Psychiatric diagnostic covariation suggests that the underlying structure of psychopathology is not one of circumscribed disorders. Quantitative modeling of individual differences in diagnostic patterns has uncovered several broad domains of mental disorder liability, of which the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra have garnered the greatest support. These dimensions have generally been estimated from lifetime or past-year comorbidity patters, which are distal from the covariation of symptoms and maladaptive behavior that ebb and flow in daily life. In this study, structural models are (...) applied to daily diary data ( Median = 94 days) of maladaptive behaviors collected from a sample ( N = 101) of individuals diagnosed with personality disorders (PDs). Using multilevel and unified structural equation modeling, between-person, within-person, and person-specific structures were estimated from 16 behaviors that are encompassed by the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra. At the between-person level (i.e., individual differences in average endorsement across days) we found support for a two-factor Internalizing–Externalizing model, which exhibits significant associations with corresponding diagnostic spectra. At the within-person level (i.e., dynamic covariation among daily behavior pooled across individuals) we found support for a more differentiated, four-factor, Negative Affect-Detachment-Hostility-Disinhibition structure. Finally, we demonstrate that the person-specific structures of associations between these four domains are highly idiosyncratic. (shrink)

Recent claims contrast relief experienced because a period of unpleasant uncertainty has ended and an outcome has materialized (temporal relief)—regardless of whether it is one’s preferred outcome—with relief experienced because a particular outcome has occurred, when the alternative was unpalatable (counterfactual relief). Two studies (N = 993), one run the day after the United Kingdom left the European Union and one the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, confirmed these claims. “Leavers” and Biden voters experienced high levels of relief, and less (...) regret and disappointment than “Remainers” and Trump voters. “Remainers” and Trump voters showed an effect of precursor, experiencing little relief about the outcome that had occurred but stronger relief that a decision had been implemented. Only Trump voters who believed the election was over showed this precursor effect. Results suggest at least two different triggering conditions for relief and indicate a role for anticipated relief in voting behavior. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:354 BOOK REVIEWS (continuously) revisable character, he falls back on an account of theology as rhetoric so as to make the best of a bad job. For persuasion is what we use when we know demonstration is hopeless. As a result, Professor Cunningham's study, which could most usefully have "placed" a variety of theologies of past, present, and, prospectively, future on the spectrum of (onto-) logic, poetic, and rhetoric, (...) concludes instead that theology must regard itself as rhetorical or perish! This inevitably narrows the several services theologies of different kinds can perform for the Church. Imagine how biblical studies would be reduced were the exegete only to treat his text as paraenesis, and never as history or as a symbolic world. Nonetheless, on the way from its (as I find) unsatisfactory startingpoint and to its depressing conclusion, Faithful Persuasion has worthwhile points to make about a number of authors (of various periods) and topics, though it might have made them more persuasively (its author's key term) had the intended audience (middle-brow or academic?) been more clearly viewed in advance. AIDAN NICHOLS, O.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860-1914. By THOMAS FRANKLIN O'MEARA, O.P. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x + 260. $35.95 (cloth). " In 1925, Baden's Kultusminister, a Protestant, began an address to the Gorresgesellschaft in Heidelberg by describing this era: ' Brave men like Hertling, Schell, Julius Bachem, and Carl Muth, shook the German Catholic world in order to lead it out of its fortress, to lead it again into the midst of the life and activity of the entire people, even when this seemed at first strange and uncomfortable ' " (pp. 159f.). Even to many theologians, the era in question-the last four decades of the nineteenth century through the outbreak of the "Great War"is comparatively unknown. There has been, of course, renewed interest in prominent theological figures like John Henry Newman, but his German-speaking contemporaries are for the most part strangers to the English-speaking world. And this is the first reason why this book is important: it describes a forgotten world of a century or so ago, yet one whose theological problematic was strikingly similar to our own. The " contours " of this period, deftly described in the first part of this book, were both varied and complex. Politically speaking, during the nineteenth century, " Germany " changed from an assortment of BOOK REVIEWS 355 geographically contiguous minor and medium-sized states to an Empire dominated by Prussia. Such a political re.arrangement had ecclesiastical implications: Roman Catholics, who previously had been the majority in places like Bavaria found themselves a persecuted minority during the Kulturkampf under Bismarck. And like many other victims of persecution, Roman Catholics adopted a "fortress mentality"fearful of Berlin, which was influenced by both the Lutheran Reformation and the Enlightenment, and mesmerized by Rome, which was coming under the increasing influence of neoscholasticism in doctrine and ultramontanism in discipline. German Catholic theologians found themselves in a quandary: what direction should they take? Many, like Joseph Kleutgen, took refuge in Rome; a few, like Joseph Schnitzer, found the appeal of Berlin more attractive; still others, however, tried to steer an independent course in dialogue with the culture of their day. The second and major part of this book focuses on five such theologians: Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Alois Schmid, Paul Schanz, Herman Schell, and Carl Braig. Scheeben (1835-88), "the best known and the most read in the first half of the twentieth century " (p. 53), pursued an independent route in seeking a " transcendent synthesis " incorporating both patristic and idealist thought; indeed, his lengthy Mysteries of Christ"ianity continued to enjoy a certain popularity up till the time of Vatican II, though more as a resource for spiritual reading than as a work of systematic theology. Like Newman, Scheeben's thought was sui generis, "and inspired the most divergent evaluations " (p. 65) ; unlike Newman, Scheeben has few disciples today. In contrast to Scheeben, the other four theologians attempted to emerge from the " fortress " of Roman Catholic defensiveness and to engage the historical and philosophical currents of their age. The... (shrink)

