Displayed on school walls during holidays, attached to floats and triumphal arches in processions, emblems played a part in all public events organized by the Jesuits in the 17th century. These verbal-iconographic compositions, which were used to illustrate the principal themes of the ceremony, were not a mere period detail or an ornamental device but constituted a means of expression which, by virtue of the particular relations governing the association of text and image, mobilized complex rhetorical, moral, and spiritual elements (...) simultaneously. By associating an image - seen as the “body” - with a textual element (inscriptio et subscriptio) - the “soul” - the emblem-maker sought to achieve a unity of meaning in which the two forms of communication complemented each other: it is precisely the way in which the two elements are connected, and the laws that regulate their composition, that constitutes the foundation of the language of the emblem. This language, which is used in a corresponding manner in a variety of other symbolic compositions (devices, hieroglyphs, symbols, coats of arms, medals, etc.), is based on the rhetorical operations of the metaphor, applied here as a model both for the word, with its mimetic properties, and for figurative codes. However, the metaphor, as a product of human ingenuity, is not only situated at the crossroads of a system of thought crystallized in a great number of inventions, but also bears witness to an ornamental aesthetic, typical of the 17th century's aristocratic culture and social rituals. While there does exist a vast bibliography of materials on the function and role of metaphor in Baroque culture, questions nevertheless remain about the numerous cultural practices to which the Baroque gave rise and the particular processes that the 17th century brought into play. My intention here is not to resolve all such questions but rather to provide an analytical framework by focusing my observations on emblematic compositions produced in the scholastic milieu of the Society of Jesus. (shrink)

The Rhetorimachia by Anselm of Besate is one of the most original and less understood works of the high Middle Ages. By showing his literary and philosophical competences with this fictitious ‘rhetoric battle’ against his cousin, Anselm tries to obtain a prestigious job at Emperor Henry III’s court. In a continuous, polished game with his learned readers, Anselm uses all resources of the trivium, presenting his culture in a new, secular way, which is an anticipation of the Italian cultural context (...) of the 12th century, the era of the Comuni. (shrink)

Through the seasons, you are attentive to God's inherent timing and intended purpose at every stage and episode in life. Obstacles give way to opportunities and hindrances to heights, as you surrender to a life of completion with a realization that it is the journey that matters at the finish.

The article describes the historical-critical method within the field of philosophy and the issues to which it is related, such as the role of the history of philosophy in the development of theoretical philosophy and thedistinction between historiography and history. First, it highlights the relevance of the historical-critical method for philosophy, which is based on the knowledge philosophers should have about the genesis of thinking. Then it analyzes the original sense of the method, understood as a search for historical, cultural, (...) external, and internal factors that influence philosophical works. It, also, addresses history of philosophy as a rational reconstruction of previous doctrines. Finally, it considers the distinction between Historie and Geschichte, which comes from biblical studies, to evaluate the limitations to applying the historical-critical method. To sum up, the article goes from mere documentarism, as a primary form of preserving and recovering information about the progression of philosophical doctrines, through historiography, as a systematic undertaking for chronological ordering with the assistance of specific instruments, to history, as rational and critical reconstruction of thinking, and what in theology -but also in philosophy- is known as Geschichte, that is, the profound happening that provides the fabric of thinking with real meaning. (shrink)

La notoria importancia que Eckhart da al desapego de las cosas (Gelassenheit) podría sugerir que el místico alemán desdeña la vida activa. Inversamente, Eckhart entiende que el desasimiento respecto de las creaturas es perfectamente compatible con la acción e incluso interpreta, de un modo opuesto a..

En este escrito realizaremos un aproximamiento al concepto de naturaleza, desde los primeros filósofos de la Physis hasta el Idealismo de Schelling. Para ello, seguiremos la interpretación que el pensador Merleau-Ponty realiza sobre este concepto a partir de las respuestas de Kant y Schelling al «argumento ontológico» de Descartes.

The notion of natural law was to a great extent discovered by the Greeks. Although formulated for the first time by the Stoics, there are important precedents in previous philosophers and tragic writers. Nevertheless, the coming of Christianity, by virtue of its concept of creation, brought along a different notion of God and nature. This meant a decisive change in the notion of the natural law, which we will highlight in these pages.

