Steps Toward a Computational Metaphysics

In this paper, the authors describe their initial investigations in computational metaphysics. Our method is to implement axiomatic metaphysics in an automated reasoning system. In this paper, we describe what we have discovered when the theory of abstract objects is implemented in prover9 (a first-order automated reasoning system which is the successor to otter). After reviewing the second-order, axiomatic theory of abstract objects, we show (1) how to represent a fragment of that theory in prover9’s first-order syntax, and (2) how prover9 then finds proofs of interesting theorems of metaphysics, such as that every possible world is maximal. We conclude the paper by discussing some issues for further research.     

CREATED FOR EVERLASTING LIFE: CAN THEISTIC EVOLUTION PROVIDE AN ADEQUATE CHRISTIAN ACCOUNT OF HUMAN NATURE?

Christians who affirm standard science and the biblical doctrine of creation often endorse theistic evolution as the best approach to human origins. But theistic evolution is ambiguous. Some versions are naturalistic (NTE)—God created humans entirely by evolution—and some are supernaturalistic (STE)—God supernaturally augmented evolution. This article claims that NTE is inadequate as an account of human origins because its theological naturalism and emergent physicalist ontology of the soul or person conflict with the Christian doctrine that God created humans for everlasting life. Both the traditional Christian account of the afterlife and its modern Christian alternatives involve God's supernatural action and a separation (dualism) of person and body at death. STE can combine with several philosophical accounts of the body‐soul relation to provide an adequate Christian account of original human nature.     

Spiritual Need Four: Opportunities to Be Served and to Share with Others

SUMMARY

Older adults have unique opportunities to be served and to share with others through groups and individual relationships and programs in religious congregations. Where programs and senior centers with public funding can provide only for physical, emotional, and social needs, religious congregations can be more wholistic and provide for the spiritual needs as well. This chapter offers further discussion of planning that will facilitate program development for the whole person.     

《易经》:早期儒家的形上学与意识进化学

相关资料初步表明,在中国古代,客观地把握人性及人与宇宙交互作用的自觉与努力业已发生。本文试图阐明《易经》的思维理路,借此思维理路,《易经》不仅塑造和影响了早期儒家形上学,而且也塑造和影响了诸如意识研究,尤其是意识学之类的当代研究领域。《易经》的发展及其在西方的传播,正说明了这一点。意识学研究人性,思考存在的其他领域。在这些方面,意识学与《周易》是相通的。将意识学同中国古代思想相比较可以看出,我们现在所研究的意识学在中国古代思想中早已有之。基于这一历史事实,我们有必要在意识学的起始处研究意识学。在意识学研究中,意识进化学是一个不可或缺的、必须进行研究的内容。我们可以通过《易经》来探索意识的进化。     

The Neuropsychology of Aesthetic, Spiritual, and Mystical States

An analysis of the underlying neurophysiology of aesthetics and religiousexperience allows for the development of an Aesthetic-Religious Continuum. This continuumpertains to the variety of creative and spiritual experiences available to human beings. This mayalso lead to an understanding of the neurophysiological mechanism underlying both"positive" and "negative" aesthetics. An analysis of this continuumallows for the ability to understand the neurophenomenological aspects of a variety of humanexperiences ranging from relatively simple aesthetic experiences to profound spiritual and unitarystates such as those obtained during meditation. However, it may be possible through aneuropsychological analysis to determine the similarities that exist across such experiences.Thus, certain parts of the brain may be functioning in similar ways during different experiences.It may be the case that the specific neuropsychological components of a given experience maydepend on the strength of the affectual response of the person and the ability to mark suchexperiences as significant. Further, even though similar structures may be functioning duringdifferent experiences, their inhibitory and excitatory interactions may be different. Finally, byconsidering the Aesthetic-Religious Continuum, we may eventually arrive at a betterunderstanding of how we experience and define reality.     

Descartes on the Identity of Passion and Action

According to the standard Aristotelian doctrine of the identity of passion and action (I_pa), a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a distinction of reason, and both passion and action are located in the patient. Descartes has recently been interpreted by some scholars to be rejecting I_pa in favor of a view that throws into contention a dualistic interpretation of his philosophy of mind. This article contends that Descartes did hold I_pa, albeit expressed in his own metaphysical vocabulary of substance and mode. On this interpretation, (1) a passion and the action with which it is identified are distinguished through a conceptual distinction or distinction of reason and (2) the passion and the action constitute one and the same mode which is locatedin the patient. This result is significant first, because it shows Descartes's retention of a fundamentally Aristotelian understanding of the metaphysical categories of passion and action and second, because it removes some of the support for recent interpretations on which Descartes is seen in the Passions of the Soul to diverge from a dualistic view of mind and body.     

