Like _Beyond All Appearances_,_ _which it supplements, Paul Weiss’s new book is a fundamental work which faces all the hard issues which are not only at the heart of philosophy but at the core of our entire culture. Readers of Mr. Weiss’s phenomenology of religion will need no introduction to this new work which expands and clari­fies many of the issues raised in _Beyond All Appearances. _However, no knowl­edge of Paul Weiss’s previous books is required to understand and appreciate this (...) brilliant new exposition. Weiss’s plain style makes his ideas accessible to all intelligent readers, whether or not they have been trained as professional philosophers. Here in _First Considerations _Mr. Weiss addresses himself to such topics as actuality, internalization, evidence, names, substance, being, natures and possibilities, existence, unity and the cosmos—issues which have engrossed him as a moral philosopher and meta­physician throughout his distinguished career. In his progress through the ideas and issues expounded in this new book Mr. Weiss is concerned with the human condition distinctive of this species of ours. Rigorously applied, his moral philosophy is as complete and thorough as that of any of the major thinkers, and provides as complete a guide as, for example, that of Buddhism. A highly original work, no doubt well in advance of current trends in philosophy, _First Considerations _will provoke further thought and discussion and will be regarded as a seminal work in modern philosophical approaches. (shrink)

Professor Savage has been candid and generous in stating his interest in philosophy, and the philosophers who have heard him are surely grateful for this. His attitude is very far from that of some competent scientists and mathematicans who purport to clear up the questions which philosophers raise concerning their disciplines by means of a battery of technical results of varying relevance—a procedure which can often be appropriately described as “an abominable snow-job.” However, Professor Savage's generosity places a responsibility on (...) philosophers, since the questions he raises are difficult. (shrink)

H.P. Stapp has proposed a number of demonstrations of a Bell-type theorem which dispensed with an assumption of hidden variables, but relied only upon locality together with an assumption that experimenters can choose freely which of several incompatible observables to measure. In recent papers his strategy has centered upon counterfactual conditionals. Stapp’s paper in American Journal of Physics, 2004, replies to objections raised against earlier expositions of this strategy and proposes a simplified demonstration. The new demonstration is criticized, several subtleties (...) in the logic of counterfactuals are pointed out, and the proofs of J.S. Bell and his followers are advocated. (shrink)

Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance is a book for theoretical physicists and philosophers of modern physics. It treats a puzzling and provocative aspect of recent quantum physics: the apparent interaction of certain physical events that cannot share any causal connection. These are said to be `entangled' in some way, but an explanation remains elusive. Abner Shimony - to whom the book is dedicated - and others suggest the need to revive the category of what may be seen as a metaphysical (...) potentiality. Abner has described these events without actions to link them as `passion at a distance': not active, but passive. The discussions gathered here are written by a truly remarkable cast of scientists and philosophers and shed new light on the most profound puzzles of our times. (shrink)

In early work, I argued that Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, often represented, in his political speeches and writings, a form of philosophical pragmatism with special relations to the University of Chicago and its reform tradition. That form of pragmatism, especially evident in the work of such early figures as John Dewey and Jane Addams, and such later figures as Saul Alinsky, Abner Mikva, David Greenstone, Richard Rorty, Danielle Allen, and Cass Sunstein, contributed greatly (...) to the intellectual atmosphere that Obama breathed during his many years in Chicago as a community organizer, senior lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, and emerging figure in Illinois politics. And that form of pragmatism has, from Dewey to Obama, been keenly concerned to appropriate for its purposes the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. My purpose in this essay is to set out these filiations in ways more accessible to a global audience, and to carry the story forward through the opening moves of the Obama presidency. Key Words: Obama • pragmatism • optimism • pessimism • community • rhetoric • political philosophy. (shrink)

