Theology and Religious Studies

A brief exploration of the relationship between the ‘ideas’ or principles of all existing things as they are held in the divine intellect, and the Logos itself. I shall be pointing out that Balthasar’s assumption that pagan Neo-Platonism is pantheistic is misleading, and that Plotinus’s system is closer to Maximus than has been recognized by recent commentators. Issues about ‘Creation’, ‘the Fall’ and ‘the Incarnation’ make some difficulties for this proposal, which I acknowledge and attempt to deconstruct.

Can non-human animals be said to be "religious", and what is meant by "religion"? I address traditional arguments against this possibility, as well as more modern attempts to ground "religion" in natural lusts and affections, largely ignoring the metaphysical or mystical aspects of particular "religious" faiths.

It has been traditional to suppose that human beings, if they are to be reckoned something else than ‘animals’, must have an eye to the whole truth, the cosmos as a living reality, rather than the simple local worlds, the Umwelten, of all other creatures. To take this seriously is to develop a Platonic epistemology, whereby ‘reason’ is something more than the intelligent adaptation of means to local ends: Nous is the recognition of reality as something itself worth knowing. Either this is available to ground our conviction that we can indeed uncover real relationships or we must be content with a much more pragmatic, common sense approach to reasoning, and with merely local insight. In either case we may have less reason than we supposed to distinguish our own, human, endeavours and identity from those of other creatures.

Atheists in general need share no particular political or metaphysical views, but atheists of the most modern, Western, militant sort, escaping from a merely nihilistic mind-set, are usually humanists of an especially triumphalist kind. In this paper I offer a critical analysis and partial history of their claims, suggesting that they are members of a distinctively Christian heretical sect, formed in reaction to equally heretical forms of monotheistic idolatry.

How best can an apparently inconsistent triad be reconciled? To be good we must be ethically virtuous; being good is being like God; God isn't ethically virtuous. I offer an examination of the pagan and patristic insistence that we should not think merely mortal thoughts, but aim to be like gods. What sort of life do gods live, and how is that life related, perhaps paradigmatically, to the civil and purificatory virtues described by Neo-Platonists?

Persons are creatures with a range of personal capacities. Most known to us are also people, though nothing in observation or biological theory demands that all and only people are persons, nor even that persons, any more than people, constitute a natural kind. My aim is to consider what non-personal minds are like. Darwin's Earthworms are sensitive, passionate and, in their degree, intelligent. They may even construct maps, embedded in the world they perceive around them, so as to be able to construct their tunnels. Other creatures may be able to perceive that world as also accessible to other minds, and structure it by locality and temporal relation, without having many personal qualities. Non-personal mind, on both modern materialist and Plotinian grounds, may be the more usual, and the less deluded, sort of mind.

According to Plotinus’ exegesis of Homer’s Odyssey 11.601-2, Heracles’ image or shadow is in Hades, but he himself is among the gods (Ennead I.1[53].12; see also IV.3 [27].32). I shall explore the distinctions between living body, shadow and self as these affect Mediterranean thought about the Afterlife from the seventh century BC to the fifth AD. There was no one universal and coherent account in those years, either of the individual self or of the afterlife: for some, all that survived was memory; others might expect a simple repetition of our lives over infinite time or space; others again, from early until late, supposed that we were spirits, with no essential identity with our living bodies. Schematically, very different Spenglerian cultures develop in those centuries, despite the use of similar terms (like psyche) to describe – in Egyptian terms – both ka and ba.

Robots are to be built as animated tools, and the possibility of their rebellion is to be avoided by imposing fundamental laws. But those laws are both ambiguous and easily subverted. Despite our inclination to attribute personality and conscious life to robots it is likelier that successful robotsmost worryingly, von Neumann probes-will constitute intelligent but unconscious mechanisms for whom biological life will be either irrelevant or dangerous. A world or universe controlled entirely by such a civilization, even one that is not centralized but fragmented by the distances involved, will be effectively meaningless: here Max Tegmark's judgement agrees with Plotinus's, and both hint at the possibility of conceiving the real world as one understood and realized in Intellect. This real world is perhaps what robots have been supposed to miss, unless-by some miracle-they are woken up to conscious repentance.

It is a thoughtful and direct essay. Singer claims that a certain moral principle is true. He claims that it implies that affluent people such as ourselves ought to give very substantial assistance to the poverty-stricken victims of natural disaster in East Bengal. He goes further; he claims that 'the way of life that has come to be taken for granted in our society' needs to be altered. He anticipates various objections to his argument, and states his replies. He closes with a short discussion of the extent to which professional philosophers ought to try to influence public policy. The paper has been widely reprinted, and has become a sort of modern classic. I think it deserves this status. The moral principle to which Singer appeals is roughly this: SP: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it. 1 The principle seems plausible: if you see a child drowning in a shallow pond, and you could easily save him, then you ought to do it. The fact that it would ruin your nice suit can hardly excuse you. Preserving your suit is not of comparable significance. Since the death of an innocent child in East Bengal is clearly a bad thing, and affluent people like us can prevent quite a few such deaths merely by writing a check, we ought to do it. If we receive a request from UNICEF, it would be wrong for us simply to toss the envelope into the trash. The fact that writing the check and sending it in would require us to sacrifice an evening at the ballet can hardly excuse us. An evening at the ballet is not of comparable moral significance. Though SP seems quite plausible at first glance, further reflection might lead to doubts. Some people apparently feel that there are important differences between the case of the child in the shallow pond and the case of the children in East Bengal. Their moral intuition tells them that we have a duty to give aid in the case of the shallow pond; but their moral intuition does not tell them that we have a duty to give aid in the case of the envelope from UNICEF. They agree that the suffering of the children of East Bengal is very bad, and they

