In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Center Blossoms, Part 1:The Pneumatological Fruit of the Incarnate Word in Bonaventure's BreviloquiumBr. Thomas A. Piolata OFM Cap. (bio)This paper asks the following question: What is the fruit of Saint Bonaventure's theological focus on Christ as the center of all theology? While Bonaventure's christocentric vision has rightly received ample scholarly attention and recognition, a clear and robust explication of the fruit—i.e., the culmination or goal—of this (...) vision yet remains to be articulated.1 The above question has not received a full answer. There is thus a lacuna and a need within the secondary literature on the Seraphic Doctor's thought. This study addresses and begins to remedy this lacuna. It offers a preliminary answer to the above question.2 To this end, I will argue that Bonaventure's christocentrism yields a theology that accentuates the Spirit's role in salvation—a pneumatological soteriology.To argue this point, I focus principally on Bonaventure's systematic masterpiece, the Breviloquium. I have chosen this text for two principal reasons. The first reason: the Breviloquium makes manifest the Seraphic [End Page 195] Doctor's distinctive christocentrism.3 After all, in a work consisting of seven parts,4 it is precisely Part 4—De incarnatione Verbi—that constitutes the text's undeniable structural center. Bonaventure's treatment of the Incarnate Word constitutes, as Part 4 of the text, the centerpiece of the seven-part theological synthesis developed in the Breviloquium.The second reason: the Breviloquium makes explicit the inherent— and specifically pneumatological—fruitfulness of Bonaventure's christocentrism. Significantly, that is, the centrality of Christ in the text does not end in Christ. Already in Part 4, the text's structural center, the centrality of Christ culminates and finds its fullness in a pneumatological, pentecostal reflection: "Postremo, ut inflammaret ad caritatem, misit [Christus] ignem Spiritus sancti in die Pentecostes."5 These words reveal the pneumatological climax of Christ's mission. They are taken from the tenth and final chapter of Part 4, where Bonaventure makes explicit reference to the "Spiritus sanctus" nine times.6 This pentecostal conclusion and cluster of references to the Spirit imbues this final chapter of Part 4 De incarnatione Verbi with a pronounced pneumatological accent and culmination. The centrality of the Incarnate Word already—within its own structure—begins to blossom into the Spirit. Indeed, the centrality of Christ is a blossoming center.This pneumatological apogee of the centrality of Christ does not go unnoticed by Joshua Benson in his careful study of the Breviloquium's Christology. Benson utilizes as a structural hermeneutic Bonaventure's triadic division of ortus, progressus/modus, and status/fructus introduced in the prologue of the text,7 and arrives at the following synthesis: "This chapter [Chapter 10 of Part 4] is the ultimate fructus of Bonaventure's investigation of the incarnate Word and also establishes Christ further as the ortus of the life of grace that Bonaventure will examine in part 5 [De gratia Spiritus sancti]."8 Benson thus eventually concludes: "The paschal mystery is the foundation for the pneumatological mystery of the church."9 [End Page 196]Ultimately, then, Benson's comments bear witness to the inherent trajectory of the Breviloquium's distinctive christocentrism. Indeed, the center not only anticipates, but even reaches into the subsequent parts that follow: Part 4 does not stand alone as an isolated monad, but betrays directionality, a movement toward the Spirit. Put differently, the text's undeniable christic center is a vibrant center that bears fruit, a center that breathes forth the mystery of the Spirit. In a word, the center blossoms: pneumatological presence pulsates within and so blossoms forth from the reality of the Incarnate Word.This insight motivates the present study. After all, it is this basic insight that lies at the genesis of, formulates an initial answer to, and evinces the theological gravity within the very question that opened this essay: What is the fruit of Bonaventure's theological focus on Christ the center? Answering this question constitutes the goal of this study. To answer it, I will explicate the—pneumatological—fruit of Christ the center. In brief, the answer I propose lies in what I will... (shrink)

