights of humans, who have rights in the fullest, strongest sense. Subsequently, Warren believes that our duties to animals are far weaker than our duties to other humans. This weakness is especially evident from the fact that Warren believes (...) that it is frequently permissible for humans to kill animals for food. Warren’s argument for her view consists primarily in the belief that we have inevitable practical conflicts with animals that make it impossible to grant them equal rights without sacrificing basic human interests. However, her arguments fail to justify her conclusions. In particular, Warren fails to justify her beliefs that animals do not have an equal right to life and that it is permissible for humans to kill animals for food. (shrink)

Poverty is a social problem. Its alleviation has been one of the major issues that occupy a significant place in the scale of preference of developmental policies of several nations, international organizations, church and other interested stakeholders. Thus, the thrust of this work centers on poverty alleviation strategies of selected Churches in Anambra State: namely how this institution participates in some economic activities, skill acquisition programmes, and empowerment programmes, among others in view of controlling the scourge of poverty. The research (...) methods employed here are: both qualitative and quantitative - survey and documentary research methods of data collection. The survey method collects data through designed research questionnaire and oral interview with some respondents respectively, while in qualitative approach is the content analysis of written sources such as books, journal articles and online sources that are relevant to the research. The findings of this research show that poverty is human-induced problem manifested in the mismanagement of resources and other forms of ills. Selected churches in Anambra State has reduced the effects of poverty through its collaboration with the State and Non-Governmental Organizations in poverty reduction programmes. (shrink)

Why do people seemingly want to be scared by movies and feel pity for fictional characters when they avoid situations in real life that arouse these same negative emotions? Although the domain of relevant artworks encompasses far more than just tragedy, the general problem is typically called the paradox of tragedy. The paradox boils down to a simple question: If people avoid pain then why do people want to experience art that is painful? I discuss six popular solutions to the (...) paradox: conversion, control, compensatory, meta-response, catharsis, and rich experience theories. (shrink)

There is a tension in Emilie Du Châtelet’s thought on mathematics. The objects of mathematics are ideal or fictional entities; nevertheless, mathematics is presented as indispensable for an account of the physical world. After outlining Du Châtelet’s position, and showing how she departs from Christian Wolff’s pessimism about Newtonian mathematical physics, I show that the tension in her position is only apparent. Du Châtelet has a worked-out defense of the explanatory and epistemic need for mathematical objects, consistent with their metaphysical (...) nonfundamentality. I conclude by sketching how Du Châtelet’s conception of mathematical indispensability differs interestingly from many contemporary approaches. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity—topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution’s features. This has conflated multiple, (...) independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. (shrink)

—Cultural studies remains one of the fields of research in the humanities that contributes to the development of the society by aiding the formulation of cultural policies towards the re-engineering of a nation’s social behavior. A functioning state benefits a lot from cultural products of cultural studies. Thus for any state, like Nigeria, to reap from cultural studies and policies, its basic democratic institutions should be strong and effective. The theoretical framework for this research is symbolic interactionism proposed by Stryker (...) and Denzin. This is because it enables the understanding of how cultural products are translated into policies that shape the society. In this paper, we demonstrated that Cultural Studies is instrumental to the development cultural policies that take seriously national identity and social integration of the Nigeria society. (shrink)