This paper is about how to interpret and evaluate purported evidence for predicativism about proper names. I aim to point out some underappreciated thorny issues and to offer both predicativists and non-predicativists some advice about how best to pursue their respective projects. I hope to establish three related claims: that non-predicativists have to posit relatively exotic, though not entirely implausible, polysemic mechanisms to capture the range of data that predicativists have introduced ; that neither referentialism nor extant versions of predicativism (...) can offer a very plausible account of the interpretive possibilities for singular unmodified definite descriptions containing names ; and that the most plausible version of predicativism would treat bare names as non-anaphoric definite descriptions. (shrink)

Some have argued that chance and determinism are compatible in order to account for the objectivity of probabilities in theories that are compatible with determinism, like Classical Statistical Mechanics (CSM) and Evolutionary Theory (ET). Contrarily, some have argued that chance and determinism are incompatible, and so such probabilities are subjective. In this paper, I argue that both of these positions are unsatisfactory. I argue that the probabilities of theories like CSM and ET are not chances, but also that they are (...) not subjective probabilities either. Rather, they are a third type of probability, which I call counterfactual probability. The main distinguishing feature of counterfactual-probability is the role it plays in conveying important counterfactual information in explanations. This distinguishes counterfactual probability from chance as a second concept of objective probability. (shrink)

It is natural to think of precise probabilities as being special cases of imprecise probabilities, the special case being when one’s lower and upper probabilities are equal. I argue, however, that it is better to think of the two models as representing two different aspects of our credences, which are often vague to some degree. I show that by combining the two models into one model, and understanding that model as a model of vague credence, a natural interpretation arises that (...) suggests a hypothesis concerning how we can improve the accuracy of aggregate credences. I present empirical results in support of this hypothesis. I also discuss how this modeling interpretation of imprecise probabilities bears upon a philosophical objection that has been raised against them, the so-called inductive learning problem. (shrink)

David Malament argued that Hartry Field's nominalisation program is unlikely to be able to deal with non-space-time theories such as phase-space theories. We give a specific example of such a phase-space theory and argue that this presentation of the theory delivers explanations that are not available in the classical presentation of the theory. This suggests that even if phase-space theories can be nominalised, the resulting theory will not have the explanatory power of the original. Phase-space theories thus raise problems for (...) nominalists that go beyond Malament's initial concerns. Thanks to Mark Steiner, Jens Christian Bjerring, Ben Fraser, John Mathewson, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

