Kinds of process and the levels of selection

Synthese - Most attempts to answer the question of whether populations of groups can undergo natural selection focus on properties of the groups themselves rather than the dynamics of the...     

Violence,Atonement, and Retributive Justice: Bonhoeffer as a Test Case

Recent soteriological discourse has worried that atonement theologies like satisfaction and penal substitution have potentially damaging effects like inoculating us to our violence, further buttressing retributive justice, and inducing passive acquiescence in the face of abuse. Though legitimate concerns in their own right, this essay investigates whether certain views on the atonement do in fact produce the issues of concern. By investigating the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who believed that God had to punish sin, this article will seek to identify the complex nuances in Bonhoeffer's work that would potentially safeguard against some of the concerns being raised about atonement theologies like his.     

Requesting Belief

Requests belong to a family of forms of social influence on action that appear problematic when employed in the attempt to directly influence belief. Explaining why this is so is more difficult than it might at first appear. The fact that belief is not directly subject to the will can only be part of the explanation. It must also be the case that requests are incapable of providing epistemic reasons in a way that parallels that in which they provide practical reasons. I propose an account of the nature of requests that is in a position to explain why requests are incapable of doing this.