bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“Out of the Dust”: The Book of Mormon Comes Forth
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

The Book of Mormon narrates how Lehi, a Jewish prophet, migrated to the Western Hemisphere with his clan and established a colony there, whose leaders maintained a history of their religious, political, and military history for the next thousand years. Eventually the followers of Christ, Nephites, were exterminated by their apostate brethren the Lamanites, while being led by Mormon and Moroni, great generals and final record keepers of the gold plates. The Book is structurally complex, and suffused with references to and teachings about Jesus Christ, even recording his visit to the Americas after his Jerusalem resurrection. Initial reception of the Book of Mormon was tepid.
“Devices of the Devil”: The Book of Mormon as Cultural Product or Sacred Fiction
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

Critics and cultural historians have proposed a variety of explanations for the Book of Mormon's origin. Outright fabrication, automatic writing, and plagiarism of either Solomon Spaulding or Ethan Smith were early theories (the latter two still having defenders). Environmental explanations have proliferated in recent years. Scholars have alleged parallels with masonry, an early American magical worldview, and nineteenth‐century religious controversies. Under pressure to accommodate naturalistic models of authorship, some scholars propose a model of inspirational fabrication – but such a compromise would necessarily entail the loss of the Book of Mormon's scriptural status.
“Plain and Precious Truths”: The Book of Mormon as New Theology, Part 1—The Encounter With Biblical Christianity
Authors: Givens Terryl L.
Published: October 2003

Perhaps surprisingly, most readers saw the Book of Mormon as embodying – not contesting – doctrines of the Bible. Most distinctive beliefs associated with Mormonism are absent from the Book of Mormon. Mormons revere both the Book of Mormon and the Bible as scripture, but words of living prophets are also scripture. But some distinctions worth noting in the Mormon scripture are a more elaborate doctrine of atonement, Jehovah as the pre‐mortal Christ, denial of original sin and of human depravity, extensive pre‐Christian and non‐Judean knowledge of Christ, a “fortunate fall.”
The Actors
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

The different individuals and groups mentioned in Chs. 2 and 3 of the Apocalypse are the subject of this chapter. It first describes John's followers and then focuses on the Jews mentioned in Chs. 2 and 3 (who the author refers to as the “synagogue of Satan”). The beliefs and practices of John's rival “Jezebel” are examined next, specifically the activities of which John accuses her (eating ɛιδωλόθυτα and practicing πορνɛία). The chapter concludes with a focus on the “invisible majority,” those in the community who would not be considered in the camp of either John or “Jezebel” and who probably represent John's real audience.
Wealth, Commerce, and the Merchant Class
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

Begins by examining John's attitudes toward wealth. It challenges the view that, because of his concern for social justice, he polemicizes against wealth. Instead, John's polemic is directed against commerce. John, though, is careful not to openly condemn merchants and craftspersons so as not to alienate those merchants and craftspersons in his audience who might be sympathetic to his message.
The Women of Revelation
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

The author of the Book of Revelation highlights four female figures throughout the Book of Revelation: “Jezebel” (Ch. 2), the unnamed woman “clothed with the sun” (Ch. 12), “Babylon” (Ch. 17), and “Jerusalem” (Chs. 21–22). Two of these women are depicted positively (the unnamed woman and “Jerusalem”) and two negatively (“Jezebel” and “Babylon”). John forges strong links between the positive figures and between the negative figures and then sets these linked pairs over against one another. By closely linking the negative women, “Jezebel” and “Babylon,” and by setting them over against the positive women, he first places his Christian rival on the side of evil and, second, he attacks “Jezebel” indirectly by maligning “Babylon.” By focusing on both gender and food issues in the descriptions of the four women, John is able to comment indirectly on the charges of ɛιδωλόθυτα and πορνɛία that he had leveled against “Jezebel” in Ch. 2.
The Out‐Of‐Control Female
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

John uses the issues of food and sex to continue his indirect denunciation of “Jezebel.” He focuses on these issues in the passages that feature female characters in order to connect the activities of “Jezebel” (ɛιδωλόθυτα and πορνɛία) to “Babylon's” heinous acts focused on eating (cannibalism) and sex (promiscuity). John also uses gender stereotypes (specifically that women are weak, undisciplined, emotional, and ultimately dangerous) to suggest that his rival, a woman, is unfit to lead the churches.
True and False Prophets
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

Throughout the Book of Revelation, John implicitly compares his rival to one of the primary evil characters, the Beast from the Earth (also known as the False Prophet in the later chapters of Revelation). On the one hand, he ironically ties this figure (in this case in the guise of the False Prophet) to the character of Elijah, an exemplary prophet from the Hebrew Bible whose nemesis was, appropriately enough, Jezebel (the wife of Ahab). On the other hand, he makes the connection by means of the portrait of the Beast that appears in Ch. 13. There the Beast is depicted in a manner quite different from the other beasts of Revelation; it looks like a lamb and sounds like a dragon. This description of the Beast could easily fit “Jezebel” for she too looks like a lamb (in that she is a Christian) but sounds like a dragon (in that Satan is depicted in the guise of a dragon in Ch. 12.
Conclusion
Authors: Duff Paul B.
Published: October 2003

