Philosophy and Religious Studies

This project collected the views of young children on play provision within two local parks through research conducted by Early Childhood Studies students and academics. Findings identified that traditional playground equipment and ‘risky’ play were important for children. Natural features and semi-permanent provision were valued, alongside the provision of mixed-age fixed equipment. Children were highly aware of health and safety, and they were very risk averse. Conclusions recognised constraints and limitations of collaborative working, including eliciting authentic voices of children.

The Jewish and Christian inhabitants of twelfth-century Rome viewed the urban landscape of their city through the lens of its ancient past. Their perception of Rome was shaped by a highly localized topography of cultural memory that was both shared and contested by Jews and Christians. Our reconstruction of this distinctively Roman perspective emerges from a careful juxtaposition of the report of Benjamin of Tudela’s visit to Rome preserved in his Itinerary and various Christian liturgical and topographical texts, especially those produced by the canons of the Lateran basilica. These sources demonstrate that long-standing local claims regarding the presence in Rome of ancient artifacts from the Jerusalem Temple and their subsequent conservation in the Lateran acquired particular potency in the twelfth century. Jews and Christians participated in a common religious discourse that invested remains from the biblical and Jewish past reportedly housed in Rome with symbolic capital valued...

This article examines how currents of renewal, particularly the
charismatic movement, have been leading to new patterns of Christian
formation within the Roman Catholic Church. I will look first at the
overall context; secondly, at the first stage of reform and renewal in
Catholic formation (1965-85) This article examines how currents of renewal, particularly the charismatic movement, have been leading to new patterns of Christian formation within the Roman Catholic Church. I will look first at the overall context; secondly, at the first stage of reform and renewal in Catholic formation

This paper deals with the relation between God and the secular legal systems of Western liberal democracies. It provides a normative argument for the compatibility of God and secular legal reasoning. In our age, in which believing in God is no longer socially axiomatic and the right to religious freedom protects all kinds of theistic and non-theistic religious beliefs, creeds, and first philosophies, it seems contrary to religious neutrality for secular legal systems to single out God. This paper instead argues that, although God and religion are inextricably intertwined, they affect the legal system in different ways because they are ontologically different. God cannot be reduced to a mere component of theistic religion. This paper argues that a proper understanding of secularization might call for keeping God outside the legal system but not for driving God out of the public sphere of democratic societies. Secular legal systems are not atheist legal systems. Secular legal systems are legal systems 'without religion' but not 'without God.' Secularization implies some degree of minimal recognition of God as a metalegal concept. The specific degree of recognition of God appropriate for any given political community depends on its cultural and communitarian identity and should be subject to the rules of democratic procedures and majorities. This is the metalegal God.

This study surveys the introduction of astrology into East Asia with a primary focus on the Buddhist experience of Indian and Iranian astrology during the eighth and ninth centuries. It is argued that prior to the introduction of Esoteric Buddhism during the 8th century, the Chinese sangha had no pressing need to observe astrology. However, following the rising popularity of Tantric rituals, which require proper timing according to non-Chinese astrological conventions, Chinese Buddhism took a deep interest in astrology. This in turn prompted a wider interest in astrology among Chinese elites, encouraging the translation of more foreign works on astrology, even outside of a Buddhist context. It is shown that around the year 800 there was a shift from Indian to Iranian sources of astrology, most likely as a result of ethnic Iranians working at court. Iranian astrology, which included a rich system of horoscopy rooted in the earlier Hellenistic tradition, prompted a booming popular interest in astrology. Buddhists subsequently took up practice of horoscopy for themselves. Chinese Buddhist astrology was then exported to neighboring countries, most notably Japan where it influenced medieval religious and court cultures.

This thesis (1999) delves into Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's hermeneutics of the Qur'an, which was, at that time, not yet systematically formulated. It tries to reconstruct his theories of text and interpretation based on his works, and gives some examples in which he implemented his hermeneutics, such as the issues of  evil forces (jinn, shayâtîn, sihr and hasad), ribâ and interest, slavery,  polygamy, and women's Inheritance. Abu Zayd's contribution to Qur'anic hermeneutics is important in developing critical Qur'anic scholarship.

In Wicks v State Rail Authority (NSW) (2010) 84 ALJR 497 the High Court of Australia held that, among other things, plaintiffs (who establish that they suffer a recognised psychiatric illness as a result of the breach of duty of care owed to them by the defendant under s 32 of the Civil Liability Act 2002 (NSW)) are entitled to recover damages for pure mental harm under s 30 if their psychiatric injury arose "wholly or partly from" a "series of shocking experiences" in the form of "a sudden and disturbing impression on the mind and feelings" in connection with witnessing at the scene "another person ('the victim') being killed, injured or put in peril by the act or omission of the defendant". The High Court construed the phrase "being ... injured or put in peril" to include plaintiffs who suffer pure mental harm by witnessing at the scene another person being injured through the process of suffering pure mental harm in the fo...