When people are united in their suffering for a common cause, that which binds them together is always stronger than their differences. The bond is even sturdier when religious motives define their common convictions. For this reason, during martyrdom, those who are persecuted create peculiar reli - gious identity through their common belief in God. This identity generates a socializing bond which makes them resolute in their united witness to the su - bject of their faith. This was the case (...) with the nineteenth-century Ugandan martyrs who died during the reign of the morally debased King Kabaka Mwan - ga. The novelty of this work consists in accentuating the ecumenicity of the Ugandan martyrdom that came into prominence, inter alia , through the Roman Catholic processes of canonization. It is so because there is no research work that has highlighted the fact that Anglicans and Lutherans were equally put to death in their defence of the Christian beliefs and morality alongside the Ro - man Catholics. For this reason, this work underlines how an inclusive narrative of the East-African Christian witness to the truth of the gospel brings out the ecumenicity of the Ugandan martyrologic events. Theoretical frameworks of deterrence and group memory were used in the understanding martyrdom and common witnessing in Uganda. In their united witnessing to the Christian faith, the Ugandan martyrs overcame the shackles of denominational divide that co - uld have weakened their common resolve to stand for Christ. Therefore, Chri - stians in contemporary African continent are called to re-receive the spirit of united witnessing to Christ as exhibited by the Ugandan martyrs since this will go a long way to: healing the wounds caused by denominational rivalry, con - trolling the tendency of tearing one another apart because of ethnic interests, sustaining common witness to truth and justice, encouraging all those suffering for their belief in Christ (no matter their denominational rootedness) to stand firm, and strengthening the spiritual bond that connects together all believers in Christ. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to demarcate, develop, and defend the commitments and consequences of metaethical minimalism. Very roughly, this is the position that a commitment to objective moral truths does not require any accompanying ontological commitments. While there are few, if any, who call themselves “metaethical minimalists”, I endeavor to uncover existing articulations of metaethical minimalism which have been presented under different names, attempting to identify the common ground between them. As I interpret the position, all metaethical minimalists (...) are committed to the same positive pair of claims (what I call the Objectivity Thesis): “a) Moral truths are strongly mind-independent; b) there are moral truths.” Taken by itself, however, this pair of claims is not sufficient for differentiating their view from the moral realist’s. Consequently, the minimalist must also articulate that which they are denying about the non-minimalist approach, or what I call the “negative ontological thesis”. I offer my own version of this negative thesis and argue for its dialectical advantages. -/- In Chapters 3 and 4, I focus my attention on attacks on the viability of metaethical minimalism in the form of two “challenges” that aim to problematize a commitment to objective moral truths absent any accompanying ontological commitment. The big-picture takeaway from these chapters is that minimalism can defend itself by playing to the dialectical advantage I find for it in Chapter 2 as well as by being creative about minimalist constructions/reworkings of plausible principles/lines of reasoning that seem to contradict it. -/- The temptation to embrace quietism is strong among minimalists, but in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 I aim to show that there is a positive alternative available for the minimalist interested in developing a full picture of their position. Chapter 5 is aimed at providing an adequate understanding of the distinction between the objects of purely normative thoughts and objects of thoughts about reality. Building on this are Chapters 6 and 7, which argue in favor of an account of the relationship between emotion and evaluative knowledge that is consistent with metaethical minimalism. (shrink)

Stereotypes within any society have consequences that are sometimes harmful and also affect targeted group of persons or ethnic group in a common way. One of the cultural stereotypes about Efik women is that they hardly believe in ‘…till death do us apart’ promised during monogamous marriage rite, that is, they walk out of marriage when conditions are unbearable. The misinterpretations of some exhortations given to the couples at Efik traditional marriage rite seem to support this claim. For example: ‘Eyen (...) mi nyamkkenyam, nnọ ke ndọ; ebot ebot edi unyam. Mm’ ifonke mendiyak, abang okubomo ikim okuwaha utong’. This exhortation is translated as: ‘I have not sold my child but given her to you in marriage; only goat is for sale. If she is no longer good for you bring her back. Let nothing malevolent happen to her.’ This implies that the life of one’s daughter is priced over marriage. One of the aims of this article is to investigate the context of this statement and how it has shaped people’s perception of marriage among the Efiks in Nigeria. In addition, this paper seeks to deconstruct some of the stereotypical views on Efik traditional marriage with regard to the female gender. Theories of Correspondent Inferences and Attribution in Social Psychology are used in understanding how women in Efik culture respond to marriage. Data from quantitative analysis of questionnaires and oral interviews threw more light on how cultural changes influence marriage institution among the Efiks. The findings of the research show that intermarriage, education, peer group influence, Western religious cultures, socio-economic conditions, etc., have necessitated the reconsideration of stereotypical views on marriage in Efik culture. (shrink)

