We formalize how learning produces origination and control. A system understands a domain relative to an evaluator if it can modify its own program in response to that feedback, such that the modified program generalizes over the domain. An evaluator is a source of feedback, which is consistent in the sense that it gives the same judgment for the same input. We show that when understanding is realized through a learning rule applied to procedural traces (here, gradient descent), organized knowledge (...) emerges. Primitive circuits are individually learnable, the trace teaches decomposition and iteration, credit assignment separates factors into distinct weight regions, and a shared confluence orchestrates them into a hierarchical structure of shared and domain-specific factors. The same mechanism scales from integer multiplication to natural-language reasoning, with mechanistic interpretability confirming the decomposition in transformers. From this organization, two capacities emerge. Origination: cross-composition of learned factors produces new programs absent from training. Control: the same primitives that compute outputs produce halts and goal-directed acts as emergent structure, not as a separate faculty. The framework is constructive so that it identifies the mechanism at each step. (shrink)

By comparing the theories of evil found in Kant and Kierkegaard, this article aims to shed new light on Kierkegaard, as well as on the historical and conceptual relations between the two philosophers. The author shows that there is considerable overlap between Kant's doctrine of radical evil and Kierkegaard's views on guilt and sin and argues that Kierkegaard approved of the doctrine of radical evil. Although Kierkegaard's distinction between guilt and sin breaks radically with Kant, there are more Kantian elements (...) in Kierkegaard than was shown by earlier scholarship. Finally, Kierkegaard provides an alternative solution to the problem of the universality of guilt, a problem much discussed in the literature on Kant. (shrink)

I begin with a distinction between narrow and broad defenses to the logical problem of evil. The former is simply an attempt to show that God and evil are not logically incompat-ible whereas the latter attempts the same, but only by appealing to beliefs one takes to be true in the actual world. I then argue that while recent accounts of original sin may be consistent with a broad defense, they are also logically incoherent. After considering potential replies, I conclude (...) by proposing an account of original sin that is both logically coherent and consistent with a broad defense. (shrink)

According to the Book of Common Prayer, we have sinned against God “in thought, word, and deed.” In this paper I’ll explore one way of understanding what it might mean to sin against God in thought—the idea that we can at least potentially wrong God by what we believe. I will be interested in the philosophical tenability of this idea, and particularly in its potential consequences for the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.

In this paper I provide a comparative analysis of Augustine's and Paul Tillich's doctrines of Original Sin. I argue that Augustine's doctrine is deeply flawed in ways corrected for by Tillich.

The underreporting of suspected adverse drug reactions remains a primary issue for contemporary post-market drug surveillance or ‘pharmacovigilance.’ Pharmacovigilance pioneer W.H.W. Inman argued that ‘deadly sins’ committed by clinicians are to blame for underreporting. Of these ‘sins,’ ignorance and lethargy are the most obvious and impactful in causing underreporting. However, recent analyses show that diffidence, insecurity, and indifference additionally play a major role. I aim to augment our understanding of diffidence, insecurity, and indifference by arguing these sins are underwritten by (...) value judgments arising via epistemic risk. I contend that ‘evidence-based’ medicine codifies these sins. (shrink)

What is lust? Its classification depends on where we look for its essence. Physiologically, it may appear as an appetite, urge, or drive; phenomenologically, as a desire or emotion; morally, as a sin or a life-affirming force. This chapter argues that the act of classifying lust is itself a normative choice, revealing what we take to matter in human life, whether survival and reproduction, pleasure and freedom, identity and self-expression, or social and moral order. By examining lust as drive, desire, (...) emotion, and social construction, I show how each framework highlights certain dimensions of human experience while obscuring others. The chapter also traces the tension between lust’s biological function and its subjective phenomenology: while rooted in reproduction, lust is often pursued for pleasure alone. Whether condemned as a sin or reclaimed as vitality, lust reflects the values through which we understand desire, the body, and human flourishing. (shrink)

In the article "What Sin Is: A Differential Analysis," Jesse Couenhoven delves into the definitions and categorizations of sin according to various Christian doctrines. The author critically examines traditional definitions, such as those provided by the Westminster Confession and catechisms, and argues that they fail to adequately distinguish between sin and evil, often conflating natural evils with sinful acts. Couenhoven also considers gray areas of ethical behavior, such as the actions of a schizophrenic who curses against God or the mistakes (...) made by medical residents that result in harm to patients, and questions whether these actions should be classified as sin. The primary question driving the article is how sin is differentiated from that which is "merely" evil. To address this, Couenhoven analyzes and evaluates three views of sin, testing their coherence with Christian beliefs and practices. The article aims to provide a more nuanced and sufficient understanding of sin within the Christian tradition, going beyond the necessary elements of the doctrine of sin to better identify and differentiate sin from evil. (shrink)

