This article examines a model of formation within higher education that is committed to educationally based spiritual formation, desiring to see students formed as people who love God and neighbor, devoting their lives to redemptive labor in the world. Deeply influenced by the evolving relationship between the department, the institution, and the broader evangelical culture, the Christian Formation and Ministry department of Wheaton College seeks to equip students with the theological and theoretical foundation, the personal maturity of character and faith, (...) and the practical ministry skills necessary to lead and participate in the formational and caring mission of the church in the world. Wheaton College’s unique approach to teaching spiritual formation and soul care in both their undergraduate and graduate programs is examined through a historical context of the department, a liberal arts and learning-centered approach to education that includes biblical foundations, philosophical framework, pedagogy, and teaching curriculum and assessment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom: A New Translation, Redaction History, and Interpretation of “Dignitatis humanae.” by David L. Schindler and Jr. Nicholas J. HealyBarrett H. TurnerFreedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom: A New Translation, Redaction History, and Interpretation of “Dignitatis humanae.” By David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. Grand (...) Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015. Pp. xiv + 477. $45.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-7155-8.“I fear that you are going to give the inaccurate impression that this document was exclusively the work of the Americans at the Council, or nearly so,” wrote Ernest Primeau, an American bishop who helped revise Dignitatis humanae (DH) at Vatican II, to a priest-journalist. “The truth is... that many others from other nations played an important role in the writing and passage of the declaration.” Despite Primeau’s warning, popular and scholarly interpretations of DH have often hewed closely to John Courtney Murray’s juridical approach, usually in contrast to the integralism of Cardinal Alfredo [End Page 309] Ottaviani and the Spanish episcopate. Yet “many others” did not fit into those two groups, for a large contingent of bishops favorable to religious liberty nonetheless sought to undergird the juridical reasoning for the right with an ontological foundation.David L. Schindler and Nicholas Healy promote these other voices in Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity. Indeed, they argue that the other voices—the “French” or “ontological” school comprised of bishops such as Alfred Ancel and Karol Wojtyła—provide the true key to DH’s meaning and significance. The book thus responds from the perspective of Communio theology to Murray-ite political theologies that are critical of John Paul II’s emphasis on truth as the basis for freedom. Accompanying Schindler’s and Healy’s essays are conciliar texts charting the origin and influence of this ontological school: the six conciliar drafts, the oral and written interventions of Wojtyła, and an oral intervention of Ancel. These texts, transcribed from the Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (AS), have been translated by Patrick T. Brannon, S.J., and Michael Camacho. Also included is a side-by-side comparison of the third and sixth drafts that displays the changes made to the juridical position in response to the ontological school.Schindler’s 170-page essay, “Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: An Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae on the Right to Religious Freedom,” is the heart of the work. Schindler recapitulates in a fresh way themes from his prior analyses of liberalism and Murray. In section 1, he summarizes how Wojtyła’s interventions influenced the evolution of DH such that Murray’s juridical approach became subordinated to an emphasis on truth as the foundation and telos of freedom. He conveys Wojtyła’s concern that DH not divide reason and revelation, but that reason be presented as capable of knowing that religion is “nature’s crown and summit” (50). Section 2 outlines Murray’s postconciliar objections to DH’s final version, namely, that it assumes that the American juridical approach leads to relativism and that its insistence on truth as religious liberty’s foundation undermines the universality of the right by degrading the liberty of those in error. To the first, Schindler replies (in section 3) that Murray’s juridical approach necessarily entails what Servais Pinckaers, O.P., called the “freedom of indifference,” Murray’s denials of relativism notwithstanding. The juridical approach leads to the conception of civil space as something neutral to truth-claims about God, but finally results in a state-enforced indifferentism that limits the religious liberty of those who hold that all of existence, prior to human freedom, is intrinsically ordered to God. “The human act, considered from the perspective of the juridical order, is first empty; and truth thus becomes, from that same juridical perspective, adventitious, something that, as such, cannot but logically burden the free-intelligent human act by arbitrarily limiting and closing what is considered by government, for legal purposes, to be simply open, or abstracted from all (metaphysical-religious) content... (shrink)

