scholarly journals Phantom Limbs, Extended Minds and the Decline of Religiosity: A Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspective

Open Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carles Salazar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Significant Others ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
The Other ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Phantom Limbs

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to advance a hypothesis that might explain the decline of religious belief and practice among the so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations. The main point of this paper is to postulate a causal relationship between two variables that appear to be significantly correlated: on one hand, the decline of religious belief and practice that has been observed in those populations during the twentieth century, and especially since the second half of that century; on the other, the remarkable growth of their life span during that period. The factor that the author proposes as an explanation for that correlation is the causal link relating to the experience of the death of significant others and belief in the supernatural in such a way that the more that experience happens to be relevant in a population’s day-to-day life the more that population will be prone to entertain beliefs in the supernatural, and conversely, the less prominent that experience happens to be, the less inclined that population will be to uphold those beliefs.

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

Gewalt und Kommunikation

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jens Bonnemann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Normal Case ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Philosophy Of Dialogue ◽  
The Individual

In ethics, when discussing problems of justice and a just social existence one question arises obviously: What is the normal case of the relation between I and you we start from? In moral philosophy, each position includes basic socio-anthropological convictions in that we understand the other, for example, primarily as competitor in the fight for essential resources or as a partner in communication. Thus, it is not the human being as isolated individual, or as specimen of the human species or socialised member of a historical society what needs to be understood. Instead, the individual in its relation to the other or others has been studied in phenomenology and the philosophy of dialogue of the twentieth century. In the following essay I focus on Martin Buber’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of intersubjectivity which I use in order to explore the meaning of recognition and disrespect for an individual. They offer a valuable contribution to questions of practical philosophy and the socio-philosophical diagnosis of our time.

State of Fashion: Searching for the New Luxury

APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.

Gender and Social Exclusion in European Migration Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 658-676
Author(s):  
Marlou Schrover
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
The One ◽  
European Migration

This chapter discusses social exclusion in European migration from a gendered and historical perspective. It discusses how from this perspective the idea of a crisis in migration was repeatedly constructed. Gender is used in this chapter in a dual way: attention is paid to differences between men and women in (refugee) migration, and to differences between men and women as advocates and claim makers for migrant rights. There is a dilemma—recognized mostly for recent decades—that on the one hand refugee women can be used to generate empathy, and thus support. On the other hand, emphasis on women as victims forces them into a victimhood role and leaves them without agency. This dilemma played itself out throughout the twentieth century. It led to saving the victims, but not to solving the problem. It fortified rather than weakened the idea of a crisis.

A guide to the nomenclature of heterochrony

1986 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Biogenetic Law ◽  
The Relationship

Since Haeckel's Biogenetic Law (‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’) fell into disrepute early in the twentieth century, there has been intermittent debate, particularly in recent years (de Beer, 1958; Gould, 1977; Alberch et al., 1979; Alberch, 1980; Bonner, 1982; McNamara, 1982a), on the nature of the relationship between an individual's development and phylogenetic history. Important questions under discussion include the following: If a strong causal relationship does exist, what is its nature? How does it work? What is its importance in evolution? How can it be recognized in the fossil record?

Political Matrix and Political Representation: Prolegomenon to a New Departure from an Old Problem

1969 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prewitt ◽  
Heinz Eulau
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Century ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Political Units ◽  
The One ◽  
Special District

Scholars interested in theorizing about political representation in terms relevant to democratic governance in mid-twentieth century America find themselves in a quandary. We are surrounded by functioning representative institutions, or at least by institutions formally described as representative. Individuals who presumably “represent” other citizens govern some 90 thousand different political units—they sit on school and special district boards, on township and city councils, on county directorates, on state and national assemblies, and so forth. But the flourishing activity of representation has not yet been matched by a sustained effort to explain what makes the representational process tick.Despite the proliferation of representative governments over the past century,theoryabout representation has not moved much beyond the eighteenth-century formulation of Edmund Burke. Certainly most empirical research has been cast in the Burkean vocabulary. But in order to think in novel ways about representative government in the twentieth-century, we may have to admit that present conceptions guiding empirical research are obsolete. This in turn means that the spell of Burke's vocabulary over scientific work on representation must be broken.To look afresh at representation, it is necessary to be sensitive to the unresolved tension between the two main currents of contemporary thinking about representational relationships. On the one hand, representation is treated as a relationship between any one individual, the represented, and another individual, the representative—aninter-individualrelationship. On the other hand, representatives are treated as a group, brought together in the assembly, to represent the interest of the community as a whole—aninter-grouprelationship. Most theoretical formulations since Burke are cast in one or the other of these terms.

Jainism in Danger? Temple entry and the rhetoric of religion and reform in post-colonial India

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MANISHA SETHI
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Open The Doors ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.

Voltaire, Philosopher of Human Progress

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 356-364
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Topazio
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Single Addition ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Popular Consent ◽  
Positive Knowledge ◽  
Separate Discipline

With the emergence of philosophy in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline which stressed primarily questions insoluble by empirical or formal methods, Voltaire's reputation as a philosopher has gone into gradual eclipse. It has become unfashionable and degrading for philosophers to concern themselves with the practical aspects of philosophical enquiry. In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the identification of philosophy with science, which by twentieth-century standards had vitiated philosophical thought, produced the “philosophes” or natural philosophers who were on the whole more interested in human progress than in the progress of the human mind. And Voltaire was by popular consent the leader of this “philosophe” group, the one who had unquestionably contributed the most in the struggle to make man a happier and freer member of society. Yet, ironically, despite a lifelong effort in behalf of humanity, Voltaire's reputation as a destructive thinker has steadily grown even as the critics have pejoratively classified him as a “practical” rather than a “real” philosopher. Typical of this criticism of Voltaire is Macaulay's statement: “Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of our positive knowledge.”

Concept of Rivalry in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-454
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Sibling Rivalry ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Qualitative Pattern ◽  
The One ◽  
Theory Competition

Sons and Lovers (1913) is one of D.H. Lawrence’s most prominent novels in terms of psychological complexities characteristic of most, if not all, of his other novels. Many studies have been conducted on the Oedipus complex theory and psychological relationship between men and women in Lawrence’s novels reflecting the early twentieth century norms of life. This paper reexamines Sons and Lovers from the perspective of rivalry based on Alfred Adler’s psychological studies. The discussion tackles the sibling rivalry between the members of the Morels and extends to reexamining the rivalry between other characters. This concept is discussed in terms of two levels of relationships. First, between Paul and William as brothers on the one hand, and Paul and father and mother, on the other. Second, the rivalry triangle of Louisa, Miriam and Mrs. Morel. The qualitative pattern of the paper focuses on the textual analysis of the novel to show that Sons and Lovers can be approached through the concept of rivalry and sibling Rivalry. Keywords: Attachment theory, Competition, Concept of Rivalry, Favoritism, Sibling rivalry.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document