The Church and the Trinity I: The Church of the Spirit

We are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of the outstanding young preacher Geoffrey Preston by publishing this trilogy. It was written not very long before he died and has not appeared in print before. Its other two parts, 'The Church of the Son' and 'The Church of the Father', we will be publishing in our July/August and September numbers.     

The Church and the Trinity II: The Church of the Son

The second part of the trilogy which we are publishing to mark the tenth anniversary of Geoffrey Preston's death.     

The Values of the Virtual

How do we assign values to virtual items, which include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In this article, I offer a framework for answering this question. After considering different value theses in the literature, I argue that whether we think these theses mutually exclusive or not turns on our view about the number of value-salient kinds virtual items belong to. Virtual monism is the view that virtual Xs belong to only one value-salient kind in relation to X. Virtual pluralism is the view that they belong to more than one value-salient kind. I argue for two claims. First, virtual monism is mistaken. Minimally some virtual Xs are Xs, while others are not. Second, dualistic virtual pluralism is also mistaken because it is too coarse grained. Instead, I argue for fourfold pluralism: virtual items either represent an original's properties or reproduce essential properties and do so to lesser or greater extents. This gives us four value-salient kinds of virtual X: virtual reproductions, simulations, representations, and simulacra of X. I apply this view to various debates in the literature and conclude with a discussion of less basic hybrid kinds.     

The return of the Sophists

The author argues against a foundational epistemology and thus sides with the Greek Sophists. He shows that the search for foundations of knowledge and truth is the outcome of a referential theory of language. He finds that Nietzsche and Saussure pioneered attacks on and substitutions for this theory. Wittgenstein, Derrida and Rorty, inter alia, continued this trend. The author discusses the criticisms and theories of these philosophers and finds that he agrees with their criticisms and many of their positive moves but that he cannot accept their social relativism because it cannot account for inter- and transcultural understanding and the regulative role of truth. He looks for a theory of language and truth which will also comply with these requirements.