FROM THE SENSES TO SENSE: THE HERMENEUTICS OF LOVE

Abstract. Drawing on philosophy, theology, comparative religion, spirituality, Holocaust studies, physics, biology, psychology, and personal experience, I argue that continued human existence depends on our willingness to reject nihilism–not as an expedient "noble lie" but because faith in a meaningful cosmos and the power of love is at least as validly grounded in human experience as insistence on cosmic indifference and ultimate futility. I maintain that hope will free us to develop nonimperialistic methods of bridging cultural differences by forming a mutually intelligible vocabulary that celebrates diversity, enters the worlds of others in respectful dialogue, and fosters a postmechanistic, organic, ecological, holistic, dynamic, interactive, open-ended model of reality. I lay the foundation for a "hermeneutics of love" to complement Paul Ricoeur's "hermeneutics of suspicion" and invite speculation on the ways science, technology, and society would be transformed if those "glasses of friendship" were widely applied.     

Begging what is at issue in the argument

This paper objects to treating begging the question as circular reasoning. It argues that what is at issue in the argument is not to be confused with the claim or position that the arguer is adopting, and that logicians from Aristotle on give the wrong definition and have difficulty making sense of the fallacy because they try to define it in terms of how an argument is defined by logical theory - as a sequence consisting of premises followed by a conclusion. That the problematic about begging the question depends on treating an argument as a context-less sequence of statements seems to be anticipated by the pragma-dialectical approach. The paper offers a critique of this dialogical approach, as exemplified by Douglas Walton in his recent book on begging the question, on the grounds that it raises more problems than it solves. It concludes with the suggestion that what is really at issue in discussions of begging the question is the need for a theory of fallacy.     

Contexts of Begging the Question

In this paper a dialogical account of begging the question is applied to various contexts which are not obviously dialogues: - reading prose, working through a deductive system, presenting a legal case, and thinking to oneself. The account is then compared with that in chapter eight of D. Walton'sBegging the Question (New York; Greenwood, 1991).     

Eastern Orthodoxy and Ecumenism

This article reviews a set of papers in a special issue of The Ecumenical Review on “Theological Exchanges: The Ecumenical Reception of Orthodoxy,” which examines the reception of Orthodoxy by other theological traditions through the mediation of ecumenical dialogue. The papers display a wide variety of approaches, many introducing, although in different ways, the nature of engagement with the Orthodox by the different Christian bodies represented. Others looked more directly at theological conversations between the Orthodox and other Christian bodies, and especially the doctrine of theosis (deification). The remaining papers offer an insight into specific moments of Orthodoxy’s involvement with other Christian traditions.     

Growth in Criticism?

Reports of global ecumenical conversations are regularly published by the World Council of Churches in a collection of volumes titled Growth in Agreement. The assumption is that the dialogues are not just repeating the same arguments they made half a century ago, but that relations between member churches have grown qualitatively as a result of this process. This paper asks whether Orthodox critique of Roman Catholic ecclesiology reflects signs of growth or continues “traditional” stereotypical thinking about other churches and religions. The paper first examines Orthodox reactions to Lumen Gentium during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council, then compares them with Orthodox reactions to the council’s 50th anniversary. The paper concludes by asking whether Pope Francis’ endeavour to reform the Catholic Church in the direction of greater synodality is partly the result of the expectations of our sister churches’ representatives over the past 50 years.     

Experiencing the mastership in transdisciplinary studies for sustainability

In this article, we describe the transdisciplinarity process in our education postgraduate program at the University of Veracruz. The program emphasizes the main processes of the eco-formation experience for sustainability through a transdisciplinarity methodology that is focused on three processes: (a) Re-Learning; (b) Eco-literacy; and (c) Dialogue of Knowledge. The experience of self-knowledge is described through our specific re-learning practices in the Mastership program, which represents a central tenet in the process for creating our Learning Community through holarchy practices, profound dialogues, and self-organization processes. Finally we discuss three central ideas: creativity, spirituality, and play, which express and nurture our Learning Community.     

Argumentative Ordering of Utterances for Language Generation in Multi-party Human–Computer Dialogue

In trying to control various aspects concerning utterance production in multi-party human–computer dialogue, argumentative considerations play an important part, particularly in choosing appropriate lexical units so that we fine-tune the degree of persuasion that each utterance has. A preliminary step in this endeavor is the ability to place an ordering relation between semantic forms (that are due to be realized as utterances, by the machine), concerning their persuasion strength, with respect to certain (explicit or implicit) conclusions. Thus, in this article, we propose a mechanism for assessing utterances, in terms of their argumentative force. The framework designed conflates insights from Asher and Lascarides’ SDRT (“Segmented Discourse Representation Theory”), and from Anscombre and Ducrot’s AT (“Argumentation Theory”). These mechanisms are included in a language generation component of a multi-party dialogue system for book reservation applications (i.e., a “virtual librarian”), and thus evaluated via typical human–machine conversations.

What can regular and timely student feedback tell us about the teaching and learning processes?

Most studies on the evaluation of teaching focus on the input (teacher traits) or the output (student-generated products) of the teaching and learning processes. This article is based on a case study that examines the three components of teaching and learning: input, output and process. It presents a framework for collecting quantitative and qualitative data on the quality of instruction, assessment and feedback, and learning environment in college composition courses to complement the feedback provided by the end-of-course student evaluations of teaching for the purpose of monitoring, guiding, and improving instruction.