From the beginning, the implications of quantum theory for our most general understanding of the world have been a matter of intense debate. Einstein argues that the theory had to be regarded as fundamentally incomplete. Its inability, for example, to predict the exact time of decay of a single radioactive atom had to be due to a failure of the theory and not due to a permanent inability on our part or a fundamental indeterminism in nature itself. In 1964, John (...) Bell derived a theorem which showed that any deterministic theory which preserved locality would have certain consequences for measurements performed at a distance from one another. An experimental check seems to show that these consequences are not, in fact, realized. The correlation between the sets of events is much stronger than any local deterministic theory could allow. What is more, this stronger correlation is precisely that which is predicted by quantum theory. The astonishing result is that local deterministic theories of the classical sort seem to be permanently excluded. Not only can the individual decay not be predicted, but no future theory can ever predict it. The contributors in this volume wrestle with this conclusion. Some welcome it; others leave open a return to at lease some kind of deterministic world, one which must however allow something like action-at-a distance. How much lit it? And how can one avoid violating relativity theory, which excludes action-at-a-distance? How can a clash between the two fundamental theories of modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, be avoided? What are the consequences for the traditional philosophic issue of causality explanation and objectivity? One thing is certain; we can never return to the comfortable Newtonian world where everything that happened was, in principle, predictable and where what happened at one measurement site could not affect another set of measurements being performed light-years away, at a distance that a light-signal could not bridge. Contributors: James T. Cushing, Abner Shimony, N. David Mermin, Jon P. Jarrett, Linda Wessels, Bas C. van Fraassen, Jeremy Butterfield, Michael L. G. Redhead, Henry P. Stapp, Arthur Fine, R. I. G. Hughes, Paul Teller, Don Howard, Henry J. Folse, and Ernan McMullin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:714 BOOK REVIEWS learning; the Jesuits lean to the voluntarist. Possessed of a unitary academic model, he is really arguing for Aristotle's analogy of attribution. Apparently, no one of his 200 plus Jesuit contacts told him that Nastri prefer St. Thomas and his analogy of proper proportionality. The historian Daniel Boorstin spent 25 yeari!l writing his trilogy on The Americans. What emerges from this analysis? Boorstin points out that (...) Americans like ambiguity, that they function best amid flux; ambivalence becomes their proper medium. For this reason, I have accepted Nathaniel Hawthorne as our most central writer. He situates American questions within a landscape of chiaroscuro. The Jesuit experience in the United States belongs essentially to the same landscape. But today, as formerly, it remains a landscape of questions. McDonough, on the other hand, has too many certitudes, too many answers, too much high definition-what Henry Adams regards as "mere facts." Instead of illuminating the landscape from within, his study inevitably recedes into the larger ambiguity reserved for what Wallace Stevens has called, " Prologues to what is possible." Saint Paul University Ottawa, Ontario JOHN P. McINTYRE, S.J. The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge. By LINDA TRINKAUS ZAGZEBSKI. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. viii + 215 pp. $29.95. As a Christian and a philosopher, Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski wants to understand why it is reasonable to affirm that we remain free despite God's infallible knowledge of our future acts. Moreover, she is not content simply to demonstrate that this affirmation involves no logical con· tradiction, for "reasonable people expect more" (p. 33) than a merely negative result. Hence the author sets herself the more ambitious task of working toward a positive solution that would explain why the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom is plausible and not a bare logical possibility. The hook sorts out recent opinions on the subject and sketches an original position that she hopes will advance the discussion. Zagzehski begins by constructing the most formidable version of the dilemma. Assuming that God is infallible and essentially omniscient, that the past has a kind of necessity that the future lacks ("accidental necessity"), and that this necessity can he transferred (in some sense) from the antecedent to the consequent of a conditional proposition, the dilemma may he stated as follows: BOOK REVIEWS (1) Necessarily, God believes at time t 1 that I will do S at t 3 if and only if I do S at t 3. (2) It is accidentally necessary at t 2 that God believes at t 1 that I will do S at t 3. (3) If (1) and (2) are true, then it is accidentally necessary at t 2 that I do Sat t 3. (4) It follows that it is accidentally necessary at t 2 that I do S at t 3. (5) But if it is accidentally necessary at t 2 that I do S at t 3, I do not do S at t 3 freely. (6) Therefore, I do not do S at t 3 freely. 715 Much of the first chapter is devoted to establishing that this form of the dilemma is more resistant to solution than any other, especially the so-called problem of future truth. Zagzebski goes on to evaluate three broad approaches to solving the dilemma. In Chapter 2 she takes up the " timelessness " solution. Its proponents, among whom the author numbers Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Eleonore Stump, and Norman Kretzmann, negate premise (2) of the foreknowledge dilemma by contending that God is not in time. Zagzebski considers this an acceptable negative solution to the dilemma and sees in it the potential to ground a more comprehensive, positive solution. Nonetheless, she refrains from subscribing wholeheartedly to the timelessness solution because it confronts one with a dilemma at least as perplexing as the one it solves. She puts the problem this way: like the past, eternity is fixed, for it is constituted by a state of affairs about which we cannot do anything; therefore my future acts are determined no less by God's timeless knowledge than by God's foreknowing them in a strictly temporal sense. In Chapter 3, Zagzebski considers... (shrink)

First published in 1952, British Empirical Philosophers is a comprehensive picture of one of the most important movements in the history of philosophic thought. In his introduction, Professor A. J. Ayer distinguishes the main problems of empiricism and gives a critical account of the ways in which the philosophers whose writings are included in this volume attempted to solve them. Editors Ayer and Raymond Winch bring together an authoritative abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Bishop George Berkeley’s (...) Principles of Human Knowledge ; almost the entire first book of David Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature ; and extracts from Thomas Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man and John Stuart Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy. (shrink)

In the course of history, many individuals have the dubious honor of being remembered primarily for an eponym of which they would disapprove. How many are aware that Joseph-Ignace Guillotin actually opposed the death penalty? Another notable case is that of Maria Agnesi, an Italian woman of privileged, but not noble, birth who excelled at mathematics and philosophy during the eighteenth century. In her treatise of 1748, Instituzioni Analitiche, she provided a comprehensive summary of the current state of knowledge concerning (...) both integral calculus and differential equations. Later in life she was elected to the Bologna Academy of Sciences and, in 1762, was consulted by the University of Turin for an opinion on the work of an up-and-coming mathematician named Joseph-Louis Lagrange. (shrink)