The Western cultural archetype of Narcissus experiences a significant turning point in the 1400s, thanks to Leon Battista Alberti’s work. Indeed, the myth evolves from being a subject embodying a taboo in the Antiquity to become the glance that generates the image; in so doing this myth assumes the rank of science and philosophy. Alberti does not follow Pliny’s reading of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but handles Philostratus’s version; with his visual description he represents in the “Eikones” the darting glance towards the (...) water. The rendering of this image anticipates the notion of centric ray, on which Alberti establishes his perspective’s theory based on the diaphanous nature of “velum”. The art of painting is compared to an “open vitreous and translucent window”. Narcissus does not see the water, so to say, but the image, as well as the painting’s observer instantly grasps the iconic value of it, rather than the material support. Because of this immediacy, the art of painting becomes the terrain of revelation: it makes clear the emerging progressive visibility of “something”, thus concurring with philosophy; better, the art of painting overtakes philosophy with the simple representation of polysemous complexities. This is the new art of painting, in which “there is nothing that is not philosophy”. Furthermore, in this synthetic role of representation in which the icon becomes all one with the spectator – in addition to the centric ray and to the orthogonality of the vision, topics already analyzed by the author in previous studies – consists an outstanding resemblance between Alberti and Cusanus. The two philosophers show their synergy in exploring a new anthropology. From this point of view can be read Alberti’s explanation, often misinterpreted, of Narcissus’ transformation into a flower: a synthesis between “imaginatio” and “executio”, or inactiveness versus activeness. Among all Narcissus’ portrayals of that time, it would be useful to consider the Pseudo Boltraffio’s version of London; this rendering applies thematically Alberti’s theory in its essential aspects, introducing it within Leonardo Da Vinci’s circle of artists. (shrink)

La crisis acontecida a partir de los avances del averroísmo latino y sus sucesivas condenaciones (particularmente la de 1277) produjo una creciente separación de razón y fe, por lo que los vínculos entre metafísica, teología natural y teología sobrenatural se volvieron cada vez más problemáticos. La doctrina escotista de la univocidad del ser tuvo como motivación tratar de superar el hiato, ya evidente, entre el conocimiento metafísico del ente y el conocimiento de Dios intentando fundar la posibilidad de este último. (...) Siglos más tarde, el pensamiento posmoderno, que asume como punto de partida la caída de la metafísica, retoma la doctrina de la univocidad con un propósito diferente: señalar que un orden metafísico de lo real es inexistente. (shrink)

There are important difficulties in the post modern interpretation of Heidegger’s thought. The point is that it is possible to perceive a diverse understanding of being in Heidegger than in post modern authors. Quite often, this divergence causes confusion in post modern representatives confronted t..

Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign‐function mapping optionality, one of acquisition‐dependent sign‐function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness‐talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to help refine the definition of humans as “linguistic animals” in light of a comparative approach on nonhuman animals’ cognitive systems. As Uexküll & Kriszat (1934/1992) have theorized, the epistemic access to each species-specific environment (Umwelt) is driven by different biocognitive processes. Within this conceptual framework, I identify the salient cognitive process that distinguishes each species typical perception of the world as the faculty of language meant in the following operational definition: the ability to (...) connect different elements according to structural rules. In order to draw some conclusions about humans’ specific faculty of language, I review different empirical studies on nonhuman animals’ ability to recognize formal patterns of tokens. I suggest that what differentiates human language from other animals’ cognitive systems is the ability to categorize the units of a pattern, going beyond its perceptual aspects. In fact, humans are the only species known to be able to combine semantic units within a network of combinatorial logical relationships (Deacon 1997) that can be linked to the state of affairs in the external world (Wittgenstein 1922). I assume that this ability is the core cognitive process underlying a) the capacity to speak (or to reason) in verbal propositions and b) the general human faculty of language expressed, for instance, in the ability to draw visual conceptual maps or to compute mathematical expressions. In light of these considerations, I conclude providing some research questions that could lead to a more detailed comparative exploration of the faculty of language. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to focus not on the problems that I believe may threaten Kant’s account of the highest good, but instead on those that I believe threaten the majority of the interpretive reconstructions attempted by commentators and thus prevent the emergence of a consensus in the near future. My goal is to set forth exactly four problems to which I believe any successful interpretation or reconstruction of Kant’s account of the highest good will have to provide substantive (...) solutions and, in doing so, either break new theoretical ground or at least provide a more comprehensive methodology for sorting through the texts. (shrink)