In this paper we provide a simplified, possibilistic semantics for the logics K45(G), i.e. a many-valued counterpart of the classical modal logic K45 over the [0, 1]-valued Gödel fuzzy logic $$\mathbf{G}$$ G . More precisely, we characterize K45(G) as the set of valid formulae of the class of possibilistic Gödel frames $$\langle W, \pi \rangle $$ ⟨ W , π ⟩ , where W is a non-empty set of worlds and $$\pi : W \mathop {\rightarrow }[0,1]$$ π : W → [ 0 , 1 ] is a possibility distribution on W. We provide decidability results as well. Moreover, we show that all the results also apply to the extension of K45(G) with the axiom (D), provided that we restrict ourselves to normalised Gödel Kripke frames, i.e. frames $$\langle W, \pi \rangle $$ ⟨ W , π ⟩ where $$\pi $$ π satisfies the normalisation condition $$\sup _{w \in W} \pi (w) = 1$$ sup w ∈ W π ( w ) = 1 .

This paper focuses on the effects of nonbinding recommendations on bargaining outcomes. Recommendations are theorized to have two effects: they can create a focal point for final bargaining positions, and they can decrease outcome uncertainty should dispute persist. While the focal point effect may help lower dispute rates, the uncertainty reduction effect is predicted to do the opposite for risk-averse bargainers. Which of these effects dominates is of critical importance in the optimal design of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures, which are becoming increasingly utilized to help resolve disputes in a variety of settings. We theoretically examine the effects of recommendations on the bargaining contract zone. Our theoretical framework, which allows bargainers ’ final positions to influence a binding outcome should negotiations fail, provides for a more stringent test of focal points than previously considered. We also present data from controlled laboratory bargaining ...

The aim of this paper is to construct a tableau decision algorithm for the modal description logic K ALC with constant domains. More precisely, we present a tableau procedure that is capable of deciding, given an ALC-formula ϕ with extra modal operators (which are applied only to concepts and TBox axioms, but not to roles), whether ϕ is satisfiable in a model with constant domains and arbitrary accessibility relations. Tableau-based algorithms have been shown to be 'practical' even for logics of rather high complexity. This gives us grounds to believe that, although the satisfiability problem for K ALC is known to be NEXPTIME-complete, by providing a tableau decision algorithm we demonstrate that highly expressive description logics with modal operators have a chance to be implementable. The paper gives a solution to an open problem of Baader and Laux [5].

Intelligent design theorist William Dembski hasproposed an``explanatory filter''fordistinguishing between events due to chance, lawful regularity or design. We show that ifDembski's filter were adopted as a scientificheuristic, some classical developments inscience would not be rational, and thatDembski's assertion that the filter reliablyidentifies rarefied design requires ignoringthe state of background knowledge. Ifbackground information changes even slightly, the filter's conclusion will vary wildly. Dembski fails to ...

Moderated by Elaine Coburn, Harry Glasbeek, Meg Holden, Charles Mills and Frank Cunningham presented a symposium on Frank's book Ideas in Context May 29, 2021 for the Society of Socialist Studies.  Now shared here in written form, the symposium includes what may have been the last contribution of Charles Mills, a friend of half of a century to Frank, known for his generosity of spirit and his trenchant theorizing of racial justice (Mills 1997).

Scholars have long pointed to Josephus, Ant. 10.180–182 as evidence that Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in the Levant in his twenty-third year (582 B.C.E.), but have not determined the viability of this passage as a historical source. Extant Greek sources do not provide the details visible in Josephus’ text and it is thus unlikely that they were his source. The details of the campaign are, however, available from Jeremiah or by inference from it. As such, the study argues that Ant. 10.180–182 is not an independent historical source of information for a campaign of Nebuchadnezzar in 582 B.C.E.

This paper is about the relationship between management, a First World discipline, and the Third World. Management is widely assumed to apply in organizations in modern, or postmodern, societies. However, a distinctive form of management, Development Administration and Management (DAM), exists and is applied to Third World nation-states, which are deemed in the First World to require modernization. This article sets out the institutional and conceptual separation and crossover between management and DAM. It ...

