La distinction entre la distinctio rationis ratiocinatae et la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis n’est aucunement une spécialité scotiste, mais bien un héritage scolastique commun depuis le XVIe. La controverse portait sur la manière dont la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis s’appliquait à la proposition « A=A ». Sur ce point, la pensée de Mastri constitue un tournant dans l’histoire du scotisme, dans la mesure où il n’instrumentalise plus la distinctio rationis ratiocinantis pour la logique mentaliste, mais au contraire la transforme en une doctrine (...) ontologique qui permet au conceptualisme d’Auriol de se faire une place au sein du scotisme.In the scholastic way of spelling out « A=A », some sort of distinction intervened between the relata, viz. the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis. To distinguish between the distinctio rationis ratiocinatae and ratiocinantis was commonplace from the sixteenth up to the eighteenth centuries. But how to make sense of a distinction that is without any foundation in the object itself ? Mastri’s account marks a crisis within Scotism, since his reception of Peter Aureol’s conceptualism made it possible to give the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis a metaphysical rather than a logical interpretation. (shrink)

The present essay explores the sources and the scope of a major feature of the scholastic logic and metaphysics: the 16th-century distinction of the reasoning reason in contradistinction to the distinction of reasoned reason. Depending on whether the non-identity was meant to refer to first-order or second-order intentions, the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis intervened either between a definition and the term defined or between the two terms of identical propositions: »A = A«. How to save this elusive kind of distinction was (...) a common concern of Thomists, Scotists and early modern Jesuits. Special attention is paid to the logician and metaphysician Bartholomew Mastri. German philosophy up to Frege will be considered. Quite contrary to a time-honoured prejudice, the ancient metaphysics turns out to have been furnished with a powerful device in order to avoid the traps of reification. (shrink)

While the French Jesuits were scandalized at God's moral necessity to elect the best, Des Bosses was right in defending the Théodicée drawing the attention to the contemporary Spanish theology. In fact, Optimism is not the invention of Leibniz', but of the two Sevillan Jesuits' Diego Ruiz de Montoya and Diego Granado . It will be argued that Optimism has two roots, both of them closely connected with the Posttridentinian Theology: 1) the moralization of modal categories, 2) a universe integrating (...) Nature, Grace and Incarnation. In the latter regard, Optimism is a legitimate child of Molinism, viz. in respect to the ,scientia media‘ being the basis of its concept of World, to the ,total decree‘ as a certain mode of this world being realized. As a result, the Théodicée depends on Jesuit theology to an extent which still has to be acknowledged. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to outline how destructive communication exemplified by ransomware cyberattacks destroys the process of organization, causes a “state of exception,” and thus constitutes organization. The authors build on Agamben's state of exception and translate it into communicative constitution of organization theory. Design/methodology/approach A significant increase of cyberattacks have impacted organizations in recent times and laid organizations under siege. This conceptual research builds on illustrative cases chosen by positive deviance case selection of ransomware attacks. Findings CCO theory focuses (...) mainly on ordering characteristics of communication. The authors aim to complement this view with a perspective on destructive communication that destroys the process of organization. Based on illustrative cases, the authors conceptualize a process model of destructive CCO. Practical implications The authors expand thoughts about a digital “corporate immune system” to question current offensive cybersecurity strategies of deterrence and promote resilience approaches instead. Originality/value Informed by destructive communication of cyberattacks, this theory advancement supports arguments to include notions of disorder into CCO theory. Furthermore, the paper explains where disruptions like cyberattacks may trigger sensemaking and change to preserve stability. Finally, a novel definition of ‘destructive CCO’ is provided: Destructive Communication Constitutes Organization by disrupting and destroying its site and surface while triggering sensemaking and becoming part of sensemaking itself. (shrink)

Who owns the girl’s body, the parents, or the daughter herself? In Catholic casuistry, this issue has not only been occasionally touched upon, it has been topical among the commentators on Aquinas (STh II-II, q. 154, a. 6) from the 16th up to the 18th centuries. Nevertheless, modern scholarship ignores this big dispute. The distortion of early modern history in consequence thereof precludes a fair appraisal of the achievements of the Christian schools within the Habsburgian commonwealth. Whereas the Iberian Peninsula (...) was the theatre of the endeavour here described (Domingo de Soto OP, Luis de Molina SJ, Gabriel Vázquez SJ, Juan de Lugo SJ, the Salmantine Carmelites), Jansenist France was forward in defeating it. The quarrel about this issue gains an additional interest by the observation that it represents the rare case where the schoolmen themselves had the keen feeling that the stand they took represented a divide between two ages, medieval and modern, viz. Pre-Tridentine and Post-Tridentine. The main purpose of the present paper, then, is to render a necessary piece of apologetics. Its focus is on the deplorable situation in which we presently are due to the rotten feminist convictions about how things went. (shrink)

