Explore the vast range of titles available.

Diminished rewards arise from attempts to establish hierarchies within the healthily variegated scope of contemporary theory. A re-emerging pragmatism is present in current architectural discourse, which frames certain modalities as indulgences. To appraise theory—if possible—it is necessary to ask what criteria exists for sorting out theory. Exploring the edges of discourse can accomplish this: to paint a simplified antipodal dialogue between differing perspectives to understand the scope of theory better. This essay uses a dialectic between Existential Theorists (those addressing contemporary issues focusing on human survival) and Esoteric Theorists (those addressing a myriad of topics that are specialised and not as clearly relevant to contemporary topics). Following this analysis, I deconstruct the boundaries between these two modalities to cast into doubt the methods for appraising theory. This is bolstered by a brief reminder of the lessons of Pragmatism in the last hundred years and follows with the stubborn reminders of post-structuralism. William Blake, who revealed a path towards radical subjectivity, is treated as a proto-post-structuralist. All of this is in service to a deep scepticism of appraisal and a plea for a “softer pragmatism,” one that softens the hard boundaries between the variegated modalities of theory. 

Diminished rewards arise from attempts to establish hierarchies within the healthily variegated scope of contemporary theory. A re-emerging pragmatism is present in current architectural discourse, which frames certain modalities as indulgences. To appraise theory—if possible—it is necessary to ask what criteria exists for sorting out theory. Exploring the edges of discourse can accomplish this: to paint a simplified antipodal dialogue between differing perspectives to understand the scope of theory better. This essay uses a dialectic between Existential Theorists (those addressing contemporary issues focusing on human survival) and Esoteric Theorists (those addressing a myriad of topics that are specialised and not as clearly relevant to contemporary topics). Following this analysis, I deconstruct the boundaries between these two modalities to cast into doubt the methods for appraising theory. This is bolstered by a brief reminder of the lessons of Pragmatism in the last hundred years and follows with the stubborn reminders of post-structuralism. William Blake, who revealed a path towards radical subjectivity, is treated as a proto-post-structuralist. All of this is in service to a deep scepticism of appraisal and a plea for a “softer pragmatism,” one that softens the hard boundaries between the variegated modalities of theory. 

Abstract Marilyn McCord Adams has defended theodicy by appeal to the idea of post-mortem compensation for the victims of horrendous evil. I have argued that this overlooks the dissociation of theodicy from moral reality that she concedes in her response to criticism of theodicy by D Z Phillips. Joshua Thurow has recently defended Adams against my argument. Here I defend and strengthen that argument against Thurow.

In cancer biology, genomics represents a big data problem that needs accurate visual data processing and analytics. The human genome is very complex with thousands of genes that contain the information about the individual patients and the biological mechanisms of their disease. Therefore, when building a framework for personalised treatment, the complexity of the genome must be captured in meaningful and actionable ways. This paper presents a novel visual analytics framework that enables effective analysis of large and complex genomics data. By providing interactive visualisations from the overview of the entire patient cohort to the detail view of individual genes, our work potentially guides effective treatment decisions for childhood cancer patients. The framework consists of multiple components enabling the complete analytics supporting personalised medicines, including similarity space construction, automated analysis, visualisation, gene-to-gene comparison and user-centric interaction and exploration based on feature selection. In addition to the traditional way to visualise data, we utilise the Unity3D platform for developing a smooth and interactive visual presentation of the information. This aims to provide better rendering, image quality, ergonomics and user experience to non-specialists or young users who are familiar with 3D gaming environments and interfaces. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach through case studies with datasets from childhood cancers, B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) and Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) patients, on how to guide the effective treatment decision in the cohort.

Marilyn McCord Adams agrees with D. Z. Phillips that instrumental theodicy is a moral failure, and that sceptical theists and others are guilty of ignoring what we know now (in this life) about the moral reality of horrendous evils to speculate about unknown ways these evils might be made sense of. In place of theodicy, Adams advocates ‘the logic of compensation’ for the victims of evil, a postmortem healing of divine intimacy with God. This goes so deep, she believes, that eventually victims will see the horrors they suffered as points of contact with the incarnate, suffering God and cease wishing they had never suffered them. I argue Adams’s position falls foul of the very criticisms she and Phillips make against instrumental theodicy.

Gleeson responds to comments made by Bishop and Mintoff regarding his book A Frightening Love. Gleeson argues that what goes for love goes for good and evil, and indeed for God .

Much contemporary analytic philosophy understands the power of God as belonging to the same logical space as the power of human beings: a power of efficient causation taken to the maximum limit. This anthropomorphic picture is often explicated in terms of God’s capacity to bring about any logically possible state of affairs, so-called omnipotence. D.Z. Phillips criticized this position in his last book, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God . I defend Phillips’s argument against recent criticism by William Hasker, contending that the omnipotence thesis is either false or trivial. I trace the superficial plausibility of the thesis to a Cartesian understanding of personal agency, in the light of which God’s power over the whole material world is an inflated version of our more modest power over our own bodies: it is the power of immaterial souls to control material phenomena. This comparison is expressed to perfection in the work of Richard Swinburne, my main target. I argue that by making God a force among other possible forces, in-principle able to be resisted, however feebly, by contrary forces, this picture reduces the Creator to a creature.

In ‘The Power of God’ (Gleeson 2010 ) I elaborate and defend an argument by the late D.Z. Phillips against definitions of omnipotence in terms of logical possibility. In ‘Which God? What Power? A Response to Andrew Gleeson’ (Hasker 2010 ), William Hasker criticizes my defense of Phillips’ argument. Here I contend his criticisms do not succeed. I distinguish three definitions of omnipotence in terms of logical possibility. Hasker agrees that the first fails. The second fails because negative properties (like disembodiedment and simplicity) do not amount to a nature that licenses the attribution of causal powers. The third fails because it does not identify actions that can be performed without a body. It cannot be saved by appeal to the idea of purely mental acts.