This chapter asks if the thesis that John invented, the crisis depicted in the visions of the Apocalypse, is credible. In answer to this question, the final chapter compares John's rhetoric to the rhetoric used by the aggressors in the Bosnian and Kosovo crises in the 1980s and 1990s. In both the first‐ and twentieth‐century cases, there seemed to have been a great disparity between the stories told and the reality lived. In other words, a powerful story can easily overwhelm the realities of history. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the final outcome of the crisis in the churches of the Apocalypse.
The Quest for the Theory Behind the Diptychs
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

It is not fully clear why Genesis consists of literary diptychs – narratives in dialog – rather than linear narrative. Yet, diptych structure is central to Genesis. The complexity of diptychs corresponds significantly to the complex nature of reality, of art, and of ideas. This complexity also corresponds partly to Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of truth as dialogical. The diptych is mind‐opening.
The Diptych Structure: Original or Redactional?
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Theoretically, Genesis’ diptych structure may be seen either as belonging to the nature of the text or simply as an editorial addition – a way of arranging the text. To determine which explanation is true, research needs to attend to the full meaning of the individual texts or diptychs; the immediate context of Genesis; the further context of the Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings); the larger context of the Bible as a whole; and the context of diverse theories concerning sources, particularly the documentary theory.
Genesis as Part of a Larger Unity (The Primary History, Genesis‐Kings)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The breaks and variations within the Primary History (Genesis‐2 Kings) are similar to those in Genesis and may likewise be explained as expressions of literary art. The literary unity of Genesis‐2 Kings is indicated positively by the unity within specific books, the continuity between books, and several features of overall continuity. These features of continuity – partly indicated by David Noel Freedman and Richard Elliott Friedman – include unity of story/plot; compactness of the narrative; unity of overall function; coherence of viewpoint; continuity of themes and motifs; plausibility of the project; plausibility of the beginning and ending, balance between beginning and ending; continuity of structure; complementarity of Sinai and Sion/Zion; the role of Judah; the mirroring of the entire text by Elijah‐Elisha narrative, and apparently by Mosaic law. The literary unity of Genesis‐2 Kings implies composition during the Persian Empire.
Toward Detecting the Process of Composition
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

There are four main theories concerning the origin of Genesis‐2 Kings. Building on these, this chapter proposes that – apart from initial outlining and some possible final editing – Genesis‐2 Kings was composed in three coordinated stages: (1) Beginning with Genesis, the outline was developed into a narrative that ran from creation to the fall of Jerusalem, each part building on what preceded. (2) The Elijah‐Elisha narrative, synthesizing and reinterpreting that narrative, was placed shortly before the narrative's conclusion. (3) Mosaic law was inserted last, reflecting the entire narrative. The unified process may have involved several people. The text was written to be evocative, numinous, and cryptic.
Genesis's Central Concern
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Genesis has two levels or focal points – history of Israel (the patriarchs) and human life (or human existence). Both are important and indispensable, but for Genesis, human life is the more fundamental of the two, and so the book is structured not according to the diversity of patriarchs but according to diverse aspects of human life, including space, time (the flow of generations), and stages of life and perception. As Israel's history is accompanied by a further level of meaning (namely human life), so also is Israel's land; “land” in Genesis means more than specific territory.
Genesis and Spirituality
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

In contrast to some disciplines – for instance, psychiatry and psychology – which sometimes exclude or reduce religion and spirituality, Genesis looks beyond evil and explores the deeper and more positive realms of the spirit. These realms include the story of God and God's Spirit; grace; seeing as God makes one see; second birth; immortality; and transcendence.
Creation and Its Harmony (1:1–2:24)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The two creation accounts are pervaded by the complementarities: time and space; humanity as in the image of God, and humanity as made of clay; humanity as ruling the earth, and humanity as serving the earth; the divinity as transcendent (Elohim), and the divinity as closer to earth (YHWH Elohim), and so on. Even in the first words (1:1; 2:4b):“In the beginningGodcreatedthe heavens and the earth.”