In Bearing Witness, Courtney S. Campbell draws on his experience as a teacher, scholar, and a bioethics consultant to propose an innovative interpretation of the significance of religious values and traditions for bioethics and health care. The book offers a distinctive exposition of a covenantal ethic of gift-response-responsibility-transformation that informs a quest for meaning in the profound choices that patients, families, and professionals face in creating, sustaining, and ending life. Campbell's account of "bearing witness" offers new understandings of formative (...) ethical concepts, situates medicine as a calling and vocation rooted in concepts of healing, affirms professional commitments of presence for suffering and dying persons, and presents a prophetic critique of medical-assisted death. This book offers compelling critiques of secular models of medical professionalism and of individualistic assumptions that distort the physician-patient relationship. This innovative interpretation bears witness to the relevance of religious perspectives on an array of bioethical issues from new reproductive technologies to genetics to debates over end-of-life ethics and bears witness against the oddities of a market-oriented and consumerist vision of health care that is especially salient for an era of health-care reform. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to better understand Kant’s conception of philosophy as a “world concept”, which is at the heart of the Architectonic of Pure Reason. This is pursued in two major parts. The first evaluates the textual foundation for reading Kant’s world concept of philosophy as cosmopolitanism and concludes that he most probably never himself equated philosophy as a world concept with any form of cosmopolitanism. The second major part of the paper clarifies this concept of philosophy (...) through the specific role it plays in the argument of the Architectonic. Kant’s unique concept of science is examined and compared with several specific applications of it found elsewhere in Kant’s writings. From this it is concluded that Kant’s intention in the Architectonic was to derive his world concept of philosophy from its logical counterpart, namely the scholastic concept of philosophy, and that its function there is to provide the idea from which the entire structure of Kantian critical metaphysics can be derived. Philosophy as a world concept, it is further argued, is the complete system of critical or Kantian metaphysics in application and the philosopher in this sense is the ideal critical metaphysician who fully realizes its laws through her own understanding and will. (shrink)

Tracing the political origins of the Mexican indigenous rights movement, from the colonial encounter to the Zapatista uprising, and from Chiapas to Geneva, Courtney Jung locates indigenous identity in the history of Mexican state formation. She argues that indigenous identity is not an accident of birth but a political achievement that offers a new voice to many of the world's poorest and most dispossessed. The moral force of indigenous claims rests not on the existence of cultural differences, or identity, (...) but on the history of exclusion and selective inclusion that constitutes indigenous identity. As a result, the book shows that privatizing or protecting such groups is a mistake and develops a theory of critical liberalism that commits democratic government to active engagement with the claims of culture. This book will appeal to scholars and students of political theory, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology studying multiculturalism and the politics of culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSince the release of the Final Report of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, many non-Indigenous Canadians, politicians, and educational and cultural institutions have embraced reconciliation. Yet, many Indigenous people in Canada remain skeptical. In this article, I examine six reasons Indigenous people may resist reconciliation. Reconciliation may aim to restore a relationship that never existed in the first place, and may limit an Indigenous future. Reconciliation may look more like adaptation than transformation. Reconciliation may serve as a government project (...) whose primary aim is to bolster state legitimacy. Reconciliation may reflect the desire, for settler-descendants, for expiation or a ‘move to innocence.’ Ultimately, reconciliation is about living together, which may be incompatible with more transformative political projects, such as decolonization. (shrink)

This volume explores the metaphysics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and its decisive influence on Immanuel Kant. Eleven specially written essays by leading scholars of German philosophy will boost further the growth of interest in Baumgarten as a key figure in the history of European thought.

This paper explains a way of understanding Kant's proof of God's existence in the Critique of Practical Reason that has hitherto gone unnoticed and argues that this interpretation possesses several advantages over its rivals. By first looking at examples where Kant indicates the role that faith plays in moral life and then reconstructing the proof of the second Critique with this in view, I argue that, for Kant, we must adopt a certain conception of the highest good, and so also (...) must choose to believe in the kind of God that can make it possible, because this is essentially a way of actively striving for virtue. One advantage of this interpretation, I argue, is that it is able to make sense of the strong link Kant draws between morality and religion. (shrink)