Theological anthropology has tended to view human flourishing as consisting in the loving communion of ourselveswith God. Recently, Natalia Marandiuc has brought the tools of attachment theory to theological anthropology to argue that a self is not inherent to human persons but rather is co-created through our loving relationships with one another and with God. In this paper I argue for the introduction of narrative, particularly as understood through the work of Eleonore Stump, to Marandiuc’s account as a practical means (...) by which healing love might be communicated, particularly through Scriptural narratives. In evidence of narrative’s usefulness, I offer a brief exegesis of the Gospel of John’s account of the Woman at the well. This synthesis fills a gap in our understanding of the self’s flourishing by not only adopting a model demonstrating its emergence but also by providing a method by which the model can be applied. (shrink)

In my first year at the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley); I was required to read Oscar Cullmann's <b> Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Dead? </b> (1956). I was shocked and dumbfounded by what I discovered. Giving my religious instruction under the guidance of the Ursuline nuns at Holy Cross Grade School, it never entered my mind that Jesus did not believe that every person had an immortal soul that survived the death of the body. After a (...) single reading, however, I suddenly realized that Jesus never endorsed the immortality of the soul. I suffered a crisis of faith--I realized that my Catholic upbringing had been contaminated by dubious ideas that originated with Socrates.<br> More recently, the international NT scholar and Bishop N.T. Wright has challenged the Christian churches to drop Socratic ideas and to return to the faith of Jesus:<br> <quote>Mention salvation, and almost all Western Christians assume that you mean going to heaven when you die. But a moment’s thought, in the light of all we have said so far, reveals that this simply cannot be right. . . . If God’s good creation—of the world, of life as we know it, or our glorious and remarkable bodies, brains, and bloodstreams—really is good . . . , then to see the death of the body and the escape of the soul as salvation is not simply slightly off course, in need of a few subtle alterations and modifications. It is totally and utterly wrong! </quote> In my article, I use my personal story to illustrate how Socratic doctrines had distorted my faith in Jesus. I use my training in historical theology to illustrate (a) how Socrates became the patron saint of the Church Fathers; (b) how Jesus' mission in Hades expanded during the first three centuries; and (c) how Hades began as a cool place where the souls of saints and sinners resided together and ended up as a hot place where grave sinners were eternally tormented. Along the way, I show how Socrates failed to resolve key issues such as (a) whether the soul survives death; (b) whether communication between souls is even possible after death; and (c) whether souls in the heavenly realm are locked in a permanent coma. In brief, I supply N.T. Wright with massive evidence of just how "utterly wrong" the "going to Heaven" movement has been.<br><br> Note: I just finished this paper and hope to publish it. Any help you can give me to improve its readability or content, would be appreciated. (shrink)

Newman remains an ecumenical figure held in high esteem by Roman Catholics and Anglicans. His ecumenical hermeneutics is observable in Tract No. 90. This Tract is a re-reading of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion ratified in 1571 as the fundamentals of the Anglican faith. This tract is the product of the Oxford Movement that returned to the Antiquity in view of resolving the Anglican faith crises epitomized by erastianism. This return to the Fathers of the Church had a lot of (...) implications for the Anglican faith. Influenced by Antiquity, Newman rediscovered the common grounds between the Anglican faith and the church Catholic that inheres in the Roman Church. Thus, Tract No. 90 demonstrated that more things united the Nineteenth Anglicans and the Roman Catholics than what separated them. (shrink)

I criticize the idea that theories of ‘fragmented’ or ‘compartmentalized’ belief (as found in, e.g., Lewis 1982, Egan 2008) can help to account for the puzzling phenomena they are often taken to account for. After introducing fragmentationalism and a paradigm case that purportedly motivates it, I criticize the view primarily on the grounds that the models and explanations it offers are at best trivial—as witnessed by examples of over-generation—and should be seen as merely re-describing in figurative terms the phenomena it (...) is designed to account for. I also point out that fragments, as used in these theories, are not likely to be psychologically real in any robust sense and so cannot be appealed to on such grounds. (shrink)