Spiritual Disposition and Understanding Illness

Although Dull and Skokan (1995) proposed a cognitive model of the effect of religion on health, they neglected to clearly identify the multi-dimensional nature of religion as a cognitive schema. The present paper identifies various aspects of spiritual disposition (defined as personality and beliefs) that can play a role in an individual’s adaptation to illness. Specifically, this paper reviews the factors of religious doctrine and affiliation, spiritual beliefs, religious orientation, God locus of control, faith and hope as aspects of a spiritual disposition and explores how they can function as resources and/or negative factors in the process of adjustment to illness. Implications for clinical health care (e.g., pastoral counsellors) are drawn from this review.     

Psychologism Revisited in Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology

Psychologism is a philosophical ideology that seeks to explain the principles of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology as psychological phenomena. Psychologism has been the storm center of concerted criticisms since the nineteenth century, and is thought by many to have been refuted once and for all by Kant, Frege, Husserl, and others. The project of accounting for objective philosophical or mathematical truths in terms of subjective psychological states has been largely discredited in mainstream analytic thought. Ironically, psychologism has resurfaced in unexpected guises in the form of intuitionistic logic and mathematics, cognitivism, and naturalized epistemology. I examine some of the principal objections to psychologism – distinguishing roughly between good and bad or philosophically acceptable versus unacceptable psychologism – and consider the extent to which a new wave of psychologism may be gaining prominence in contemporary philosophy, and the light its successes and failures may shed on the original concept and underlying perspective of classical psychologism.     

"一阴一阳之谓道"析议

一阴一阳之谓道,包含着三个问题:一是一阴一阳的关系;二是一阴一阳与道的关系;三是道究 竟是二元的或是一元的。本文结合中西哲学史对此展开分析,并得出结论认为,“一阴一阳之谓道”,已将 易之三义(即易简、变易、不易)全部涵括在其中了。     

Ontology and Metaphysics in Chinese Philosophy

This paper begins with a critique of the uses of the term "bentilun 體論 (ontology)" in modem Chinese scholarship by tracing their claim to being theoretical paradigms for understanding Chinese philosophy as a philosophical tradition.It is supplemented by a contrastive discussion of bentilun and its original ancient Greek counterpart,i.e.ontology,to show that the object of discourse in bentilun does not match up with that of ontology,namely "being qua being." This comparative study also demonstrates that bentilun finds its philosophical significance in connection with the theory of xinxing心性(heart-mind).In the second section of this paper,a comparative study of "xingershangxue形而上學 (metaphysics)" and "metaphysics" highlights the central tenet that the dao essentially transcends language.Daoist philosophy is used as an example that identifies a unique predilection toward philosophical concepts that transcend the realm of nameable thoughts and objects in Chinese philosophy.Textual evidence is provided to show that the conceptual possibility of xingershangxue is based upon a fundamental difference between you (being) and wu無 (not-being),in a way that is similar to philosophical developments in other early civilizations.Nonetheless,in addition to a philosophical interest in principles and values that transcend the material world,Daoist xingershangxue exhibits an idiosyncratic attention to notions and theories whose object of discourse is essentially unnameable.This characteristic philosophical interest is identified with the aim of locating essential disciplines within Chinese philosophy,including the theory of xinxing,practical wisdom,and the theory of jingjie境界 (state-of-attainment) in a wider framework of east and west philosophical traditions.     

Metaphysics, History, And Rational Justification A MacIntyrean Response to Franklin Gamwell's Critique

This article addresses Franklin Gamwell's critique of Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the nature of rational justification. I argue that MacIntyreans have good reasons to take seriously Gamwell's critique, and thus to reformulate MacIntyre's position to make clear that that position does not rest on a denial of all a priori claims. The author outlines such a reformulation, drawing heavily on MacIntyre's account (in his 1990 Aquinas Lecture) of the place of a priori claims within the development of rational traditions of inquiry. When thus rethought, MacIntyre's position grounds a twofold response to Gamwell's critique.     

身体美学的启迪与反思

舒斯特曼提出来的“身体美学”日渐得到人们的重视。利用传统中国哲学和中国医学中所包含的身心一元论思想指导下的身体观来说明身体美学的可能性和重要意义,思考有中国文化特色的身体美学的一个重要特点及其对于当前流行的美容实践的启迪。     

Aristotle and Headless Clones

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Cloned organisms can be genetically altered so that they do not exhibit higher brain functioning. This form of therapeutic cloning allows for genetically...     