This study investigates the role of language in cross‐sector collaboration between mental health hospitals and municipalities, focusing on the challenges of maintaining continuity of care and integrating patient‐centered approaches. Using Fairclough's framework for critical discourse analysis, we examined focus group interviews with 21 healthcare professionals, including nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists, to identify key themes and patterns in how cross‐sector collaboration is discussed. The analysis revealed a dominant medicalized discourse in hospital settings, which often emphasized structured care processes like treatment (...) plans and medication management, overshadowing more flexible, patient‐centered approaches common in community‐based services. Power dynamics were evident, with hospital professionals frequently positioned as active agents, while patients and community‐based workers were portrayed in more passive roles. Although efforts to involve patients in decision‐making were noted, these were often controlled by professionals, reflecting a mediated approach to patient empowerment. The findings highlight the cultural and structural divides between hospital and community services and suggest the need for improved communication strategies, integrated care pathways, and a shift toward more inclusive, patient‐centered care models. Addressing these discursive barriers is crucial for achieving more effective, integrated, and patient‐centered care, ultimately improving outcomes for patients. (shrink)

For half a century, J. I. Packer's classic has helped Christians everywhere discover the wonder, glory, and joy of knowing God. This fiftieth anniversary edition of a thought-provoking work seeks to renew and enrich our understanding of God, bringing together knowing about God and knowing God through a close relationship with Jesus Christ.

L'eschatologie a marqué la théologie chrétienne du XXe siècle. Initiateur en ce domaine, R. Bultmann entreprend une herméneutique « existentiale » et « démythologisante » de la prédication apocalyptique de Jésus, mise en lumière par J. Weiss et A. Schweitzer : en Jésus Dieu prononce la parole définitive qui m'appelle aujourd'hui à la décision de foi et à l'existence authentique. La théologie apprend ainsi à parler de Dieu avec sens en parlant de l'homme. Avec J. Moltmann, le futur est désenclavé (...) du présent où le laissait Bultmann, et l'eschatologie se fait résolument christologique en même temps qu'historique ; mais le passage de la Théologie de l’espérance au Dieu crucifié pose le problème redoutable du lien entre l’horizon de l’espérance et l'histoire abandonnée à la souffrance. Pour J. Moingt, la résurrection, fondement de la christologie, permet de relire la vie de Jésus comme l’histoire de Dieu menant avec les hommes depuis la création le combat eschatologique de la vie contre la mort.La pensée eschatologique s’élabore aussi dans la ligne des théologiens de l'histoire. O. Cullmann fait du Christ le centre de l’histoire du salut, entre un « déjà là » et un « pas encore ». Avec plus d’ambition mais aussi d’ambiguïté, W. Pannenberg situe la résurrection de Jésus, en tant qu’événement historique, au regard de l'histoire universelle dont elle anticipe la fin. La pensée eschatologique ne laisse pas de travailler également d’autres théologies, davantage marquées par les problématiques traditionnelles.Twentieth century Christian theology has been marked by eschatology. R. Bultmann, initiator in this field, underlook an “existential” and “demythologising” hermeneutic of the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus, which had been brought. to light by J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer : in Jesus God pronounces the definitive word that calls me to a decision of faith and authentic existence today. Theology thus learns to speak of God with meaning by speaking of man. With J. Moltmann, the future is freed from present, where Bultmann had left it, and eschatology became resolutely Christological at the same time as historical. But the passage from the Theology of Hope to the Crucified God poses the difficult problem of the connection between the horizon of hope and history left to suffering. For J. Moingt, the resurrection, foundation of Christology, permits a rereading of the life of Jesus as the history of God, who, from the time of creation, leads humanity in the eschatological combat of life against death.Eschatological thought also develops in the direction of theologies of history. O. Cullmann makes Christ the center of the history of salvation, between an “already here” and a “not yet”. With greater ambition but also ambiguity, W Pannenberg places the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event, in comparison with universal history, of which it anticipates the end. Eschatological thought does not fail to also influence others theologies, more marked by traditional problematics. (shrink)

There is what might be called a ‘majority position’ in the history of Western philosophy according to which causes are sufficient for or ‘necessitate’ their effects. However, there is also a singificant ‘minority position’ according to which causes are necessary relative to their effects. The second/third century A.D. Peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias is an ancient representative of the minority position. He attributes his own view — with some justification, I shall suggest – to Aristotle. This paper has two, somewhat loosely (...) connected purposes. The first is to explore the origin of the conception of ‘causes’ as necessary conditions in Aristotle, particularly in On Generation and Corruption 2.11 and Posterior Analytics 2.12, and the development and use of the conception in Alexander's De fato. The second purpose of the paper is to explore and criticize a sophisticated contemporary version of the conception of causes as ‘necessary in the circumstances,’ that of J.L. Mackie. (shrink)