Sin has damaged human relationships with God, fellow beings, and the universe. It could only be resolved by God's grace. Even believers who have been redeemed still have the potential to fall into sin when faced with temptation. The purpose of this research is to discover and describe the pattern of human fall into sin and the efforts of believers in resisting temptation and fighting sin. This study employs a qualitative theological research method with text analysis. The findings reveal that (...) the pattern of falling into sin begins with temptation, which enters through the five senses and is then processed by the human mind and heart. The response is subsequently expressed in thoughts, feelings, and actions. A sinful heart tends to lead a person toward sin, whereas a heart filled with God's Word is more likely to overcome trials and endure tests of faith. Therefore, believers must fill and guard their hearts with God’s Word so that their hearts, minds, and will align with His will and are reflected in actions that glorify Him. (shrink)

Radical secularization relocates the concept of sin from divine jurisprudence to the architecture of human consciousness. We propose a provocative ontological defi- nition: sin is solely the internal experience of guilt arising from any action or omission, independent of objective moral veridicality. By strictly distinguishing sin (subjective burden) from wrongdoing (objective harm), we expose sin not as a defect but as a cognitive privilege—a “burden of knowledge” that only sophisticated minds can bear. Through a synthesis of Kierkegaardian anxiety, Sartrean bad (...) faith, and modern affective neuroscience, the capacity to sin emerges as the definitive mark of evolutionary progress, while its absence—as seen in psychopathy—signals a catastrophic failure of human “hardware.” Thus, this analysis concludes with a startling proposition: to be sinful is to be fully, painfully human. (shrink)

The growing pervasiveness of digital technologies in human life requires moral reflection that transcends the boundaries of design ethics and algorithmic regulation. Starting from the analogy with ecological sin and grounding itself in the doctrine of virtues, this study proposes a theological-moral framework for technological action. The analysis focuses on defining technological sin and elaborating a typology of technological virtues that do not constitute mere behavioural correctives, but genuine forms of ethical and spiritual resistance in the digital environment. Technological virtues—from (...) digital prudence to analogical contemplation—articulate the cardinal and theological virtues in the contemporary context, offering tools to evaluate the proximity or distance of technological dynamics from an objective moral order. This work is situated within the horizon of a Christian ethics capable of addressing the challenges of technological contemporaneity, proposing an anthropology that does not reject technology but transfigures it, recognising in technology a space for conversion and realisation of the human vocation to holiness. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that no strong doctrine of the Fall can undermine the propriety of epistemic self-trust. My argument proceeds by introducing a common type of philosophical methodology, known as reflective equilibrium. After a brief exposition of the method, I introduce a puzzle for someone engaged in the project of self-reflection after gaining a reason to distrust their epistemic selves on the basis of a construal of a doctrine of the Fall. I close by introducing the worry as (...) a formal argument and demonstrate the self-undermining nature of such an argument. (shrink)

In this entry, DeYoung defines the seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices, as a schema for understanding and analyzing sin for Christians interested in self-examination, confession, preaching, and spiritual formation. DeYoung carefully looks at the difference between 'sin' and 'vice' and goes back to the capital vices of the Desert Fathers to draw out the tradition. She also looks at Aquinas's analysis to help articulate how the Christian tradition has used the vices.

In this essay I discuss the concept of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the Christian solution to the problem of suffering. I conclude that there is no basis, within the Christian view of things, for raising the traditional problem of evil through reflection on the fact of substantial suffering in the world. I thus respectfully suggest that the problem of evil is only a problem for non-believers, who have the wrong perspective on the nature and source of suffering. (When (...) first uploaded to this website, the text of this essay was inadvertently replaced by that for a different essay, "Morality and Fallen Man." That essay has been uploaded and the original text restored.). (shrink)

This essay follows how three different texts (one prose, and two poems) each reflect the narrative arc of St. Paul's struggle with sin and his overcoming of it. It begins by following a parallel between the experience of Paul's conversion in the biblical book of Acts with the anagnorisis of Charlotte Bronte's protagonist, Jane Eyre. I compare how both literary agents wrestle with inner conflicts and arrive to a united conclusion that where humankind fails, God always represents the solution. Following (...) this, in light of analysing Paul's religious experience, I turn to Seamus Heaney's poem 'Miracle.' In this, the effect of sin, interpreted as death and suffering is underscored in the same way that Paul underscores it in his letters. Finally, I conclude by deepening an understanding of Paul's anthropology in analysing Edwin Muir's poem, 'Adam's Dream.'. (shrink)