St. Thomas Aquinas preaches in his sermon Puer Iesus, "Just as your father begot you bodily, your teacher begot you spiritually." St. Thomas himself has been blessed with prodigious fecundity through the centuries for his teaching in the Holy Spirit. Always, he leads us to think of the Blessed Trinity and all things from God's own view. With new insights into St. Thomas's spiritual teaching in its sources, context, breadth, wisdom, and influences, Thomas Aquinas as Spiritual (...) Teacher presents chapters inspired by an international conference cosponsored by the Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal at Ave Maria University and the Thomistic Institute of the Dominican House of Studies. The volume, like its conference, honors Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, OP, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, for his dedication to the spiritual teaching of St. Thomas in several decades of service to the Church and the academy. Luis F. Cardinal Ladaria, SJ, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, contributed the volume's foreword. Contributors to this book include: Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP; Romanus Cessario, OP; Therese Scarpelli Cory; Michael A. Dauphinais; Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, OP; Bishop Daniel E. Flores; Wojciech Giertych, OP; Andrew Hofer, OP; Luis F. Cardinal Ladaria, SJ; Dominic Legge, OP; Steven A. Long; Roger W. Nutt; Michael Root; Daria Spezzano; Thomas Weinandy, OFM, Cap.; and Thomas Joseph White, OP-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The welfare reform law of 1996 completely overhauled the nation's system of assistance to low-income families. The reauthorization of that law, now several months overdue because of congressional delays, presents an opportunity for religious social ethicists to evaluate the adequacy of our nation's anti-poverty efforts. This paper surveys policy developments from 1996 to 2003 and analyzes five key issues in the reauthorization debate: the size and structure of welfare block grants; work requirements; welfare time limits, sanctions, and exemptions; marriage promotion (...) and the family cap; and ancillary programs providing work supports such as food stamps, Medicaid, and child care subsidies. A variety of ethical critiques of policy proposals is offered, some of them from the perspective of Catholic social teaching. The trail of missed opportunities in welfare reform will probably continue, as American social policy fails to act upon an accurate portrayal of the challenges facing poor families today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE CASE FOR SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY: SOME REFLECTIONS THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M., CAP. Greyfriars Hall, University of Oxford IN THE JUNE, 1992, issue of Theological Studies Roger Haight, S.J., of the Weston School of Theology, authored an essay entitled "The Case for Spirit Christology." 1 In the December, 1992, issue of the same journal John Wright, S.J., of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, wrote a critical response entitled: (...) "Roger Haight's Spirit Christology." 2 While I fully endorse Wright's reservations, here I wish to offer some of my own criticisms as well as expand upon some of his.3 In order for a Spirit Christology to be viable Haight believes that it must fulfill six criteria: 1) It must adequately explain why Christians believe that their salvation is found in Jesus; 2) It must be faithful to the Bible; 3) It must uphold the teaching of the Councils, especially Nicaea and Chalcedon; 4) It must be intelligible and coherent; 5) It must respond to contemporary concerns, specifically the relationship of Jesus to the founders of other 1 Roger Haight, S.J., "The Case for Spirit Christology," Theological Studies 53(1992): 257-287. Hereafter referred to in the text by page numbers. 2 John Wright, S.J., "Roger Haight's Spirit Christology," Theological Studies 53(1992) : 729-735. 3 While this article will focus exclusively on Haight's Spirit Christology, much of what will be said here, by way of criticism, can be applied equally to other expressions of Spirit Christology, since the various forms are quite similar. Haight himself relies heavily upon and substantially agrees with G. W. H. Lampe, " The Holy Spirit and the Person of Christ," in Christ, Faith and History, ed. S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton (Cambridge: University Press, 1972) 111-130; and God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977). For other recent examples of Spirit Christology see Haight's footnote 1, p. 257. 173 174 THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M., CAP. religions; 6) It must be able to stimulate and empower Christian life (see 260-262). As in Wright's response, I wish to examine I-Iaight's Spirit Christology in light of these criteria. I will begin with an extensive examination of Haight's second criterion-faithfulness to scripture-for it is most central to his whole enterprise. Then, more succinctly, I will address his other criteria. Biblical Revelation and Religious Language The central, and therefore fatal, flaw within Haight's Spirit Christology is that his understanding of '.' God as Spirit," upon which the whole of his Christology is founded, is itself non-biblical. To discern Haight's understanding of " God as Spirit," we must first examine his notion of religious language and the philosophy sustaining it. For Haight, "the medium through which religious experience takes place may be called a symbol, making all religious knowledge symbolic knowledge. A symbol is that through which something else is made present and known; a symbol mediates a perception and knowledge of something other" (263). While the symbol makes the presence of God known, yet, precisely because it is a symbol, God is beyond or transcends what is symbolized. The symbol " both makes God present and points away from itself to a God who is other than itself" (263). Thus the symbolized " is" and " is not" the symbol (263). Haight argues then that the biblical symbol, " the Spirit of God " refers to God and is " materially and numerically identical with God. God as Spirit is God" (266). However, God as Spirit " indicates God at work, as active, and as power, energy, or force that accomplishes something" (266-267). God as Spirit refers not to God as he is immanent in himself, but to God as he is "outside of himself," within the order of time and history. Haight recognizes that the Old Testament also uses " Word" and " Wisdom" as symbols along with " Spirit," but " all of these symbols are basically the same insofar as they point to the same generalized experience of God outside of God's self and im- THE CASE FOR SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY 175 manent in the world in presence and active power" (267). While Haight acknowledges that these symbolic... (shrink)

