Jacob Einwechter

For quite some time now, there has been a nebulous idea of the Near-Death Experience in popular culture.1 Stories of a light and a tunnel and seeing loved ones are touted briefly in mainstream media and are either harshly criticized or summarily dismissed.2 Few laymen have truly looked into the experience all while more and more psychologists, neurobiologists,

If we say that we can't know that we have the truth in science or philosophy, but can know we are being rational, then how do we know our idea of rationality is the true one? Epistemically, we have here not a mere circularity, but a vicious one that undermines itself. It is not even enough to claim that one's idea of rationality might possibly be the true one since this maneuver perpetuates the error initially entered into, namely, that we can never know the truth even if we did in fact espouse it in some particular domain of inquiry. Therefore, it seems we are committed first to espousing that there is one best rationality in any domain and also to espousing that our particular standards of justification are the true standards for that domain. However, one might reply that we need not believe that we hold the finally true standards of justification, but that we hold the best among a current set of alternatives. But it would remain even after this reasoning that we still do not hold the finally true standard of justification and this raises the question of why one standard should be accepted if it is only relatively the best. Let us more directly turn this enquiry in upon epistemic issues themselves. If I claim my externalist or internalist epistemic standard is the best one relative to others currently espoused among philosophers, I state nothing at all that is internally inconsistent. However, if I make my assumptions more explicit, and state that my epistemic standard's superiority is of a purely relative nature to others, then how could I possibly be consistent with this claim when I engage in chastising the moral relativist, the scientific antirealist, or even the Cartesian skeptic? If one doubts the reality of the external world, those who espouse relative rationality instead of final truth, can merely offer some relative reasons why they think that person is wrong, but they cannot consistently claim that the denier of the external world is finally wrong if they make no counter claim to the final truth. The denier's view might be said to be less justified than those who do believe there is a mind-independent world, but both parties agree that it might possibly turn out that the apparently skeptical view is actually the finally true view to espouse. Now concerning truth and rationality, I do not see why any philosophical position is worth holding if it is merely the most rational to hold in an epistemically relative sense. Perhaps an extreme example might jolt philosophers of such dubious relativity out of their stupor. Suppose a husband and wife have been verbally fighting for several years and that the wife accuses her husband of physically beating her recently. Although she can identify no bruises or injuries whatsoever, and indeed only the husband is the one with a black eye, they go to a criminal court where the husband potentially faces 10 years in prison. We all recognize in the law that drawing the best inference relative to others does not satisfy an appropriate, or perhaps a moral standard of epistemic justification. In other words, since we cannot definitively identify the final truth of the matter, we refrain from judgment, which in a criminal case means that the defendant is innocent by default. The case is much different with epistemology, however. A philosopher could conceivably refrain from espousing any regular standard of epistemic justification, but it would not follow that internalism or externalism is more rational or less rational by default. In fact, just who owns the burden of proof in first philosophies is itself an irresolvable debate. On what basis other than one's own circular position could he place the burden of epistemic proof on another's circular position? And when we then conclude that circular positions are perfectly justifiable, we neglect to address the question that constantly concerns us elsewhere: which position is relatively more justified? Having arrived at this stage of the dilemma, Earnest Sosa motions that we adopt a " virtue epistemology, " where we explore the internal fruitfulness, or the " virtues " of one kind of

The scope and utility of the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes in biology has recently been questioned. As examples of developmental plasticity and niche construction continue to surface, a number of biologists and philosophers are beginning to doubt the picture of evolutionary biology rendered by the Modern Synthesis (Westultimate distinction is not applicable in certain circumstances, I argue that proponents of evolutionary psychology lean too heavily upon the distinction and that their failure to notice where it breaks down is symptomatic of a deeper problem. The deeper problem is that unrestrained adherence to the distinction blinds one from questioning whether some current proximate cause has any ultimate cause at all. Those dedicated to the evolutionary psychological (EP) " paradigm " have to be more sensitive to the fact that proximate causes in humans are often the only causes of their behavior and that no ultimate evolutionary causes exists in many instances. My main aim in this article is to use the proximate-ultimate distinction to find some line dividing human practices that will and will not be amenable to EP speculations. In what follows, I will first review the recent literature on the proximate-ultimate distinction and specify which amended version of Mayr's distinction I will adopt (section one); then I analyze how some prominent EP advocates erroneously employ the distinction (section two); and then I will reinterpret the adaptationist debate so relevant to EP in terms of the proximate-distal distinction (section three); and finally I will offer an initial sketch of some criteria for when the distinction is applicable in EP (section four). The hope is that translating the adaptationist debate into proximate-ultimate terms will offer some way forward for the EP program in spite of its loss of the said distinction's universal applicability.

Defining " Consciousness " Before it is meaningful to speak of how religious systems evolved, one must explain how human beings have attained their current psychological complexity from which their religion sprouts. By " complexity " I mean that human behaviors are not very predictable and when they are, the factors involved in the predictability are legion. Even when all the influences on a human decision are known and understood, there is still the challenge of understanding a person's introspective mechanisms which delineate which influences are to take priority over others. Because there is much more evidence for how human consciousness evolved than there is for how religion itself developed,1 let us survey the evolution of human consciousness and see how that might come to bear on the study of ancient Yahwism.