This article examines the regulation of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, with particular focus on products approved for marketing in the United Kingdom, while denied marketing approval in the United States on safety grounds, and then subsequently withdrawn from the UK market on those grounds. Using international comparison of regulatory data never before accessed outside government and companies, together with interviews with relevant industry scientists and regulators, the article demonstrates the importance of regulatory expectations, deficits and paradigms. It is argued both that (...) these sociological concepts can be enriched by their application to detailed comparative case study of regulatory science, and that they provide an important policy-relevant framework with which to understand discrepant drug regulatory processes in a sociohistorical context. It is found that regulatory expectations and paradigms may be regarded as mediating factors between political culture and structural interests, on the one hand, and the outcomes of regulatory science, on the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and the Body in Medical ResearchCourtney S. Campbell (bio)AbstractReligious discussion of human organs and tissues has concentrated largely on donation for therapeutic purposes. The retrieval and use of human tissue samples in diagnostic, research, and education contexts have, by contrast, received very little direct theological attention. Initially undertaken at the behest of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, this essay seeks to explore the theological and religious questions embedded (...) in nontherapeutic use of human tissue. It finds that the “donation paradigm” typically invoked in religious discourse to justify uses of the body for therapeutic reasons is inadequate in the context of nontherapeutic research, while the “resource paradigm” implicit in scientific discourse presumes a reductionist account of the body that runs contrary to important religious values about embodiment. The essay proposes a “contribution paradigm” that provides a religious perspective within which research on human tissue can be both justified and limited.The retrieval and use of human tissue samples for diagnostic, therapeutic, research, and educational purposes represent further developments in scientific study of the human body as a source of medical information. Following the completion of its examination of the ethical and policy issues pertaining to human cloning in the spring of 1997, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) returned to the set of questions for which it had been originally constituted, including ethical issues that arise in human subjects research. One issue that proved controversial for the human genetics subcommittee of NBAC was the scientific, philosophical, and legal status of tissue and other body parts (usually surgical specimens) that had been retrieved from patients (not research subjects) who had given general consent to the use of their body materials for research and educational purposes. The subcommittee addressed questions about the adequacy of general versus specific [End Page 275] consent, the scientific merits of identifiable versus anonymous samples and claims about patient confidentiality, and the justification for patient refusals and requests that the materials be returned to the patient or discarded rather than made available for scientific research. In an effort to better understand the ramifications of research on human tissue, the subcommittee commissioned several background papers that examined these questions from ethical, legal, research, and religious perspectives. What follows is a modified version of the report on religious considerations originally presented to the genetics subcommittee of NBAC.The central question examined in this article is whether tissue banking for purposes of research presents distinctive theological issues or prompts objections from religious communities or scholars. Religious discussion of human organs and tissues has focused largely on donation for therapeutic purposes (what I describe as the “donation paradigm”); hence, there is very little direct consideration of nontherapeutic uses of such tissue. It is possible, however, to describe implications and suggest inferences by considering (1) religious attitudes to the human body and to organs, tissues, and cells removed from the body, and (2) religious discussions of modes of transfer of body parts, such as donations, offerings, sales, and abandonment. By and large, this discussion will reflect themes that emerge from the central Western religious traditions, with some attention given to Eastern and Native perspectives.The Body: Religious Holism, Scientific Reductionism, Private PropertyThe human body as an organic totality has long been the subject of theological reflection and a symbol for religious communities. However, much less attention has been devoted to the religious status of organs, tissues, cells, and DNA. The reflection of religious scholars and communities on the status of body parts has been prompted by the necessity to confront practical questions in personal and public health and in communal life, such as justifications for surgery, autopsies, organ donation, or burial. Scientific and research interest in parts of the body can sometimes conflict with religious values about bodily integrity. Indeed, E. Richard Gold cites the “disparate claims of scientific investigation and religious belief on the body” as the exemplary case of incommensurate values regarding the body. According to Gold (1996, p. 149), “The body, from a scientific viewpoint, is a source of knowledge of physical development, aging, and disease. From a religious perspective, the body is understood [End Page 276] as a sacred object, being created in the image... (shrink)

