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This paper starts by examining the language used in some well known scriptural passages where the importance of mercy or compassion is stressed. Such passages underline the ethical importance of a direct, physically and emotionally involved response. This leads on to a critique of the shortcomings of approaches to ethics which advocate the impersonal promotion of welfare; our lives as ethical beings depend intimately on the immediate responses arising from our encounters with others in our day-to-day lives. The paper then further explores the special status of loving kindness and mercy in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and argues that secular ethical systems, whether grounded in human nature or in the supposed requirements of rationality, are unlikely to be able to underwrite this kind of status. The final section reflects further on the 'cosmic' significance of love in a theistic worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paradigm for religion is Christianity, which appeared as a sub-society, the culture of which differed both from Jewish culture and from that of the Greeks and Romans. Human beings are essentially social, depending upon society for all rational thought and activity. As social beings we live with regard to customs we think good on the whole. Customs are rationalised by theoretical and moral beliefs. They contrast with nature and also with convention and habit. Religions, like families, are societies intermediate between individuals and states. So-called secular values concern the same things as religious and have comparable practical consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Materialism claims that everything is physical; everything can be exhaustively described and explained in principle by physics. For over half a century challenges to materialism have focused on mental phenomena such as consciousness, reason, and value. The tacit assumption among most materialists – one shared by most of their critics – has been that more basic biological phenomena, such as metabolism and reproduction, do not pose a serious obstacle to the materialist program, that these can be easily accommodated within a materialist framework. But there is reason to think that this assumption is false. Thomas Nagel has recently argued that materialism cannot countenance biological phenomena at large. Like so many anti-materialist arguments, however, his focuses on mental phenomena. After explaining why this is a liability for him and other would-be critics of materialism, I advance an anti-materialist argument that appeals directly to biology. Materialism is false, it says, because our best empirical descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena appeal to biological organization or structure, and there is good reason to think that these appeals cannot be eliminated, reduced to, or paraphrased in favor of descriptions and explanations framed in exclusively physical terms. As a result, not everything can be described and explained exhaustively by physics. Materialism must be false. The reason, however, has nothing to do with mental phenomena specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that religious belief is epistemically equivalent to mathematical belief. Abstract beliefs don't fall under ‘naive’, evidence-based analyses of rationality. Rather, their epistemic permissibility depends, I suggest, on four criteria: predictability, applicability, consistency, and immediate acceptability of the fundamental axioms. The paper examines to what extent mathematics meets these criteria, juxtaposing the results with the case of religion. My argument is directed against a widespread view according to which belief in mathematics is clearly rationally acceptable whereas belief in religion is not. The paper also aims to make some of the implications of contemporary mathematics available to philosophers working in different fields.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper is a particular kind of fear. The danger to which it is a response is the possibility that the evaluative dimension of life from which we derive the values by which we live is arbitrary. If it were arbitrary, nothing we value would be valuable. There are strong reasons both for and against this kind of fear. I am concerned with understanding these reasons and judging their strengths and weaknesses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hume's account of the passions is largely neglected because the author's purposes tend to be missed. The passions were accepted by early modern philosophers, of whatever persuasion, as the mental effects of bodily processes. The dualist and the materialist differed over whether reason is a higher power able to judge and control them: thus Descartes affirms, whereas Hobbes denies, this possibility. Hume's account lines up firmly behind Hobbes. Although he shies away from Hobbes's dogmatic physiological claims, he affirms all the key elements of the psychology Hobbes based on them: the nature of the will, the compatibility of freedom and necessity, the subservience of reason to passion, and the motivating power of pleasure and pain. Hume's account is thus best regarded as implicitly materialist. It is not, however, merely disinterested analysis: it aims at criticism of orthodox religious values. The passions are not threats to morality, but virtuous or vicious according to their pleasurable or painful nature. Thus the status of pride and humility is reversed. Hume's account of the passions underpins a rejection of orthodox religious morals, and endorses the values of antiquity – of pagan virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the aspects of reasons. It notes that reasons exist not merely in the light of contingent desires but they shine the lights of objectivity, independence and necessity. It states that theoretical reason exist when the movement of the mind might be one from one cognitive state or a true belief state to another. It adds that reason is every bit as pliable as sentiment.

In this article the author reflects upon the moral and ethical aspects related to emotions. He refers to the views of Aristotle, a philosopher, whose ethics on virtue viewed emotions with moral significance and comments that ethical conflicts lead to conditions of emotional differences and ambivalence. He also discusses the psychological aspect of emotions and analyzes their relation with reason and cognition.

The article examines several issues regarding determinism as a metaphysical thesis. It discusses the different definitions of determinism, which all may be understood by stating that the only possible explanation for the transition of the state of the world from moment to moment is that each state is the only one possible. It also addresses various problems surrounding the fundamental explanation of determinism as well as the reason why determinism is not defined in terms of causation. In addition, it is argued that the real basis of the appeal of determinism can be explained by taking into account the rhetorical strategy of determinists and the strategy of treating the threat to determinism as coming from its supposed incompatibility with free will.

Discusses the fundamental antithesis between reason and violence. Relation between reason and religion; Conceptual connection between the facts of freedom and suffering; Use of reason to lessen violence.

Examines the philosophic spirit of Thomas Aquinas. Relationship between faith and reason; Connection between the weakness of the arguments and the departure from epistemic practice; Fundamental nature of reality.

Examines the application of a philosophical argument to the theory of practical reason. Properties of the simple aim of an agent in an argument; Action of consequentialism in promoting strategy of rational agents; Errors of consequentialism if the goods are incommensurable.

Presents a critique of the book `Critical Rationalism,' by David Miller. Book's rejection of reason; Book's theses on reason.

Argues against the view that reason has no use in attaining knowledge of cause and effect. Increments of a priori knowledge; Tendency of theorists to use sweeping generalizations; Concern of a priori increments in causal reasoning on spatial arrangement or spatial translation.

The article discusses the arguments concerning the importance of life and how one should live it. The rationality of valuing an authentic life of truth is given importance than living it the other way around. Getting through life that minimises the feeling of distress caused by the thought that life is pointless and meaningless is also justified.

The article explores about ad hominem argument pertaining to decision making in an argumentation. The author states that Ad hominem argument is disregarded during the time of assesment of arguments and rational discourse for it undermines the arguments rather divert the attention to the character of the person involve. He mentions that dismissal of this argument is based on the paradigm of rationality. The author also cited that Ad hominem should not be applied in any serious debate of philosophical conversition for injecting of such might limit the intellectual capacities of a person though the presence of moral vitues, non-moral character traits suggest intellectual virtues might considerable.