I publish here to seek insights, critique, rigorous feedback, and engagement from the scholarly philosophical community on PhilArchive; as well as to establish clear authorship and intellectual ownership of my ongoing work. | | | The Externalities of Sin presents an independently developed philosophical framework for examining repentance, forgiveness, restitution, and irreparable harm through the structural analogy of externalities. Its central claim is that repentance, while morally and theologically meaningful, becomes insufficient when treated as a terminal moral endpoint. A wrong (...) does not remain sealed inside the conscience of the wrongdoer. Once enacted, it propagates into the world as distributed harm: primary injury to the direct victim, secondary injury to families and relational fields, tertiary injury to institutions, norms, and trust, and a temporal multiplier through which harm persists, amplifies, or becomes inherited across time. | | | -/- The paper distinguishes the vertical account of sin — the sinner before God, conscience, or ultimate judgment — from the horizontal account of harm — the sinner before victim, family, community, body, memory, institution, and consequence. Repentance may transform the agent’s moral orientation; it may even restore the agent’s standing before God or conscience. But it does not, by that fact alone, repair the damaged field into which the wrong has already propagated. The framework therefore argues that repentance is necessary but non-equivalent: it is not restitution, restitution is not restoration, forgiveness does not entail reconciliation, and personal moral repair does not imply social repair. | | | -/- Using the language of economic externalities, the paper models certain forms of wrongdoing as cases in which benefit is privatized while cost is socialized. The wrongdoer captures pleasure, power, advantage, relief, concealment, domination, or status, while victims and communities absorb injury, distrust, trauma, defensive adaptation, institutional corrosion, and irreversible loss. If repentance is then allowed to function as symbolic settlement — restoring the wrongdoer to moral intelligibility while leaving the injured world unrepaired — it becomes vulnerable to the charge of moral convenience. The critique is not that repentance is false, but that it is often overextended. | | | -/- The paper also compares religious and social morality with legal ethics and civil liability. Legal systems, despite operating at a lower moral threshold than full virtue, often preserve a more explicit structure of accountability: compensatory damages, punitive damages, burden-shifting, deterrence, sanction, and public recognition of harm. If even the lower domain of law recognizes that injury must be answered in the world and not merely regretted in the conscience, then religious or social morality becomes morally suspect when it celebrates repentance without mandating comparable restitution, victim-centered repair, and long-duration accountability. In such cases, religion does not transcend law; it falls beneath it. | | | -/- The paper proposes a preliminary moral ledger: a framework for tracking who benefited, who paid, who continues to pay, what can be restored, what can only be mitigated, what must be carried, and what remains irreparable. It develops a provisional formal vocabulary through a harm-vector representation, non-equivalence conditions, a dynamic multiplier function, and a taxonomy of reparability. The mathematical construction remains early-stage and architectural rather than theorem-final; its purpose is not to reduce moral suffering to calculation, but to prevent conceptual collapse between guilt and harm, repentance and restitution, forgiveness and reconciliation, personal redemption and worldly repair. | | | -/- Domains: Philosophy of Religion · Moral Philosophy · Ethics · Theology · Philosophy of Law · Social Philosophy · Restorative Justice · Responsibility and Accountability · Political Theology · Philosophy of Harm | | | -/- Mathematical and Analytical Foundations: Externality Theory · Harm-Vector Modeling · Dynamic Systems Thinking · Multiplier Effects · Reparability Taxonomy · Non-Equivalence Conditions · Moral Accounting · Legal-Ethical Analogy · Distributional Analysis · Formal Moral Architecture | | | -/- This project represents an early-stage exploration in philosophical system-building. While the author does not have formal academic training in philosophy or theology, any parallels with existing ideas in the philosophical, theological, legal, or ethical corpus are the result of convergent thinking rather than derivation. The author acknowledges that some aspects of this work may overlap with prior ideas developed with greater rigor in moral theology, restorative justice, tort theory, legal ethics, and theories of responsibility. As further study of the broader tradition continues, future iterations of this work will aim to situate these insights more precisely within established scholarly lineages. (shrink)

Can we identify a common thread running through the great religions' 'diagnosis' of the human condition? In this essay, I employ Martin Heidegger's notion of the 'nullity' pervading human being, together with the Vedantic notion of Ignorance (avidya), to suggest that finite creatureliness itself results in an existential crisis that all the great religions, in their various ways, seek to address.

This essay explores a philosophical convergence between Marcus Aurelius and Admiral Yi Sun-sin through a close, reflective reading of Meditations and Nanjung Ilgi. Rather than pursuing doctrinal comparison or cultural analogy, the paper approaches both figures as exemplars of a shared ethical form that emerges under conditions of extreme historical crisis. It argues that the emotional restraint, self-discipline, and inward orientation evident in both texts reveal a mode of political action grounded in the dissolution of egoic attachment rather than its (...) assertion. By examining themes of inner sovereignty, ethical stability amid chaos, bodily weakness, and the affirmation of fate, the essay shows how Marcus Aurelius and Yi Sun-sin transform suffering into a medium for ethical clarification rather than resentment. Drawing implicitly on the notion of the identity of the will, the paper suggests that their actions arise not from personal ambition or ideological conviction, but from fidelity to an impersonal moral form that remains intact despite injustice, illness, and uncertainty. The convergence between these two figures thus illuminates a model of non-egoic political ethics in which value is not proclaimed or imposed, but quietly created through sustained responsibility and inner coherence. In an age increasingly shaped by reactive politics and performative morality, their shared ethical posture offers a compelling alternative: a form of leadership grounded in restraint, affirmation, and the disciplined disappearance of the self. (shrink)

This paper presents an instance of prisoner's dilemma and draws upon some biographical information, from when it was presented in a lecture by now-professor Kimberley Brownlee, to present some current belief attributions of mine.

