TELEOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract. Current teleology in Western biology, philosophy, and theology draws on resources from four main Western philosophers. (1) Plato's Timaeus shows how to interpret the universe as the handiwork of a purposive Creator who subordinates secondary, necessary, causes to primary, intelligent, causes. (2) Aristotle's Physics sets forth purpose as implicit in the nature of things. Purposes of different sorts inhere in different types of being, and everything has a natural function. Living things grow to actualize the potentials of the goal whose principle they bear within themselves. (3) Kant's Critique of Judgment denies that purpose is anything that human beings can know, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, purpose is a concept we must use to make sense of biological systems. (4) Hegel's Philosophy of Nature articulates organic systems as dialectically including and transcending mechanical and chemical systems. Teleological themes persist, in different ways, in contemporary discussions; I consider two lines of criticism of traditional teleology—by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould—and one line that continues traditional teleology in an updated way—by Holmes Rolston, III.     

RELIGIOUS NATURALISM—WHERE DOES IT LEAD?

I respond to the four symposiasts who commented on my recent book Religion Is Not About God (2005)—religious studies scholars Donald Braxton and David Klemm, philosopher William Rottschaefer, and cognitive scientist Leslie Marsh. Various general and specific points relative to the nature of religion and the future of religion are either clarified or defended. Among the issues that receive attention are (1) the status and adequacy of my proposals for religious naturalism: Can it motivate wholeness, and is it finally a form of pantheism? (2) ritual practices, particularly those of Christianity, reinterpreted within the framework of religious naturalism; and (3) the adequacy of any naturalistic position to account for subjective properties of consciousness.     

Augustine’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Confessions</Emphasis>: The Story of a Divided Self and the Process of Its Unification

This article takes up William James’ observation that Saint Augustine is “a classic example” of the discordant personality or divided self, and employs E. R. Dodd’s equally classic (1927–28) article on Augustine’s “spiritual maladjustment” to explore the psychological bases, especially parental, for Augustine’s discordant personality, and to evaluate the effectiveness of Augustine’s efforts to overcome the discordancy through a personal religious conversion.     

THE REVOLUTIONARY VISION OF WILLIAM BLAKE

It was William Blake's insight that the Christian churches, by inverting the Incarnation and the dialectical vision of Paul, have repressed the body, divided God from creation, substituted judgment for grace, and repudiated imagination, compassion, and the original apocalyptic faith of early Christianity. Blake's prophetic poetry thus contributes to the renewal of Christian ethics by a process of subversion and negation of Christian moral, ecclesiastical, and theological traditions, which are recognized precisely as inversions of Jesus, and therefore as instances of the forms of evil that God-in-Christ overcomes through Incarnation, reversing the Fall. Blake's great epic poems, particularly Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20), embody his heterodox representation of the final coincidence of Christ and Satan through which, at last, all things are made new.     

Militant atheism,pragmatism, and the God-shaped hole

This paper addresses recent examples of militant atheism. It considers the theistic reply that describes atheism as deriving from a “God-shaped hole” in the human soul. The paper will argue that American pragmatism offers a middle path that avoids militant atheism without suffering from this problem. The paper describes this middle path and considers the problem that is seen in Rorty’s recent work: how the pragmatist can remain critical of religious fundamentalism without succumbing to a militant version of atheism. The solution proposed is tolerant acceptance of religion along with melioristic criticism developed within shared norms of inquiry.     

5G远程超声诊断：提升医疗质量、安全和可及性

回顾了5G远程超声诊断的技术特点和应用趋势,剖析受检者、医护人员及社会的获益与风险,认为5G 远程超声诊断模式作为远程医疗全新应用,可以成为我国医联体资源共享的重要载体,有望改善医疗资源在基层和偏远地区时空分布不均,满足公共卫生疾病筛查、院前急救和隔离病房超声检查需求,提高医疗质量、安全和可及性。此外,针对衍生出的受检者-本地端-远程端三方权责关系治理挑战,以及未来直接面向消费者的健康管理新模式,提出运用医师多点执业制度、设备备案管理等措施予以规范的建议。     

EVOLUTION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Evolutionary theory is becoming an all‐encompassing form of explanation in many branches of philosophy. However, emergence theory uses the concept of self‐organization to support yet alter traditional evolutionary explanation. Biologist Stuart Kauffman suggests that the new science will need to tell stories, not simply as a heuristic device but as part of its fundamental task. This claim is reminiscent of C. S. Peirce's criticism of the doctrine of necessity. Peirce's suggestions reference Hegel, and this essay draws out this Hegelian background, addressing the question of subjectivity and issuing some Hegelian reminders so that such evolutionary and emergent theories will consider the implication of this research program on philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on two post‐Kantian, neo‐Hegelian thinkers in contemporary philosophy who deal with this problem: John McDowell and Robert Brandom.     

WILLIAM AMES'S CALVINIST AMBIGUITY OVER FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

Reformed Christianity's qualified embrace of freedom of conscience is perhaps best represented by William Ames (1576–1633). This essay explores Ames's interpretation of conscience, his understanding of its relationship to natural law, Scripture, and civil authority, and his vacillation on the subject of conscientious freedom. By rooting his interpretation of conscience in natural law, Ames provided a foundation for conscience as an authority whose convictions are binding and worthy of some civil respect and freedom. At the same time, his Puritan worldview ultimately required the deference of conscience to the superior manifestations of divine law in Scripture and civil institutions. As a result, Ames provided raw ingredients for a theological doctrine of freedom of conscience despite his unwillingness to commend the idea himself consistently. In this way, Ames symbolizes an ambiguity on freedom of conscience characteristic of the broader Reformed tradition.     

Algebraic study of Sette's maximal paraconsistent logic

The aim of this paper is to study the paraconsistent deductive systemP ¹ within the context of Algebraic Logic. It is well known due to Lewin, Mikenberg and Schwarse thatP ¹ is algebraizable in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi, the quasivariety generated by Sette's three-element algebraS being the unique quasivariety semantics forP ¹. In the present paper we prove that the mentioned quasivariety is not a variety by showing that the variety generated byS is not equivalent to any algebraizable deductive system. We also show thatP ¹ has no algebraic semantics in the sense of Czelakowski. Among other results, we study the variety generated by the algebraS. This enables us to prove in a purely algebraic way that the only proper non-trivial axiomatic extension ofP ¹ is the classical deductive systemPC. Throughout the paper we also study those abstract logics which are in a way similar toP ¹, and are called hereabstract Sette logics. We obtain for them results similar to those obtained for distributive abstract logics by Font, Verdú and the author.     

Abstract modal logics

In this paper we develop a general framework to deal with abstract logics associated with a given modal logic. In particular we study the abstract logics associated with the weak and strong deductive systems of the normal modal logicK and its intuitionistic version. We also study the abstract logics that satisfy the conditionC ⁺(X)=C( _in I ⁿ X) and find the modal deductive systems whose abstract logics, in addition to being classical or intuitionistic, satisfy that condition. Finally we study the deductive systems whose abstract logics satisfy, in addition to the already mentioned properties, the property that the operatorC ⁺ is classical relative to some new defined operations.Work partially supported by Spanish DGICYT grant PB90-0465-C02-01.Presented byJan Zygmunt