David Shaw has a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy from the Aquinas Institute. This three-year in-depth study of Aristotle was illuminated with commentaries by Thomas Aquinas. Many persons believe that God has created everything that is. I do not disagree with them but I am not satisfied with this generality. There is no guidance in this belief. We have endured 300 years since the revolutionaries of modern science began their dismemberment of the Greek cosmos that had endured for (...) 2,000 years. We now have no theory of creation. The Hebrew cosmos and the Greek cosmos made up the traditional theories of creation for the western world. Since many have forgotten this history, I summarize it before venturing into my proposal for a new theory of creation. Our universe and the ancient universe are vastly different. The ancient universe was static. It was thought to have no history. Our universe is dynamic. It has a history. Harold Morowitz has identified 28 emergences of new complexity in our universe [1]. I propose a new theory of creation. I give four arguments for community as the next emergence based on the statements of four great thinkers: Plato, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, and Michael Sandel. These thinkers do not propose community as the next emergence, they do identify community as a central process in human affairs. A description of my experience with community-building projects is included. While writing this section, the importance of civic fabric in building community confronted me.Community does not flow from civic fabric. Community does not flow without civicfabric. Civic fabric is the foundation for community. 1. Morowitz, Harrold. The Emergence Of Everything: How The World Became Complex. (shrink)

Given its clinical significance, horror should occupy a prominent place within emotion theory. However, conceptualizations of horror within psychological science are relatively underdeveloped and conceptually confused. Through conceptual analysis of the disparate literature on the emotion, we seek to establish horror as a qualitatively distinct mode of engagement with the world and to remedy its over-intellectualization, as evident in many prior accounts. Given its etymology, we first address horror's characteristic immobilization—at the level of stereotypical facial configuration and action readiness—before analyzing (...) horror's formal object and appraisal structure. In the process, we critique schema accounts of the emotion and argue for conceptualizing horror pre-reflectively by grounding it in appraised violations of the practical dynamics of social engagement. (shrink)

Distinguishing explicit from implicit knowledge on the basis of the active representation of certain propositional attitudes fails to provide an explanation for dissociations in learning performance under implicit and explicit conditions. This suggests an account of implicit and explicit knowledge grounded in the presence of multiple learning mechanisms, and multiple brain systems more generally. A rough outline of a connectionist account of this kind is provided.

As an introduction to this issue, I argue that the concept of autonomy is clearly important for many of the freedoms we enjoy. The problem in medicine with its use lies in interpreting the concept with respect to the impact of disease on persons, the models of medicine we employ, and the settings in which the problems arise. A short statement about the major points of the authors collected in this issue concludes the editorial.

Biology has been advancing with explosive pace over the last few years and in so doing has raised a host of ethical issues. This book, aimed at the general reader, reviews the major advances of recent years in biology and medicine and explores their ethical implications. From birth to death the reader is taken on a tour of human biology - covering genetics, reproduction, development, transplantation, aging, dying and also the use of animals in research and the impact of human (...) populations on this planet. In each chapter there is a sketch of a field's most recent scientific advances, combined with discussions of the ethical and moral principles and implications for social frameworks and public policy raised by those advances. Anybody interested or concerned about the ethical dilemmas caused by advances in science and medicine should read this book. (shrink)

In this paper I address three problems posed by modern medical technology regarding comatose dying patients. The first is that physicians sometimes hide behind the tests for whole-brain death rather than make the necessary human decision. The second is that the tests themselves betray a metaphysical judgment about death that may be ontologically faulty. The third is that discretion used by physicians and patients and/or family in deciding to cease treatment when the whole-brain death criteria may not be met are (...) sometimes open to challenge. In each of these problems I find that the operative concept of death relates to life itself. This point is expanded by examining the uses of the word death in our language and culture. From these I formulate an initial ontology of death. In it, death is described through a relationship with life, rather than as an absence of life, of consciousness, awareness, or sensation. This ontology then leads to a proposal for an ethics of discretion about the discontinuation of treatment for comatose patients. (shrink)

In this work David Durst explores the development of modernism in the philosophy, politics, and culture of the first German Republic between 1918 and 1933. Through a reasoned critique of various Weimar intellectual figures such as Ernst Bloch, Martin Heidegger, and Theodor Adorno, Durst offers clarity and insight into the various aesthetic postures of the interwar period. From the cultural vibrancy of the early Weimar period to the eventual decay towards fascism and Nazi rule,Weimar Modernism provides a new and (...) coherent way to examine this important era, which has often been presented in a fragmented manner. (shrink)

A purely deductive medical ethics cannot properly account for the varieties of circumstances which arise in medical practice. By contrast, a purely inductive medical ethics lacks sufficient guidance from ethical principles. In resolving ethical dilemmas in medicine, most often an appeal is made to middle-level axioms and methodological rules to mediate between theory and practice. I argue that this appeal must be augmented by considerations of context, such considerations, in effect, constituting a moral rule based on the social structure of (...) medical practice. A contextual grid is proposed which assists the process of weighing values in resolving cases. (shrink)

In a 1990 lecture Alasdair MacIntyre identified a number of difficulties in dialogue between philosophers of the Aristotelian and Thomist schools and those of certain modern schools. An examination of various interpretations of Aquinas reveals not only difficulties for inter-school dialogue but for intra-school dialogue as well. Even on foundational topics such as the notion of being, the proper method by which to study being, and the notion of substance, there are divergent opinions about what Aquinas held. This essay argues (...) that certain concepts from Gadamer can be helpful on these disputes. In particular, Gadamer’s ideas that to be is to be manifested, that a perspective-free metaphysics is impossible, and that the relationship between text and performance can serve as a model for understanding the relationship between substance and accident may help to resolve certain internecine disputes within the Aristotelian and Thomist schools as well as to foster philosophical conversation between these approaches and some contemporary schools of thought. (shrink)