Though it is well known that Hume composed his Treatise and the first version of his essay On Miracles during his stay in La Flèche, this fact has not received the attention it surely deserves. What may have induced a gentleman from Edinburgh to bury himself in the library of a Jesuit college? While every historian of early modern philosophy is quick to credit La Flèche with having provided Descartes’s education, Burton’s amazement that Hume himself never alludes to this unique (...) circumstance is still suggestive. I shall argue that what attracted Hume’s attention were the scholastic items contained in every good Jesuit library. (shrink)

Molinism, formerly an invective, is nowadays a topic of philosophy. This book, however, does not deal with the modern renaissance of Middle Knowledge, rather, it explores its proliferation during the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus shifts from reviewing current trends in Church History to rehearsing the metaphysics that backed up Middle Knowledge. Fact, in Molinism, is threefold: It could have been otherwise, it belongs to some possible world, it is necessarily known by the Omniscient. Whereas the classical account of (...) God's foreknowledge rests on its being postvolitional, the Molinist qualification of this account denies that it applies to the counterfactuals. On what else then does it prevolitionally depend that God knows for sure something to happen rather than not to happen? The Salmantine Treatise on God's foreknowledge edited here provides some additional piece of evidence of a deep Molinist disagreement. Though the manuscript was ready for print in 1653, this business failed and the manuscript fell into oblivion along with its author. The Jesuit Luke Wadding (1593-1651) belongs to a number of men from Waterford who at a time, when intolerance forced Catholics into large scale emigration, hopefully turned towards Spain. He must not be confounded with his famous namesake, the Franciscan friar, who was his cousin. (shrink)

What do we mean, when we claim that something is »refuted«? The present essay deals with the evolution of the notion of refutation. Nowadays, refutations do not enjoy that high estimation in intellectual life as formerly – a lost of credit that is due to the removal of the Aristotelian pattern of refutation and its having been replaced by a more demanding pattern during the 16th – 18th centuries. On the one hand, the modern pattern pushed the Enlightenment culture, on (...) the other hand, it ended up in a sceptical crisis. At first, this crisis concerned only philosophy. Finally, even the conclusiveness of empirical refutations was disputed. The philosophical way of doing Begriffsgeschichte, whereof the present essay is a specimen, centers on the long-term impact of definitions and distinctions. From this point of view, special attention is called to the contribution of the 18th-century Wolffianism. (shrink)

When disaster disrupts healthcare and other systems, the ethical allocation of resources should follow principles of justice, defined as fairness, established for normal clinical practice. Standards of clinical practice may be altered during disaster, but ethical standards must remain centered on prioritizing the treatment of patients according to need and the effectiveness of treatment. Should resources become extremely limited, it is fair to restrict their use to patients who have the highest needs, provided that the intervention is effective. When resources (...) become more available, patients with lower priority can be increasingly accommodated. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems will increasingly be used to cause harm as they grow more capable. In fact, AI systems are already starting to help automate fraudulent activities, violate human rights, create harmful fake images, and identify dangerous toxins. To prevent some misuses of AI, we argue that targeted interventions on certain capabilities will be warranted. These restrictions may include controlling who can access certain types of AI models, what they can be used for, whether outputs are filtered or can (...) be traced back to their user, and the resources needed to develop them. We also contend that new restrictions on non-AI capabilities needed to cause harm will be required. For example, concerns about AI-enabled bioweapon acquisition have motivated efforts to introduce DNA synthesis screening. Though capability restrictions risk reducing use more than misuse (resulting in an unfavorable Misuse–Use Tradeoff), we argue that interventions on capabilities are warranted in some circumstances when other interventions are insufficient, the potential harm from misuse is high, and there are targeted interventions. We provide a taxonomy of interventions that can reduce AI misuse, focusing on the specific steps required for a misuse to cause harm (the Misuse Chain), and a framework to determine if an intervention is warranted. We exemplify our framework to three examples: predicting novel toxins, creating harmful images, and automating spear phishing campaigns. (shrink)

The year 2021 saw the publication of Sven K. Knebel’s new book on Middle Knowledge. It is an exceedingly important research publication which deserves scholarly attention. The book contains a long introduction (consisting of various studies) and an edition of the fourth book of the Irish Jesuit theologian Luke Wadding’s incomplete work on scholastic theology. This present review article first recapitulates the origins and historical significance of the doctrine of Middle Knowledge. Then Knebel’s book as well as the (...) career of Luke Wadding are introduced. I then discuss the place of Wadding’s work in the Jesuit discourse of ‘concordia’ and its relation to Molinism. In the subsequent sections, I investigate various doctrines defended by Wadding. These include his view of disjunctive necessity, his variant of the doctrine known as ‘connectionism’, and his use of various kinds of distinctions in theology. The study concludes with a critical assessment of Knebel’s publication. Despite all praise, I disagree with Knebel’s all too pessimistic view of the research landscape: We will soon be pondering over why Early Modern scholasticism has received so much attention in recent scholarship, rather than why it did not do so in the past. (shrink)

A collection with papers on early modern views on laws and causation. Authors: Michael Hampe, Katia Saporiti, Sven Knebel, Andreas Hüttemann, Friedrich Steinle, Rainer Specht, Hans-Peter Schütt, Dominik Perler, Wolfgang Krohn, Robert Schnepf.