“On the dayYHWH God madeearth and heavens.”

each word or phrase of the second line involves a precise complementarity with the first. It reflects the first, but in a down‐to‐earth way. The two accounts do not warrant the reconstruction of two hypothetical sources (P and J, priestly and Yahwistic, as in the documentary theory). Rather, the two accounts form a diptych, a single harmonious picture that is true to the complexity of creation. The account of the creation of woman (2:18–23) counterbalances the misogynistic account of Hesiod.
Sin and Its Disharmony: Crime and Punishment (2:25–4:16)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Having given two complementary viewpoints of creation, Genesis gives two complementary accounts of sin, the first involving the couple in the garden, and the second involving the brothers in the field. As with the two creation accounts, the sin accounts vary between emphasis on the higher level (the first sin, Adam and Eve) and emphasis on the lower level (the down‐to‐earth murder, Cain and Abel). Many of the complementarities were noted by Claus Westermann. One of the features of the larger text (creation plus sin, 1:1–4:16), is that the greater the emphasis on the earthly and sinful, the closer is the divinity.
The Flood's Creation: More Sinful, More Compassionate (6:1–9:17)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The flood story consists of two balancing sections: the accounts of creation being undone (Genesis 6–7) and creation being remade (Genesis 8:1–9:17). It echoes the original creation (1:1–2:24), but in a sense, integrates evil and sin. It indicates tension within God – a blend of anger, compassion, and forgiveness. As with the first creation, which culminated with a picture of marriage (2:24), the flood story emphasizes monogamous marriage. The tensions and contradictions of the text are probably best seen as reflections not of diverse hypothetical documents (the documentary theory), but as reflections of the paradoxical content of the narrative.
Rebekah, Betrothal, and Genealogy (24:1–25:18)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Rebekah's betrothal (Genesis 24) is the centerpiece of Genesis. It is the longest chapter, containing the longest speech (24:34–49). Rebekah plays a double role. She is a beautiful woman who brings marriage love to Isaac, and as Abraham's servant sees her, she is the manifestation of God's love for Abraham. This double role is linked to the presence of two wells in the betrothal scene. Isaac is betrothed, but so is Abraham in another sense. The complementary text (25:1–18) recounts the surprising proliferation of Abraham's children and the surprising breadth of the associated land.
Isaac's Jacob‐Oriented Journey (25:19–26:33)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The Bible's first biography‐like narrative, that of Jacob, begins here. The diptych (Genesis 25:19–26:33) gives an important role to Isaac, first to his family (25:19–26:11), then to the world around him (especially to his relationship with the Philistines, 26:12–33). However, unlike Abraham and Jacob, Isaac is not the basis for a distinct section of Genesis (see Ch. 11 of this volume). At one level his role here is secondary to the emergence of Jacob. Jacob's beginnings – his conception and relationship with Esau – are tense. Then, Rebekah is endangered (a well‐known motif). And in the second part of the diptych, his father has to struggle with the Philistines concerning wells to achieve peace. The overall effect is to suggest that for Jacob life will be difficult. As in the beginning of the Abraham story (Genesis 12–13), the diptych highlights difficulties surrounding beauty and wealth.
The Long Journey Homeward (Chaps. 31–33)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Jacob's journey homeward, after an absence of twenty years, consists of two main episodes: journeying in fear to meet Laban (Genesis 31:1–32:2), and journeying in greater fear to meet Esau, the brother who once sought to kill him (32:3–ch. 33). Jacob's fear includes the fear of death. In meeting Laban, he is cowed initially; only in his anger does he find the courage to confront Laban. However, before facing Esau, Jacob wrestles with God, and then he faces the danger somewhat calmly. The night struggle with God has some aspects of a betrothal.
From Paralysis to Pilgrimage (34:1–35:20)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The next two episodes form a contrast, a form of antithetic parallelism. The seduction of Dinah leaves Jacob motionless and weak (Genesis 34); but then he embarks on a journey that, despite the presence of death, shows energy and strength (35:1–20). Many complementarities are contrasts. For instance, God is completely absent in the first episode, but central to the second. The first begins with seduction (some say rape), the second with purification. Part of the interplay between the episodes concerns the relationship of love and death. The overall picture, reminiscent of the call of Abraham, is of a remarkable transition from paralysis to life.
Remembering Joseph: His Rise and the Brothers' Conversion (Chaps. 41–42)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

The narrative recounts first, how the butler finally remembered his sins and Joseph, thus bringing Joseph to be in charge of the famine situation (Genesis 41), and then how the famished brothers went to Egypt and there began to remember Joseph and their sin (Genesis 42). Joseph's treatment of his brother may seem harsh, but immediate self‐revelation would have left them feeling guilty. Instead, he leads them into a process of remembering, into a conversion that will restore their self‐respect.
Joseph Revealed: Vision‐Led Recovery of Relationship and Land (45:1–47:11)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Joseph's self‐revelation leads to a great embrace of reconciliation with his brothers (Genesis 45), and when Jacob is carried to Egypt, he too embraces Joseph and is reconciled (Genesis 46). However, there is a variation in the focus of reconciliation: the brothers are reconciled to one another (45:14); Jacob is reconciled to death (46:30). One is horizontal, the other vertical. In both cases, reconciliation is associated with land (45:10,18–20; 47:4–6,11). “Ch. 45 ... must be seen as closely coordinated with ch. 46” (Terence Fretheim).
Amid Famine and Death: Life and Blessing (47:12–Chap. 48)
Authors: Brodie Thomas L.
Published: October 2003