The story of Rapunzel is a German folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm in  the late nineteenth century as part of a drive to record folk traditions and myths. The story of Rapunzel begins with the long-awaited pregnancy of a poor couple who lived next door to the walled garden of an enchantress. The pregnant wife longed for the rare plant of "rapunzel" to the point of death. So her husband stole into the garden to take some of the plant for his wife. He was discovered by the enchantress and begged for mercy. So she required as payment that they surrender their child to her at birth. This they did. The child (named Rapunzel) grew in loveliness and was placed in an ivory tower, deep in the forest. Each day the enchantress would visit her and ask her to let down her golden hair so she could scale the tower to reach her, using the hair as a rope. One day a young prince was passing by the isolated tower and heard Rapunzel singing. He longed to meet the possessor of such a beautiful voice. Then he saw the enchantress visit Rapunzel, so after she left, he mimicked her commands. Rapunzel let down her golden hair but instead of the enchantress it was a young dashing prince. He went to visit her everyday after the enchantress had been and they planned to run away together. But the enchantress discovered the deceit of Rapunzel and cut her hair in anticipation of the prince's arrival. When the prince got to the top of the tower, he met the enchantress instead of Rapunzel. The enchantress threw down the rope of hair so that the prince fell from the tower and landed in a thicket of thorns. He was blinded and was left to wander the forest alone. However Rapunzel escaped and went to live in a little cottage. One day the prince heard her singing once again. The couple was reunited. As Rapunzel saw his damaged eyes, she wept. But as her tears delicately dropped onto his eyelids they miraculously restored his sight. And of course, they lived happily ever after.

The relationship between Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection and the ecological environment of density regulation is examined. Using a linear model, it is shown that the theorem holds when density regulation is caused by exploitative competition and that the theorem fails with interference competition. In the latter case the theorem holds only at the limit of zero population density and/or at the limit where the competitively superior individuals cannot monopolize the resource. The results are discussed in relation to population dynamics and life history evolution, where evidence suggests that the level of interference competition in natural populations is so high that the fundamental theorem does not apply.

In a previous article (see [3]) a system of axioms is proposed stating conditions which are necessary and sufficient to determine a cardinal utility function on any set, finite or infinite, of outcomes X. The present paper discusses and interprets the meaning of those axioms, and compares this new approach to cardinal utility with the utility differences approach proposed by Alt and Frisch, among others, and with the expected utility approach of von-Neuman and Morgenstern. The notion of repetition of the same choice situation is presented and its interpretation discussed. It is then argued that this notion leads naturally to the system of axioms presented in ‘On Cardinal Utility’. It is also argued that this notion must be used if we want to have a more clear understanding of the meaning of the axioms proposed by Alt and Frisch. Finally, it is remarked that since uncertainty is not present in the new approach, it is free of the paradoxes that have plagued the expected utility hypothesis.

Competent leadership is essential for the health and well-being of a
Bible school. According to Oswald Sanders, “leadership is influence, the
ability of one person to influence others to follow his or her lead.”1
Leadership influence is a powerful commodity with many roles or
functions which we should regard with much sobriety. One major
leadership role, according to Robert Clinton, “is that of selection of rising
leadership. Leaders must continually be aware of God’s processing of
younger leaders and work with that processing,”2
which is an apt
description of the key task of all Bible school educators—equipping the
next generation of leaders. This paper will explore the leadership roles
of administrators, faculty, and students and discuss guiding principles for
leadership growth in Bible school educators which will, in turn, increase
the efficacy of the Bible school’s training programs for developing
leaders.

This essay argues that the engagement with Greece and Rome after The Will to Knowledge allowed Foucault to bring clarity to his conception of limited freedom in complex societies. The Classical fulfilled this function paradoxically by being jarringly different from and integral to the discourses of modern sexuality. Foucault’s engagement with the Classical in The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self continued his established method of uncovering the development of a discourse, or set of discourses, over time. He thereby demonstrated the historical specificity of understandings of sexuality and the self. It follows that if the ancient self was a historical construct, then the modern self must also be such. But Foucault’s Classical engagement leads him to an innovative position in which the disciplinary dynamics of ancient self-knowledge offer a practical philosophy. Foucault’s Greek philosophy could have effects through two related mechanisms: the care of the self through askesis...

The paper examines the UN 2000 Trafficking Protocol in the context of international responses to the issue of people trafficking. Attention is drawn to the conceptual flaws in this new instrument regarding the failure to address domestic trafficking, not incorporating the purchasing and selling of people as defining characteristics of trafficking, and the lack of clarity around issues of prostitution. Framing the discussion within feminist theory, the essay concludes that women’s campaigning will continue to be crucial to putting issues such as human trafficking on the international political agenda and to tackle the underlying causes of trafficking.

Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars usually begin with a family tree. These family trees are often rhetorical, foreshadowing in the ancestors character traits that will be themes of the rest of the Life. This particular rhetorical strategy relies upon an older phenomenon of ‘family identity’—namely, the literary application of similar characteristics to people in the same family—such as the one that tells us that the Claudii are proud and the Domitii Ahenobarbi are ferocious. Gary Farney studied ‘family identity’ as a phenomenon of the Republic. There, it was the association of a family with a certain characteristic, a kind of ‘branding’. It would be perfectly obvious for Suetonius to use the family identities already in use for well-known families, but, as I show here, Suetonius’ selection of ancestors creates different family identities rather than simply using the traditional ones he would have found in other sources. In this study I concentrate on Nero and Tiberius. I focus on these...