What makes psychedelic psychotherapy work? Is it the induction of psychedelic experience, with its distinct patterns of hallucinations and insights, or is it the neural ‘shakeup’ that moves the brain out of its regular mode of functioning and into a more disordered state? We consider the role that attention-related phenomenological changes play in psychedelic transformation and psychotherapy. We review Letheby’s account of psychedelic psychotherapy, which appeals to increases in phenomenal opacity as the central mechanism of psychotherapeutic transformation. We argue that (...) there is an alternative vehicle of psychedelic transformation that this account overlooks, involving radically transparent experiences. We outline the common kinds of phenomenal transparency shifts typical of psychedelic experiences, and argue that in many cases, such shifts are responsible for the psychotherapeutic benefits. This argument motivates an alternative approach to possible mechanisms of psychedelic self-transformation, and opens up a new venue of empirical research into the role of attention and phenomenology in psychedelic psychotherapy. (shrink)

In the philosophy of probability there are two central questions we are concerned with. The first is: what is the correct formal theory of probability? Orthodoxy has it that Kolmogorov’s axioms are the correct axioms of probability. However, we shall see that there are good reasons to consider alternative axiom systems. The second central question is: what do probability statements mean? Are probabilities “out there”, in the world as frequencies, propensities, or some other objective feature of reality, or are probabilities (...) “in the head”, as subjective degrees of belief? We will survey some of the answers that philosophers, mathematicians and physicists have given to these questions. (shrink)

Among the virtues of relationist approaches to Frege’s puzzle is that they put us in a position to outline structural features of the puzzle that were only implicit in earlier work. In particular, they allow us to frame questions about the relation between the explanatory roles of sense and sameness of sense. In this paper, I distinguish a number of positions about that relation which have not been clearly distinguished. This has a few pay-offs. It allows us to shed light (...) on recent controversies about the ‘essential indexical’, and it also allows us to see what’s at stake between relationists and their opponents. When we see what’s at stake, we can see that we have reason to adopt an account of cognitive significance that incorporates elements of both relationist and Fregean approaches. (shrink)

Metalinguistic approaches to names hold that proper names are semantically associated with name-bearing properties. I argue that metalinguistic theorists owe us an account of the metaphysics of those properties. The unique structure of the debate about names gives an issue which might look to be narrowly linguistic an important metaphysical dimension. The only plausible account of name-bearing treats name-bearing properties as a species of response-dependent property. I outline how such an account should look, drawing on forms of response-dependence identified in (...) the literature on colour, moral properties, etc. Having done that, I show how the account can illuminate a feature of the communicative function of names which would otherwise be puzzling from the perspective of metalinguistic accounts. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to Wittgenstein's remarks on Frazer's The Golden Bough and represents a collaboration of scholars within philosophy and the study of religion. For the first time, specialized investigations of the philological and philosophical aspects Wittgenstein's manuscripts are combined with the outlook of philosophical anthropology and ritual studies. In the first section of the book Wittgenstein's remarks are presented and discussed in light of his Nachlass and relevant lecture-notes by G.E. Moore, reproduced in this book as facsimiles. The (...) second section deals with the cultural and philosophical background of the early remarks, while the third section focuses specifically on the general problem of understanding as being a main issue of these remarks. The fourth section concentrates on the philosophical development characteristic of the later remarks. Finally, the fifth section reviews Wittgenstein's opposition to Frazer, and the ramifications of his remarks, in light of ritual studies. The book is intended for scholars in philosophy and religious studies, as well as for the general reader with an academic interest in philosophy and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This paper responds to arguments due to Joel Smith and Annalisa Coliva that try to show that James Pryor’s notion of wh-misidentification is philosophically uninteresting, and perhaps even spurious. It also proposes definitions of wh-misidentification and immunity to wh-misidentification which try to improve in various ways on the characterisations that standardly figure in the literature, and explores the relationship between misidentification and the epistemic structures characteristic of some kinds of Gettier cases.

