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The Iona Community and the ecumenical movement: External influences and internal changes
Full text linkThis article teases out the relationship between the Iona Community (founded 1938) and the ecumenical movement (both nationally – Scotland and the UK – and internationally), and the steps the Community took to enable itself internally to be more ecumenical. The first part of the article reviews the original brief of the Community – a missional ‘brotherhood’ that would work for the Church of Scotland’s Church Extension Scheme, using the base of the Iona Abbey as a training ground. Yet the Community quickly caught international missionary and ecumenical attention and the project was drawn beyond this original framework, becoming engaged in missional and ecumenical endeavours in and beyond Scotland. The second part of the article reflects on how these alternative engagements questioned the internal diversity of the Community, and how young people, lay people, ministers from other denominations and finally women pushed for their involvement in the originally male, clerical body. The article ends by drawing upon the work of Aruna Gnanadason who argues for a new paradigm of ecumenism that shakes the patriarchal, clerical powers of church boundaries and embraces realistic, messy, diversity in church bodies as the starting place for ecumenical endeavours
Cats, Christendom, and the undivided self: The feline philosophy of John Gray
Full text link[From the introduction to the essay:] "John Gray’s Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life is an unusual combination of historical, literary, anecdotal, and scientific insights into the domestic cat and its relationship with humankind, which the author integrates, deftly, with his characteristically perceptive and unsparing thoughts on the human condition."
Reviewed work:John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life (London: Penguin Books, 2021), pp. 128, ISBN: 978-0141988429. £8.9
AI Systems and Liability: An Assessment of the Applicability of Strict Liability & A Case for Limited Legal Personhood for AI
Full text linkRecent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have prompted discussion about whether conventional liability laws can be applicable to AI systems which manifest a high degree of autonomy. Users and developers of such AI systems may meet neither the epistemic (sufficient degree of awareness of what is happening) nor control (control over the actions performed) conditions of personal responsibility for the actions of the system at hand, and therefore, conventional liability schemes may seem to be inapplicable[1].
The recently adopted AI Liability Directive [2022] has sought to adapt EU law to the challenges to conventional liability schemes posed by AI systems by imposing a system of strict, rather than fault-based liability, for AI systems. The goal of this is to be able to more easily hold developers, producers, and users of AI technologies accountable, requiring them to explain how AI systems were built and trained. The Directive aims to make it easier for people and companies harmed by AI systems to sue those responsible for the AI systems for damages. However, the Directive seems to ignore the potential injustice that could result from producers and developers being held accountable for actions caused by AI systems which they are neither aware of nor have sufficient control over.
In this essay, I will critically assess the Directive’s system of fault-based liability for AI systems and argue that, whilst such a system may confer some instrumental advantages on behalf of those suing for damages caused by AI systems, it risks causing injustice on the part of developers and producers by making them liable for events they could neither control nor predict. This is likely to risk both producing unjust outcomes and hindering progress in AI development. Instead, following Visa Kurki’s analysis of legal personhood as a cluster concept divided into passive and active incidents, I will argue that some AI systems ought to be granted a limited form of legal personhood, because they meet some of the relevant criteria for active legal personhood, such as the capacity to perform acts-in-the-law. The legal personhood I propose for AI systems is a kind of dependent legal personhood analogous to that granted to corporations. Such a form of legal personhood would not absolve developers and producers from liability for damages (where such liability is applicable), but at the same time, it would not risk unjustly holding producers and developers liable for actions of an AI system.