Both episodes seem grim: great famine (Genesis 47:12–28), and Jacob's impending death (47:29–ch. 48). Yet, both conclude with suggestions of vitality. Joseph's takeover of the famine‐struck land, though it seems harsh, leads to a renewal. And, Jacob's deathbed is dominated not by doom but by blessing. (Linking Joseph's takeover of the land to Egyptian history does not change its narrative significance). The combination of upheaval in nature (world famine) with the upheaval of impending death has analogs in the lives of David and Jesus.
Agent‐Based Virtue Ethics
Authors: Slote Michael
Published: October 2003

Aristotelian virtue ethics does not treat motives or even character (traits) as the grounding basis for the rest of ethics, but the present agent‐based approach does. However, there are objections to agent‐basing that need to be considered. Having answered those objections, the chapter discusses three major forms of agent‐based virtue ethics: a somewhat less than plausible ”morality as inner strength” (inspired by Plato, the Stoics, and Nietzsche); ”morality as universal benevolence” (inspired by Hutcheson); and ”morality as caring” (inspired by Gilligan and Noddings). Any agent‐based morality does well to treat overall motivation, rather than occasional single motives, as the fundamental basis for ethical characterizations.
Agent‐Based Practical Reason
Authors: Slote Michael
Published: October 2003

Practical reason or rationality can be understood in agent‐based terms. Strength of purpose, for example, can be internally characterized, and the rationality of the courage to face facts and not deceive oneself about what is unpleasant or horrifying can also be understood in agent‐based terms. Practical rationality also requires us not to be self‐defeatingly insatiable in our wants, but this likewise is a feature of inner motivation. Finally, being rational seems to require a certain amount of concern for one's own well‐being or happiness – just as being moral requires a certain kind of concern for others; but like the other conditions of practical rationality just mentioned, this kind of concern can readily be understood in agent‐based terms. In fact, it makes more intuitive sense to understand the rationality of self‐interest in terms of motivation than to understand it in terms of (expectable or expected) consequences (for the agent).
A Priori Warrant and Naturalistic Epistemology
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

Some definitions of naturalistic epistemology exclude the possibility of a priori warrant, but a more plausible definition leaves room for it. The general approach to warrant favored here is two‐stage reliabilism, which is reformulated from earlier papers. The present proposal is that belief‐forming processes of a “ratiocinative” sort may be a priori warranters if they are reliable, free of perceptual experience, and part of one's basic cognitive architecture. Cognitive science is relevant to determining the possibility of a priori warranters because it can shed light on the availability of belief‐forming processes that might meet the foregoing requirements. A review of scientific findings on arithmetic cognition suggests that these requirements are indeed met.
Philosophical Theory and Intuitional Evidence
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

How can intuitions be used to validate or invalidate a philosophical theory? An intuition about a case seems to be a basic evidential source for the truth of that intuition, i.e., for the truth of the claim that a particular example is or isn’t an instance of a philosophically interesting kind, concept, or predicate. A mental‐state type is a basic evidential source only if its tokens reliably indicate the truth of their contents. The best way to account for intuitions being a basic evidential source is to interpret their subject matter in psychologistic terms. Intuitions provide evidence about the contents of the intuiter's concept, where “concept” is understood as a psychological structure.
Science, Publicity, and Consciousness
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

A traditional view is that scientific evidence requires methods to be public or intersubjective: they must be usable by different investigators and must produce agreement. The publicity constraint ostensibly precludes introspection. But the science of consciousness relies on the subjects’ introspective reports, so there is a tension between the publicity requirement and scientific practice. This chapter argues against the publicity requirement and in (provisional) support for reliance on introspection.
Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: October 2003

In everyday life, novices often defer to the testimony of experts in deciding what to believe. But when putative experts disagree, how can a novice justifiably decide which expert to trust? Five methods are considered: listening to their arguments and counter‐arguments, determining who has more agreement from other experts, consulting the ratings of metaexperts, checking the biases of the contenders, and consulting their respective track records. Going with greater numbers seems promising but depends on problematic assumptions. Appealing to track records, though ostensibly beyond a novice's ken, is shown to be possible and sometimes quite helpful.
The Spirituality of the Subaltern
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

This first chapter summarizes the main arguments of the author's companion volume, The Economics of Ecstasy:‐ Tantra, Secrecy, and Power in Colonial Bengal. In doing this it places the Songs of Ecstasy of the Kartābhajās, a Bengali sect devoted to Tantra in colonial Calcutta, in a historical and literary context. The different sections of the chapter look at the style and structure of the Bhāver Gīta (the main song text, which translates literally as Songs of Ecstasy), the mystical imagery and social ideals found within it, the ambivalent status of Tantra in colonial Bengal, and the decline into obscurity of the songs following a period of scandal, slander, corruption, and disrepute.
From the Songs of Ecstasy
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