The first aim of this paper is to elucidate Russell’s construction of spatial points, which is to be <br>considered as a paradigmatic case of the "logical constructions" that played a central role in his epistemology and theory of science. Comparing it with parallel endeavours carried out by Carnap and Stone it is argued that Russell’s construction is best understood as a structural representation. It is shown that Russell’s and Carnap’s representational constructions may be considered as incomplete and sketchy harbingers of (...) Stone’s representation theorems. The representational program inaugurated by Stone’s theorems was one of the success stories of 20th century’s mathematics. This suggests that representational constructions à la Stone could also be important for epistemology and philosophy of science. More specifically it is argued that the issues proposed by Russellian definite descriptions, logical constructions, and structural representations still have a place on the agenda of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. Finally, the representational interpretation of Russell’s logical constructivism is used to shed some new light on the recently vigorously discussed topic of his structural realism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that topology has a bearing on<br><br>combinatorial theories of possibility. The approach developed in this article is “mapping account” considering combinatorial worlds as mappings from individuals to properties. Topological structures are used to define constraints on the mappings thereby characterizing the “really possible” combinations. The mapping approach avoids the well-known incompatibility problems. Moreover, it is compatible with atomistic as well as with non-atomistic ontologies.It helps to elucidate the positions of logical atomism and monism (...) with theaid of topological separation axioms. (shrink)

Surely the greatest possible accomplishment for a religious epistemologist would be to show how God's existence might be empirically verified. The most obvious, although certainly not unproblematic, approach to this task is to claim that perceptual evidence is available from which God's existence can be inferred. The only apparent alternative, direct sense perception of God, is ruled out by God's essential unobservability, which is implied by his essential incorporeality. But Robert Oakes, in his essay, ‘Religious Experience, Sense-perception and God's Essential (...) Unobservability’ , boldly suggests a third alternative. God's unobservability may preclude his being perceived directly through the senses, but there are still logically possible, Oakes says, ‘ sensory detections of God's presence ’ . To illustrate, he gives the following quote from William Barclay's The Mind of St Paul : A great artist tells us that it was his father who taught him to see and to love beauty. His father used to take him out in the evening time…One evening there was a sunset of surpassing majesty and splendour, and at the sight of it his father stood up, removed his cap and looked at the splendour of the dying sun, and said: ‘My son, it is God.’. (shrink)

Let S be the group of all permutations of the set of natural numbers. The cofinality spectrum CF(S) of S is the set of all regular cardinals λ such that S can be expressed as the union of a chain of λ proper subgroups. This paper investigates which sets C of regular uncountable cardinals can be the cofinality spectrum of S. The following theorem is the main result of this paper. Theorem. Suppose that $V \models GCH$ . Let C be (...) a set of regular uncountable cardinals which satisfies the following conditions. (a) C contains a maximum element. (b) If μ is an inaccessible cardinal such that $\mu = \sup(C \cap \mu)$ , then μ ∈ C. (c) If μ is a singular cardinal such that $\mu = \sup(C \cap \mu)$ , then μ + ∈ C. Then there exists a c.c.c. notion of forcing P such that $V^\mathbb{P} \models CF(S) = C$ . We shall also investigate the connections between the cofinality spectrum and pcf theory; and show that CF(S) cannot be an arbitrarily prescribed set of regular uncountable cardinals. (shrink)

When proponents of cognitive externalism (CE) turn to empirical studies in cognitive science to put the framework to use and to assess its explanatory success, they typically refer to perception, memory, or motor coordination. In contrast, not much has been said about reasoning. One promising avenue to explore in this respect is the theory of bounded rationality (BR). To clarify the relationship between CE and BR, we criticize Andy Clark's understanding of BR, as well as his claim that BR does (...) not fit his version of CE. We then propose and defend a version of CE—“scaffolded cognition”—that is not committed to constitutive claims about the mind, but still differs from mainstream internalism. Finally, we analyze BR from our own CE perspective, thereby clarifying its vague appeals to the environment, and argue that cognitive internalism cannot explain important aspects of the BR program. (shrink)