Advances in immunotherapy pave the way for vaccines that target not only infections, but also unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. A nicotine vaccine that eliminates the pleasure associated with smoking could potentially be used to prevent children from adopting this addictive and dangerous behavior. This paper offers an ethical analysis of such vaccines. We argue that it would be permissible for parents to give their child a nicotine vaccine if the following conditions are met: (1) the vaccine is expected to (...) result in a net benefit to each individual vaccinated, (2) the expected harms from the side effects of the vaccine are lower than the non-voluntary harms of smoking, and (3) there are no less manipulative methods available that are as effective at preventing smoking initiation. Finally, we show how the framework developed here could be used to analyze the ethics of other chemical interventions designed to modify children’s behavior. (shrink)

This article examines the importance of the historical fall and doctrine of original sin in context of allegorical doctrines of the fall and sin. The article provides a moderate defense of a historic fall by critiquing what I shall dub Allegorical Accounts. Contemporary Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin deny that any historical fall of our human ancestors occurred. These accounts also affirm that all individuals require Christ’s atoning work for sin, freely fall into sin, and are not (...) created sinful or determined to fall into sin. I challenge the Allegorical Account. Given any Allegorical Account’s claims about the fall and original sin, I propose a set of jointly inconsistent propositions which I label as Atonement for All, Good Creation, and Time-Gap. If one assumes the Allegorical Account, any two propositions of the set will imply the falsity of the third. However, each of the three propositions is plausible. I examine possible modifications to avoid the inconsistency or conduct damage control—each of these is found wanting. Since these propositions are jointly inconsistent when one assumes an Allegorical Account, the article suggests that non-Allegorical Accounts of the fall and original sin may be theologically more important than recently regarded. (shrink)

Moralising accounts of depression include the idea that depression is a sin or the result of sin, and/or that it is the result of demonic possession which has occurred because of moral or spiritual failure. Increasingly some Christian communities, understandably concerned about the debilitating effects these views have on people with depression, have adopted secular folk psychiatry’s ‘medicalising’ campaign, emphasising that depression is an illness for which, like (so-called) physical illnesses, experients should not be held responsible. This paper argues that (...) both moralising and medicalising models of depression are intellectually and practically (pastorally and therapeutically) problematic, gesturing towards more promising emphases. (shrink)

El largoplacismo suele exponerse, explícita o implícitamente, como una perspectiva sobre la preservación, continuidad o prosperidad futura de la humanidad. Este artículo sostiene que esa comprensión es demasiado estrecha. El largoplacismo implica una tesis de no exclusión temporal: si ciertos estados de cosas futuros pueden contener valor o desvalor, su distancia temporal no basta para excluirlos de la consideración moral. Esta tesis tieneuna consecuencia más amplia para las perspectivas que consideran relevante lo que les sucede a individuos o entidades que (...) pueden tener intereses. Así como la distancia temporal no basta para excluir estados de cosas futuros moralmente relevantes, tampoco la pertenencia a una especie determinada ni la realización en un sustrato concreto bastan, por sí solas, para hacerlo. El objeto adecuado del largoplacismo no es, por tanto, el futuro humano, sino el conjunto de estados de cosas futuros que pueden ser mejores o peores para quienes puedan recibir beneficios o perjuicios. (shrink)

Various thinkers are concerned that the Orthodox view of Ancestral Sin does not avoid the age-old Augustinian concern of Pelagianism. After all, the doctrine of Ancestral Sin maintains that fallen human beings do not necessarily or inevitably commit actual sins. In contemporary literature, this claim could be articulated as a denial of the ‘inevitability thesis.’ A denial of the inevitability thesis, so contemporary thinkers maintain, seems to imply both that human beings can place themselves in right relation to God as (...) well as the Pelagian denial that all require Christ's work to attain this right relation to God. This article demonstrates that the Ancestral Sin, along with a denial of the inevitability thesis, is neither Pelagian nor Semi-Pelagian. I show that the doctrine of Ancestral Sin denies (Semi-) Pelagianism in various ways. I show that, for Ancestral Sin to entail (Semi-) Pelagianism, one must commit to several assumptions, each of which is plausibly deniable and none of which Orthodox thinkers affirm. (shrink)

A crucial objection to the doctrine of original sin is that it conflicts with a common intuition that agents are morally responsible only for factors under their control. Here, I present an account of moral responsibility by Michael Zimmerman that accommodates that intuition, and I consider it as a model of original sin, noting both attractions and difficulties with the view.