A series of select translations is presented from the Bhāver Gīta, the main song text of the Kartābhajās, a Bengali sect devoted to Tantra in colonial Calcutta, Bengal. The author has chosen the songs that he considers most significant and organized them under thematic headings: Company songs, Songs of the marketplace, Songs of mystical belief and esoteric practice, Songs of lust and love, and Other songs of faith and worship. Each set of songs is introduced by explanatory text.
The Language of the Mint
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

The collection of “Mint Sayings” (Ṭyāṅkśālī) for which translations are presented in this chapter was compiled in 1902 by Manulāl Miśra, a Kartābhajā author who tried to systematize this ortherwise wildly eclectic and confusing esoteric tradition of the Kartābhajās (a Bengali sect devoted to Tantra in colonial Calcutta). The sayings are intentionally obscure, enigmatic, and in a deliberately confusing form, and are clearly designed to mislead and befuddle the uninitiated outsider. They have no written commentary of their own and are intended to be transmitted in the secret oral context of a master‐disciple relationship. The value of the sayings does not appear to lie in their meaning or content; indeed, they often appear quite intentionally meaningless and absurd, but rather in their form and the ways in which they are exchanged. Miśra explains that the sayings are called “mint” sayings precisely because this secret discourse operates much in the same way as a physical mint. Just as a mint transforms ordinary metals into legal currency, so too the Mint language transmutes ordinary words into highly valued commodities, which can be exchanged in the secret marketplace, which is the Kartābhajā sect itself.
Songs from the “Secret Marketplace”
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

In addition to the songs of the Bhāver Gīta (the main song text of the Kartābhajās, a Bengali sect devoted to Tantra in colonial Calcutta), there is also a large body of other Kartābhajā songs scattered over a wide range of sources. Most of these are quite different in form and structure from the songs of the Bhāver Gīta, and many are almost indistinguishable from more popular folk forms like the Bāul songs. These have been gathered together, and translations of them are presented in three groups under the titles: Popular songs of unknown origin; Songs from the works of Manulāl Miśra (the Kartābhajā theologian of the early twentieth century); and Songs of the “Wealthy Gentlemen” (Sāhebdhanī): Other Kartābhajās and related groups. The Sāhebdhanīs are most important of the related groups and are a closely related sister movement to the Kartābhajās; they spawned some of the most important folk songs of rural West Bengal. Each set of songs is introduced by explanatory text.
The Underworld of the Imperial City
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

This is the first of two chapters looking at the broader social and historical background of late‐eighteenth‐century Bengal and the basic religious and social ideals of the early Kartābhajā tradition. It examines the role of secrecy as a hermeneutic strategy, or as a means of appropriating the legitimating authority of traditional scriptures and sacred metanarratives while submitting them to a deeper, esoteric interpretation that undercuts or subverts them. The chapter argues that the rise of the Kartābhajā occurred at a pivotal historical moment and at a key geographic locus in early colonial Bengal, on the critical margins between the urban streets of Calcutta and the rural hinterland, amidst the economic transition from precapitalist to colonial capitalist forms, as power changed hands from indigenous Hindu and Muslim elites to the East India Company. After briefly describing the religious background and the social and economic context of early colonial Bengal, an account is given of the early history of the Kartābhajā sect (which appears to have been drawn particularly from men and women involved in the marketplace – traders), as it emerged within this critical period, hailing itself as a new “company” – a “Company of the Poor.”
The Language of the Mint
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

This chapter and the following two delve into the most esoteric and hidden dimensions of the Bengali Kartābhajā sect, as they explore the use of secret discourse and bodily practice. This is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the cryptic songs of the Kartābhajās and their own unique form of the Tantric sandhābhāṣā(intentional language with elaborate use of imagery, metaphors, and riddles), which they called the “Language of the Mint.” This is examined not so much in terms of its professed hidden content (the usual approach), but rather in terms of form and strategies. After briefly outlining the form and content of the Mint Sayings, the chapter delves into the hermeneutic problems involved in trying to make sense of these cryptic utterances, and offers the author's own reading, based on a modified version of Bourdieu's model of symbolic capital. Finally, it looks at the problem of secrecy as played out in contemporary field research from conversations with Kartābhajā gurus.
The Progressive “Exotericization” and “Institutionalization” Of an Esoteric Tradition
Authors: Urban Hugh B.
Published: October 2003

This short chapter demonstrates that the esoteric elements of the tradition of the Bengali Kartābhajā sect would eventually become an increasing source of embarrassment. They were to be progressively institutionalized and marginalized as a later tradition evolved from the secretive obscure cult centring around the mysterious mad Fakir Bā into a largely innocuous, well‐organized, and rather, bureaucratic, and popular devotional faith centring around the miraculous healing powers of the Satī Mā, and the sacred hierarchy of the Mahāśays (regional gurus).
The Heart of Islamic Philosophy
Authors: Chittick William C.
Published: October 2003