Epistemic injustice has become one of the most widely discussed topics in social epistemology, and has revived interest in issues in the intersections between epistemology and ethics and political philosophy. Much of the impetus for this recent explosion of interest has been the influential work of Miranda Fricker; however, Fricker’s framework and terminology for discussing the phenomena and the kinds of examples she’s interested in has not always been cleanly separated from the phenomena themselves. This chapter examines what’s distinctive of (...) Fricker’s treatment of the phenomena she labels epistemic injustice, focusing on the two varieties that her discussion highlights, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Once the distinctive elements of Fricker’s treatment are clearer, we will be better placed to assess which of them are plausible and which implausible, and to consider alternative theoretical frameworks for thinking about the phenomena, such as that developed by Kristie Dotson. (shrink)

According to a tradition reaching back to Plato, questions about the nature of knowledge are to be answered by offering an analysis in terms of truth, belief, justification, and other factors presumed to be in some sense more basic than knowledge itself. In light of the apparent failure of this approach, knowledge first philosophy instead takes knowledge as the starting point in epistemology and related areas of the philosophies of language and mind. Knowledge cannot be analyzed in the traditional sense, (...) but this does not make it mysterious or unimportant. On the contrary, we are freed to use our grasp of what knowledge is to elucidate the nature of belief, justification, evidence, the speech act of assertion, and the demands on action and practical reasoning, and to treat knowledge as a purely mental state in its own right. Knowledge First? offers the first overview and critical evaluation of knowledge first philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

Proponents of the predicate view of names explain the reference of an occurrence of a name N by invoking the property of bearing N. They avoid the charge that this view involves a vicious circularity by claiming that bearing N is not itself to be understood in terms of the reference of actual or possible occurrences of N. I argue that this approach is fundamentally mistaken. The phenomenon of ‘reference transfer’ shows that an individual can come to bear a name (...) in virtue of the referential practices of a group of speakers. I develop a picture of name-bearing which captures this fact by treating the extension of name as a function of the way that extension is represented in the presuppositions of groups of speakers. I show that though there is a form of circularity inherent in this approach, it is not vicious circularity. (shrink)

Advance care planning refers to the process of determining how one wants to be cared for in the event that one is no longer competent to make one's own medical decisions. Some have argued that advance care plans often fail to be normatively binding on caretakers because those plans do not reflect the interests of patients once they enter an incompetent state. In this article, we argue that when the core medical ethical principles of respect for patient autonomy, honest and (...) adequate disclosure of information, institutional transparency, and concern for patient welfare are upheld, a policy that would allow for the disregard of advance care plans is self-defeating. This is because when the four principles are upheld, a patient's willingness to undergo treatment depends critically on the willingness of her caretakers to honor the wishes she has outlined in her advance care plan. A patient who fears that her caretakers will not honor her wishes may choose to avoid medical care so as to limit the influence of her caretakers in the future, which may lead to worse medical outcomes than if she had undergone care. In order to avoid worse medical outcomes and uphold the four core principles, caregivers who are concerned about the future welfare of their patients should focus on improving advance care planning and commit to honoring their patients’ advance care plans. (shrink)

A main thread of the debate over mathematical realism has come down to whether mathematics does explanatory work of its own in some of our best scientific explanations of empirical facts. Realists argue that it does; anti-realists argue that it doesn't. Part of this debate depends on how mathematics might be able to do explanatory work in an explanation. Everyone agrees that it's not enough that there merely be some mathematics in the explanation. Anti-realists claim there is nothing mathematics can (...) do to make an explanation mathematical ; realists think something can be done, but they are not clear about what that something is. I argue that many of the examples of mathematical explanations of empirical facts in the literature can be accounted for in terms of Jackson and Pettit's [1990] notion of program explanation, and that mathematical realists can use the notion of program explanation to support their realism. This is exactly what has happened in a recent thread of the debate over moral realism. I explain how the two debates are analogous and how moves that have been made in the moral realism debate can be made in the mathematical realism debate. However, I conclude that one can be a mathematical realist without having to be a moral realist. (shrink)