Psychoanalysis is the name of a practical psychology, which seeks to make intelligible the aberrant phenomena in the stream of human experience which often are coincident with suffering and ineffectuality. In addition, it has another distinguishing characteristic in that it seeks to create a teachable method for the systematic treatment of these disturbances in adaptation. The application of scientific method to a psychology with these objectives created problems which are unique. These problems stem from the nature of the subject matter (...) with which it deals and the particular objectives of the scientific maneuvers. Its subject matter constitutes material which no other psychology has seen fit to deal with and the objective, namely, therapy, is one which imposes upon this scientific discipline a social responsibility. (shrink)

В книге рассматриваются проблемы, занимавшие умы ученых мыслителей и нашедшие свое выражение в различных вариантах философии истории. Для тех, кто хочет знать, что такое история, имеет ли она цель и смысл, и нужно ли ее изучать.

Anistia e as Ambivalências do Cinismo- A ADPF 153 e Micropolíticas da Memória consiste em uma primeira aproximação da pesquisa dos problemas contemporâneos suscitados por um tema cujo aparente anacronismo revela progressivamente sua extemporânea atualidade- o da anistia no Brasil, suas consequências éticas e políticas na transição do Estado brasileiro, e de suas instituições à democracia. Estes estudos foram escritos na atmosfera do debate público suscitado por ocasião do julgamento da ADPF 153 - sob todos os aspectos - sua propositura, (...) pelo Conselho Federal da OAB, consistiu em um gesto simbólico com o potencial de reabrir internamente o debate jurídico, ético e político sobre os temas da anistia e da responsabilização de agentes de Estado, civis e militares, violadores de direitos humanos no Brasil. Decantados nos anos seguintes, os textos que apresentamos ao leitor foram revistos e ampliados à luz de alguns encontros e oportunidades para debater o tema em espaços de pesquisa e de divulgação acadêmica privilegiados. (shrink)

Background: The magnitude of bullying and harassment among psychiatrists is reportedly high, yet no peer-review published studies addressing this issue could be found. Therefore, it was decided to conduct a pilot study to assess the degree of the problem, the types of bullying/harassment and to provide some insights into the situation.Methods and Principal Findings: Following multiple focus group meetings, a yes/no response type questionnaire was developed to assess the degree and type of bullying and harassment experienced by psychiatrists. Over a (...) 3-month period the questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 60 psychiatrists. 57 out of the 60 psychiatrists reported harassment and bullying. Frequencies of the following response variables are presented in descending order: rumours 40% ; defamation 20% ; passing remarks 20% ; false accusations 15% ; threats 13.3% ; verbal abuse 13.3% ; unjustified complaints 13.3% ; promotion blocked 13.3% ; humiliation 13% ; bad reference given 10% ; credentials questioned 8.3% ; physical attacks 5% ; termination 5% ; derogatory remarks 1.7% and 1.7% were subjected to personal work. As a result of being subjected to harassment, 66.7% of the psychiatrists did not take any action, whereas 33.3% confronted the person they believed responsible. Asked whether the bullying and harassment caused distress, 18.3% of the psychiatrists did not report any effect, 30% reported mild distress, 40% moderate distress and severe distress was reported by 11.7%.Conclusions: It was concluded that the magnitude of bullying and harassment among psychiatrists may be quite high, as evidenced by this pilot study. There is a need for extensive systematic studies on this subject and to establish strategies to prevent and address this issue at a national and regulatory level. (shrink)

Not being satisfied with the interpretation offered by Sankara and his followers, or some other teachers the author has attempted in the following pages to present to the readers his own interpretation of the work as he has understood it. But in no way does he claim that his interpretation is the interpretation, i.e., the interpretation intended by Gaudapada himself. In the present volume the author has given a new edition of the text of the Agamasastra based on a number (...) of MSS and different editions, followed by an English translation. After this comes his annotation. At the end there are Appendixes including the text and English translation of the Mandukya Upanisad, VAriants of the MSS used for the edition of the text of the Agamasastra, and different indexes. (shrink)

On the philosophy of death in Hindu traditions; study based on Mr̥tyupurāṇa of Svāmī Mr̥tyujayānanda.

This book is one of the definitive accounts of Steiner-Waldorf education by the founder of the first Waldorf School in the UK. In clear and insightful terms, Cecil Harwood presents the heart of this unique approach to children's development, learning and wellbeing as a much-needed antidote to modern educational methods. Harwood's book is full of still-fresh ideas for both parents and teachers, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Steiner-Waldorf education. The classic work has been edited for the modern (...) age, with a contextualising introduction by Professor Douglas Sloan. (shrink)

I am now sitting in La Antigua, Guatemala. It's 6:00 a.m. Ancient church bells compete with their clanging. Some with a clear ringing, others of dead metal. For centuries this tiny town of some 20 square blocks was the very center of Christianity in the "new" world. Its philosophy was brought to this place, lock, stock, and barrel. And, from here it was funneled south to Peru and north to Mexico. Not a philosophy of "liberation." Just ask the Maya who (...) remain. (shrink)