Encountering Reality
Encountering Reality

Author: Travis M. Stevick

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1506412920

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Encountering Reality argues for a new appreciation of T. F. Torrance on epistemology and reality. According to Torrance's realism, all authentic knowledge involves the nature of the object impressing its inherent rationality on the mind. Consequently, knowledge involves thinking in accordance with the nature of the object. We shall explore the place and function of “ultimate beliefs” in epistemology, as well as the question as to whether such beliefs imply a retreat to either foundationalism or fideism. The inescapability of ultimate beliefs in all human knowledge requires a shift in the traditional notion of objectivity. We find that shift in the account provided by T. F. Torrance, whose epistemological position implies an alternative notion of truth. Drawing on distinctly Christian sources, Torrance emphasizes the distinction between truth and truthfulness thereby reorienting the discussion from a focus on statements to a focus on being. This shift challenges the dichotomy between correspondence and coherence theories of truth and provides one way of transcending the scientific realism/anti-realism debate and gives rise to a practical epistemological tool, disclosure models, which function as self-correcting, self-marginalizing lenses through which we encounter reality, yielding knowledge in accordance to the nature of the thing known.

Encountering Truth
Encountering Truth

Author: Pope Francis

Publisher: Image

Published: 2015-06-16

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1101903015

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Experience the morning homilies of Pope Francis and witness how he continues to change the life of the Catholic Church. Shortly after seven in the morning, Pope Francis gives a brief homily in the little Vatican chapel of Saint Martha, in front of an audience that is always different: gardeners, office workers, nuns and priests, as well as a growing group of journalists. It is a set appointment, and in some ways a revolutionary innovation, where a pope speaks to everyone, off the cuff, without any written text, as he would have done as a parish priest. Encountering Truth is a collection of highlights from these homilies from March 2013 to May 2014. Along with summaries by Radio Vaticana (who recorded and transcribed the homilies) and commentary by Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, these reflections provide moments of inspiration, simplicity, and a glimpse into the papal world very few ever get to experience.

Encountering Artificial Intelligence
Encountering Artificial Intelligence

Author: Matthew J. Gaudet

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2024-03-15

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13:

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What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’s discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, the document investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI.

The Nature of Reality
The Nature of Reality

Author: Steven E. Kaufman

Publisher: Balboa Press

Published: 2023-10-03

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13:

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What is The Nature of Reality? Contrary to what almost all human beings presently believe, we do not live in a physical Universe because, as The Nature of Reality explains, physical reality is just an appearance that is being created by our minds and then superimposed by projection upon the non-physical reality that is both actually there and what we really are. The problem that arises as a result of believing physical reality to be the reality that is actually there is that that mistaken belief causes physical reality to function like a misperceived reflection to continuously obscure one’s own reality from their awareness, thereby effectively trapping one’s awareness in what is nothing more than a mind-generated experiential dream that is neither the reality that is actually there nor the reality that one really is. The Nature of Reality was written to provide you with the opportunity to free yourself from that experiential dream and from the suffering being trapped in that dream produces by using fundamental scientific facts to demonstrate that physical reality is not the reality that is actually there where it appears to be so you can rid your mind of the false belief in physical reality that it is inadvertently using to convert physical reality into a delusion that continuously hides from your awareness the non-physical reality you really are. Whether you know it or not, your awareness is presently trapping itself in a mind-generated experiential dream as a function of what is nothing more than a mistaken belief. The question is: Are you ready to loosen your grip on that belief so you can begin to wake up and become aware of the reality you really are?

Anthony C Thiselton and the Grammar of Hermeneutics
Anthony C Thiselton and the Grammar of Hermeneutics

Author: Robert Knowles

Publisher: Authentic Media Inc

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 1780783493

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A provisional and preliminary attempt to show how the formative hermeneutical thinking of Anthony C. Thiselton - once systematized and critiqued - can begin to resolve the major problems found in the discipline of hermeneutics today, most notably its varying 'disunities' - theoretical, practical, and inter-disciplinary. This book aims to show that the formative thinking of Anthony C. Thiselton provides valuable insights for a programmatic construction towards a unified hermeneutical theory. This construction provides powerful keys for unlocking six contemporary problems in hermeneutics: disorganization, complexity, abstraction, theoretical disunity on several levels, inter-disciplinary polarization, and irresponsible interpretation. Robert Knowles' exhaustive analysis engages critically and creatively.

Encountering ETI
Encountering ETI

Author: John Hart

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1610978803

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Encountering ETI weaves together scientific knowledge and spiritual faith in a cosmic context. It explores consequences of Contact between terrestrial intelligent life (TI) and extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI). Humans will face cosmic displacement if there are other complex, technologically advanced intelligent beings in the universe; our economic structures and religious beliefs might need substantial revision. On Earth or in space, humans could encounter benevolent ETI (solicitous of our striving for maturity as a species) or malevolent ETI (seeking our land and goods to benefit themselves, claiming that their "superior civilization" gives them the right)--or meet both types of species. Earth Encounters of the Third Kind described by credible witnesses (including American Indian elders) suggest that both have arrived already: some shut down U.S. and U.S.S.R. ICBM missiles to promote peace; others mutilated cattle or abducted people, perhaps to acquire physiological data on biota for scientific study or for other, unknown purposes. Sci-fi movies such as Avatar and novels like The Martian Chronicles describe humans as malevolent ETI aliens: we do to others what we fear others will do to us. A shared and evolving spiritual materiality could enable humanity to overcome cosmic displacement, and guide TI and ETI in a common quest for meaning and wellbeing on cosmic common ground.

Christopraxis
Christopraxis

Author: Andrew Root

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1451484283

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Finding practical theology not always able to present frameworks for understanding concrete and lived experience with divine action, Andrew Root's Christopraxis seeks to reset the edifice of practical theology on a new foundation. While not minimizing its commitment to the lived and concrete, Root argues that practical theology has neglected deeper theological underpinnings. Root seeks to create a practical theology that is properly and fully theological, post-postmodern, post-Aristotelian, and that attends to doctrines such as divine action and justification.

Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering Their Identities
Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering Their Identities

Author: Maya Kahanoff

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2016-04-13

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1498504981

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Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering their Identities reveals the powerful potential of inter-group dialogues to transform identities and mutually negating relations. Using meetings with Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arabian students who attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as case studies, Kahanoff examines the hidden psychological dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and illustrates how each participant’s sense of identity shifted in response to encounters with conflicting perspectives. Kahanoff contends that an awareness of the limitations of dialogue, without the renunciation of its value, is the most realistic basis upon which to build a sustainable agreement. This book is recommended for scholars of psychology, sociology, religious studies, political science, and communication studies.

Ethical Encounter
Ethical Encounter

Author: C. Cordner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2001-12-14

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0230509177

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This book shows how our moral concepts are nourished by awe, reverence and various forms of love. These ways of encountering the world and other human beings inform our sense of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of obligation, of fidelity and betrayal, and of many virtues and vices. In ways moral philosophy commonly misses, this book shows moral understanding is broadened and deepened by what is disclosed only in these forms of encounter.