It is usually supposed that the central limit theorem explains why various quantities we find in nature are approximately normally distributed—people's heights, examination grades, snowflake sizes, and so on. This sort of explanation is found in many textbooks across the sciences, particularly in biology, economics, and sociology. Contrary to this received wisdom, I argue that in many cases we are not justified in claiming that the central limit theorem explains why a particular quantity is normally distributed, and that in some (...) cases, we are actually wrong. 1 Introduction2 Normal Distributions and the Central Limit Theorem2.1 Normal distributions2.2 The central limit theorem2.3 Terminology3 Explaining Normality3.1 Loaves of bread3.2 Varying variances and probability densities3.3 Tensile strengths and problems with summation3.4 Products of factors and log-normal distributions3.5 Transforming factors and sub-factors3.6 Transformations of quantities3.7 Quantitative genetics3.8 Inference to the best explanation4 Maximum Entropy Explanations5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has proposed that we should give a ‘knowledge first’ twist to David Lewis’s account of content, maintaining that for P to be the content of one’s belief is for P to be the content that would be attributed by an idealized interpreter working under certain constraints, and that the fundamental constraint on interpretation is a principle of knowledge maximization. According to this principle, an interpretation is correct to the extent that it maximizes the number of knowledgeable judgments the (...) subject comes out as making. Here I will argue against knowledge maximization and two fallback positions suggested by Williamson’s discussion. Williamson intends the principle of knowledge maximization to form the basis of an argument against a certain sort of skepticism about judgment. In the final section I argue that the kind of general response to judgment skepticism envisaged by Williamson is neither desirable nor necessary. (shrink)

Predicativism about names—the view that names are metalinguistic predicates—has yet to confront a foundational issue: how are names represented in the lexicon? I provide a positive characterization of the structure of the lexicon from the point of view Predicativism. I proceed to raise a problem for Predicativism on the basis of that characterization, focusing on cases in which individuals have names which are spelled the same way but pronounced differently. Finally, I introduce two potential strategies for solving the problem, and (...) offer reasons not to be optimistic about either. (shrink)

Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works characterises and explores one democratically problematic kind of propaganda, ‘undermining propaganda’, which involves ‘[a] contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals’. Stanley’s model for how undermining propaganda functions is Rae Langton and Caroline West’s treatment of moves in pornographic language games. However, Stanley doesn’t consider whether his theory of propaganda might in turn illuminate the harmful nature of (...) pornography, in light of the familiar contention that some pornography acts as a kind of misogynistic propaganda. Drawing on Catharine MacKinnon’s writings on pornography, this paper will explore one way of developing the claim that pornography sometimes functions as undermining propaganda, in something close to Stanley’s sense. Moreover, I will suggest that the discussion points to a new response to the so-called authority problem for Rae Langton’s silencing argument against the protected status of pornography.El libro de Jason Stanley How Propaganda Works caracteriza y explora un tipo de propaganda democráticamente problemático, la ‘propaganda debilitadora’, que envuelve ‘[una] contribución al discurso público que se presenta como si incorporase determinados ideales, pero que es de un tipo que tiende a erosionar esos mismos ideales’. El modelo de Stanley para el funcionamiento de la propaganda debilitadora es el del tratamiento de los movimientos en los juegos de lenguaje pornográficos debido a Rae Langton y Caroline West. Sin embargo, Stanley no reflexiona acerca de si su teoría sobre la propaganda podría, a su vez, iluminar la dañina naturaleza de la pornografía, a la luz de la conocida tesis de que hay pornografía que actúa como una forma de propaganda misógina. A partir de los trabajos de Catharine MacKinnon sobre pornografía, este artículo pretende explorar una forma de desarrollar la tesis de que la pornografía funciona en ocasiones como propaganda debilitadora, en un sentido próximo al de Stanley. Además, sugeriré que la discusión apunta a una nueva respuesta al llamado problema de la autoridad en relación con el argumento del silenciamiento debido a Rae Langton en contra de un estatuto de protección para la pornografía. (shrink)

International political economy identifies declining nominal interest rates, securitization, and financial liberalization as drivers of rising housing prices. Despite witnessing these common credit shocks, however, developed economies experienced divergent trends in housing inflation since the 1980s. We offer a comparative political economy explanation of variation in house prices, arguing that by restraining household incomes, wage-setting institutions can blunt financial liberalization’s inflationary impact on housing markets. Employing quantitative analysis and a comparative study of Ireland and the Netherlands, we uncover two findings. (...) First, countries where political coalitions in the export sector held veto powers over those in the nontraded sector in national wage setting realized lower housing inflation. Second, the impact of sectoral coalitions on housing prices in OECD countries is similar to that of financial variables. Our results suggest that the organization of labor politics continues to play an important role in mitigating the destabilizing effects of global finance on developed economies. (shrink)

