232 research outputs found
Tribute, hope and reconciliation
This article represents a trilogy of tribute to and by JĂŒrgen Moltmann on 05 and 06 April 2017 during the centenary celebrations of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria and the conferment of an honorary doctorate to Moltmann. The first tribute to Prof. Moltmann is an address from the General Secretary, World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. In this he honours Professor Moltmannâs prophetic reflection on how theology can bring the living God we all believe in to the world today, so that human beings and the entire creation can experience the fullness of life that God promised to us all. The second tribute is authored by Klaus NĂŒrnberger, in which he reflects on Moltmannâs legacy for South Africans. The second part is Prof. Moltmannâs acceptance speech at the graduation ceremony on 06 April when he addressed the new graduandi and their families and friends at the Rembrandt Hall, University of Pretoria. He inspires the newly graduandi by saying: âIn the end â there is a beginning. Young men and women, let your hope arise. We have so much of sick and dying hope around us. There is resignation. There is the arrogance of the powerful, and there is the apathy of powerless. Drop arrogance and learn to listen to others. Get out of apathy and lift up your head and raise your voices. Break out of indifference and get involved. Life is so beautifulâ. The last section echoes Moltmannâs lifelong emphasis on the living power of hope and focuses on the power of forgiveness to mend broken relationships. This is not an easy task, and where it is up to humanity, utterly impossible to cross the divides the human condition can create. Moltmann focuses on how the reconciliation of Christ with humanity creates bridges for humanity to reconcile with one another. Reconciliation restores relationships and opens a âgatewayâ to the future. In this way, Moltmann highlighted the theme of the centenary celebration of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Pretoria
Endurant Types in Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling: Towards OntoUML 2.0
For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed
to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
- aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs.
This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven
Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological
micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML
have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and
governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different
domains. These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of
improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying
theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising
the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The
new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present
in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should
be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should
be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types,
Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization
of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a
metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support
tool implementing this updated metamodel
Rich Situated Attitudes
We outline a novel theory of natural language meaning, Rich
Situated Semantics [RSS], on which the content of sentential utterances
is semantically rich and informationally situated. In virtue of its situatedness,
an utteranceâs rich situated content varies with the informational
situation of the cognitive agent interpreting the utterance. In virtue of its
richness, this content contains information beyond the utteranceâs lexically
encoded information. The agent-dependence of rich situated content
solves a number of problems in semantics and the philosophy of language
(cf. [14, 20, 25]). In particular, since RSS varies the granularity of utterance
contents with the interpreting agentâs informational situation, it
solves the problem of finding suitably fine- or coarse-grained objects for
the content of propositional attitudes. In virtue of this variation, a layman
will reason with more propositions than an expert
Relationships and events: towards a general theory of reification and truthmaking.
We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge repre- sentation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and rela- tionships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge from the context (the scene) they occur in
Substitution in a sense
The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate â( ) is a horseâ does not refer to a property is point out that â( ) is a horseâ and âthe property of being a horseâ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand âsubstitutionâ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like
Urban social movements in South Africa today: Its meaning for theological education and the church
The collection entitled âSpirit rising: tracing movements of justiceâ, forms part of the âFaith in the Cityâ research project, hosted by
the Centre for Contextual Ministry in the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria. Some of the articles were papers presented at the
Biennial Consultation on Urban Ministry, hosted by the Institute for Urban Ministry, in collaboration with other organizations, from 17-20
August 2016. The theme of this Consultation was â#We must rise: healers - dreamers â jestersâ.In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to
specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of
such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm
conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described by Gustavo
Gutierrez and others, and that movements of liberation residing with, or in a commitment to,
the poor, should be the locus of our theological reflection, this article suggests that there is
much to be gained from the praxis of urban social movements, in disrupting, informing and
shaping the praxis of both theological education and the church. I will give special consideration
to Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Reclaim the City campaign in Cape Town, the Social Justice
Coalition in Cape Town, and Abahlali baseMjondolo based in Durban, considering these as
some of the most important and exciting examples of liberatory praxes in South Africa today.
I argue that theological education and educators, and a church committed to the Jesus who
came âto liberate the oppressedâ, ignore these irruptions of the Spirit at our own peril.http://www.hts.org.zaam2018Centre for Contextual MinistryPractical Theolog
IMOS national reference stations: A continental-wide physical, chemical and biological coastal observing system
Sustained observations allow for the tracking of change in oceanography and ecosystems, however, these are rare, particularly for the Southern Hemisphere. To address this in part, the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) implemented a network of nine National Reference Stations (NRS). The network builds on one long-term location, where monthly water sampling has been sustained since the 1940s and two others that commenced in the 1950s. In-situ continuously moored sensors and an enhanced monthly water sampling regime now collect more than 50 data streams. Building on sampling for temperature, salinity and nutrients, the network now observes dissolved oxygen, carbon, turbidity, currents, chlorophyll a and both phytoplankton and zooplankton. Additional parameters for studies of ocean acidification and bio-optics are collected at a sub-set of sites and all data is made freely and publically available. Our preliminary results demonstrate increased utility to observe extreme events, such as marine heat waves and coastal flooding; rare events, such as plankton blooms; and have, for the first time, allowed for consistent continental scale sampling and analysis of coastal zooplankton and phytoplankton communities. Independent water sampling allows for cross validation of the deployed sensors for quality control of data that now continuously tracks daily, seasonal and annual variation. The NRS will provide multi-decadal time series, against which more spatially replicated short-term studies can be referenced, models and remote sensing products validated, and improvements made to our understanding of how large-scale, long-term change and variability in the global ocean are affecting Australia's coastal seas and ecosystems. The NRS network provides an example of how a continental scaled observing systems can be developed to collect observations that integrate across physics, chemistry and biology
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