Keith Ward
Science, Religion and Culture
... scientifically informed philosophy). But there is something very odd about this. Nowhere in the book does he mention consciousness, value, or thought. In fact he finally gives the game away on p. 228 by saying, ‘we human beings ...are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles’. That is a philosophical view if ever there was one! It is precisely what is usually called eliminative reductionism, and I regard it as a non-starter, if you want...
Mark Zelcer
...iefs Matter is a book of philosophy, science, and religion written for a lay audience. Comprised of five loosely connected chapters dealing with a plethora of interesting themes, the book is principally a polemic against inserting metaphysical assumptions into mathematics, science, and religion. The book focuses on the metaphysical worldviews of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, and religious thinkers. Though for reasons I elaborate on later, I would n...
Dana Kay Nelkin
...values--including seeing philosophy as an inclusive conversation, and to testing and revising one’s views in the search for truth....
Rick Repetti
...er read on Buddhist philosophy, a subject I’ve studied for over 40 years, and in this assessment I include both primary and secondary sources, both Western and Buddhist. It is also one of the best philosophy books I’ve ever read—my few (minor) objections notwithstanding. Engaging Buddhism is directed primarily at a Western philosophical readership, but is of perhaps e...
Rick Repetti
...in contemporary analytic philosophy: Peter van Inwagen’s consequence argument, which asserts that if choices are lawfully necessary consequences of prior events, then they are unfree; Derk Pereboom’s two arguments for hard incompatibilism: the manipulation argument, which asserts that manipulated choices are unfree, determinism is functionally equivalent to manipulation, and thus determined choices are unfree; and the randomness...
Mariano Gastón Asla
...t also in literature and philosophy. Epicurus, William of Ockham, Immanuel Kant or Michael Ruse, to name just a few examples, have used this kind of fictions to analyze and defend very different arguments. Currently, this interest has not diminished. On the contrary, it has spread to other disciplines, including the natural sciences. In fact, this interest does not entail just an expansive theoretical movement, but also the development of a practical dimension...
Bruce R. Reichenbach
...;This is no less true in philosophy than elsewhere, and certainly no less true in matters dealing with the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and human free actions. In what follows I will argue that the incompatibilist view that Fischer and others stalwartly defend results from the particular starting point they choose, and that if one adopts a different starting point about divine knowledge the logical incompatibility they envision and philo...
Martín Grassi
... thought. I will address philosophy, biology, and theology, by studying Aristotle’s natural philosophy, Thomas Aquinas’ theology, and Maturana and Varela’s biological theory of autopoiesis. Although self-sufficiency is quite revealing of what life is, I will argue that it does notdo justice to the relational essence of life, being my goal to open new perspectives on life by placing the prefix syn-...
Jesse Butler
...e American and Confucian philosophy, respectively, Cordova and Tu illustrate how both worldviews exhibit ESU and thereby serve as models toward the cultivation of ecological well-being.
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Ellen Y. Zhang
...ative expressions in his philosophy. Zhuangzi’s claim that “The perfect happiness is derived from the absence of happiness” designates two key arguments: (1) Happiness cannot be designed and measured, and (2) There is no single fixed notion of happiness and meaning-making. In conclusion, I attempt to show that flow experiences, in the context of Zhuangzi’s Daoism, point to a fluid and creative mind that transcends the rigidity of conven...