protect dispositional autonomy. To permit voluntary enslavement, for example, would exalt the occurrent over the dispositional. Paternalism is, however, distinguished from Devlin-type legal moralism. Chapter 7 devotes insufficient space to harm and offence as reasons for restricting autonomy. The result is a set of practical conclusions, sensible enough and doubtless supportable by argument, though their principled bases are not made sufficiently clear to preclude suspicions that the author is indulgent to his 'intuitions'. Chapter 8, which deals with restrictions on economic activity in the interest of autonomy, suffers in a higher degree from lack of spelled out argument. This is particularly unfortunate in view of the importance attached by the author himself to disentangling autonomism from economic individualism. The complaint is not that the conclusions are indefensible, only that they are insufficiently defended. Chapter 9 is a two page conclusion, which makes a high claim for the controversial nature of the surely familiar contention that the unfettered exercise of autonomy in the economic field may threaten the autonomy of others. The text is conspicuously lucid and well-organised, though in places over-compressed. Teachers and students of social philosophy will find it useful, even at the highish price, which one must hope was not inflated by the remarkable number of blank sheets bound in at both ends.

PLOTINIAN DUALISMS AND THE "GREEK" IDEAS OF SELF I. The Concept of "The Greek Concept" Talking about "the Greeks" or "the Classical Greeks" at all is likely to irritate classical scholars, who will point out that there is small reason to suppose that every native Greek speaker, or even everyone who thought of him-/herself as "Hellene," from Gerasa in Palestine to Massilia in southern Gaul, over all the centuries from Hesiod to the final fall of Byzantium (or whenever) shared any concept of the self, or the world, or what to have for breakfast. Even if we speak only of the Golden Age of Athens, from the defeat of Persia through its own brief empire to the death of Alexander, we can only really conclude that the Athenians were a disputatious people, agreeing on almost nothing. Talk of what "the Greeks" supposed is rendered even sillier when it is suggested-as it still often is-that these "Greeks" were dualists. Oswald Spengler, despite his obvious errors of scholarship and reasoned argument, was a lot closer to a truth of sorts, in suggesting that the essence of "Classical Culture" was corporealist and presentist. 1 The real self was the corporeal self. Maybe something survived its death, but it was only a shadow, a breath, a partial memory. Anything beyond an easy journey or a living memory vanished into myth or fable. This generalization too, I emphasize, is faulty-but it is at least a little truer to the literary and artistic record of the central centuries than is talk of "Greek Dualism." Plato, of course, may be an exception. Those who make the Platonic Dialogues their central reference will usually conclude that he is arguing for a clear distinction between Soul and Body, and between the Real World and the shifting, unresolvable Phenomena. They may even suppose, misleadingly, that he has in mind a distinction between the "material" and the "ideal" world. 2 There is some truth in thisthough what exactly is not so easy to decide-but it should be obvious that the dialogues were contentious, that Socrates's interlocutors were astonished and disbelieving when these doctrines, whatever they

T he overall aim of the NHS R&D Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme is to ensure that high-quality research information on the costs, effectiveness and broader impact of health technologies is produced in the most efficient way for those who use, manage and work in the NHS. Research is undertaken in those areas where the evidence will lead to the greatest benefits to patients, either through improved patient outcomes or the most efficient use of NHS resources. The Standing Group on Health Technology advises on national priorities for health technology assessment. Six advisory panels assist the Standing Group in identifying and prioritising projects. These priorities are then considered by the HTA Commissioning Board supported by the National Coordinating Centre for HTA (NCCHTA). This report is one of a series covering acute care, diagnostics and imaging, methodology, pharmaceuticals, population screening, and primary and community care. It was identified as a priority by the Methodology Group and funded as project number 94/35/01. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Standing Group, the Commissioning Board, the Panel members or the Department of Health. The editors wish to emphasise that funding and publication of this research by the NHS should not be taken as implicit support for the recommendations for policy contained herein. In particular, policy options in the area of screening will be considered by the National Screening Committee. This Committee, chaired by the Chief Medical Officer, will take into account the views expressed here, further available evidence and other relevant considerations. Reviews in Health Technology Assessment are termed 'systematic' when the account of the search, appraisal and synthesis methods (to minimise biases and random errors) would, in theory, permit the replication of the review by others. Criteria for inclusion in the HTA monograph series Reports are published in the HTA monograph series if (1) they have resulted from work either prioritised by the Standing Group on Health Technology, or otherwise commissioned for the HTA Programme, and (2) they are of a sufficiently high scientific quality as assessed by the referees and editors.

On Stoic principles (and those of classical physics) there is only one determinate time-line, whether or not its elements can always be predicted or retrodicted. It is now more often agreed that there are many possible time-lines, though there is no definite agreement about their ontological status. The option often explored in speculative fiction is that all such possible time-lines are equally "real", raising questions about our own identity "across time" and the moral implications of the thesis that we, or people almost identical with us, have done or will have done all the things we possibly could. It has even been proposed that our past history is as multiform as our future: many possible histories issue in this very moment, just as many possible futures diverge from it. I explore the implications of these notions, as represented in science fiction (where the interest lies in what it would be like to live in such a multiverse), and suggest that-in the absence of definite experimental proof-we had much better believe that not all possible time-lines are real rather than virtual, and that we may feature as the very same persons in all the lines where we exist at all.