1811 research outputs found
Sort by
From the Natural Self-Orgnizaton of Religion to the Modern Magical Realism of the Religious Experience
Religion is a powerful phenomenon arising in and from society. Various efforts have been done to understand religion as a natural phenomenon, which could be framed in the language of science. In this paper, I forward a sui generis approach to the naturality of religion, where religion is explained as one of the next stages in broader natural processes of self-organization. Furthermore, having framed like this the naturality of the religious experience, the paper explores the contemporary debate of current religious expressions. It is suggested that the arrival of science and the modern society have changed some expressions of religious experiences; while, nonetheless, keeping their capacity to self-organize societies. The magical realist society, as the society capable of disguising the magic of religion within the realism of the scientific ethos, is presented and discussed as a modern secular expression of religion, capable to cope with the challenges of science through the dynamics of modernity and capitalism
Quine on the Dogmas of Empiricism
In his works the American philosopher Willard van Quine constantly rejects the analytic/synthetic distinction claiming that it is not justified. This happens because, in his opinion, human statements about the external world face the tribunal of experience not individually but as a corporate body, which implies that the judgment on their validity ultimately rests on experience itself. Many problems arise at this point, since even language plays a fundamental role in the Quinean view, and it must be accommodated into the picture if the picture itself means to be coherent. Conceptual scheme and external world are both necessary, but language does not seem to be a factor whose ultimate legitimacy relies on something outside the conceptual sphere, and this means in turn that we face a dualistic situation. Conceptual schemes or world-views, like the ones provided by Newtonian mechanics or quantum theory, are the primary bearers of truth, and the truth of a statement strictly depends from the particular conceptual scheme one currently adopts