Debates in ecological social theory are characterised by dualisms of nature and society. The author proposes the notion of ‘ecological aporias’ to account for these dualisms, focusing on three landmark examples of ecological thought over the past four decades from Niklas Luhmann, Bruno Latour and Jason W. Moore. He shows the persistence in this work of paradoxes and intractable contradictions revolving around the nature/society dualism. Rather than trying to dissolve these ecological aporias, he draws on recent work in eco-deconstruction to (...) suggest that the ecological is itself an aporetic category and that this enables a new perspective for political ecology in an age of climate crisis. Rejecting Latour’s identification of political ecology with the politics of dwelling, he argues that climate change demands we recognise forms of life irreducible to the ontological security on which the concept of the ecological has long been based. (shrink)

This paper offers a close reading of “The Geology of Morals,” the third and possibly most important chapter, or plateau, of Deleuze and Guattari’s magnum opus A Thousand Plateaus. I analyse some of...

Four experiments investigated how people judge the plausibility of category-based arguments, focusing on the diversity effect, in which arguments with diverse premise categories are considered particularly strong. In Experiment 1 we show that priming people as to the nature of the blank property determines whether sensitivity to diversity is observed. In Experiment 2 we find that people's hypotheses about the nature of the blank property predict judgements of argument strength. In Experiment 3 we examine the effect of our priming methodology (...) on people's tendency to bring knowledge about causality or similarity to bear when evaluating arguments, and in Experiment 4 we show that whether people's hypotheses about the nature of the blank property were causal predicted ratings of argument strength. Together these results suggest that diversity effects occur because diverse premises lead people to bring general features of the premise categories to mind. Although our findings are broadly consistent with Bayesian and Relevance-based approaches to category-based inductive reasoning, neither approach captures all of our findings. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has proposed that one has entitlements to accept certain propositions that play a foundational role within one’s body of belief. Such an entitlement is a kind of warrant that does not require the possessor to have acquired evidence speaking in favor of the proposition in question. The proposal allows Wright to concede much of the force of the most powerful arguments for scepticism, while avoiding the truly sceptical conclusion that one lacks warrant for most of one’s beliefs. Here (...) I will argue that Wright has underestimated a problem for his proposal, the alchemy problem, which is that it seems to make room for the easy conversion of mere entitlement to accept a proposition into justification to believe it. I question the adequacy of Wright’s own response to this worry, and instead explore the idea that epistemic alchemy, properly understood, is not epistemically objectionable. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 6, September 2019, Page 670-672.

A theme running through Katherine Hawley’s recent works on trust and trustworthiness is that thinking about the relations between these and Miranda Fricker’s notion of testimonial injustice offers a perspective from which we can see several limitations of Fricker’s own account of testimonial injustice. This paper clarifies the aspects of Fricker’s account that Hawley’s criticisms target, focusing on her objections to Fricker’s proposal that its primary harm involves a kind of epistemic objectification and her characterization of testimonial injustice in terms (...) of prejudicial credibility deficits. I also offer an assessment of the potency of Hawley’s objections, concluding that they do point to genuine limitations of Fricker’s account, but that we can appreciate Hawley’s points without adopting her trust-centric approach to testimonial injustice, or her specific commitment-based accounts of trust and trustworthiness. However, in the last section I examine the positive picture of testimonial injustice that emerges from Hawley’s discussion of unequally distributed obstacles to both being trustworthy and maintaining a reputation for trustworthy testimony in her recent book How To Be Trustworthy, considering how this picture contrasts with Fricker’s account and where it might have important affinities with other accounts in the literature. (shrink)

