Partial Truths and Our Common Future

Partial Truths and Our Common Future PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438471351
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how "partial truths" are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about religion, science, morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life.

Partial Truths and Our Common Future

Partial Truths and Our Common Future PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438471351
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how "partial truths" are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about religion, science, morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life.

The Future of the Middle East

The Future of the Middle East PDF Author: Monte Palmer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538117894
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This deeply informed book considers the intertwined roles of faith, force, and finance in shaping the modern Middle East. Leading expert Monte Palmer argues that these factors will continue to have a major impact on the Middle East as the United States and other major powers increasingly find themselves embedded in conflicts that defy resolution. Palmer considers the lessons learned from past and current conflicts: the limits of using tyrants as avenues of force; the transformation of faith into force; the root causes of terror; and the perils of a global environment that threatens a new cold war between Russia and the United States, a war of religions between the Abrahamic faiths, and a war of terror that is rapidly becoming global. As he clearly shows, the relative dominance of faith, force, or finance is always shifting, depending on time, place, and local conditions. Drawing on cases from ten critical periods, from World War I through the current chaos and stalemate, the author offers constructive paths forward for building a Middle East of peace and stability.

Liminality in Questions of Truth

Liminality in Questions of Truth PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666934321
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
A limen links the interior of a building to what lies outside it. It is also the connection between any one of its rooms and other areas of the building. It is thus a kind of necessary included middle marking the transition from one domain to another. We are often tempted to think that the boundary between truth and falsity must always be absolute, and thus that there is no possible bridge between the two; in other words, that it is the nature of any genuine truth to be completely contradicted by its denial. In Liminality in Questions of Truth: The Law of the Included Middle, Donald A. Crosby questions this idea, calling it a Law of the Excluded Middle and contending that, in many cases, there is a Law of the Included Middle that must be carefully considered and thoughtfully applied. Absolute, either/or truths are rare, and most claimed truths, when carefully examined, are imprecise, in need of further investigation, or no longer tenable in their present form. This is especially the case when the alleged truths relate to fundamental, wide-ranging issues of conviction, purpose, and value. Failing to ask the right questions can bar the way to more satisfactory answers. This book argues that searching for liminal bridges between opposing claims is an essential part of such questioning.

Living with Ambiguity

Living with Ambiguity PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791475201
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
How a religion based on the sacredness of nature deals with the problem of evil.

Faith and Freedom

Faith and Freedom PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429883358
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
It is sometimes thought that individual religious faith should be firmly fixed in the traditions of the past. That once it is established in someone’s life, it should remain steadfast and unchanging throughout personal, cultural, or any other changes. This book subverts that idea by showing how it is actually ongoing inquiry, examination, and indeed change, requiring similarly ongoing acts of informed and responsible freedom, that will produce a dynamic and meaningful faith. Contending that religious faith should readily encompass deliberate and ongoing acts of personal freedom, the text outlines various ways in which these dual aspects are more ally than enemy. It also demonstrates how the ongoing free choices that are required for genuine faith are not absolute, but are in fact contextualized and conditioned by genetic makeup, environmental conditioning, and present character traits produced in part by a person’s past choices. Despite this caveat, personal freedom is presented as genuine and real, with a vitally important role to play in a person’s religiosity. The book concludes with some observations of this process in practice in the author’s own journey from a Christian theist worldview to that of a religious naturalist. This is a fascinating treatise on the role of personal freedom in religious faith. It will, therefore, be of significant interest to scholars of religion, theology, philosophy of religion and religious naturalism.

Sacred and Secular

Sacred and Secular PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438486618
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The sacred and the secular—or religion and secularity—differ from one another in many ways, but they must also frequently interact with and can instruct and benefit one another in today's world. This is especially so when neither is reduced to an uninformed distortion or stereotype by the other. Careful analysis of their relationships is needed. Such analysis is especially important in the contemporary world, where the two are being challenged, reshaped, and reformed by the sheer number of changing religious and secular perspectives—all of this taking place within the ferment of an increasingly global society. This book explores past and present ways of distinguishing the two with which Donald A. Crosby either takes issue with or finds to be congenial. It also proposes ways in which the two are not only meaningfully distinguished from one another, but also where their mutually beneficial relationships can be highlighted. A particular conception of the nature of religious faith is compared and contrasted with some influential types of secular faith.

Amicable Ambiguity

Amicable Ambiguity PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1666969664
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Often rejected out of hand as the enemy of clarity and convincingness, ambiguity—in thought, speech, writing, analysis, or theory—should not be overlooked. Donald A. Crosby explores the innumerable positive contributions of conceptual and discursive ambiguity in situations where ambiguity can be the amicable friend of intelligibility and convincingness rather than their sworn enemy. While people have been willing to acknowledge the positive role ambiguity can play in poetry, story, myth, ritual, oratory, and song, Crosby argues that its positive roles extend far beyond these modes of reflection and expression and into the whole of life. Amicable Ambiguity: The Indispensable Value of Vagueness, Open-Endedness, and Uncertainty shows how, why, and when this claim may hold true and needs to incorporated both across academic disciplines as well as in the more ordinary areas of thought and experience.

Primordial Time

Primordial Time PDF Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793620164
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
What if there is no such thing as a real passage of time? What differences would this idea make for our conception of the world and of our lives in the world? Donald A. Crosby’s Primordial Time: Its Irreducible Reality, Human Significance, and Ecological Import defends the objective, underived reality of time and its crucial existential significance on the basis of the essential role of the qualitative, inner experiences of the passage of time and with a variety of other scientific and philosophical arguments concerning time. He also explores the urgent reality of time in relation to the ecological crisis of our day.

Our Common Future

Our Common Future PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195531916
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description


Radical Interpretation in Religion

Radical Interpretation in Religion PDF Author: Nancy Frankenberry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521017053
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
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