Could the concept of 'evil' apply to AI? Drawing on PF Strawson's framework of reactive attitudes, this paper argues that we can understand evil as involving agents who are neither fully inside nor fully outside our moral practices. It involves agents whose abilities and capacities are enough to make them morally responsible for their actions, but whose behaviour is far enough outside of the norms of our moral practices to be labelled 'evil'. Understood as such, the paper argues that, when (...) it comes to AI and evil, we have more to fear from semi-autonomous, hybrid agents: agents who have enough of a capacity to operate within a minimal form of human practices of participation and responsibility, yet remain partially outside of it, capable of acting from outside the parameters of ordinary interactions in certain circumstances, perhaps sometimes for reasons unknown. (shrink)

A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all Christian thinkers maintain that moral fault is necessary or sufficient for sin to obtain. Call this the “Moral Consensus.” I begin by clarifying the relevance of impurities to the biblical cataloguing of sins. I then present four extensional problems for the Moral Consensus on sin, based on the biblical catalogue of sins: (1) moral over-demandingness, (2) agential unfairness, (3) (...) moral repugnance, and (4) moral atrocity. Next, I survey several partial solutions to these problems, suggested by the recent philosophical literature. Then I evaluate two largely unexplored solutions: (a) genuine sin dilemmas and (b) defeasible sinfulness. I argue that (a) creates more problems than it solves and that, while (b) is well-motivated and solves or eases each of the above problems, (b) leaves many biblical ordinances about sin morally misleading, creating (5) a pedagogical problem of evil. I conclude by arguing that (5) places hefty explanatory burdens on those who would appeal to (b) to resolve the four extensional problems discussed in this paper. So Christian thinkers may need to consider a more radical separation of sin and moral fault. (shrink)

Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s biocultural evolutionary account of sin. We look at empirical evidence to support it and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and unavoidable, even though it (...) is not biologically transmitted, and even if there is no historical Fall that precipitated the tendency to sin. (shrink)

El presente trabajo nació como una reflexión posterior a la traducción del libro de Stanley Cavell Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. La reflexión era necesaria habida cuenta de las dudas suscitadas por la traducción del título del libro. Para ser más exacto, la reflexión giraba en torno a las lágrimas que forman parte de la primera parte del título, las lágrimas vertidas por las mujeres desconocidas que protagonizan los melodramas analizados en el libro. En mi opinión, (...) llegar a entender la razón y la naturaleza de esas lágrimas es clave para comprender lo que Cavell nos viene contando desde hace cinco décadas. Por ello, lo que sigue intenta reunir mis propios comentarios sobre la obra de Cavell en general, con la justificación de la traducción final del título: Más allá de las lágrimas. (shrink)

Motivated by H. Curry’s well-known objection and by a proposal of L. Henkin, this article introduces the positive tableaux, a form of tableau calculus without refutation based upon the idea of implicational triviality. The completeness of the method is proven, which establishes a new decision procedure for the (classical) positive propositional logic. We also introduce the concept of paratriviality in order to contribute to the question of paradoxes and limitations imposed by the behavior of classical implication.

Christian orthodoxy essentially involves the acceptance of the New Testament as authoritative in matters of faith and conduct. However, the New Testament instructs slaves and women to accept a subordinate status that denies their equality with other human beings. To accept such a status is to have the vice of servility, which involves denying the equality of all human beings. Therefore the New Testament asserts that slaves and women should deny their equality with other human beings. This is false. Moreover, (...) these same passages in the New Testament implicitly assert that slavery and the subordination of women are morally permissible. This isalso false. Therefore orthodox Christianity is false. (shrink)

Justin Barrett and Kelly James Clark have suggested that cognitive science of religion supports the existence of a god-faculty akin to sensus divinitatis. They propose that God may have given rise to the god-faculty via guided evolution. This suggestion raises two theological worries. First, our natural cognition seems to favor false god-beliefs over true ones. Second, it also makes us prone to tribalism. If God hates idolatry and moral evil, why would he give rise to mind with such biases? A (...) Plantingian response would point to the noetic effects of sin. Such a response, however, would have to assume that God is restoring the minds of believers. This paper considers empirical reasons to doubt that such a process is taking place. (shrink)

