The Woman at the Well

The woman at the well argued theology with Jesus, and he listened to her and engaged her in conversation. Theological education today must make spaces for the voices of the marginalized to be heard and prepare church leaders to listen respectfully to people from the margins.     

Poisoning the Well

In this paper it is shown is that although poisoning the well has generally been treated as a species of ad hominem fallacy, when you try to analyze the fallacy using ad hominem schemes, even by supplementing with related schemes like argument from position to know, the analysis ultimately fails. The main argument of the paper is taken up with proving this negative claim by applying these schemes to examples of arguments associated with the fallacy of poisoning the well. Although there is a positive finding in this quest, in that poisoning the well is shown to be based on and associated with these forms of argument in interesting ways, the paper in the end is led to the conclusion that the fallacy is irreducibly dialectical. Poisoning the well is thus analyzed as a tactic to silence an opponent violating her right to put forward arguments on an issue both parties have agreed to discuss at the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. It is concluded that it is a special form of strategic attack used by one party in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion to improperly shut down the capability of the other party for putting forward arguments of the kind needed to properly move the discussion forward.     

"活得好"与"做得好":亚里士多德幸福概念的两重含义

在这篇文章中,我将证明,亚里士多德伦理学里的eudaimonia概念是"在两种意义上说的",而非只具有一种意思.它既是"活得好"也是"做得好".这一区分构成了亚氏伦理学主要论证的基础.它是一条贯穿许多主要论争的单一线索.对于这两种用法的区分将能够提供对这些争辩的一种统一性的解决.尤为重要的是,它将使我们得以用一种不十分费劲的方式去阅读那荆棘丛生的<尼各马可伦理学>第十卷的第六到第八章.幸福是"活得好"还是"做得好"这一问题是一个比涵盖论-理智论的论争更为基本的问题.在很大程度上,涵盖论-理智论的论争之所以会发生,正是由于争论双方都没能在作为"活得好"的幸福与作为"做得好"的幸福之间进行区分.他们共同地设定幸福的意思在于"活得好",然后开始争论它到底是各种善的复合、还是专注于思辨.本文将首先表明对于活动的讨论在亚里士多德幸福论之中有着何种位置;然后,我将论述"做得好"和"活得好",并将讨论下面一些争论主题:(a)幸福的两种标准;(b)思辨生活的非实用性;(c)首要幸福与第二等级幸福这一层级的性质,以及(d)道德与思辨的关系.     

Mapping European social psychology: Co-word analysis of the communications at the 10th General Meeting of the EAESP

This study aims to provide a picture of the present European research topics in Social Psychology, using the 339 papers presented at the 1993 General Meeting of the EAESP. The most frequent themes of research are analysed and the structure of the association of those themes are described in a two-factor structure. The first factor differentiates research in terms of level of analysis and the second factor contrasts types of applied research.     

Meeting the Evil God Challenge

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met.