Afdal al‐Dîn Kâshânî, better known as Bâbâ Afdal, died in the village of Maraq near Kashan in central Iran in the year 1210. Little is known of his life or his teachers, only that he taught in Maraq and had many students. His Persian philosophical prose is the most beautiful in the language. He mentions Aristotle and Hermes among previous philosophers, but only alludes to his Muslim predecessors. His views, like those of the Ikhwân al‐Safâ’ and many others, are strongly tinged with Neoplatonism. He explains with rare clarity that the goal of philosophy is to actualize intelligence and to achieve human perfection. His positions on ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics, cosmology, and psychology are both original and traditional. In three chapters, the book introduces Bâbâ Afdal and his writings, describes the world view of Islamic philosophy, and analyzes significant terms of the philosophical vocabulary. In the main body of the book, more than half of Bâbâ Afdal's Persian writings are translated into English.
The Worldview of Islamic Philosophy
Authors: Chittick William C.
Published: October 2003

Despite the opinions of those who would define the Islamic tradition in narrow terms, most of the Muslim practitioners of Hellenistic philosophy found it perfectly compatible with their religion. They looked upon the first principle of Islamic faith – tawhîd or the assertion of divine unity – as a universal truth that underlies every sound understanding of the nature of things. Those who want to grasp their outlook, however, need to put aside the scientism that governs modern thought and to look upon the universe as they saw it. They established their perspective first by conceptualizing the qualities that infuse the universe and the soul, but their purpose in doing so was to conform themselves to the First Real by perfecting their understanding and their character. They integrated the intellectual disciplines into one grand vision rooted in wujûd, a term that is commonly translated as “existence” but is explained correctly by Bâbâ Afdal to mean both “being” (bûd) and “finding” or “perception” (yâft). Drawing from both the understanding and the experience of wujûd, the philosophers engaged with both ontology and epistemology and drew appropriate conclusions for psychology (the knowledge of soul and intellect), cosmology (the descent of apparent reality from the First Real and its reintegration into its source), and ethics (the diversity of human souls and the normative principles that guide people to the actualization of virtue).
Frege's Conception of Logic
Authors: Goldfarb Warren
Published: October 2003

Goldfarb depicts salient differences between Frege’s and the contemporary philosophical conceptions of logic. On the contemporary conception, logical properties such as validity and consequence are metalinguistic properties of schemata determined by the truth values that result from interpretations of their placeholders. They thus require a truth predicate for their expression, and, moreover, apply only indirectly to actual statements, through the use of Tarskian semantic disquotational facts. On Frege’s universalist conception, in contrast, logical laws are maximally general truths, differing from other truths only in generality. Goldfarb argues that Frege was precluded from adopting the schematic conception by two central aspects of his views. First, Frege doubted that truth is a genuine property, and that the use of a truth predicate expresses genuine claims. Second, logic for Frege constitutes the ultimate standards of justification, and must be applicable to any subject matter without presupposing other truths, in particular independently of semantic facts. The latter point shows that for Frege what counts as a law of logic is not explicable by appeal to any more fundamental facts. Goldfarb argues also that Frege’s conception of the role of logic in justification shows that he is not vulnerable to the type of regress objections against logicism first presented by Poincaré. Finally, Goldfarb argues that although Frege in the end must within his conception of logic take our grasp of inference rules to be non-propositional, deductive justification under the schematic conception involves a regress of assumptions of stronger set theories that Frege’s conception can avoid.
Ernst Mach at the Crossroads of Twentieth‐Century Philosophy
Authors: Hintikka Jaakko
Published: October 2003

Hintikka questions the principled division between analytic and continental philosophy by arguing that Mach should be considered the century’s most influential philosopher, a giant on whose shoulders thinkers like Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Heidegger subsequently stood. Hintikka notes that Frege’s direct influence on philosophy proper outside of logic and the foundations of mathematics was for a very long time quite minimal. Mach’s wider impact is measured in the great importance to much 20th-century philosophy of the question whether knowledge may be given to us apart from what is conceptualized in thought (in, e.g., pure sense perception, intuition, or the sensory given). Mach’s phenomenalism (or phenomenology) set the agenda, according to Hintikka, for future discussion of this question in philosophy and in physics. Mach’s disputes with Bolzmann about the reducibility to knowledge of sensation affected Einstein. Hintikka argues that both Husserl and the early Wittgenstein embraced phenomenological conceptions of experience and knowledge that were indebted to Mach’s ideas. Heidegger was therefore wrong to insist that phenomenology and phenomenalism are distinct philosophical traditions.
Truth and Propositional Unity in Early Russell
Authors: Ricketts Thomas
Published: October 2003