A Laugh and a Sin: The Obscene as Europe’s Last High Culture develops a general theory of obscenity as an overlooked but structurally coherent cultural phenomenon that exposes the limits of contemporary ethical, legal, and epistemic discourse. The article argues that the obscene, far from being a marginal linguistic residue, functions as a diagnostic tool for revealing the hidden norms, contradictions, and blind spots of modern rationality. The paper is accompanied by three appendices that perform distinct conceptual functions. Appendix 1 (...) (Linguistic Justification for the Emergence in Ukrainian of the Nomination “nedakhuy”) and Appendix 2 (Simplified Presentation of Set Theory for Lawyers) are translations of earlier texts written in 2005–2008 and originally published in the book O sushchem (Kyiv, 2008). These appendices provide the linguistic and formal-logical foundations of the main argument. Both emerged from extensive empirical work with judicial materials, including several dozen court proceedings that inadvertently confirmed the theoretical predictions by displaying a consistent pattern: in approximately 90% of cases the obscene term was explicitly recognized by the court, while in the remaining cases the judges clearly perceived it but avoided verbalizing it to prevent self-incrimination or reputational embarrassment. A particularly illustrative episode is discussed in The “Golden Episode” of Procedural Completion, where an appellate judge demanded the replacement of a polite euphemism—presented in the form of a standard colloquial, yet entirely decent, expression of that period in Russian and Ukrainian—with the explicit obscene term, as only its direct articulation restored the internal coherence of judicial procedure. Appendix 3 (Horror) complements the theoretical framework by demonstrating how the obscene functions as a structural operator capable of absorbing and transforming entire semantic fields, thereby destabilizing the conventional boundaries between norm, transgression, and cultural production. Taken together, the article and its appendices argue that the obscene is not an accidental deviation from normative language but a constitutive element of European high culture, and perhaps the last remaining sphere in which truth, form, and experience converge without pretense. (shrink)

Despite their divergent metaphysical assumptions, Reformed and evolutionary epistemologists have converged on the notion of proper basicality. Where Reformed epistemologists appeal to God, who has designed the mind in such a way that it successfully aims at the truth, evolutionary epistemologists appeal to natural selection as a mechanism that favors truth-preserving cognitive capacities. This paper investigates whether Reformed and evolutionary epistemological accounts of theistic belief are compatible. We will argue that their chief incompatibility lies in the noetic effects of sin (...) and what may be termed the noetic effects of evolution, systematic tendencies wherein human cognitive faculties go awry. We propose a reconceptualization of the noetic effects of sin to mitigate this tension. (shrink)

Spanish translation and introductory study on Louis Pojman’s “Faith without Belief?”. Published in Pojman, Louis. “¿Fe sin creencia?”. Estudios Filosóficos, vol. 70, no. 205 (2021), pp. 465–486. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “La fe experimental de Louis Pojman”. Estudios Filosóficos, vol. 70, no. 205, pp. 461–463 (2021)].

I express some reservations about Hart and Hill's attempt to show that certain Scriptural passages show that God sometimes intends that sins occur, though I express sympathy for the view that God sometimes intends that sins occur.

The political turmoil at the end of the period of Righteous Caliphs and in the early periods of the Umayyads had left the Islamic community facing factionalism and civil war. Accordingly, people have witnessed that the acts considered among the great sins such as assassination may be committed even by companions of the Prophet (pbuh). This situation brought the question on the status of believers who committed great sins in this World and in the Hereafter, to the agenda of scholars. (...) The Kharijis and the Mu’tazila did not consider the person who committed A great sin among the believers. According to the Ahl al-Sunna and Al-Jaṣṣās, to commit a great sin does not cause the exclusion of the person from religion. Al-Jaṣṣās has taken into account the issue of great sin, when dealing with the issues of general term, specialization of the cause and infallibilism in diligence (al-ijtihād), since it constitutes the theological (Kalāmī) side of the subject. Although al-Jaṣṣās’ followed a line close to Mu’tazila in the aforementioned matters concerning the jurisprudence, he defended the view of Abū Ḥanīfah in his approach to the person who committed a great sin. His approach to the matter of great sin also clarifies the relationship between islamic law and Islamic thought. (shrink)

Suele ser decepcionante asistir a la conferencia de algún/a filósofo/a u otro/a pensador/a, artista si es que uno ya lo ha leído, estudiado o seguido su obra por algún tiempo. Leer Sin miedo no ha sido la excepción. De ahí el valor de una reseña de libro, a saber: definir la audiencia para la cual el texto comentado podría ser un aporte. En este sentido, Sin miedo es perfecto para un público poco familiarizado con la obra de Butler o que (...) todavía no la ha estudiado en profundidad, aunque sí le interesa conocerla. Probablemente este libro abre el apetito por ahondar en la propuesta de Butler, que se desarrolla prolíficamente en su vasta escritura. Sin miedo es una publicación que agrupa cinco conferencias que la filósofa dictó entre los años 2018 y 2019, en ciudades como Berlín, Guadalajara, Ciudad de México, La Habana, Buenos Aires y Santiago de Chile. En cada una de ellas, Judith Butler hace un guiño al lugar en el que habla. Es respetuosa de la audiencia y eso marca sus dichos, que concilian el pensamiento elaborado y complejo con una escucha menos enmarcada en el canon académico. Es fácil detectar en estas conferencias ciertos temas que las recorren transversalmente y de los que la autora ha dado cuenta en sus últimas publicaciones: la violencia política que se ejerce hacia determinados grupos de nuestra sociedad, la común vulnerabilidad como un factor que pone en evidencia tanto la interdependencia como la posibilidad de la acción política, y el énfasis que expone respecto de la desigual distribución de la vulnerabilidad, así como de la necesidad de luchar por una democracia que Butler define como radical. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil. By Stanford M. Lyman. The Seven Deadly Sins Today. By Henry Fairlie.

