Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Jeff Jordan and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-10-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absenceof adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James'scelebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher JulesLachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false.In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is aversion of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers.The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe written by Desmond M. Clarke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A team of leading scholars survey the development of philosophy in the period of extraordinary intellectual change from the mid-16th century to the early 18th century. They cover metaphysics and natural philosophy; the mind, the passions, and aesthetics; epistemology, logic, mathematics, and language; ethics and political philosophy; and religion.

Download or read book The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science written by Peter Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-20 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: See:

Download or read book A World of Ideas written by Chris Rohmann and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-10-06 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you keep up in the age of information when there's so much to know and so little time? Here's the ideal solution: a practical book of knowledge offering in-depth analysis, detailed interpretation, and penetrating insight into the key concepts, the most influential minds, and the major intellectual movements in history. A World of Ideas is an essential tool for anyone who wants to be fully informed and stay ahead of the curve in today's world. Now you can get to the bottom of the big bang theory; find out where Freud's ideas were coming from, and where Einstein's may ultimately take us; demystify surrealism and survivalism, nature and nurture, communism and capitalism. With hundreds of in-depth entries, drawn from a wide range of fields--including religion, philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, history, art, literature, and science--A World of Ideas enables you to turn immediately to the term in question for a comprehensive description of its history, meaning, and context. - Hundreds of entries, alphabetically arranged, with key words and concepts highlighted and cross-referenced - Reviewed and approved by an academic board of leading scholars - A unique emphasis on multicultural influences and the long-neglected impact of women on the history of ideas - An extensive bibliography of further readings and resources Here are the concepts that shaped civilization . . . the minds that made history . . . the thinkers, the thoughts, and the theories--everything you need to know to fully understand the world we live in. Concise and authoritative, meticulously researched and lucidly written, this invaluable resource is sure to become a standard reference for years to come.

Download or read book Pascal s God Shaped Vacuum written by Peter Brian Gilbert and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blaise Pascal wrote the Pensées to his skeptical and restless friends to move them to seek God. The Pensées are widely regarded as one of the most exhilarating and effective defenses of the Christian faith ever written, particularly for today's readers who resemble Pascal's friends. This comprehensive guided tour of Pascal's Pensées, plus biography of Pascal's courageous life, aims to benefit seekers and believers by conveying Pascal's insights into: (1) Why a human being is miserable without God; (2) Why Christianity uniquely offers a winsome and efficacious cure; and (3) Why Christianity, despite modern objections, is plausibly true. The greatest significance of Pascal's Pensées may be their compelling articulation of the unique relevance of Christ's gospel for our time. In T.S. Eliot's words, “But I can think of no Christian writer, not Newman even, more to be commended than Pascal to those who doubt, but who have the mind to conceive, and the sensibility to feel, the disorder, the futility, the meaninglessness, the mystery of life and suffering, and who can only find peace through a satisfaction of the whole being.”Pascal's signature Pensée undergirding the themes of this guided tour is number 148: “What else does this craving proclaim but that there was once in man a true state of happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object, in other words by God himself.” Through this Pensée and many others Pascal wakes us up to appreciate that we may have a God-shaped vacuum in our heart, as suggested, for example, by our affinity for diversions and indifference as ways to avoid addressing our grimmest problems such as our impending deaths, unhappiness, and unjust self-absorption. The Pensées in particular address how a person this side of the technological revolution can seriously consider Christian truth and life in the face of contemporary countervailing currents including scientism, cynicism, and entertainment culture. Pascal's case for why to seek and believe is especially relevant for today because he wrote to modern secular society, to ambitious pursuers of career success, to the bored and indifferent, to intellectual skeptics. In contrast, classical rational apologetics hardly penetrate this group, because they neglect the readers' psychology, mistakenly pre-supposing they are open to seeking God. By combining style, wit, and reasoned arguments to move both the heart and mind, Pascal's Pensées are known for setting his listeners on fire to take up an interest in seeking. The Pensées will appeal to those who enjoy brilliant writing and wish to gain deeper insight into the human condition. As Professor Henry Phillips put it, “Pascal offers a portrait of the human condition that provokes questions whose answers will be found only in the Christian religion.” The Pensées are especially on target for readers who struggle with how a reasonable person living in today's technological era can be a Christian; for these Pascal is indispensible reading and the ultimate mentor. In addition to helping seekers work out their doubts about belief, this guided tour aims to make Pascal's thoughts practically helpful for a Christian to live life congruently with the gospel, and in particular to better weather modern doubts and criticisms. This book was inspired by the excellent guided tour of the Pensées (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 1993) by Professor Peter Kreeft, and from learning that many fellow Christians count the Pensées as one of their all-time most helpful reads. Given the stature of Pascal as a colossal Christian thinker, it is surprising that very few comprehensive guided tours with objective to help modern seekers and believers have been published, and this book helps fill this space.Forward by Reverand Earl F. Palmer