The first book on my shelf at the newly created Program on Human Values and Health Sciences at the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences in Memphis was by Van Rensselaer Potter on Global Bioethics. He was a cancer specialist at the University of Wisconsin and had the vision that bioethics should be a global concern—global in terms of scope, disciplines involved, and relationship to the environment and cultural context. This view has shaped my own career as well (...) as influencing many others. (shrink)

Can it be already 30 years since the first days of modern, secular bioethics? As those of us in the field for almost all these years arrive near the end of our careers, we find that time has truly flown and the challenges have not diminished one bit. If anything, they are even greater than in the early years. Along the way it was tempting to think that the broad consensus reached on research ethics, on the four principles, on the (...) need for consent in clinical ethics, and then on rights in reproduction and dying, would paint the picture rather well. Only fill-in would be needed by the apprentices coming afterward. Yet time and again new biological and medical discoveries continued to challenge that painting. A new canvas had to be hung. Among the major newer developments were the challenges of healthcare reform, genetics, antifoundationalism, the certification of ethics consultants, and now, the internationalization of bioethics, its relationship to the environment and world politics, and biotechnology. (shrink)

This paper proposes a number of improvements to the text of Basil of Caesarea's Homiliae in hexaemeron 4 and 5. The biblical text poses particular problems for the fourth and the fifth homilies. Therefore, the text form of Genesis from these two homilies is discussed first, and then further individual instances from the fourth and the fifth homilies are examined. The passages are presented in the format of a commentary under the assumption that the reader has the GCS edition at (...) hand. (shrink)

This overview of the "sister arts" of the nineteenth century by younger scholars in art history, literature, and American studies presents a startling array of perspectives on the fundamental role played by images in culture and society. Drawing on the latest thinking about vision and visuality as well as on recent developments in literary theory and cultural studies, the contributors situate paintings, sculpture, monument art, and literary images within a variety of cultural contexts. The volume offers fresh and sometimes extended (...) discussions of single works as well as reevaluations of artistic and literary conventions and analyses of the economic, social, and technological forces that gave them shape and were influenced by them in turn. A wide range of figures are significantly reassessed, including the painters Charles Willson Peale, Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, George Caleb Bingham, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Mary Cassatt, and such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and William Dean Howells. One overarching theme to emerge is the development of an American national subjectivity as it interacted with the transformation of a culture dominated by religious values to one increasingly influenced by commercial imperatives. The essays probe the ways in which artists and writers responded to the changing conditions of the cultural milieu as it was mediated by such factors as class and gender, modes of perception and representation, and conflicting ideals and realities. (shrink)

Amor Dei, “love of God” raises three questions: How do we know God is love? How do we experience love of God? How free are we to love God? This book presents three kinds of love, worldly, spiritual, and divine to understand God’s love. The work begins with Augustine’s Confessions highlighting his Manichean and Neoplatonic periods before his conversion to Christianity. Augustine’s confrontation with Pelagius anticipates the unresolved disputes concerning God’s love and free will. In the sixteenth-century the Italian humanist, (...) Gasparo Contarini introduces the notion of “divine amplitude” to demonstrate how God’s goodness is manifested in the human agent. Pierre de Bérulle, Guillaume Gibieuf, and Nicolas Malebranche show connections with Contarini in the seventeenth-century controversies relating free will and divine love. In response to the free will dispute, the Scottish philosopher, William Chalmers, offers his solution. Cornelius Jansen relentlessly asserts his anti-Pelagian interpretation of Augustine stirring up more controversy. John Norris, Malebranche’s English disciple, exchanges his views with Mary Astell and Damaris Masham. In the tradition of Cambridge Platonism, Ralph Cudworth conveys a God who “sweetly governs.” The organization of sections represents the love of God in ascending-descending movements demonstrating that, “human love is inseparable from divine love.”. (shrink)

This paper applies models of the onset of adolescent sexual intercourse using national data from Denmark and the USA. The model gave excellent fits to data on Danish Whites and a good fit to American Whites, but the model-fits for American Blacks and Hispanics were not as good. The weakness of the latter model fits may reflect either real processes that the model does not capture or problems in the reliability of adolescent sexuality data.

Gorgeous black and white photographs of machines built to unlock the secrets of the universe.

John Dewey, like many other American intellectuals between the world wars, was fascinated by Soviet events. After visiting Russia in 1928 he wrote excitedly about the and especially about Soviet educational theorists. In his early enthusiasm Dewey hoped that the US and the USSR could learn from each other, especially among the cosmopolitan group of progressive pedagogues he met on his trip. Observing the rise of Stalinism in the 1930s, though, his optimism dissipated; at the same time he came to (...) emphasize historical and cultural differences between the US and the USSR. The result is apparent in Dewey's writings in the late 1930s (especially FreedomandCulture, 1939), as he began to evaluate the Soviet Union in terms that would have been anathema to him a decade earlier. He increasingly blamed Russia's cultural heritage for inhibiting Soviet development along the lines he had envisioned. Dewey's transformation suggests the importance of a cultural reading of American ideas about the USSR. Many American observers joined Dewey in seeing the USSR as the product of Russian culture, with its historical traditions and its own national character—and not just as the instantiation or betrayal of a political doctrine. (shrink)