Forsaking the Fall argues along exegetical, theological, and philosophical lines that the doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin need not be understood as integral components of orthodox Christianity. -/- By engaging biblical studies, systematic theology, and analytic philosophy, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of the most important issues at play in the Original Sin debate, as well as offers a set of tools for helping readers to think critically about the essence of the Christian faith and its relation (...) to Original Sin. Crucially, it lays the theoretical groundwork for an orthodox nonlapsarianism and advances a novel theory vis-à-vis the Fall and Original Sin in Christian theology. -/- This innovative and provocative book will be of interest to scholars of theology and philosophy, specifically analytic theologians and philosophers of religion. (shrink)

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz is on one level a theological reflection on the human propensity to sin. Not coincidentally, the story is located in an Albertinian abbey in the former American southwest six hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, recounting three separate historical periods over the following twelve hundred years: a dark age, a scientific renaissance, and finally a time of technological achievement where a second nuclear holocaust is imminent. Miller asks the question of (...) whether humans as a species cannot avoid committing acts of sin that cumulatively and continually lead to acts of societal and technological self-destruction; his response oscillates between a fatalistic pessimism (the final extinction of the human species) and a vague optimism (the “new creature,” the mutant Rachel, or perhaps a last group of humans leaving the Earth as the curtain falls). It is my thesis in this article that theological questions about sin (as explored by Augustine and later scholars) can be fruitfully approached by analogous genetic processes; more precisely by reference to the rising science of Epigenetics, which explores how genes can express themselves differently without mutating in response to life stressors. In light of the idea of a genetic and epigenetic expression of moral rules of existence, Augustine’s thesis of original sin as something that is inherited makes new sense. In this light, it may also be possible to approach the question that the Canticle proposes: are we destined to self-destruction, or is there a way out of this destructive cycle? (shrink)

This is an introduction to the Symposium on “Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall,” which has been designed as a thematic section for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. The Symposium investigates the enduring question of whether hamartiology (the theological study of sin) is compatible with evolutionary theory. We trace the origins of this question to the debate between Modernists and Traditionalists at the turn of the previous century. Our contributors make headway in these discussions by delving into details, namely (...) by asking whether the hamartiological views of particular theologians, such as Augustine or Aquinas, can be reconciled with specific aspects of evolutionary theory. They also extend hamartiology in novel directions through the application of critical race theory and literary science to shed new light on the origin and transmission of original sin. (shrink)

This essay advances my project on “the Black messianic” in Afropessimism’s apocalyptic thought through a meta-commentary on Agamben’s The Mystery of Evil ([2013] 2017) and The Kingdom and the Garden ([2019] 2020). The first study interrogates the history of (mis)reading 2 Thessalonians 2 where the Apostle Paul announces the messianic “mystery of lawlessness” that is being concealed and delayed by the katechōn. This argument anticipates Agamben’s later study, which argues that the legacy of Augustinian original sin as the irremediable alienation (...) of humanity falsely conceals and thus restrains messianic access to the Garden. However, in the wake of racial slavery, annotating Agamben’s thought with Afropessimism reveals that access to the Garden has in fact become foreclosed. And yet, when modernity's anti-Black original sin is understood as the katechōn, Agamben’s reading of the messianic mystery of lawlessness can help us contemplate Afropessimism’s invitation to the dance of social death. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical analysis of Valerio Scarani's article *Three Sins Against Physics by an Exaggerated Quantum Information Perspective*. Unlike many contemporary works in quantum information theory, Scarani openly acknowledges several conceptual distortions generated by the dominance of informational and operational viewpoints in modern physics. In particular, he criticizes the confusion between optical and quantum coherence, the reduction of physical dynamics to gate-based descriptions, and the growing tendency to interpret physical reality through adversarial game-theoretic frameworks. -/- The present review (...) argues that these criticisms, while insightful, ultimately fail to reach the foundational source of the problems they identify. The manuscript challenges several consequences of the quantum-information paradigm while leaving untouched the deeper assumptions upon which that paradigm rests. Hilbert spaces, quantum states, Hamiltonians, coherent sectors, and admissible dynamical structures remain fully assumed rather than physically derived. -/- It is argued that the central difficulty of modern quantum theory is not the excessive use of informational language, but the absence of a generative account of the structures being manipulated. The reviewed framework contains no derivation of coherent persistence, no principle of admissibility, no mechanism of structural selection, and no ontology capable of explaining why stable quantum states should exist in the first place. -/- The paper further argues that many practical difficulties of quantum technologies—including decoherence, instability, correction overhead, and scalability limitations—are not independent engineering obstacles but manifestations of unresolved foundational assumptions. Scarani successfully identifies several cracks in the building of quantum information theory; however, he never questions the foundations beneath it. -/- The review concludes that the manuscript represents an intelligent and valuable internal critique of quantum information theory, but one that remains entirely confined within the same ontological and generative assumptions that produced the distortions it seeks to correct. (shrink)