Keith Thomas: Gerald Edward Aylmer, 1926-2000 Adrian Hollis: William Spencer Barrett, 1914-2001 Bruce Williams: Charles Frederick Carter, 1919-2002 Malcolm Mackintosh: John Erickson, 1929-2002 J. H .R. Davis: Raymond William Firth, 1901-2002 F. M. L. Thompson: Hrothgar John Habakkuk, 1915-2002 A. W. Price: Richard Mervyn Hare, 1919-2002 Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, 1921-2003 Michael Lapidge and Peter Matthews: Vivien Anne Law, 1954-2002 Ann Moss: John Lough, 1913-2000 Terence Cave: Ian Dalrymple McFarlane, 1915-2002 Ludwig Paul: David Neil MacKenzie, 1926-2001 Peter (...) Birks: John Kieran Barry Moylan Nicholas, 1919-2002 Jonathan Shepard: Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky, 1918-2001 David Cannadine: John Harold Plumb, 1911-2001 Daniel Waley: Nicolai Rubinstein, 1911-2002 Ian Wood: John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, 1916-1985 R. G. M. Nisbet: William Smith Watt, 1913-2002 G. W. Bernard: Richard Bruce Wernham, 1906-1999. (shrink)

This is a contribution to an Author Meets Critics special issue on John Martin Fischer's _Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will_.

I first argue that the Matrix trilogy is a Gnostic cyber-epic; I then use this interpretive lens to review the films' treatment of fundamental questions in epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory.

The paper explores possible resources available to Plotinus for responding to Plato's famous "Third Man Argument" in the _Parmenides_.

Can free agency exist within a Minkowskian "block universe"? A negative answer to this question has been labeled 'chronogeometrical fatalism'. I look at five theses associated with Minkowskian space-time which have been thought to entail chronogeometrical fatalism, and argue that none of them delivers the goods.

Here a group of philosophers, economists and political theorists discuss the work of David Gauthier, which seeks to show that rational individuals would accept certain moral constraints on their choices. The possibilities and limitations of a contractarian approach to issues of justice is analyzed.

David Gauthier is one of the most outstanding and influential philosophers working in moral theory today, and his book Morals by Agreement has established him as a preeminent defender of contractarian moral theory. This volume brings together a selection of his best essays on contractarianism, many of which have become difficult to find.

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

For much of the twentieth century, plant physiologists considered themselves in an ideal position to study and explain the functions and processes of plants. Much of that authority stemmed from plant physiologists’ long-standing commitment to experimental control and the integration of the physical sciences into biological practice. This article places plant physiology back in the center of the story of the recent life sciences. It shows the development of parallel experimental research programs into environmental as well as genetic effects on (...) growth and development in plant physiology and genetics, and notes that the pursuit of an experimental environment was celebrated as much as (and occasionally more than) a molecular vision of life throughout most of the twentieth century by much of the plant science community. Thus, this article concludes that the history of the recent life sciences needs new complementary narratives of plant physiology with genetics, new concepts with technological tools, and plant-sized scales with the molecular. The history of the ‘Age of Biology,’ as the plant scientists saw it, helps confront the issue first posed by Evelyn Fox Keller, namely that the history of genetics has overshadowed a larger history of experimental life science. My answer here is through a larger narrative of the rise of the complementary experimental sciences of genes and environments in the life sciences. (shrink)

A science sutra -- Non-self (Anatman) -- Impermanence (Anitya) -- Connectedness (Pratitya-Samutpada) -- Engagement, part 1 (Dukkha) -- Engagement, part 2 (Karma) -- Meaning (existential Biobuddhism?).

For several decades, David Gauthier has been one of the leading philosophers working on practical rationality and deliberation. This book presents a selection of Gauthier's writings on these topics, all but two of which were written after Morals by Agreement. They represent Gauthier's most important contributions to the theory of practical reason, moving some distance from the view a first presented in Reason and Maximization and developed in a much-reprinted chapter of Morals by Agreement. These essays challenge common misconceptions (...) of Gauthier's revisionist conception of practical rationality, and provide important insights with implications for economic theory. (shrink)

This study uses a “science pipeline” model and cross-national data to examine women's participation in science education and occupations in seven countries. Gender stratification in later science education and in science occupations is found in every country examined. Young women's participation in science education decreases with each stage in the science pipeline, but there is considerable cross-national variation in the extent of gender stratification in science. Findings show greater gender stratification in science occupations than in science education, suggesting factors other (...) than training help maintain inequality in high-status science occupations. (shrink)