In this paper I examine the intracultural variability of parental and alloparental caregiving among the Aka foragers of the Central African Republic. It has been suggested that maternal kin offer higher frequencies of allocare than paternal kin and that maternal investment in infants will decrease when alloparental assistance is provided. Behavioral observations were conducted on 15 eight- to twelve-monthold infants. The practice of brideservice and the flexibility of Aka residence patterns offered a means to test the effect of maternal residence (...) on parental and alloparental investment. There was significant variation in the frequency of investment and who supplied care to infants depending on whether mothers resided with their kin or their husbands’ kin. However, in spite of the variation in allocare, when all categories of caregivers were examined collectively, infants received similar overall levels of care. (shrink)

This chapter traces the origins of Kant's perfectionism, and so of his moral law, to the formal conception of 'nature' that emerges from his reflection on the work of Wolff and Baumgarten. The conceptual preparation for this move turns upon two hinges, both of which trace to Baumgarten's subtle modifications of Wollffian perfectionism, namely, his fuller articulation of a non-consequentialist, internal morality of actions and what I call a 'hyper-Leibnizian' account of the idea and formal structure of nature itself. The (...) fourth section shows how Kant discovers a new account of the a priori origin of this formal structure, which, when combined with his conception of unconditioned or transcendental freedom, allows him to locate an unconditioned, hence genuinely moral law, in freedom's lawlike unconditioned, intetentional imiposition of this same formal strcture, this homologia, on all its actions. In this way, the neo-Stoicism found in the earlier rationalist tradition, which bits us to 'live according to nature,' becomes in Kant the absolute duty to live according to reason's pure, a priori idea of a nature. (shrink)

In this chapter, I demonstrate the several fundamental and original aspects of Bamgarten's concpetion of metaphyics that have been overlooked or at least insufficiently investigated. Baumgarten departs from his predecessors, and from many of his contemporaries, by regarding metaphysics as a uniquely human science whose essential purpose is to provide the best instruments for knowing and realising perfection in human life, given that we are subject to essential limitations. This instrumental view of metaphysics leads him to develop seveal Leibnizian ideas (...) regarding perfection and the best possible world into highly articulated metaphysical doctrines that are able to serve as universal guiding principles for all other sciences. In the final part of the chapter, I illustrate three ways in which metaphysics plays this role through an examination of the foundations of Baumgarten's own practical philosophy. (shrink)

Feminist sociologists claim that while feminist insights have been incorporated in sociological paradigms and women sociologists have been well-integrated into academia, sociological frameworks have not been transformed, a process known as the missing feminist revolution. Yet, few have examined how the missing feminist revolution operates in specific subdisciplines and the mechanisms that sustain it. This article undertakes these tasks by analyzing religion and gender scholarship published in six sociology journals over the past 32 years. We find evidence of partial integration (...) and continued marginalization. However, we also document disparate networks of interlocutors that operate in two distinct intellectual fields—religion and gender. We argue that this bifurcation partially explains the missing feminist revolution and that insularity of feminist conversations likely contributes to this process. Our findings shed light on obstacles to transforming mainstream disciplines. (shrink)

Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness-talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

: The chronic shortage of transplantable organs has reached critical proportions. In the wake of this crisis, some bioethicists have argued there is sufficient public support to expand organ recovery through use of neocortical criteria of death or even pre-mortem organ retrieval. I present a typology of ways in which data gathered from the public can be misread or selectively used by bioethicists in service of an ideological or policy agenda, resulting in bad policy and bad ethics. Such risks should (...) lead us to look at alternatives for increasing organ supplies short of expanding or abandoning the dead donor rule. The chronic problem of organ scarcity should prompt bioethicists to engage in constructive dialogue about the relation of the social sciences and bioethics, to examine the social malleability of the definition of death, and to revisit the question of the priority of organ transplants in the overall package of healthcare benefits provided to most, but not all, citizens. (shrink)

We not only own our bodies, we are our bodies. Can we simply alienate parts of them? Both a theology of stewardship and the principle of self‐ownership would seem to permit or even encourage us to do this.

Although the overwhelming majority of terminally ill patients in Oregon who seek a physician's aid in dying are enrolled in hospice programs, hospices do not take a major role in this practice. An examination of fifty‐five Oregon hospices reveals that both legal and moral questions prevent hospices from collaborating fully with physician‐assisted death.