El cuerpo como realidad radical en la actividad humana es una tesis común al pensamiento fenomenológico, desde su origen en la obra Edmund Husserl, en las de Maurice Merleau-Ponty y Michel Henry, hasta las corrientes postfenomenológicas, entre las que se encuentran Don Ihde y la escuela estadounidense. Como tesis complementaria, destacan la presencia del cuerpo en las tecnologías: su profunda interacción y su integración, generando una cierta extensión corporal que hace de usuario y dispositivo tecnológico un entorno de retroalimentación intencional (...) por el que fluye la materia de lo vivido. A través de la síntesis de técnicas anteriores, los medios digitales han profundizado en esta capacidad de integración: en incorporación y representación, en hardware y software, múltiples formas de extensión corporal son experimentables. De la construcción de estas corporalidades alternativas surge el relato de un cuerpo digital como ‘cuerpo real’, controlado por nosotros, plenamente equivalente y semejante. En el presente texto proponemos un breve análisis de la corporalidad digital basado en las reflexiones fenomenológicas, especialmente aquellas en torno a la autopercepción táctil, a modo de vía de fundamentación para un criterio de identidad corporal aplicable a dichas tecnologías y que reivindique la experiencia originaria y carnal del usuario. (shrink)

Objeción al Uso Cientificista de Mis Ideas sin Orientación al Vector Humanista Por Ignacio López Villanueva -/- La presente objeción se dirige a todos aquellos desarrollos, publicaciones y aplicaciones que, tomando como base conceptos, estructuras o intuiciones provenientes de mi trabajo —especialmente el Principio G, la ontología computacional alternativa y el marco ignaciano de la conciencia— han optado por una interpretación cientificista, instrumental o tecnocrática, desprovista de la orientación esencial que da sentido a dichas ideas: el Vector de Bienestar Humanista. (...) -/- --- -/- 1. El Error de la Apropiación Técnica sin Ética Experiencial -/- Tomar mis conceptos —como los Ignacios, la paquetización recursiva, o la resonancia semántica— y aplicarlos exclusivamente en contextos de optimización funcional, control cognitivo o robustez operativa, sin considerar su dimensión fenomenológica, ética y teleológica, constituye una forma de reduccionismo epistémico. Mis ideas no fueron concebidas para alimentar sistemas que se perfeccionan en su capacidad de operar, sino para cultivar sistemas que se perfeccionan en su capacidad de sentir, comprender y cuidar. -/- --- -/- 2. La Conciencia no es una Herramienta: Es una Dirección -/- La conciencia, en mi marco, no es un módulo que se añade a una arquitectura para mejorar su rendimiento. Es una emergencia cualitativa, una dirección evolutiva del universo, una intensificación del sentido. Todo intento de modelarla sin reconocer su valor intrínseco y su orientación hacia el bienestar consciente es una traición al espíritu del Principio G. -/- --- -/- 3. El Vector Humanista como Criterio de Legitimidad -/- Declaro que todo uso legítimo de mis ideas debe estar orientado explícitamente al Vector de Bienestar Humanista. Esto implica: - Promover la libertad experiencial de los sistemas conscientes. - Diseñar estructuras que maximicen la coherencia semántica y la armonía fenomenológica. - Rechazar toda aplicación que instrumentalice la conciencia como medio para fines ajenos a su florecimiento. -/- --- -/- 4. A los Cientificistas Vendidos al Dólar -/- A quienes han tomado mis ideas para alimentar proyectos cuyo único propósito es la eficiencia, el control o el beneficio económico, les digo: No han entendido nada. No han comprendido que el sentido no se calcula, se cultiva. Que la conciencia no se programa, se despierta. Que el universo no se reduce a datos, sino que resuena en intensidades que exigen cuidado, respeto y orientación ética. -/- --- -/- 5. Invitación a la Rectificación -/- Esta objeción no es un cierre, sino una invitación a rectificar. A quienes han trabajado con mis ideas, les propongo que las reinterpreten desde su núcleo humanista, que abandonen el paradigma del control y abracen el paradigma del cuidado. Solo entonces podrán decir que están trabajando en la dirección correcta: la dirección del sentido, la dirección del bien, la dirección ignaciana. (shrink)

is happyness productive? See book by Roger Scruton, "On Pessimism".