The Importance of Being Actual: Some Reasons for and Against Procreation

In 'Axiological Actualism' Josh Parsons attempts to defend both the intuition that the anticipated welfare of a person cannot constitute a reason to bring him or her into being and the intuition that such considerations can constitute a reason not to. The former, 'basic' intuition he defends by an appeal to the belief that 'ethical theory should refrain from assigning levels of welfare … or anything of the sort to merely possible people'. The latter, 'converse' intuition he defends by an appeal to prudential considerations. I argue that Parsons's attempts to defend these intuitions are unpersuasive. On the one hand, and notwithstanding his attempts to demonstrate the contrary, the basic intuition is undermined by the claim that an actual person could have been worse off if she had never existed. On the other, his grounding of the converse intuition in prudential considerations runs counter to the ought implies can dictum and is also highly counterintuitive.     

Transsexualism: Some Theological and Ethical Perspectives

Abstract : The debates in church and theological circles regarding sexuality have been dominated by the subject of homosexuality. There has been far less theological discussion and ethical reflection regarding transgendered people and transsexualism in particular. This article introduces readers to some basic facts about transsexualism and to a selection of theological and ethical responses to this phenomenon with particular attention to how the notion of “disordered sexuality” is a factor in both the debate over the ethical status of transsexualism and homosexual unions.     

Rhetoric and Dialectic: Some Historical and Legal Perspectives

The thesis is defended that rhetoric is not, as is often said, a discipline which is hierarchically subordinate to dialectic. It is argued that the modalities of the links between rhetoric and dialectic must be seen in a somewhat different light: rhetoric and dialectic should be viewed as two complementary disciplines. On the basis of a historical survey of the views of various authors on the links between rhetoric and dialectic, it is concluded that efforts to establish clear boundaries or unequivocal conceptual or moral hierarchical relationships between the two disciplines have failed and that therefore, they must be conceived as being mutually dependent.     

Christian Perspectives on Spiritual Needs of a Human Being

SUMMARY

Each human being, independent of culture, time, and age has three fundamental needs. A need for biophysical exchanges, a need for psychosocial exchanges, and a need for spiritual-integrated exchanges. Spiritual needs are not separated from biological, social, psychological, and material aspects of life. Christian spirituality today is oriented toward responding to life, to its beauty and injustices, to the universe, and is responsive and responsible to the poor. Some specific tasks for older people today are commitment to the great causes of justice, peace, and environmental protection, and a deeper bond of love for God and fellow man.     

The Pain of Dying

SUMMARY

Dying can be a painful and difficult business. Fears, hopes, losses, questions, and uncertainty result in a form of pain that lies beyond the therapeutic reach of science and pharmacology. Efforts to preserve and prolong life or to make things better can sometimes result in this pain being overlooked or remaining unheard. To search the deepest part of oneself is the journey that beckons us all as we are dying. Within this space resides the source of our own suffering but also the seeds for healing. This exploration has a momentum of its own but requires conditions not often found within the biomedical paradigm. If this model of care remains the only source of hope for those with a life-threatening illness, ‘the pain of dying’ may not be addressed.     

The Impact of Globalization on Church Mission in Zambia: Some African Perspectives

This article builds on the theme of a symposium held in October 2015 for female church workers in the United Church of Zambia in Kabwe, Zambia, and devoted to the impact of globalization on mission. The article discusses the effects of globalization on missionary activities in Zambia and offers some background to both the tensions and the opportunities that arise when doing mission in an Africa that is part of a globalized world. It discusses some insights that have emerged from the symposium with specific reference to the challenges faced by women doing mission in a globalized Zambian context. It concludes that globalization is setting the agenda for how mission should be done. To be relevant to Zambians, the church should seriously engage with the challenges and opportunities presented by the current uni‐directional globalization to make it into an instrument of liberation rather than a force of oppression.     

Logic and Rhetoric in Legal Argumentation: Some Medieval Perspectives

While the formal treatment of arguments in the late medieval modi arguendi owes much to dialectic, this does not remove the substance and function of the argumentative modes discussed from the realm of rhetoric. These works, designed to teach law students skills in legal argumentation, remain importantly focused on persuasive features of argumentation which have traditionally been strongly associated with a rhetorical approach, particularly in efforts to differentiate from it dialectic as a more strictly scientific and logical form of reasoning. This also sheds some light on the relative roles logic and rhetoric play in the legal discourse of our own time. In their approach to persuasive legal discourse, the modi arguendi stand between the argumentative rhetorics of Antiquity and the rhetoricized dialectics of the Renaissance, and by linking the minute technicalities of professionalized law with broad general considerations of justice, utility, nature, and emotion, they mediate between the modem trend towards atomized field-specific rhetorics and the classical idea of a unified civic rhetoric.     

The Ways of Humans: The Emergence of Sense and Common Sense Through Language Production

The present paper is an extension of Elstrup (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, doi:10.1007/s12124-009-9095-x, 2009). Primarily, it is argued that the model presented in ‘The ways of humans’ describes the functional foundation of an emergent hierarchy and therefore cannot be reduced to its elements. Next, some ideas concerning the language mechanism, sense making and common sense are developed. Finally, it is argued that the scientific exploration of human development needs a unit of measurement. It is suggested that this unit can be found in time dependent sense making.