Ricketts treats shifts in Russell’s views about truth and judgment between 1905 and 1910, a period during which Russell attempted to articulate an atomistic, pluralist, and realist metaphysical alternative to the Idealistic Monism of Bradley in which reality is constituted by a plurality of mind-independent entities standing in relations external to them. Russell did not simply dismiss Idealism; significant aspects of the development of his alternative stem from his attempt to answer Bradley’s criticisms. Ricketts focuses on three elements of Russell’s early metaphysics: propositions not facts are metaphysically fundamental; a proposition is not a mere list of its components; and propositions are not representational, so that truth of propositions is not analyzed in terms of relations to truth-makers. Russell’s problem was to explain the unity of the proposition in face of Bradley’s challenge such that unity cannot be accounted for by external relations. Since for Russell truth is not explained by relation to fact, he was driven to a view in which truth and falsity are two irreducible ways in which propositional constituents are related by a relation that is itself one of these constituents. Unfortunately this position is self-thwarting; any attempt to state that truth is a quality of the relation holding the proposition together will, on Russell’s view, express a proposition in which truth is a constituent independent of that relation. This incoherence, on Ricketts’s reading, is what motivates Russell to a metaphysics in which facts are fundamental, in order to serve the role of truth-makers of propositions.
Hausserl and the Linguistic Turn
Authors: Parsons Charles
Published: October 2003

Parsons criticizes Dummett’s recent argument that Husserl was not an analytic philosopher because Husserl did not accept that a philosophical account of thought can be attained only through a philosophical account of language, the thesis which Dummett takes to define the analytic tradition. Dummett locates the beginning of the conceptual break between the analytic and the continental traditions in Husserl’s transcendental turn of 1905–1907, after which Husserl came to subscribe to a essentially non-linguistic general conception of intentionality. Parsons agrees with Dummett that Husserl did not view the philosophy of language as basic to the philosophy of thought, but argues that Husserl was quite aware of the need for an account of the linguistic expression of thought. The problem that led Husserl away from accepting the fundamental status of philosophy of language was whether particular perceptual experiences must have a propositional or language-like structure in order to be said to have genuine content. In concluding that not all perceptual experience is propositional in structure, Husserl’s position is relevant to contemporary debates about thought and consciousness, especially the notion of non-conceptual mental. Through this critique of Dummett’s interpretation, Parsons suggests that the distinction between the analytic and continental traditions is neither as sharp nor as philosophically principled as many have supposed.
Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist
Authors: Quine W. V.
Published: October 2003

In this essay, Quine reflects on his philosophical development, taking a steadfast adherence to extensionalism as a unifying principle of his whole philosophy starting as far back as the 1930s. Quine calls two sentences coextensive if they have the same truth value, two general terms or predicates coextensive if they are true of just the same objects, and two singular terms coextensive if they designate the same object. Extensionalism is the general doctrine that no distinction is clear and philosophical significant if it cannot be captured by differences in extensions. Intensionalism, by contrast, takes distinctions of meaning as irreducible and prior to distinctions of extension. The philosophical origin his extensionalism Quine takes to be his seeing that the intensional ontology of propositional functions not only does no mathematical work in Russell’s and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, but, in addition, had no clear criteria of individuation. Quine’s doctoral dissertation was thus concerned with reinterpreting the Principia extensionally. Much of the rest of his career consisted of meeting other philosophically significant challenges to extensionalism. The most important challenges discussed in this essay are the idiom of logical implication, predicates of irreferential singular terms, and propositional attitude ascriptions. The two most important strategies for meeting these challenges are the elimination of singular terms via Russell’s theory of descriptions and semantic ascent.
Hans Reichenbach: Realist and Verificationist
Authors: Putnam Hilary
Published: October 2003

By focusing on Reichenbach’s 1938 Experience and Prediction, Putnam argues against the claim that logical positivism represented a unified ideological viewpoint. It is a vast oversimplification, Putnam shows, to suppose that every logical positivist held that all meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable statements about sense data or else purely formal stipulations. Reichenbach, in particular, defended a form of commonsense realism, while at the same time criticizing foundational or metaphysical Realism. Thus for Putnam the most crucial philosophical questions about logical positivism concern, not a unique theory of meaning, but the particular assumptions about rationality, meaning and objectivity which each positivist brought to bear in arguing against metaphysical doctrines.
Sure Path of a Science: Kant in the Analytic Tradition
Authors: Neiman Susan
Published: October 2003

This essay is an investigation and critique of 20th-century interpretations of Kant in the analytic tradition, arguing that a clear sign of progress in recent analytic philosophy is its newly historical self-conception. Approaches to Kant by Russell, Moore, Schlick, Ayer, Strawson, and Rorty are compared and contrasted, exploring their various and shared assumptions about Kant’s announced idea to place philosophy “on the sure path of a science”; a critique of Rorty’s epistemological paradigm of the history of modern philosophy is given. Twentieth-century readings of Kant, including Rorty’s, truncated Kant’s philosophy by projecting Cartesianism onto Kant and cutting away discussion of the moral, religious, and ethical content of his work. Given Kant’s conception of the unity of reason, in which theoretical and practical philosophy are inevitably implicated by one another, such readings are not defensible but can be exposed through proper reading of the text.
Language as Social Software
Authors: Parikh Rohit
Published: October 2003