Hobbes on Demonstration and Construction DAVID GAUTHIER 1~ IN 1656 Hobbes published Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, with an Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquis of Dorchester, Lord Pierrepont. In this Epistle, Hobbes distinguishes the demonstrable from the indemonstrable arts: "demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation" . Although this passage, with the explication (...) Hobbes offers for it and the consequences he draws from it, and a similar discussion in De homine, published two years later, have not been unnoticed, their significance for Hobbes's account of science in general, and civil philosophy or politics in particular, has not, I think, been I am grateful to the University of East Anglia for appointing me a Visiting Research Fellow during the period in which the first draft of this paper was written. A second draft was presented at the Third Quadrennial International Fellows Conference of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Florence Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. I am grateful for the remarks of my commentator, J. E. McGuire, and for the discussion. I am also grateful for the comments of the two referees who read this paper for the Journal of the History of Philosophy. References to Hobbes's works appear as.. (shrink)

This essay examines the strengths and weakness of Newman’s argument in “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” that the lay faithful throughout history are the guarantors of orthodox doctrine by examining Newman’s understanding of the lay faithful, the sensus and consensus fidelium, and his historiographical methodology.

David Levine and Mathew Bowker explore cultural and political trends organized around the conviction that the world we live in is a dangerous place to be, that it is dominated by hate and destruction, and that in it our primary task is to survive by carrying on a life-long struggle against hostile forces. Their method involves the analysis of public fantasies to reveal their hidden meanings. The central fantasy explored is the fantasy of a destroyed world, which appears most (...) commonly in the form of post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives. Their special concern in the book is with defenses against the painful consequences of the dominance of this fantasy in the inner world, especially defenses involving the use of guilt to assure that something can be done to repair the destroyed world. Topics explored include: the formation of internal fortresses and their projection into the world outside, forms of guilt including bystander guilt and survivor guilt, the loss of and search for home, and manic forms of reparation. (shrink)

The author analyzes Christian Smith's What Is a Person? from a Christian theological-ethical perspective, assessing the way in which he tackles sociological theories that reflect secularized and reductionist assumptions about the human person, and offering a friendly critique of the Christian personalist, humanist, and virtue ethic that he deploys to challenge his field.

THE STRONG SUPPORT OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS FOR PRESIDENT George W. Bush contributed significantly to his reelection in November 2004. This was cause for celebration in some quarters and despair in others. It has led to an avalanche of attention to the perennial issue of the relationship between faith and politics, the role of "moral values" in determining evangelical voting patterns, and the growing political visibility and power of evangelical Christians in the United States. This essay is written by evangelical Christians (...) who currently reside in the western part of the "red state" of Tennessee. Its purpose is to shed light on several dimensions of evangelical engagement in contemporary American public life. First, we assess what is actually known about the voting patterns and motivations of evangelical Christians in the 2004 presidential election. Second, we consider the moral vision that animates the most visible conservative evangelical activists and organizations. Third, we consider alternative evangelical political/ethical stances that are being pursued today. Fourth and finally, we move to the normative ethical level, suggesting the contours of an evangelical political ethic in the U.S. context. (shrink)

In the Fray collects David Gushee's most significant essays over twenty years as a Christian intellectual. Most of the essays were written in situations of ethical conflict on the highly contested ground of Christian public ethics. Topics addressed include torture, climate change, marriage and divorce, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the church, war, genocide, nuclear weapons, race, global poverty, faith and politics, Israel/Palestine, and even whether Christian ethics is a real academic discipline. Quite visible in the collection (...) is Gushee's deep research interest in the Nazi era in Germany and how the churches fared in resisting Nazi intimidations and seductions and, finally, the Holocaust. All essays reflect the desire for a church that has learned the lessons of that period--a church with resistance to racism, militarism, nationalism, and other social-ideological toxins, and with the discernment and courage to resist these in favor of a courageous allegiance to the lordship of Christ at the time of testing. Considerable attention is directed to contesting some of the public ethics found in the author's own US evangelical Christian community. Concluding reflections on Gushee's ethical vision are offered in an illuminating essay by senior Christian ethicist Glen Harold Stassen. (shrink)

ICRC has coordinated relief for victims who are ignored by the world, in more places than all the UN agencies combined. When law is silent, as often during war time it is, human rights policies must be built on ethical choice.

My objective is to extend Ronald Green’s account of postmodernism by asking how postmodern ethicists should interview business people. I note the use of the interview method in current business ethics research. I then present Jeffrey Stout’s criticism of Robert Bellah’s interview techniques used in Habits of the Heart, which prompts questions about what constitutes a postmodern interview. In conclusion I seek clarification about whether and in what sense Ron Green intends to be a “foundationalist postmodern business ethicist.”.