When scientists act unethically, their actions can cause harm to participants, undermine knowledge creation, and discredit the scientific community. Responsible Conduct of Research training i...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 353 proportionalism that Finnis's theological argument exploits. In this regard, there is no moral theory, good or bad, which overreaches so far as proportionalism does. Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey ROBERT P. GEORGE Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology. By DAVID S. CUNNINGHAM. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. xvii + 312. $29.95 (cloth) ; $16.95 (paper). The relation between (...) words and the Word has always been of in· terest in Christian theology. Earlier in this century a school of writers approached " the Bible as literature " with a view to bringing Scripture into a more persuasive relation with literature at large, but their insistence on the rigorous exclusion of dogmatic elements from literary scrutiny impoverished their work. A later set of procedures and perspectives on rhetoric and language in their relation to reality was bet· ter able to allow the utterances of a text's speakers their own integrity, whether sacred or secular. In any case, a thematic interpretation of the founding texts of Christianity, influenced by Aristotle's Rhetoricwhere form is a means for persuasively communicating an idea-content -had long predominated in ecclesial usage, germane as it was to the didactic concerns of the Church. An alternative tradition, more indebted to Aristotle's Poetics, where form, content, and functions are treated as factors making for the indissoluble whole which is the literary work, has been less conspicuous-though its offer of initiation into the " world " of the sacred writers gives it great exegetical potential. The text's "word " should be encountered at the level of its own patterned imagery and wrought design. In the appreciation of the Gospels this has become in recent decades a commonplace. However, as the T. S. Eliot scholar Helen Gardner warned, one should not so react against the older approach as to treat the biblical text as the product of a disembodied imagination, rather than a human being writing a work that might make his readers "wise unto salvation." David S. Cunningham's Faithful Persuasion extends this discussion of the propriety or impropriety of a rhetorical approach to Scripture to the discourse of Christian theology as a whole. The intent is a laudable one but its execution vitiated, to my mind, by the excessive concessions to scepticism from which the author sets out. Because his theological epistemology, aware of the limitations of the propositions in which we assert the truths of faith, will grant those assertions no more than a 354 BOOK REVIEWS (continuously) revisable character, he falls back on an account of theology as rhetoric so as to make the best of a bad job. For persuasion is what we use when we know demonstration is hopeless. As a result, Professor Cunningham's study, which could most usefully have "placed" a variety of theologies of past, present, and, prospectively, future on the spectrum of (onto-) logic, poetic, and rhetoric, concludes instead that theology must regard itself as rhetorical or perish! This inevitably narrows the several services theologies of different kinds can perform for the Church. Imagine how biblical studies would be reduced were the exegete only to treat his text as paraenesis, and never as history or as a symbolic world. Nonetheless, on the way from its (as I find) unsatisfactory startingpoint and to its depressing conclusion, Faithful Persuasion has worthwhile points to make about a number of authors (of various periods) and topics, though it might have made them more persuasively (its author's key term) had the intended audience (middle-brow or academic?) been more clearly viewed in advance. AIDAN NICHOLS, O.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860-1914. By THOMAS FRANKLIN O'MEARA, O.P. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x + 260. $35.95 (cloth). " In 1925, Baden's Kultusminister, a Protestant, began an address to the Gorresgesellschaft in Heidelberg by describing this era: ' Brave men like Hertling, Schell, Julius Bachem, and Carl Muth, shook the German Catholic world in order to lead it out of its fortress, to lead it again into the midst of the life and activity of the entire people, even when this seemed at... (shrink)

Say It Is Pentecost completes Aidan Nichols's presentation of the great theological trilogy of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

This paper criticises Miranda Fricker's account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice as a kind of epistemic objectification, where the latter is understood on the model provided by Martha Nussbaum's influential analysis of sexual objectification and where it is taken to involve the denial of someone's epistemic agency. I examine the existing objections to Fricker's account of the primary harm, criticising some while accepting the force of others, and I argue that one of Fricker's own central examples of testimonial (...) injustice in fact offers the basis of a particularly telling objection. While Fricker's other critics have mostly concluded that we need to look at alternative theoretical resources to offer an account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice, I aim to show that this is premature; both Fricker and her critics have underestimated the resources provided by Nussbaum's analysis of objectification when offering an account of the primary harm, and something very much in the spirit of Fricker's account survives the objections. (shrink)

Early commentators on David Lewis's account of counterfactuals noted that certain examples suggest that some counterfactuals with true antecedents and true consequents are false. Lewis's account has the consequence that all such counterfactuals are true, leaving us to choose between explaining away our intuitions about the examples in question or offering an alternative to Lewis's account. Here I argue that a simple modification of the familiar Lewisian truth conditions yields the intuitively correct verdicts about these examples, and so we can (...) take our intuitions about these examples at face value without any major departure from Lewis's approach to counterfactuals. (shrink)