Parikh discusses recent developments in computer science, especially in the areas of program correctness, dynamic logic, and temporal logic. He then develops a meaning theory for a natural language versus the actual linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior of the members of a speech community, exploring three arguments concerned with the social character of language: Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, Kripke’s skeptical paradox (derived from Wittgenstein) concerning the notion of following a rule, and John Searle’s Chinese room puzzle. Parikh argues that each of these apparently skeptical arguments is concretely realized in the programmer’s efforts to devise and apply a programming language. In thinking through the relation between high-level programming languages and the machine languages into which they must be translated in order to be implemented, computer scientists can offer significant insights into philosophical issues. A pragmatic approach to meaning theory in which uniformity in individual speakers’ usage of a communal language is not assumed, and in which there is no common underlying notion of truth—in which, ultimately, large portions of language are admitted which are not informational at all—is defended, with suggestions of applications to problems of vagueness.
Meaning, Rigidity, and Modality
Authors: Shieh Sanford
Published: October 2003

Saul Kripke’s “modal argument” against the description theory of proper names turns on a distinction between reference-fixing and meaning-giving. In this essay Shieh argues first that without further explanation of meaning-giving, it is unclear how this argument shows that the meanings of names cannot be given by descriptions. Second, Shieh shows that an explanation of meaning-giving sufficient to sustain the modal argument requires a notion of modal properties of meaning. This notion, in turn, yields a notion of rigidity of names that can be explained in terms of Gareth Evans’s notion of deep necessity. Shieh concludes that Kripke’s modal argument is not based simply on untutored linguistic intuitions or facts of ordinary language use but presupposes substantial metaphysical commitments.
Epistemology and Science in the Image of Modern Philosophy: Rorty on Descartes and Locke
Authors: Hatfield Gary
Published: October 2003

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty locates the perceived ills of modern philosophy in the “epistemological turn” of Descartes and Locke. Hatfield argues that Rorty’s accounts of Descartes’s and Locke’s philosophical work are seriously flawed. Rorty misunderstood the participation of early modern philosophers in the rise of modern science, and he misdescribed their examination of cognition as psychological rather than epistemological. His diagnostic efforts were thereby undermined, and he missed Descartes’s original conception of a general physics and Locke’s probabilist analysis of the grounds for rational belief.
Object and Truth
Authors: Shapiro Stewart
Published: October 2003

Several varieties of realism are distinguished. Working realism is a methodological thesis that sanctions the inferences and principles suggested by traditional realism: excluded middle, the axiom of choice, impredicative definition, and general extensionality. Working realism is consistent with antirealist philosophical positions. Realism in ontology, sometimes called “platonism”, is the philosophical view that mathematical objects exist independent of the mind, language, or form of life of the mathematician. Realism in truth value is the view that mathematical assertions have objective truth values independent of the mind, language, or form of life of the mathematician. The relations between these realism are articulated, and the results are related to Quine's ontological, epistemological, and semantic themes.
Life Outside Mathematics
Authors: Shapiro Stewart
Published: October 2003

This final chapter extends structuralism beyond mathematics, to science and to ordinary discourse. Structuralism has a line on a partial account of how mathematics applies to the material world. The theorist postulates that a given area of the world exemplifies a given mathematical structure. One consequence of this perspective is a blurring of the boundary between mathematics and science. The book closes with some speculative remarks about the extent to which ordinary objects – tables, rocks, electrons – can be construed as places in structures.
A Poetics of Itinerancy
Authors: Grammer Elizabeth Elkin
Published: October 2003

To a large degree, these female evangelists composed their autobiographies by addition, writing what literary scholars have variously called “and then” narratives or travelogues, being unable or unwilling to prioritize and edit a lifetime of activity. “Ordained” by God and serving as his “mouthpiece,” they may well have found it advantageous to be “invisible” narrators, and writing in a century in which women were constrained in the literary marketplace, they may also have been uncomfortable with the authorial role itself, despite their very public careers as preachers. More significantly, however, they operated largely outside of institutional frameworks, and thus lacked the biographical and narrative landmarks (the occasions of public achievement and success, moments of unmistakable arrival from which autobiographies usually issue and toward which such narratives usually proceed) that helped some male itinerants compose their Lives without resorting to parataxis. As female itinerant preachers, they wrote from a precarious, ill‐defined position, in which they were marginalized from both the male and female paradigms of development, from literary models (the narrative of success or education and the marriage plot) which might have helped them “form” a more shapely narrative. Their itinerant autobiographies are thus another index of their anxiety as women settled in Christ but unsettled in nineteenth‐century American culture and of the complicated relationship between literary and political authority, between gender and genre.