It seems better to love virtue than vice, pleasure than pain, good than evil. Perhaps it's also better to love virtuous people than vicious people. But at the same time, it's repugnant to suggest that a mother should love her smarter, more athletic, better looking son than his dim, clumsy, ordinary brother. My task is to help sort out the conflicting intuitions about what we should love. In particular, I want to address a problem for the no-reasons view, the theory (...) that love cannot be rationally justified. Since it seems better to love good people rather than evil villains, it appears that there are indeed reasons for (or, at least, against) love. Is it coherent to talk this way and deny that love can be justified? I think so and will explain how. (shrink)

Religion has contributed immensely to solving some of the social problems. The aim of this paper is to situate social problems within the context of other variables like human nature, plurality of cultures, and diversity in hermeneutics of societal values. This will help those interested in social problems to come to terms with the difficulties involved in defining or describing these deviances. In addition, cultural differences, political pressures, and plurality of values weaken the therapeutic strength of religion as it attends (...) to social problems. Finally, this paper argues that religion as a social capital can reduce the menace of social problems if its institutions can be trusted by the people in the society. (shrink)

This article traces a logical and political thread leading from the theory of revolt in Furio Jesi's 1969 Spartakus to his later work on festivity and the “mythological machine model.” It opens by arguing that the humanist model that frames Jesi's early efforts to disarm the allure of insurgent violence, sacrificial mythology, and Manichaean politics generates insoluble aporias that spur the development of a radically different approach to the study of myth and human nature. Next, it shows how Jesi's studies (...) on festivity from the 1970s redound upon and transform the theory of revolt in Spartakus, bringing this theory more in line with current epochal conditions. In doing so, they presage and lay the groundwork for the theory of destituent power developed in recent decades by Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

When performing a skilled action—whether something impressive like a double somersault or something mundane like reaching for a glass of water—you exercise control over your bodily movements. Specifically, you guide their course. In what does that control consist? In this dissertation, I argue that it consists in attending to what you are doing. More specifically, in attending, agents harness their perceptual and perceptuomotor states directly and practically in service of their goals and, in doing so, settle the fine-grained manner in (...) which their bodies will move—details an intention alone leaves unsettled. This requires, among other things, that we reject views on which agents’ control is identical with their practical rationality. When all goes well, agents attentionally prioritize what is motivationally relevant to them to the exclusion of what would otherwise distract them from achieving their goals. However, sometimes agents attend distractedly—i.e., without prioritizing. As the aim of attention is to avoid distraction, this entails the possibility of defective attention. Defective attention, in turn, casts light on scenarios in which agents lose control over what they are doing, as when a skilled practitioner ‘chokes under pressure’. A complaint sometimes levelled against accounts, like mine, that claim to reduce agents’ control of their behaviour to that of causally efficacious mental states or events is that these accounts invariably deprive agents themselves of their rightful role in the generation of behaviour. This is the “Disappearing Agent Problem” for “reductive” or “event-causal” theories of action. I argue that, correctly understood, extant reductive theories do face a genuine Disappearing Agent Problem. However, it is a problem we solve by recognizing the role that conscious attention plays in making an action the agent’s own. Accordingly, I develop and defend an attentional account of action ownership. On this view, allocating conscious attention in service of your goals is sufficient for a kind of conscious perspective (“motivational perspective”), which, when active in controlling your behaviour, constitutes the behaviour as your own doing. As I explain, such perspective also contributes to explaining the subjective structure of your perceptual awareness of the world around you. (shrink)

My purpose is to examine how Kuhn and Polanyi might be mutually supportive and corrective so as to join forces in providing a more comprehensive understanding of the progress of science. My presentation will be divided into three parts: (I) The common ground Kuhn shares with Polanyi; (II) Four soft spots in Kuhn and their remedy; (III) Clarifying and upgrading Polanyi appeal to "objective reality.".