Abstract. In Dynamics of Reason Michael Friedman proposes a kind of synthesis between the neokantianism of Ernst Cassirer, the logical empiricism of Rudolf Carnap, and the historicism of Thomas Kuhn. Cassirer and Carnap are to take care of the Kantian legacy of modern philosophy of science, encapsulated in the concept of a relativized a priori and the globally rational or continuous evolution of scientific knowledge,while Kuhn´s role is to ensure that the historicist character of scientific knowledge is taken seriously. (...) More precisely, Carnapian linguistic frameworks, guarantee that the evolution of science procedes in a rational manner locally,while Cassirer’s concept of an internally defined conceptual convergence of empirical theories provides the means to maintain the global continuity of scientific reason. In this paper it is argued that Friedman’s neokantian account of scientific reason based on the concept of the relativized a priori underestimates the pragmatic aspects of the dynamics of scientific reason. To overcome this short-coming, I propose to reconsider C.I. Lewis’s account of a pragmatic the priori, recently modernized and elaborated by Hasok Chang. This may be<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br&g t;<br><br><br><br><br><br>Keywords: Dynamics of reason, Paradigms, Logical Empiricism,Neokantianism, Pragmatism, Mathematics, Communicative Rationality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism by Brenda AbbottRobert J. Karris, OFMBrenda Abbott, Eric Doyle OFM: Hidden Architect of the Retrieval of the Franciscan Charism. Durham, UK: Franciscan Publishing, 2021. Pp. vii + 388. 16 photos. £15.00. ISBN: 9781915198013.Father Eric Doyle, OFM, a member of the Province of the Immaculate Conception, UK, was born in 1938 and died in 1984. He was (...) highly talented and educated, steeped in the Franciscan tradition, a superb and humorous communicator. He was just right for his time, he was ahead of his time, and he may be just what Franciscans need today in their time as they continue to renew themselves in the spirit of St. Francis and in Franciscan Christology and spirituality.Abbott sets down her goal: "My purpose and goal in publishing this book is that something of the man and his vision will be communicated here, and that a new generation of Franciscan friars and scholars, as well as believers and unbelievers more widely, may be inspired by this vision and become aware of Doyle's enduring and precious legacy" (ii). She accomplishes her goal through an introduction, fifteen chapters which mainly delve into Doyle's Franciscan Christology and spirituality, and a conclusion. Endnotes follow each chapter. The book, which is very well-researched and written, ends with two appendices and a bibliography. Abbot has marvelously achieved her goal.The introduction is followed by: chapter 1, "Early Life: 1938–1970"; chapter 2, "The Friar"; chapter 3, "The Teacher"; chapter 4, "The Shepherd and Evangeliser"; chapter 5, "The Scholar"; chapter 6, "The Mystic"; chapter 7, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 1)"; chapter 8, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 2)"; chapter 9, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 3)"; chapter 10, "The Franciscan Theologian (Part 4)"; chapter 11, "The Ecologist: Our Sister Mother Earth"; chapter 12, "The Ecumenist: Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ"; chapter 13, "The Post–Vatican II Theologian"; chapter 14, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 1)"; and chapter 15, "The Prophet: A Franciscan Legacy (Part 2)."In the space allotted me, I provide three snapshots of Eric Doyle. First is the assessment of Doyle from an outside source, Bishop Thomas McMahon, who in his eulogy said: "He put profound truths in a very [End Page 249] simple way and conveyed always a sense of the numinous. … [He was] vivid, articulate, deeply learned, intensely human, hugely alive, full of mischief, unsparing of self … a contemporary Francis. His Franciscan spirituality permeated his total thinking" (174). I underscore Bishop Mc-Mahon's emphasis on St. Francis and his spirituality. I see implied here Doyle's teaching about the Absolute Primacy of Christ—that Christ is head of all creation and conqueror of sin and death, and that the reason for Christ's incarnation is not sin but love—demonstrating Doyle's retrieval of the best from the Franciscan tradition.The second snapshot points to two areas where Doyle was ahead of his time. First, he was a TV personality. Abbott dedicates pages 117–23 to Doyle as a wonderful TV presence. From 1971 to 1984 he was on four hundred programs of The Big Question. One reviewer noted: "The length, breadth and width of his discourse … is colossal … This man is an original, a non-pareil; before they made him, they broke the mould" (121). Second, in his book on Francis's Canticle of Brother Sun, first published in 1980, Doyle anticipated many of Pope Francis' teachings in Laudato Si'. As Abbott says: "Foreshadowing much of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', Doyle demonstrates how belief in the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of creation can help us create a better world" (270).The third snapshot is an indication of how Doyle's legacy continues in print. Doyle's St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood has been reprinted a number of times, most recently in 1997 by Franciscan Institute Publications as St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood and Sisterhood. It has been translated into five languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese. Under the imprint of Tau Publications is My Heart's Quest: Collected Writings of Eric Doyle, Friar Minor, Theologian, edited by Josef Raischl... (shrink)

Las Ciencias Cognitivas de la Religión han desarrollado desde hace casi veinte años explicaciones naturalistas sobre la mente y el comportamiento religioso, abriendo ese campo al análisis científico. Los estudiosos acostumbrados a comprender la religión desde una tradición más humanista o un enfoque hermenéutico, como teólogos, filósofos de la religión, y fenomenólogos pueden sentirse sorprendidos por la aplicación de métodos biológicos-evolutivos, cognitivos y neurológicos para explicar mejor la religión; a menudo perciben como extraño el uso de nuevos términos, conceptos y (...) formas de entender la religión, más allá de los marcos tradicionales. El tiempo ha madurado para una evaluación de la plausibilidad que exhiben estas nuevas teorías, teniendo en cuenta sus respectivos marcos y la evidencia empírica reportada. (shrink)

The Essays on the Active Powers of Man was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of common sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The (...) Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Price. (shrink)

A collection of late 20th-century scholarship devoted to Thomas Jefferson as a politician, writer, philosopher, Christian and economist.