In June 2019 Victoria became the first state in Australia to permit “voluntary assisted dying”, with its governance detailed in the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017. While taking lead from the regulation of medically assisted death practices in other parts of the world, Victoria’s legislation nevertheless remains distinct. The law in Victoria only makes VAD available to persons determined to be “already dying”: it is expressly limited to those medically prognosed to die “within weeks or months.” In this article, we (...) discuss the emergence of the Victorian legislation across key formative documents. We show how, in devising VAD exclusively for those “already at the end of their lives”, the Victorian state mobilizes the medico-legal category of the already dying. We argue that this category functions to negotiate a path between what are seen as the unacceptable alternatives of violent suicide on the one hand, and an unlimited right to die on the other. Further, we argue that the category of the already dying operates to make medical practitioners the gatekeepers of this new life-ending choice and effectively limits the realization of autonomy at the end of life. (shrink)

This paper defends the Principle of Sufficient Reason, taking Baumgarten as its guide. The primary aim is not to vindicate the principle, but rather to explore the kinds of resources Baumgarten originally thought sufficient to justify the PSR against its early opponents. The paper also considers Baumgarten’s possible responses to Kant’s pre-Critical objections to the proof of the PSR. The paper finds that Baumgarten possesses reasonable responses to all these objections. While the paper notes that in the absence of a (...) response to Kant’s Critical discussion of the PSR, this result does not vindicate the principle, it shows how this discussion provides a deeper understanding of what, according to Baumgarten, the PSR really assumes and intends, and prepares the way for a more responsible discussion of Kant’s critical objections to Baumgarten’s supposed proof. (shrink)

This chapter challenges previous interpretations of the essay by analyzing the essential features of the method it describes. It argues that, even if Kant fails to present a perfectly clear and defensible account of a method for metaphysics, the manner in which he describes this method and the kind of transformation of metaphysical inquiry that he hopes it will accomplish do not testify to a broadly rationalist approach but, in fact, embody the anti-rationalist spirit of Bacon and Newton. While Kant (...) does indeed believe that metaphysics will one day be able to re-adopt the synthetic method, I argue that this is perfectly consistent with the views of Bacon and Newton as he understood them. In contrast with Friedman’s claim, I also show that experience does play a role in Kant’s conception of data and that this is particularly clear if we take into account other texts of the same period. (shrink)

The Australian state of Victoria introduced new legislation regulating medical treatment and associated decision-making in March 2018. In this article we provide an overview of the new Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016 and compare it to the former Medical Treatment Act 1988. Most substantially, the new Act provides for persons with relevant decision-making capacity to make decisions in advance regarding their potential future medical care, to take effect in the event they themselves do not have decision-making capacity. Prima (...) facie, the new Act enshrines autonomy as the pre-eminent value underlying the state’s approach to medical treatment decision-making and associated surrogate decision-making. However, we contend that the intention of the Act may not accord with implementation of the Act to date if members of the community are not aware of the Act’s provisions or are not engaged in advance care planning. There is a need for further research, robust community advocacy, and wider engagement for the intention of the Act—the promotion of “precedent autonomy” in respect to surrogate medical treatment decision-making—to be fully realized. (shrink)

This chapter re-examines Baumgarten's definition of 'existence' with an eye to evaluating Kant's criticisms of this definition in his pre-Critical writings. It shows that Baumgarten sharply distinguishes existence, as a specific content, from actuality, as the determination with respect to the same content, in a way that has gone unnoticed by pevious commentators. Afer explaining the implications of this disocovery for our understanding of Baumgarten's view of existence in general, it uses this to construct his version of the ontological argument. (...) The chapter highlights the originality of Baumgarten's version of the argument by comparison with Wolff's and argues that Baumgarten's conception of existence allows him to avoid the objections brought forward by Kant in the Only Possible Arugment in Support of a Demonstration of God's Existence. (shrink)

In writing his metaphysics in the form of “meditations,” Descartes specifically rejects two other forms: “synthesis,” the form of a deductive proof common in ancient geometry, and “disputation,” the form of a dialectical defense of a thesis against an antithesis. Both forms, Descartes argues, impede a reader’s ability to discover the material “as if for herself” and endanger instilling in her a cynicism towards philosophy. Descartes instead chose the form of “analysis” for the presentation of his metaphysics, which he asserts (...) is the “best and truest method of instruction.” What can philosophy teachers learn from these claims? We too rely on pedagogical forms that are broadly synthetic and disputative, and we too can recognize a student’s sudden suspicion of philosophy. I argue that Descartes’s pedagogical comments offer a solution to help us avoid this classroom danger of misology. (shrink)