What is the root cause of ethical failure? Why is preoccupation with ethics more a part of the problem than a part of the solution? What makes ethical conduct a natural expression of who we are? What enables us to be ourselves in our relations with others? Ethical failure has become a significant concern in public life, in organizations and in educational institutions. The Capacity for Ethical Conduct explores how qualities of character and personality either make ethical conduct possible for (...) the individual or foster ethical failure. David Levine discusses how ethical conduct is a special way of relating to others, one that secures respect for their integrity by assuring that what they do can express who they are. He argues that this special way of relating to others results not from knowledge of, or a stated commitment to, rules, norms and values, but from the way we experience ourselves, especially from our ability to make a positive emotional investment in being and having a self. Traditionally, emphasis on the importance of values and ethics in shaping conduct tends to be connected to the need to find fault in self and others, fostering an atmosphere where the self is put at risk in its relations to others. This means that an excessive emphasis on ethics, rather than assuring ethical conduct, tends instead to create interpersonal settings marked by emotional assault. Because of this, talk about ethics often expresses ambivalence about ethical conduct, which makes the familiar combination of preoccupation with ethics and ethical failure unsurprising. The Capacity for Ethical Conduct explores the ways in which the interpersonal world of work either fosters a feeling of safety or encourages various forms of emotional assault. Presenting case studes and applying psychoanalytic object relation theory and self psychology, this book explores the factors underlying ethical failure and the capacity for ethical conduct. It will be of interest to scholars and practioners in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, sociology, organizational dynamics, management and public administration. (shrink)

Although we agree with the authors' criticism of the reigning approach to children's sociocognitive development, we raise three further issues. First, “mind talk” is not, in fact, any different from the other aspects of the social world about which children learn. Second, there is no choice between either the “single mind” or the “social context.” Finally, there is a spurious separation between organism and environment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions THE UNITY OF WISDOM AND TEMPERANCE The attempt of Socrates to establish the unity of the virtues has long been an object of philosophic suspicion. Particular attention has been directed to the argument at Protagoras 332a-333b, in which Socrates seeks to demonstrate the unity of wisdom and temperance, by showing that they must be identified as the contrary of folly. The argument proceeds on the assumption (...) that wisdom and temperance are distinct, and so terminates in a contradiction between 'Whatever admits of a contrary admits of one only' and 'Folly, which is one thing, has two contraries, wisdom and temperance.' Scholars have generally rejected Socrates' proof of the second of the contradictory propositions. However, in a recent paper, Professor David Savan has claimed that the contradiction is derived in a formally valid way from premisses which either need no argument or are accepted by Protagoras} My intent in this paper is to cast doubt on this claim, and so to restore the status quo. According to the critics, the weak point in the argument is Socrates' defence of the statement 'Foolish acts and temperate acts are contraries.' But Saran holds that this statement follows from three conditionals, all stated by Socrates and accepted by Protagoras. These conditionals, referred to by Savan as F G and H, will here be termed P1-3. P1 If an act is right and advantageous, then it is temperate. Symbolically: (r.a) D t P2 If an act is wrong, then it is foolish. w~f P3 If an act is foolish, then it is not temperate. fD -t From these, Saran argues, "it follows that 'An act is right' and 'An act is temperate ' are truth functionallyequivalent, as are 'An act is wrong' and 'An act is foolish'.... Since right and wrong are either contraries or contradictories, temperate and foolish acts must also be either contraries or contradictories" (p. 24). Savan then argues that Protagoras, on the basis of his remarks earlier in the dialogue, must take right and wrong to be contradictories, so that temperate and foolish actions are also contradictories, rather than contraries. I want first to consider whether the material equivalences alleged to follow from P1-3 do in fact follow. They may be symbolized: Clr~t C2w =f It is immediately clear that neither C1 nor C2 follows from P1-3. But this is not surprising, because some expression of the relation between 'right' and 'wrong' 1D. Saran, "Socrates'Logic and the Unity of Wisdom and Temperance," in R. J. Butler (ed.), AnalyticalPhilosophy,2nd series(Oxford: BasilBlackwell,1965),pp. 20-26. [157] 158 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY must appear among the premises. Since Savan raises the question whether 'right' and 'wrong' are contraries or contradictories only after he claims to establish C1 and C2, we may suppose that the argument should hold whichever relation we assume. If 'right' and 'wrong' are contraries we add the premise: P4A r D --w And ifthey are contradictorieswe add the stronger premise: P4B r -- --w But neither C1 nor C2 follows from PI-3 together with either P4A or P4B. However, it may be urged, the argument fails only because 'advantageous' has been treated as an independent term. P1 should be replaced by: PI* r ~ t We now find that PI*-3 and P4B are sufficientto derive C1 and C2. But PI*-3 and P4A do not suffice.The most we can establish, using only P4A, is the disjunction : C1 vC2r -- t-v-w -- f And this is useless for the purposes of Socrates' argument. One further way of strengthening the premises might be suggested. Instead of dropping 'advantageous' from the argument, one might take it as related both to 'right' and to 'foolish.' That is, one might introduce additional premises from the pairs: P5A r ~ a P5B r - a and: P6A a D -f P6B a ---- -f P5A, added to P1-3 and P4B, will suffice for the derivation of C1 and C2. But no combination of premises not including P4B will do; from P1-3, P4A, P5B and P6B, one can derive C1 but not C2. It is, therefore, necessary to modify Savan's claim in two fairly important... (shrink)