Download or read book The Gun the Ship and the Pen Warfare Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World written by Linda Colley and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best Books of the Year: Financial Times, The Economist Book of the Year: The Leaflet (International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism) Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize Profiled in The New Yorker New York Times Book Review • Editors’ Choice Vivid and magisterial, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen reconfigures the rise of a modern world through the advent and spread of written constitutions. A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world. She brings to the fore neglected sites, such as Corsica, with its pioneering constitution of 1755, and tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, the first place on the globe permanently to enfranchise women. She highlights the role of unexpected players, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who was experimenting with constitutional techniques with her enlightened Nakaz decades before the Founding Fathers framed the American constitution. Written constitutions are usually examined in relation to individual states, but Colley focuses on how they crossed boundaries, spreading into six continents by 1918 and aiding the rise of empires as well as nations. She also illumines their place not simply in law and politics but also in wider cultural histories, and their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel. Colley shows how—while advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males—constitutions frequently served over the long nineteenth century to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, though, she investigates how these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the West seeking to resist European and American power. She describes how Tunisia generated the first modern Islamic constitution in 1861, quickly suppressed, but an influence still on the Arab Spring; how Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone—inspired by the American Civil War—devised plans for self-governing nations in West Africa; and how Japan’s Meiji constitution of 1889 came to compete with Western constitutionalism as a model for Indian, Chinese, and Ottoman nationalists and reformers. Vividly written and handsomely illustrated, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen is an absorbing work that—with its pageant of formative wars, powerful leaders, visionary lawmakers and committed rebels—retells the story of constitutional government and the evolution of ideas of what it means to be modern.

Download or read book The Brush and the Pen written by Dario Gamboni and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840–1916) seemed to thrive at the intersection of literature and art. Known as “the painter-writer,” he drew on the works of Poe, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Mallarmé for his subject matter. And yet he concluded that visual art has nothing to do with literature. Examining this apparent contradiction, The Brush and the Pen transforms the way we understand Redon’s career and brings to life the interaction between writers and artists in fin-de-siècle Paris. Dario Gamboni tracks Redon’s evolution from collaboration with the writers of symbolism and decadence to a defense of the autonomy of the visual arts. He argues that Redon’s conversion was the symptom of a mounting crisis in the relationship between artists and writers, provoked at the turn of the century by the growing power of art criticism that foreshadowed the modernist separation of the arts into intractable fields. In addition to being a distinguished study of this provocative artist, The Brush and the Pen offers a critical reappraisal of the interaction of art, writing, criticism, and government institutions in late nineteenth-century France.

Download or read book The Secret of the Magic Pen written by Jamie Suzanne and published by Sweet Valley. This book was released on 1995 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pen that tells the future? Summer vacation is here, and Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and their friends have just arrived at sleep-away camp! On a hike through a dark, eerie cave, Elizabeth finds something incredible -- a glowing pen! She can't wait to use it to write an article for the camp newspaper. But as she writes, Elizabeth is astonished to find herself composing a mystery full of scary twists and turns. And to her horror, little by little the mystery seems to be coming true! This isn't just an ordinary pen. Could it be haunted? Don't Miss Any Of The Books In This Fabulous Series!