Résumé À l’intérieur du mouvement social des intermittents et précaires, « l’expertise CAP » (Conséquences de l’Application du Protocole du 26 juin 2003) est une nouvelle appréhension d’un possible quotidien du Nous. C’est la construction collective d’un savoir sur la réalité d’une réglementation mouvante qui exclut. Par le biais vivant de leur récit, trois intermittentes CAP nous narrent leurs pratiques, leurs émotions, leurs doutes sur la mise en place d’une expertise qui fournit une connaissance dynamique de ce que les gens (...) vivent. Elle est fondée sur le triptyque : entraide, échanges, mobilisation des premiers concernés, à la différence de l’expertise traditionnelle, fondée sur le savoir académique de l’expert unique délégué par l’État. De ce fait, les premiers concernés deviennent les premiers experts de la réalité sociale. (shrink)

This article explores silence and the ethics of conscience through a study of the life and late letters of Sir Thomas More. More's silence is a paradigm case for the contest of conscience under conditions of tyranny, and it is one of the most influential in the formulation of principles of conscience and human rights in modern constitutional democracies. The article focuses on More's prosecution by King Henry VIII, and offers close analysis of the concept of conscience discussed in (...) his last letters. The approach is historical and philosophical, and puts More's case in dialogue with other classic and modern texts on the ethics of conscience. Emphasis is placed on More's principle of self-determination as essential to conscience. (shrink)

Background Trust is an essential phenomenon of relationship between patients and healthcare professionals and can be described as an accepted vulnerability to the power of another person over something that one cares about in virtue of goodwill toward the trustor. This characterization of interpersonal trust appears to be adequate for patients suffering from chronic illness. Trust is especially important in the context of chronic cardiovascular diseases as one of the main global health problems. Research Aim The purpose of the qualitative (...) study was to gain a deeper understanding of how people with chronic cardiovascular disease experience and make sense of trust in healthcare professionals. Research Design Eleven semi-structured interviews with participants analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore in detail their lived experience of trust as a relational phenomenon. Participants and Research Context Participants with chronic cardiovascular disease were purposively recruited from inpatients on the cardiology ward of the university hospital located in central Slovakia. Ethical Considerations The study was approved by the faculty ethics committee. Participants gave their written informed consent. Findings Four Interrelated Group Experiential Themes Sense of co-existence; Belief in competence; Will to help; Ontological security with eight subthemes were identified. The findings describe the participants' experience with trust in healthcare professionals as a phenomenon of close co-existence, which is rooted in the participants’ vulnerability and dependence on the goodwill and competence of health professionals to help with the consequence of (re)establishing a sense of ontological security in the situation of chronic illness. Conclusion Findings will contribute to an in-depth understanding of trust as an existential dimension of human co-existence and an ethical requirement of healthcare practice, inspire patient empowerment interventions, support adherence to treatment, and person-centred care. (shrink)

This paper describes ways in which political speakers define and legitimize future policies by construing different policy options in terms of ‘privileged’ and ‘oppositional’ futures. Privileged and oppositional futures are conceptual projections of alternative policy visions occurring in quasi-dialogic chunks of speech, revealing specific evidential, mood, and modality patterns. Privileged future involves the speaker’s preferred, or at least acknowledged vision and is articulated through absolute modality and evidential markers which derive from factual evidence, history, and reason. Oppositional future involves an (...) antagonistic and plainly threatening vision, expressed by probabilistic modality and (usually) the interrogative mood. Following the principle of psychological consistency in belief, oppositional future is normally communicated first, allowing for a swift and strong response from the privileged future expressed in the speaker-preferred vision. (shrink)

Drawing on interviews with mashup producers, close readings of the mashup music and videos, and a historically and aesthetically informed cultural studies approach, Brøvig demonstrates how mashup music embraces the essence of parody through its mashing and repurposing of sources, associations, and connotations.

Pragmatics, Micropragmatics, Macropragmatics The paper addresses the distinction between micropragmatics and macropragmatics. It is postulated that this differentiation, a consequence of a number of controversies surrounding the core field of pragmatics, does manifest a number of conceptual merits and methodological feasibility. The article also aims to elaborate on the four concepts central to the methodology of pragmatics, i.e. deixis, presupposition, implicature and speech acts, from an essentially ‘micropragmatic’ perspective, describing their contribution to the proposition of an utterance, its illocutionary force, (...) and a wide range of effects the utterance may produce. At the same time, however, three relativities-regularities are indicated and presented as prompts for an integrated study of intentionality at the macro level of discourse/text. (shrink)

The paper deals with awareness of mortality as a means of assimilating the radical other in human life. By introducing the ontological aspects, such as non-functionality, irreversibility, necessity, universality, potentiality and post-mor- tality, the death and mortality are interpreted with regard to otherness. The otherness of death is either relative, or absolute. Attention is paid also to the death anxiety. In conclusion the question is asked, whether it is possible to speak meaningfully about death.

Thomas Taylor in England, by K. Raine.--Thomas Taylor in America, by G. M. Harper.--Biographical accounts of Thomas Taylor.--Concerning the beautiful.--The hymns of Orpheus.--Concerning the cave of the nymphs.--A dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic mysteries.--Introduction to The fable of Cupid and Psyche.--The Platonic philosopher's creed.--An apology for the fables of Homer.--Bibliography (p. [521]-538).