In this paper, I investigate backward-looking accounts of death's badness. I begin by reviewing deprivationism—the standard, forward-looking account of death's badness. On deprivationism, death is bad for its victims when it deprives them of a good future. This account famously faces two problems—Lucretius’s symmetry problem and the preemption problem. This motivates turning to backward-looking accounts of death's badness on which death is bad for its victim (in a respect) when it involves a decline from a good life. I distinguish three (...) different backward-looking accounts of death's badness in terms of decline, and I argue for the attractiveness of one in particular. I conclude by considering how the backward-looking consideration of decline might factor into our overall account of death's badness. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophers endorse the Humean-Lewisian Denial of Absolutely Necessary Connections (‘DANC’). Among those philosophers, many deny all or part of the Humean-Lewisian package of views about causation and laws. I argue that they maintain an inconsistent set of views. DANC entails that (1) causal properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, (2) nomic properties and relations are, with a few possible exceptions, always extrinsic to their bearers, and (3) causal and nomic properties (...) and relations globally supervene on non-causal, non-nomic properties and relations. Hence, one can’t be a consistent Half-Hearted Humean. Consistency demands giving up the core Humean thesis or facing up to its consequences. The upshot is that we face a stark choice: either there are absolutely necessary connections between distinct existents or it’s "just one damn thing after another.". (shrink)

There appear to be few ways available to improve the prospects for international cooperation to address the threat of global warming within the very short timeframe for action. I argue that the most effective and plausible way to break the ongoing pattern of delay in the international climate regime is for economically powerful states to take the lead domestically and demonstrate that economic welfare is compatible with rapidly decreasing GHG emissions. However, the costs and risks of acting first can be (...) very large. This raises the question of whether it is fair to expect some states to go far ahead of others in an effort to improve the conditions for cooperation. I argue that a costly obligation to act unilaterally and to accept weak initial reciprocity can be justified and does not violate standards of fair burden sharing. Rather, the costs of creating the underlying conditions within which we can hope to achieve meaningful international cooperation are non-­‐ideal burdens for which we can appropriately assign fair shares. (shrink)

What we have learnt in the last six or seven decades about virtual machinery, as a result of a great deal of science and technology, enables us to offer Darwin a new defence against critics who argued that only physical form, not mental capabilities and consciousness could be products of evolution by natural selection. The defence compares the mental phenomena mentioned by Darwin’s opponents with contents of virtual machinery in computing systems. Objects, states, events, and processes in virtual machinery which (...) we have only recently learnt how to design and build, and could not even have been thought about in Darwin’s time, can interact with the physical machinery in which they are implemented, without being identical with their physical implementation, nor mere aggregates of physical structures and processes. The existence of various kinds of virtual machinery (including both “platform” virtual machines that can host other virtual machines, e.g. operating systems, and “application” virtual machines, e.g. spelling checkers, and computer games) depends on complex webs of causal connections involving hardware and software structures, events and processes, where the specification of such causal webs requires concepts that cannot be defined in terms of concepts of the physical sciences. That indefinability, plus the possibility of various kinds of self-monitoring within virtual machinery, seems to explain some of the allegedly mysterious and irreducible features of consciousness that motivated Darwin’s critics and also more recent philosophers criticising AI. There are consequences for philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and robotics. (shrink)

Adam Smith sought to explain the persistence of slavery as an institution in Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurispridence. In order to accomplish this he also drew on arguments he had developed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The result was a sophisticated explanation which bridged economic, psychological, and moral considerations. After presenting Smith’s explanation I will consider a discussion of the moral wrong of slavery in Ottobah Cugoano, the author of the incisive criticism of the slave trade Thoughts (...) and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787). I will suggest that Cugoano’s account of what is morally wrong in slavery shows an important lacuna in Smith‘s views. (shrink)

The fact that philosophy is systematic—that philosophical issues are thoroughly interconnected—was a commonplace among nineteenth century idealists, then neglected by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century, and has now finally started to get some renewed attention. But other than calling attention to the fact, few philosophers have tried to say what it consists in, or what its implications are. -/- I argue that the systematicity of philosophy has disastrous epistemological implications. In particular, it implies philosophical skepticism: philosophers are (...) rationally prohibited from believing any philosophical thesis. The argument goes by way of a new principle that connects inquiry with what is rational to believe. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between my argument and other, more well-trodden arguments for philosophical skepticism. (shrink)