Download or read book Church Quarterly Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Church quarterly review written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Imperfect Garden written by Tzvetan Todorov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available in English for the first time, Imperfect Garden is both an approachable intellectual history and a bracing treatise on how we should understand and experience our lives. In it, one of France's most prominent intellectuals explores the foundations, limits, and possibilities of humanist thinking. Through his critical but sympathetic excavation of humanism, Tzvetan Todorov seeks an answer to modernity's fundamental challenge: how to maintain our hard-won liberty without paying too dearly in social ties, common values, and a coherent and responsible sense of self. Todorov reads afresh the works of major humanists--primarily Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant, but also Descartes, Montesquieu, and Toqueville. Each chapter considers humanism's approach to one major theme of human existence: liberty, social life, love, self, morality, and expression. Discussing humanism in dialogue with other systems, Todorov finds a response to the predicament of modernity that is far more instructive than any offered by conservatism, scientific determinism, existential individualism, or humanism's other contemporary competitors. Humanism suggests that we are members of an intelligent and sociable species who can act according to our will while connecting the well-being of other members with our own. It is through this understanding of free will, Todorov argues, that we can use humanism to rescue universality and reconcile human liberty with solidarity and personal integrity. Placing the history of ideas at the service of a quest for moral and political wisdom, Todorov's compelling and no doubt controversial rethinking of humanist ideas testifies to the enduring capacity of those ideas to meditate on--and, if we are fortunate, cultivate--the imperfect garden in which we live.

Download or read book Dynamic Data Assimilation written by John M. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-03 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Pascal Pens es written by Blaise Pascal and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 1966 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended to prove that religion is not contrary to reason, "Pensé es" ranks among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity. Pascal had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity but his untimely death prevented the work's completion. The fragments remain a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. Introduction by T. S. Eliot.

Download or read book Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises written by Manuela Caiani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populism is booming across all the nuances of the political spectrum. It occupies relevant positions in national parliaments, in governmental coalitions with mainstream parties or as successful challengers of the political status quo. This volume sheds new light on the topic from different methodological and theoretical angles and offers evidence from a variety of cases on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions on populism’s emergence and consolidation in Europe over the past 30 years. The volume, composed of eight chapters, investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the various crises, disentangling the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. More specifically, the volume aims are to: promote critical discussion on the concept of populism, reflecting on its conceptual ‘usability’ beyond the traditional party families to which it is usually related; use a preliminary theoretical clarification to shed new light on the different ways in which populism has been articulated in the various European countries (either in Continental and Southern Europe, or in the lesser known and studied East-Central countries) since the economic crisis, which has acted as an external shock for many party systems, either giving birth to new political actors or consolidating existing ones; investigate the connections between populism and the national contextual political and cultural specificities that can determine the development of different types of populisms across countries, elaborating on different ‘configurations’ of triggering conditions for populism and reflecting on the limitations of a discrete conceptualisation of the phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Download or read book The Red Balloon written by Albert Lamorisse and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Clark’s award-winning adaptation of Albert Lamorisse’s Fifties French film, The Red Balloon, follows the adventures of a lonely Parisian boy and a stray balloon which befriends him. It enjoyed a successful run at the National Theatre in 1996.

Download or read book Pens s written by Blaise Pascal and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1995-12 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosohical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in pscyhological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Download or read book Willful Ignorance written by Herbert I. Weisberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original account of willful ignorance and how this principle relates to modern probability and statistical methods Through a series of colorful stories about great thinkers and the problems they chose to solve, the author traces the historical evolution of probability and explains how statistical methods have helped to propel scientific research. However, the past success of statistics has depended on vast, deliberate simplifications amounting to willful ignorance, and this very success now threatens future advances in medicine, the social sciences, and other fields. Limitations of existing methods result in frequent reversals of scientific findings and recommendations, to the consternation of both scientists and the lay public. Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of Uncertainty exposes the fallacy of regarding probability as the full measure of our uncertainty. The book explains how statistical methodology, though enormously productive and influential over the past century, is approaching a crisis. The deep and troubling divide between qualitative and quantitative modes of research, and between research and practice, are reflections of this underlying problem. The author outlines a path toward the re-engineering of data analysis to help close these gaps and accelerate scientific discovery. Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of Uncertainty presents essential information and novel ideas that should be of interest to anyone concerned about the future of scientific research. The book is especially pertinent for professionals in statistics and related fields, including practicing and research clinicians, biomedical and social science researchers, business leaders, and policy-makers.