Eugene Wigner's several general discussions of symmetry and invariance principles are among the canonical texts of contemporary philosophy of physics. Wigner spoke from a position of authority, having pioneered for recognition of the importance of symmetry principles from nuclear to molecular physics. But perhaps recent commentators have not sufficiently stressed that Wigner always took care to situate the notion of invariance principles with respect to two others, initial conditions and laws of nature. Wigner's first such general consideration of invariance principles, (...) an address presented at Einstein's 70th birthday celebration, held in Princeton on 19 March 1949, began by laying out just this distinction, and in a way that seems to suggest that the three notions arise through abstraction in an analysis of the general problem of cognition in the natural sciences: The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found. The complications are called initial conditions; the domain of regularities, laws of nature. the underlying abstraction is probably one of the most fruitful the human mind has made. It has made the natural sciences possible. (shrink)

This paper examines H.A. Prichard's defense of the view that moral duty is underivative, as reflected in his argument that it is a mistake to ask “Why ought I to do what I morally ought?”, because the only possible answer is “Because you morally ought to.” This view was shared by other philosophers of Prichard's period, from Henry Sidgwick through A.C. Ewing, but Prichard stated it most forcefully and defended it best. The paper distinguishes three stages in Prichard's argument: one (...) appealing to his conceptual minimalism, one an epistemological argument that parallels Moore's response to skepticism about the external world, and one arguing that attempts to justify moral duties on non-moral grounds distort the phenomena by giving those duties the wrong explanation or ground. The paper concludes by considering Prichard's critique of ancient ethics and in particular the ethics of Aristotle. The paper is broadly sympathetic to Prichard's position and arguments; its aim is partly to make a case for him as a central figure in the history of ethics. (shrink)

Linguistic intuitive judgements are the de facto data source of choice within generative linguistics. But why we are justified in relying on intuitive judgements as evidence for grammars? In the philosophy of linguistics, this question has been hotly debated. I argue that the three most prominent views of that debate all have their problems. Devitt’s Modest Explanation accounts for the wrong kind of intuitive judgements. The Voice of Competence view and Rey’s account both lack independent evidence. I introduce and defend (...) a novel proposal that accounts for the evidential role of linguistic intuitive judgements and avoids these shortcomings. On this account, linguistic intuitive judgements are reports of the speaker’s immediate experience of trying to comprehend the sentence. This experience is due to the speaker’s linguistic competence, at least in part, and so the justification for the evidential use of linguistic intuitions ultimately comes from the speaker’s competence. However, the account does not rely on any special input from the speaker’s competence being available as the basis for linguistic intuitive judgements. (shrink)

I. Introduction, notes, and appendix -- II. A facsimile of the first edition, 1642, reduced in size.

he "many things" to which the Duchess's correspondent here refers are the repairs and improvements of the episcopal seat at Auckland. I doubt if the great apologist, greater in nothing than in the simple dignity of his character, would have considered the writing an account of himself as a thing which could be put upon him to do whatever circumstances might be taken in. But the good bishop lived in an age when a man might write books and yet be (...) permitted to keep his private existence to himself; in the pre-Boswellian epoch, when the germ of the photographer lay in the womb of the distant future, and the interviewer who pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed unimaginable, birth of time. (shrink)

Maxims concerning God and man -- Is there a God? -- The problem of evil -- Reflections on the divine nature -- Creation -- The Incarnation -- What is man? -- Human society -- The Corpus Christi sequence.

René de la Tour du Pin once noted, about his own Aphorismes de politique sociale that it was not written to attract readers so much as to provoke thought. The same kind of remark might be made about this study. Though in some chapters the argument moves very smoothly and effortlessly, it is in others complicated, over-charged and somewhat repetitive. But it is a study that deals with a complicated and difficult subject, in a highly original fashion, and is well (...) worth the effort it takes. It opens up many lines of thought and many avenues for further investigation, and this with admirable control of sources and balanced appraisal. (shrink)

The merits of these two books speak for themselves. The topic chosen by the author is one that is very much alive today and one that has provoked much discussion, some superficial, some quite definitely soul-searching. To this latter the author has made a very valuable contribution. Religious of either sex will be the poorer for ignoring these two works. He states clearly some biting truths which lay bare the deep laden fears which militate against really choosing fully a vocation—a (...) choice which is for better or for worse. The demands of a vocation are always there as a challenge. In fact ‘a feeling of revulsion from the sacrificial element, an experience of turning away can be in fact the first experienced states of a person in whom the divine call truly exists’. (shrink)

This book analyses public sector reform comprehensively in all parts of China's public sector - government bureaucracy, public service units and state-owned enterprises. It argues that reform of the public sector has become an issue of great concern to the Chinese leaders, who realize that efficient public administration is key to securing the regime's governing capacity and its future survival. The book shows how thinking about public sector reform has shifted in recent decades from a quantitative emphasis on 'small government', (...) which involved the reduction in size of what was perceived as a bloated bureaucracy, to an emphasis on the quality of governance, which may result in an increase in public sector personnel. The book shows how, although Western ideas about public sector reform have had an impact, Chinese government continues to be best characterized as 'state capitalism', with the large state-owned enterprises continuing to play an important - and increasing - role in the economy and in business. However, state-owned enterprises no longer provide care for large numbers of people from the cradle to the grave - finding an alternative, efficient way of delivering basic welfare and health care is the big challenge facing China's public sector. (shrink)