Metaphysics in China and in the West: Common Origin and Later Divergence

There are two tendencies in the arguments of the legitimacy of metaphysics in ancient China: the tendency to argue that there was no metaphysics in ancient China and the tendency to argue that ancient Chinese metaphysics is totally different from that of the West. In this article, the author counters these tendencies and argues that Chinese and western metaphysics both originated from a dynamic cosmology and shared objects of investigation and characteristics of thinking in terms of Becoming. However, in their later development, due to the difference in the problems of their focus, traditions of “moral metaphysics” and “(natural) metaphysics of Being” were formed in China and in the West, respectively. The author also explores the reasons for the rise of modern science in the West and its lack of progress in China. Translated from Shehui Kexue Zhanxian, 2005:3     

Cognitive Developmental Theory and Spiritual Development

Traditional conceptions of cognitive development have failed to account for changes in adult cognition as well as more subjective and intuitive features of human experience. This paper reviews recent theories and research in cognitive development and spirituality with the aim of providing connections between the two domains. Neo-Piagetian and postformal theories of cognitive development suggest that advances in cognition are domain-specific, dependent on individual experience, and can occur at any point in the lifespan. However, theories of spiritual development have not adequately addressed these points. Thus, a novel account of spiritual development is presented that addresses these features with respect to individuals' changing conceptions of their relation to an External Power.     

The Oneness of Objective Reality and Spiritual Truth

Spirituality and science discover that they are both motivated by the desire to know, and realize that mere sensory perception does not guarantee the truth of knowledge. The concepts that emerge in the new sciences show a striking similarity to the ideas that come to the mind of spiritually intuitive persons, giving rise to the hope that with the recognition that at the bottom objective reality and spiritual truth are one, the historic opposition (or feud) between science and spirituality can at last be overcome.     

Dementia–A Spiritual Journey Towards the Divine: A Personal View of Dementia

SUMMARY

This chapter presents a moving account of one woman's journey into fronto-temporal dementia. Bryden grapples with the difficult issues of loss of self and relationship with God. She examines the significance of memory in the Christian journey, and finally, she proposes ways for relating to her as she moves further into dementia. The strategies suggested uphold her as a fellow member of the Body of Christ, where others may become her memory, and where she can still be nurtured through the love of others and feel God's love through them.     

回到道德现象本身——康德道德形而上学的论证方法初探

在康德理性的道德形而上学的建构过程中,两种论证方法即分析法和综合法起到了重要的作用。他首先用分析法从普通人的相互混杂的道德认识中逐步分离出纯粹的道德现象和原则,力图给真正的道德哲学奠基。随后他又用综合法来论证道德律的实在性并使它在经验世界中能得到现实的应用,以说明纯粹的道德原则并非人的主观臆造。两种方法相互依赖,相辅相成,共同支撑起道德形而上学的大厦。     

Spiritual Beliefs and Barriers Among Managed Care Practitioners

Purpose: Ninety percent of American adults believe in God and 82% pray weekly. A majority wants their physicians to address spirituality during their health care visit. However, clinicians incorporate spiritual discussion in less than 20% of visits. Our objectives were to measure clinician beliefs and identify perceived barriers to integrating spirituality into patient care in a statewide, primary care, managed care group. Methods: Practitioners completed a 30-item survey including demographics and religious involvement (DUREL), spirituality in patient care (SPC), and barriers (BAR). We analyzed data using frequencies, means, standard deviations, and ANOVA. Findings: Clinicians had a range of religious denominations (67% Christian, 14% Jewish, 11% Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, 8% agnostic), were 57% female and 24% had training in spirituality. Sixty-six percent reported experiencing the divine. Ninety-five percent felt that a patients spiritual outlook was important to handling health difficulties and 68% percent agreed that addressing spirituality was part of the physicians role. Ninety-five percent of our managed care group noted 8lack of time as an important barrier, lack of training was indicated by 69%, and 21% cited fear of response from administration. Conclusions: Managed care practitioners in a time constrained setting were spiritual themselves and believed this to be important to patients. Respondents indicated barriers of time and training to implementing these beliefs. Comparing responses from our group to those in other published surveys on clinician spirituality, we find similar concerns. Clinician education may overcome these barriers and improve ability to more fully meet their patients expressed needs regarding spirituality and beliefs.*This material has previously been presented as an abstract at the Culture and End of Life Conference, Association of Medical Colleges Spirituality, Kansas City, MO, September 12–14, 2002.Project supported by the Foundation for Spirituality in Medicine, Baltimore, MD