[1] Mark Coeckelbergh, "Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility Attribution, and a Relational Justification of Explainability." Science and Engineering Ethics, (2020): 2054 
Ecumenism: Gospel imperative, harsh reality, and pilgrim journey: (D. W. D. Shaw memorial lecture 2023)
Full text linkThis paper offers a series of reflections on ecumenism today, first delivered on the occasion of the Shaw Lecture in St Andrews in February 2023. It begins with the gospel imperative of ecumenism, exploring its substance and its history. In a second section, it considers the harsh reality of ecumenism, and reflects upon its persistent challenges. In a third section, it proposes that present-day ecumenism might be conceived as a particular kind of pilgrim journey – as a difficult peregrinatio that seeks the place of resurrection but that has no clear destination. And by way of conclusion, it offers some observations on the specific ecclesiastical context of Scotland
Great power competition in Syria: from proxy war to sanctions war
Full text linkThis paper examines the latest phase in the Syrian conflict, roughly from 2015 to the current time, a period when agency has largely passed from Syrians to rival great powers which have become the ultimate shapers of developments, above all Russia and the US, but with China recently playing a greater role. Russian and American foreign policy goals in Syria are outlined; next analyzed is how their intervention helped shape a semi-proxy war in Syria. Then the transition to a sanctions war over reconstruction is examined: the various phase of sanctions inflicted on Syria and their impact on it. Then the case of Syrian sanctions is located within the global battle between Washington’s “sanctions hegemony,” and rival great powers seeking a multipolar world, including a look at the impact of the Ukraine war on this contest and on the battle for Syria. Finally attempts at push back by global and regional players against US sanctioning of Syria are examined. The paper ends with a conclusion summarizing how the global struggle has affected Syria and how outcomes in Syria will affect the latter
A Defence of the Sensitivity Analysis of Knowledge
Full text linkIt is widely considered that Nozick’s sensitivity analysis of knowledge fails. This is largely due to arguments proposed by Sosa. In this paper, I defend Nozick’s sensitivity condition on knowledge. To do this, I define and motivate sensitivity, then explain Sosa’s definition of safety and its supposed advantages. For all three of Sosa’s purported counterexamples, we will find that the sensitivity theorist can offer responses that are more satisfactory than those available to the proponent of Sosa’s safety theory. Having motivated sensitivity and shown that it deals with these purported counterexamples better than safety, I will conclude that Sosa fails to motivate a move from sensitivity to safety
Theology Not Religious Studies: Neo-Calvinism’s Defence of the Queen of Sciences’ Apparent Subjectivity
Full text linkModern universities often dismiss theology as unscientific because it begins from faith and revelation rather than neutral, publicly verifiable facts. This essay examines how the Neo-Calvinists Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck answered the same charge during late nineteenth-century Dutch debates spurred by the 1876 Higher Education Act, which pushed state universities toward “religious studies” instead of theology. The Neo-Calvinists defend theology’s academic status with three arguments: (1) all science is metaphysically biased, (2) theology’s objective revelation is available to all, and (3) the alternative religious studies is incoherence.
State Prevention Targeting Persons Attracted to Minors in Europe
Full text linkMore than a decade ago, innovative legal obligations were created in Europe to provide persons who fear that they might commit child sexual offences with access, where appropriate, to effective intervention programmes or measures designed to evaluate and prevent the risk of such offences. These supranational obligations were included in Article 7 of the Council of Europe’s Lanzarote Convention (2010) and the near-identical Article 22 of the European Union’s Directive 2011/93 (2011). These provisions have the potential to prevent damaging children’s health, to help persons attracted to minors to lead more productive and fulfilling lives, and to save society substantial resources. The European Commission noted, however, in 2020 that out of all of the state action that needs to be undertaken to implement Directive 2011/93, the least progress has to date been made in relation to prevention programmes for persons attracted to minors who fear that they might offend or have offended. This article aims to review the supranational obligations and their implementation. It finds that the stigma around pedophilia hampers progress at individual, inter-personal, and structural levels. There is room for improvement in the cooperation between the European Union and the Council of Europe. In addition, specific programmes and measures for specific target groups, such as women or people with disabilities, are identified as a blind spot
Slabs, SMS, and Semantic Dependence
Full text linkWhat does it mean for one linguistic expression to be ‘short for’ an- other? This paper claims that ‘short for’ constitutes a psychological rather than formal relationship. To develop this definition, I will turn to later Wittgenstein, seeking to adjudicate a debate between Wittgenstein and his interlocutor in Philosophical Investigations: while the interlocutor claims that a builder’s cry of “Slab!” must be ‘short for’ “Bring me a slab,” Wittgenstein calls this view into question. Their debate puts forth two plausible definitions of the ‘short for’ relationship, one based on formal necessity and the other on mental behavior. We will evaluate these definitions by examining a case study which was not available to Wittgenstein: the variable uses of texting abbreviations. Texters’ use of such abbreviations independently from their parent phrases discredits the logical definition of ‘short for’. Through an examination of how non-texters use the same abbreviations, I propose an alternate definition of ‘short for’ centered around the act of mentally translating between one phrase and another
Autism and faith
Full text linkAs the title suggests, this issue is devoted to a theme that has become much more prominent in the general public discourse over recent years, yet still lacks sustained attention or an in-depth, creative consideration in the life of the Church as well as in theological thought