This book offers an empirical and theoretical account of the mode of governance that characterizes the Bologna Process. In addition, it shows how the reform materializes and is translated in everyday working life among professors and managers in higher education. It examines the so-called Open Method of Coordination as a powerful actor that uses “soft governance” to advance transnational standards in higher education. The book shows how these standards no longer serve as tools for what were once human organizational, national (...) or international, regulators. Instead, the standards have become regulators themselves – the faceless masters of higher education. By exploring this, the book reveals the close connections between the Bologna Process and the EU regarding regulative and monitoring techniques such as standardizations and comparisons, which are carried out through the Open Method of Coordination. It suggests that the Bologna Process works as a subtle means to circumvent the EU’s subsidiarity principle, making it possible to accomplish a European governance of higher education despite the fact that education falls outside EU’s legislative reach. The book’s research interest in translation processes, agency and power relations among policy actors positions it in studies on policy transfer, policy borrowing and globalization. However, different from conventional approaches, this study draws on additional interpretive frameworks such as new materialism. (shrink)

The technologies used to govern performance at universities consist of monitoring and comparative instruments. They are designed to affect and direct behaviour. In these academic environments of exposure, comparison and self-monitoring are deeply entangled with a vulnerable affective economy. This article explores how these data may affect our moods and how academic value could be curated by other means and with care. Drawing on feminist new materialist thinking and speculative feminist storytelling, the article takes this picture of the actual as (...) a point of departure for discussing ways of experimenting with affirmative critique of the current use of data. Through a smaller experiment with thirty PhD students, the article discusses how to speculatively curate academic value by other means that provide more liveable world(ing)s than data visuals measuring performance and that engage other sensorial and affective registers. (shrink)

Newman’s anthropology duly appreciates the individuality and subjectivity of the human person, identifying each person as having “an infinite abyss of existence” within. Each person has thoughts and experiences that can never be fully understood by another. Yet Newman balances this focus on the radical irreducibility and individuality of the person with the inextricably social dimension of personhood, which is important for belief and value formation and moral development. He recognizes that we are social beings, discovering ourselves and growing through (...) the influence of community and interpersonal relationships. This essay proposes, through a presentation of the personalist thought of Newman, that the radical individuality and subjectivity of the person does not need to be seen as an alienating or isolating reality but can rather be viewed as a basis for the development of interpersonal relationships. (shrink)

We propose and axiomatically analyze a class of rational solutions to simple allocation problems where a policy-maker allocates an endowment $E$ among $n$ agents described by a characteristic vector c. We propose a class of recursive rules which mimic a decision process where the policy-maker initially starts with a reference allocation of $E$ in mind and then uses the data of the problem to recursively adjust his previous allocation decisions. We show that recursive rules uniquely satisfy rationality, c-continuity, and other-c (...) monotonicity. We also show that a well-known member of this class, the Equal Gains rule, uniquely satisfies rationality, c-continuity, and equal treatment of equals. (shrink)

There is scepticism regarding the role of values in business. Values are at best implemented as checklists and codes of conduct and not as a fundamental way of enhancing stakeholder well-being, including employees, customers, vendors and the larger ecosystem. Organizations take note of values only when instances of ethical malpractices surface—be it financial, gender-based, intellectual property and so on. Values bring out the best in individuals, teams and the organization by establishing a strong foundation for actions and interactions. Right from (...) improving the effectiveness of day-to-day meetings to creating a culture of creativity and innovation, values form the substratum for every aspect and functioning of the organization. This book establishes a strong rationale for instilling values in business organizations by demonstrating how values are the foundation for excellence, productivity, creativity, quality and for creating a stress-free work environment. By presenting experiences, challenges, inspirations and conflicts regarding values, the book will help employees at all levels strengthen their conviction regarding values at the workplace. Addressing managers at all levels and the leadership, the book pragmatically discusses how to build and nurture a values-based culture in the organization. The authors examine the subject of values from the point of view of each individual’s personal journey, and finally delve into the crucial topic of values-based leadership, which is indispensable for a culture of values. (shrink)

Contemporary Philosophy in Focus offers a series of introductory volumes to many of the dominant philosophical thinkers of the current age. Thomas Kuhn, the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is probably the best-known and most influential historian and philosopher of science of the last 25 years, and has become something of a cultural icon. His concepts of paradigm, paradigm change and incommensurability have changed the way we think about science. This volume offers an introduction to Kuhn's life (...) and work and then considers the implications of Kuhn's work for philosophy, cognitive psychology, social studies of science and feminism. The volume is more than a retrospective on Kuhn, exploring future developments of cognitive and information services along Kuhnian lines. Outside of philosophy the volume will be of particular interest to professionals and students in cognitive science, history of science, science studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

