Religion in the 21st Century

Abstract :  The secular minded element of society is actually the minority. However, this minority are often the ones running our politics. Because of this, Christians, especially in Europe, seem to think it pertinent to ally with them. But Christians in the West—because they forget about being Christians and neglect the great majority of Christians in the less secular‐minded South—run the risk of enforcing the hate many Muslims have for the West. Like the Christians of the Southern Hemisphere, such Muslims are not and will most likely never be as secular minded as European "Christians" tend to be. An interdisciplinary research program at University of Copenhagen ( Religion in the 21^st Century ) hopes to address these crucial issues. As a research area of priority this initiative will contribute to a better understanding of the position of the 90 percent religious‐minded in relation to the 10 percent secular‐minded in the world today.     

D.Z. Philips (ed.), Religion and Morality

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

D. Z. Phillips and reasonable belief

As an illustration of what Phillips called the “heterogeneity of sense,” this essay concentrates on differences in what is meant by a “reason for belief.” Sometimes saying that a belief is reasonable simply commends the belief’s unquestioned acceptance as a part of what we understand as a sensible outlook. Here the standard picture of justifying truth claims on evidential grounds breaks down; and it also breaks down in cases of fundamental moral and religious disagreement, where the basic beliefs that we hold affect our conception of what counts as a reliable ground of judgment. Phillips accepts the resultant variations in our conceptions of rational judgment as a part of logic, just as Wittgenstein did. All objective means of determining the truth or falsity of an assertion presume some underlying conceptual agreement about what counts as good judgment. This means that the possibility of objective justification is limited. But no pernicious relativism results from this view, for as Wittgenstein said, “After reason comes persuasion.” There is, moreover, a non-objective criterion of sorts in the moral and religious requirement that one be able to live with one’s commitments. In such cases, good judgment is still possible, but it differs markedly from the standard model of making rational inferences.     

John H. Whittaker (ed.), The Possibilities of Sense: Essays in Honour of D. Z. Phillips.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

D. Z. Phillips on Belief in God

In this paper I try briefly to say why I think that what D.Z. Phillips had to say about belief in God can be defended against certain familiar criticisms, and why I think that his treatment could have been improved. I note passages in his writings which might be thought not to reflect what belief in God amounts to, but I argue that these passages can be read as reflecting belief in God as we find it in biblical authors and in writers like Thomas Aquinas. Having noted that Phillips rejects attempts to do natural theology on largely Humean grounds, I argue against these grounds as echoed by Phillips and draw attention to a tradition of natural theology not subject to Humean objections, a tradition to which Phillips might have paid more attention than he did.     

D. Z. Phillips and Wittgenstein's On Certainty

I start from Phillips' discussion of Rhees's dissatisfaction with the idea of a language‐game. Then, from a rereading of Moore, I go on to exemplify interconnected uses of the expressions “language‐game,”“recurrent procedure,”“world‐picture,”“formal procedure,”“agreement in judgment,”“genre picture” and “form of life.” The discussion is related to sense perception, our knowledge of time and space, and the picture‐theory. These topics connect with Wittgenstein's earlier treatment of the will – which changed markedly later. The subtext (in footnotes) confronts (i) the sceptical methods of Descartes and Hume with the grammatical methods of Leibniz, Kant and Wittgenstein, and (ii) the realism of Leibniz and the Tractatus with the transcendental idealism of Kant. My conclusion is that, although the method of Wittgenstein's later work remains in a sense grammatical, (i) in its new form it can free us from the conviction that the intellect can and must resolve one way or the other the conflicts that arise in the course of the latter confrontation, and that (ii), although release from such a conviction is to be seen as the aim of philosophical discourse in general, it allows philosophy to retain its overriding significance. A positive element in that lies in the respect the method demands for that in a human life which is transcendental to the activity of scientific theorising: respect, therefore, for the unique perspective of the individual historical agent.     

The Meaning of Category Theory for 21st Century Philosophy

Among the main concerns of 20th century philosophy was that of the foundations of mathematics. But usually not recognized is the relevance of the choice of a foundational approach to the other main problems of 20th century philosophy, i.e., the logical structure of language, the nature of scientific theories, and the architecture of the mind. The tools used to deal with the difficulties inherent in such problems have largely relied on set theory and its “received view”. There are specific issues, in philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of mind, where this dependence turns out to be misleading. The same issues suggest the gain in understanding coming from category theory, which is, therefore, more than just the source of a “non-standard” approach to the foundations of mathematics. But, even so conceived, it is the very notion of what a foundation has to be that is called into question. The philosophical meaning of mathematics is no longer confined to which first principles are assumed and which “ontological” interpretation is given to them in terms of some possibly updated version of logicism, formalism or intuitionism. What is central to any foundational project proper is the role of universal constructions that serve to unify the different branches of mathematics, as already made clear in 1969 by Lawvere. Such universal constructions are best expressed by means of adjoint functors and representability up to isomorphism. In this lies the relevance of a category-theoretic perspective, which leads to wide-ranging consequences. One such is the presence of functorial constraints on the syntax–semantics relationships; another is an intrinsic view of (constructive) logic, as arises in topoi and, subsequently, in more general fibrations. But as soon as theories and their models are described accordingly, a new look at the main problems of 20th century’s philosophy becomes possible. The lack of any satisfactory solution to these problems in a purely logical and set-theoretic setting is the result of too circumscribed an approach, such as a static and punctiform view of objects and their elements, and a misconception of geometry and its historical changes before, during, and after the foundational “crisis”, as if algebraic geometry and synthetic differential geometry – not to mention algebraic topology – were secondary sources for what concerns foundational issues. The objectivity of basic geometrical intuitions also acts against the recent version of structuralism proposed as ‘the’ philosophy of category theory. On the other hand, the need for a consistent and adequate conceptual framework in facing the difficulties met by pre-categorical theories of language and scientific knowledge not only provides the basic concepts of category theory with specific applications but also suggests further directions for their development (e.g., in approaching the foundations of physics or the mathematical models in the cognitive sciences). This ‘virtuous’ circle is by now largely admitted in theoretical computer science; the time is ripe to realise that the same holds for classical topics of philosophy. Text of a talk given at the Workshop and Symposium on the Ramifications of Category Theory, Florence, November 18–22, 2003. For further documentation on the conference, see     

Theism,metaphysics, and D. Z. Phillips

Section I argues that theistic religions incorporate metaphysical systems and that these systems are explanatory. Section II defends these claims against D. Z. Phillips's objections to the epistemic realism and correspondence theory of truth which they imply. I conclude by raising questions about the status of Phillips's own project.     

儒家哲学的现代转型及其在21世纪的价值

面对各种挑战,儒家哲学的现代转型问题仍需要作切实的严肃的思考。儒学已不可能恢复其历史上的“独尊”地位,但它要恢复其活力,成为现代社会多元哲学中的“一元”,就必须完成其现代转型,成为一种现代的“合乎理性的完备性学说”．承担起“人类各种价值的总协调”这一哲学使命。新儒学需要与其他学说进行积极的对话和良性的互动,不仅在“正德”方面突出其价值,而且在“利用”(经济)、“厚生”(生活)、“致知”(科学)和“立制”(政治)等方面与其他学说逐渐达成“重叠的共识”。人类在21世纪将更加提升“交往理性”,更加重视“正德”．儒学在2l世纪将彰显其价值。