It has recently been shown that stem and progenitor cells undergo population self‐renewal to maintain epithelial homeostasis. The fate of individual cells is stochastic but the production of proliferating and differentiating cells is balanced across the population. This new paradigm, originating in mouse epidermis and since extended to mouse oesophagus and mouse and Drosophila intestine, is in contrast to the long held model of epithelial maintenance by exclusively asymmetric division of stem cells. Recent lineage tracing studies have now shown that (...) wound responses vary between tissues, and that a stem cell reserve is not essential as cycling progenitors and even differentiating cells contribute to regeneration. (shrink)

Through a series of essays, the author discusses the conflict between cultural and biological evolution, covering intelligent design, gender differences, and the meaning of life while offering insight into the ethical aspects of civilization.

Dramatic events involving dangerous microbes often focus attention on isolation and quarantine as policy instruments. The incident in May-June 2007 involving Andrew Speaker and drug-resistant tuberculosis joins other communicable disease crises that have forced contemplation or actual application of quarantine powers. Implementation of quarantine powers, which encompasses authority for both isolation and quarantine actions, is important not only for the handling of a specific event but also because the use of such authority provides a window on broader issues of public (...) health and the legal rules, ethical principles, and governance systems that support it. Debates about quarantine powers reflect political and social attitudes about public health that often tell us more about this policy endeavor than acts of isolation and quarantine themselves. (shrink)

Evolutionary processes have two underlying mechanisms: variation (expanding options) and selection (narrowing options). Darwin and Darwinism focused on the selectional mechanism, i.e., natural selection. If an evolutionary process is seen as pushing towards higher altitudes on a multi-peaked and cloudy “fitness landscape,” then selection is a hill-climbing mechanism while a mechanism for variation would explore to find higher hills. Selection without variation might get stuck on a low hill. Our thesis is that the best solution for the problem of variation (...) is parallel experimentation with the different probes having some semi-isolation from selectional pressure and where results in the experiments can be cross-communicated and compared to ratchet up the performance of the whole group. Our approach is by seeking out the common elements addressing the problem of variation in evolutionary theory (Sewall Wright’s shifting balance theory), in various search procedures, in the selection of economic projects, and in science and technology development. The opposite strategy is series experimentation which assumes that one is already climbing the highest peak so consideration of other peaks is irrelevant. The main critical applications are to global institutions such as the World Bank or IMF who do not condone parallel experimentation since they already “know” what is the highest peak—and, more generally, to those in power on top of a low hill who know that any real variation would be downhill for them. (shrink)

The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), making the ability to do otherwise a necessary condition for moral responsibility, is supposed by Harry Frankfurt, John Fischer, and others to succumb to a peculiar kind of counterexample. The paper reviews the main problems with the counterexample that have surfaced over the years, and shows how most can be addressed within the terms of the current debate. But one problem seems ineliminable: because Frankfurt''s example relies on a counterfactual intervener to preclude alternatives to (...) the person''s action, it is not possible for it to preclude all alternatives (intervention that is contingent upon a trigger cannot bring it about that the trigger never occurred). This makes it possible for the determined PAPist to maintain that some pre-intervention deviation is always available to ground moral responsibility. In reply, the critic of PAP can examine all the candidate deviations and argue their irrelevance to moral responsibility (a daunting prospect); or the critic can dispense with counterfactual intervention altogether. The paper pursues the second of these strategies, developing three examples of noncounterfactual intervention in which (i) the agent has no alternatives (and a fortiori no morally relevant alternatives), yet (ii) there is just as much reason to think that the agent is morally responsible as there was in Frankfurt''s original example. The new counterexamples do suffer from one liability, but this is insufficient in the end to repair PAP''s conceptual connection between moral responsibility and alternate possibilities. (shrink)