What are virtue and vice, and how do they relate to other moral properties such as goodness and rightness? This book defends a perfectionist account of virtue and vice that gives distinctive answers to these questions. The account treats the virtues as higher‐level intrinsic goods, ones that involve morally appropriate attitudes to other, independent goods and evils. Virtue by itself makes a person's life better, but in a way that depends on the goodness of other things. This account was accepted (...) by many early twentieth‐ century consequentialists, including Franz Brentano, G. E. Moore, Hastings Rashdall, and W. D. Ross. The book elaborates it further than has been done before, describing its mathematical structure, connecting it to individual virtues and vices, and applying it to specific issues such as the morality of fantasy and the proper roles of private charity and the welfare state. While doing so, it argues for the account's superiority over rival views of virtue, including those defended under the heading of “virtue ethics.”. (shrink)

Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed on (...) some important topics, especially in normative ethics. Thus some were consequentialists and others deontologists: Sidgwick thought only pleasure is good while others emphasized perfectionist goods such as knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and virtue. But all were non-naturalists and intuitionists in metaethics, holding that moral judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject-matter, and are known by direct insight. They also had similar views about how ethical theory should proceed and what are relevant arguments in it; their disagreements therefore took place on common ground. -/- Hurka recovers the history of this under-appreciated group by showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their ideas changed through time. He also identifies the shared assumptions that made their school unified and distinctive, and assesses their contributions critically, both when they debated each other and when they agreed. One of his themes is that that their general approach to ethics was more fruitful philosophically than many better-known ones of both earlier and later times. (shrink)

This book contains the text of Thomas Kuhn's unfinished book, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development, which Kuhn himself described as "a return to the central claims of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the problems that it raised but did not resolve." The Plurality of Worlds is preceded by two related texts that Kuhn publicly delivered but never published in English: his paper "Scientific Knowledge as a Historical Product" and his Shearman Memorial Lectures, "The (...) Presence of Past Science." The book opens with an introduction by the editor that describes the origins and structure of The Plurality of Worlds, and sheds light on its central philosophical problems. Kuhn's aims in his last writings are bold. He sets out to develop an empirically grounded theory of meaning that would allow him to make sense of both the possibility of historical understanding and the inevitability of incommensurability between past and present science. Moreover, he intends to show that incommensurability is fully compatible with a robust notion of a real world that science investigates, with the rationality of scientific belief change, and with the idea that scientific development is progressive. This is a must-read follow-up to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most important books of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's (...) moral thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

The impassioned democratic voice of the Age of Revolution, Paine possessed a gift for stating complex ideas in concise language. This accessible collection of highlights from the social and political philosopher's best-known works includes lengthy selections from Common Sense , The American Crisis , The Rights of Man , and The Age of Reason.

This volume contains new translations of the essential philosophical writings of Thomas Aquinas, from the Summa Theologiae and The Principles of Nature. The included texts represent the breadth of Aquinas's thought, addressing: the fundamental principles of nature; causality; the existence of God; how God can be known; how language can be used to describe God; human nature (including the nature of the soul, free will, and epistemology); happiness; ethics; and natural law. The goal of these translations is twofold: to (...) allow Aquinas to speak for himself, but also to make his thought accessible to the contemporary reader without the burden of unnecessary adherence to convention. A thorough introduction to Aquinas and his ideas is included, as are a series of useful appendices connecting Aquinas's arguments to those of Anselm, Scotus, and others. (shrink)

Aquinas occupies an extremely important position in the western philosophical tradition. His work contains influential contributions in logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics and philosophy of religion, and his commentaries on Aristotle played a major role in the incorporation of the philosophy of Aristotle into the understanding of Christian doctrine and into western culture at large. Yet many people find it difficult to begin the study of Aquinas's work, daunted by its volume and by its being worked out within in (...) the context of Catholic doctrine, which must now be obscure to most readers. This book can help rectify this. (shrink)

Existing research suggests that people's judgments of actual causation can be influenced by the degree to which they regard certain events as normal. We develop an explanation for this phenomenon that draws on standard tools from the literature on graphical causal models and, in particular, on the idea of probabilistic sampling. Using these tools, we propose a new measure of actual causal strength. This measure accurately captures three effects of normality on causal judgment that have been observed in existing studies. (...) More importantly, the measure predicts a new effect ("abnormal deflation"). Two studies show that people's judgments do, in fact, show this new effect. Taken together, the patterns of people's causal judgments thereby provide support for the proposed explanation. (shrink)

I argue that Kuhn's account of scientific practice is profitably understood as a kind of hinge epistemology: like our epistemic practices more generally, scientific inquiry is made possible precisely by the fact that certain things are not subject to doubt. In Kuhn's own words, ‘dogmatism’ is essential to scientific practice and one of the primary engines of its success. For this reason, I argue that Kuhn's account is a rich source for reflection on the relationship between faith and reason. At (...) the same time, Kuhn has faced objections similar to those which have faced hinge-epistemologists: how can disputes grounded in different, incompatible ‘dogmas’ be rationally resolved? Kuhn's response is similar to one put forward by Duncan Pritchard, but is, I argue, an improvement on it. In particular, the hinges on which deep scientific disagreement turns are for Kuhn certain shared values in light of which debate is possible. The choice among competing dogmas can, I argue, be understood on analogy with a prudential judgement of practical reasoning, i.e., an exercise of phronēsis. (shrink)