The following essay was written in one (albeit long) sitting on May 24, 2015, from 9am to 11:57am. I chose to leave it as it was written because that is the only way for it to be consistent with itself. An Organic Phenomenology of The Temporality of Epistemology What can be said of the fact that logic is instrumental in that it is employed to communicate the logical sufficiency of a non-logical conclusion? No argument is truly fashioned without the end goal in mind. But that means that we are blindly swinging as it were. In order for this whole process to appear coherent to us, we must assume that a conclusion that is true, must have a logical story to be told about it. Paradoxically, we abandon this presumption when we come back to the most basic axioms such as the law of excluded middle or of non-contradiction, at which point we decide that these rules of logic are normative simply because the conscientious denial of them is cognitively uncomfortable. Debaters of epistemology can be divided into two main camps: there are the internalists and the externalists. The internalist view is that the justification of knowledge must come from reasons the reasoner has for his or her beliefs, while the externalist view is that beliefs should be justified by the external conditions in which they were formed. Notice that the externalist view includes the temporality of belief formation while the internalist view seeks a timeless justification. The internalist looks to the logical structure of his belief and the externalist looks back to the context in which it was formed. One might offer the generalization that the internalist is the rationalist and the externalist is the empiricist, albeit both adopt each other's perspective somewhere along the way. Inasmuch as I am interested in the temporal nature of how we come to believe things and how we construct, what I'll call, revisionist logical stories, I am an externalist. More and more work is being produced on how humans come to many of their beliefs. Justin Barrett is a representative figure in this field who finds that much of what we believe is produced automatically and unconsciously by the brain. This automatic process makes obvious sense in light of evolution, even if we avoid a straightforward conclusion that it is " adaptive. " The issue I focus on here is the fact that every logical argument is an ex post facto story of the coherence of a non-coherent belief. Notice, I do not say that human beliefs are incoherent by default, but that they are non-coherent in that they are produced in a realm unknown and unknowable to our conscious selves. Notice also that I speak here of beliefs being unconsciously formed and not

• If we are operating as Homo sapiens, then let's recognize this and embrace it rather than pretend it is something that has no bearing on our moral intuitions and explicit arguments, whether from pure reason or empirical observation. The fact that our views are fashioned from a point of view need not ipso facto undermine them, but it should reorient our view of what they can and can't accomplish. A human cannot pretend to disinterestedly observe that there exists intrinsic moral value in animals when he does in fact have an interest, and of course, taking into account our own interests is rational to do if we seek the mind-independent " truth. " However, when we do take our place in the world into account, which is verified through far more direct empirical observation than through moral arguments, then we find that the initial arguments are not rational per se, but expected as effects of (brute, non-cognitive) causes which we can identify. • All of moral theory and epistemic positions are arrived at through pragmatic arguments, contrary to those holding positions within the domains of philosophy who would say that they arrived at (some of) their conclusions because the conclusive propositions are true. If they then say that they adopted their positions operating on the pragmatic ethic of comparing arguments and taking the one with the most agreeable content, then they lose the initial proposition of saying they arrived at their position because it is argumentatively supported (in a non-pragmatic way). Now, one could argue that what counts as substantiating evidence for some claim will only count insofar as it is useful to substantiating that claim, and then say that even my argument is pragmatic—but that's exactly what I am arguing for!! The pragmatist is far more consistent and it is the one with reasons stemming from ontology or logic who is undermining his own view. • Now, it follows that if we are agreed that even logic is employed pragmatically as a constraint on what we ought and ought not to accept, then we need not have any beliefs in the objective truths of logic or any other fundamental notions. And more than this, the idea that all " truth " is conditional and subject to revision is just the pragmatic notion I am arguing for and some hold this view of truth without recognizing that it universalizes their position on everything, making it all pragmatic. I don't believe that the law of excluded middle is to be accepted because it is well-supported by arguments, but because it is a semantic description of the world that is almost universally supported by what we observe (however, quantum physics might undermine it). • More interestingly, as Rorty points out, a necessary condition of rationality involves specifying in advance the criteria for what is to be accepted, i.e. what justifies our beliefs. To do this, we must come up with a standard of what counts as a justified belief. Now, philosophers will wave their hand at the skeptic for having too high a standard for justification and they will demand that the skeptic support his standard with rational arguments. When it is asked in return how the " non-skeptic " justifies his more humble standard, he can give no argument amounting to anything other than the idea that his standard has some hope of our attaining it! But that is pragmatism par excellence and exposes the fact of our animal nature—we are no more rational than the chimp or the butterfly since what counts as rational for us is what produces fruitful results. But to equate human rationality with this lower, animal form of it, is contrary to our humanist intuitions of rationality which is that we can specify what counts as justified in advance. That is the paradox of thorough-going pragmatism and it is the problem I take to need some answering (although I as of yet have not found a way to do so). If we have no standard in advance by which to judge our progress, then such a standard is itself ever in development and that makes us, essentially at least, no more rational than animals. The fact that we have language and logical relations just produces an illusion of rationality which is never delivered in actual fact.

No doctrine has seen more refining in the past twenty-five years than the doctrine of inerrancy. If one says that the Bible is "inerrant," bible teachers, pastors, and scholars will immediately be asking the question, "What kind of inerrancy do you believe?" Their question is