Redefining Religious Truth as a Challenge for Philosophy of Religion

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of pluralism. Whereas theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate

Living as if God exists: Looking for Common Ground in Times of Radical Pluralism

This paper offers some comments on some metaphysical and epistemological claims of theological realism from the perspective of continental philosophy of religion, thereby taking the work of Soskice and Hick as paradigmatic for this kind of philosophical theology. The first comment regards the fact that theological realism considers religious and theological propositions as ways to depict or represent reality, and hence aims to bring them as much as possible in line with scientific ones. Some contemporary French philosophers criticize such a representing, depicting knowledge of God, because it encapsulates the divine reality in mundane, specifically scientific categories. eventually, theological realism runs the risk of annihilating God’s radical transcendence and reducing religion to an alternative scientific theory. The second comment tries to explore whether one can affirm God’s reality from a practical perspective, as a postulate of reason, and whether such an approach could serve as a common ground for religious and secular ways of life in times of radical pluralism. This comment begins by investigating the regulative character of Kant’s idea of God as the highest idea of reason, which not only orientates our theoretical enquiries, but also our moral actions. Although this idea is only a heuristic fiction for theoretical reason, God’s existence has to be affirmed on practical grounds, as a symbolic reality that gives orientation to people’s lives

A goal-oriented requirements modelling language for enterprise architecture

Methods for enterprise architecture, such as TOGAF, acknowledge the importance of requirements engineering in the development of enterprise architectures. Modelling support is needed to specify, document, communicate and reason about goals and requirements. Current modelling techniques for enterprise architecture focus on the products, services, processes and applications of an enterprise. In addition, techniques may be provided to describe structured requirements lists and use cases. Little support is available however for modelling the underlying motivation of enterprise architectures in terms of stakeholder concerns and the high-level goals that address these concerns. This paper describes a language that supports the modelling of this motivation. The definition of the language is based on existing work on high-level goal and requirements modelling and is aligned with an existing standard for enterprise modelling: the ArchiMate language. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how enterprise architecture can benefit from analysis techniques in the requirements domain

Alcohol, assault and licensed premises in inner-city areas

This report contains eight linked feasibility studies conducted in Cairns during 2010. These exploratory studies examine the complex challenges of compiling and sharing information about incidents of person-to-person violence in a late night entertainment precinct (LNEP). The challenges were methodological as well as logistical and ethical. The studies look at how information can be usefully shared, while preserving the confidentiality of those involved. They also examine how information can be compiled from routinely collected sources with little or no additional resources, and then shared by the agencies that are providing and using the information.Although the studies are linked, they are also stand-alone and so can be published in peer-reviewed literature. Some have already been published, or are ‘in press’ or have been submitted for review. Others require the NDLERF board’s permission to be published as they include data related more directly to policing, or they include information provided by police.The studies are incorporated into the document under section headings. In each section, they are introduced and then presented in their final draft form. The final published form of each paper, however, is likely to be different from the draft because of journal and reviewer requirements. The content, results and implications of each study are discussed in summaries included in each section.Funded by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, an initiative of the National Drug StrategyAlan R Clough (PhD) School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Sciences James Cook UniversityCharmaine S Hayes-Jonkers (BPsy, BSocSci (Hon1)) James Cook University, Cairns.Edward S Pointing (BPsych) James Cook University, Cairns

Editorial

Editorial The articles of this issue of Tattva – Journal of Philosophy discuss several important philosophical problems, which are closely linked to ongoing debates about ethics, technology, and religion. Abey Koshy’s paper “Deconstructive Turn of Ethics: Subversion of Self-Identity in Derrida and Levinas” argues that French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas gives an ethical turn to deconstructive philosophy, which was introduced by Jacques Derrida and offered an alternative way of reading texts. By applying the praxis of deconstruction to the ethical field Levinas subverts the traditional view of the human being as having a stable self-identity and serving as the unique reference point for its relation to the world, including the other person. The fundamental problem of this idea is that it negates the alterity of the other in a concrete ethical situation, thus reducing him or her to a variant of the self. By showing that the autonomous ‘I’ is a construction that needs to be deconstructed Levinas makes room for an alternative view of ethical responsibility, which guarantees a passage from the reals of the self to the that of otherness. The second article, “Moore on Scepticism & Certainty”, by Anandasagar analyses George Edward Moore’s proof of the external world and his discussion with Descartes’ famous dream argument. Moore has weakened this argument by showing that it is inconsistent. The author then highlights Moore’s claim that empirical propositions are certain and offers a logical explanation of this claim. The central systematic focus of this paper is the confrontation between scepticism and common sense, and the author argues that Moore succeeds to refute scepticism on the basis of common sense. In Moore’s view, the task of philosophy is confined to analysing the propositions supplied by common sense, which does not include establishing the truth or falsity of these propositions. The next article by Kopal, entitled “The Art in Artificial: Locating the Artist in Machines”, discusses the impact of artificial intelligence on art production, a question that has gained a lot of traction due to the rapid spread of ChatGPT and other AI systems. The author explores the ways and means by which AI is able to make art and sometimes even fares better in this than human-made art. This is because AI is better at deconceptualisation and dissimilar juxtaposition, resulting in more creative works of art, although the drawback of these characteristics is that AI may produce nonsensical and absurd outcomes. The author concludes that works of art, produced by AI, deserve appraisal and encouragement. The fourth paper of this issue is written by James Sundar Aaron John Samuel, and is entitled “St. Paul’s discourse and dialogue with King Agrippa and Governor Festus as a model for contemporary inter-religious understanding and communication”. It starts with a detailed textual analysis of Saint Paul’s dialogues with two rulers of different religious backgrounds about the central truth claims of Christian faith (the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). In these dialogues, Paul uses rhetoric to argue the reasonability of his claims, thereby applying three ingredients for persuasive communication: ethos, referring to his credibility as a speaker, pathos, appealing to the emotion of his dialogue partners, and logos, referring to the content and the logic of his argument. The author argues that Paul’s threefold rhetorical method to discuss the truth of Christian faith offers a model for peaceful inter-religious communication in our times. The final article is by Kamalpreet Kaur, and is entitled “Indian Ethics: Essence, Theory and Practice”. The author uses the difference between ethics, which is intuitive and comes close to innate and inclusive values, and morals, which is rational and law-bound, to point out the specificity of the ethical tradition in India. The fact that this tradition relies more on folktales than on rational argument and thus is more pragmatic than principled shows its uniqueness. Dharma, which summarizes the Indian ethical tradition, constitutes the ethical laws of the universe, harmonizing moral life in a way similar to how the laws of nature regulate the physical world. This means that this kind of ethics, embedding the idea of universal justice, involves responsibility in its widest sense, responsibility for the whole cosmos, yet not in the form of any external compulsion. Therefore, the author argues, Indian ethics serves as a complement to Western rational morals. On behalf of the editorial board, I wish you a lot of intellectual pleasure in reading the articles of this issue and hope that they may stimulate your philosophical thinking and discussions about vital questions concerning our relationship with the other, the importance of common sense for our knowledge of the outside world, the impact of new technical developments upon the arts, the relevance of rhetoric for interreligious dialogue, and the contribution of Indian ethical traditions to the development of a global ethics.   Peter Jonkers Editor-in-chie