First Amendment issues have long bedevilled American jurisprudence. There are several areas of Professor Oderberg's fine paper where the witches are bewitching and where I find myself in disagreement with him. I choose to focus on what he calls ‘mere sincerity’. He worries that this sincerity leads to absurdity, but he fails to appreciate why it also protects central moral concerns. The basic issue Oderberg addresses is whether and how the state should avoid forcing people to do what those people (...) think is wrong. On the one hand, the state could say, ‘You will not be required to do “whatever” you personally believe is wrong. Thus, if you sincerely think taxes are wrong, you are not required to pay them.’ On the other hand, the state could say, ‘Whatever you think about the ethics of taxes is irrelevant. Rather, you must pay.’ It is a matter of indifference to the government why one pays taxes, whether sincerely out of a sense of social justice or merely out of fear. But problems arise when people have moral or religious objections for not complying with government mandates. In religious and conscience matters, the gravitational pull of absolutisms tends to rip actions out of government control. As Jesus's disciples protested: …. (shrink)

Catholic natural law has had a long and evolving interest in bioethics. Thomas Aquinas left natural law a legacy of great flexibility in evaluating goods within a whole life. He also bequeathed to the Church the basis for an abolutism on sexual issues. Modern reproductive medicine and a deeper understanding of human freedom have reopened these issues. The Vatican has developed new, holistic arguments to proscribe reproductive interventions, but critics remain unconvinced that marital relationships and goods have been adequately evaluated. (...) The resolution of this debate will require further experience and reflection. Keywords: Thomas Aquinas, freedom, natural law, reproductive ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

AS BABY BOOMERS BEGIN TO REACH RETIREMENT AGE IN 2010, THEY ARE faced with the prospect of twenty to thirty postwork years. Should this period have any goals or purpose other than be a very long vacation? Four gerontological theories propose alternative priorities for this time: continuity, new start, disengagement, and completion. Each has a place within a full life. Careful consideration of each theory exposes how certain vices and virtues mutate during this "third age" of life: integrity and dissipation; (...) self-gratification and generosity; repentance, humility, and denial; and trust and detachment. (shrink)

Recent work on the ethics of love may be divided into norm-centered and affective-centered approaches. Norm-centered approaches, exemplified by Hallett and Outka, argue for either moral parity between self and other or for self-subordination; they regard self-love as legitimate within strict boundaries; and they sharply distinguish agape from other forms of love. Affective-centered approaches, exemplified by Vacek and Post, con- centrate on love for God as the central context for neighbor-love; they ac- cord a high status to friendship, marriage, and (...) other primary relationships; and they regard all forms of love as Christian in that they are transformed by grace and constitute cooperation with God. The re- maining agenda for both approaches is primarily theological, including especially the need to develop an extended application of the doctrines of creation and grace for the status of "special relations" in the ethics of love. (shrink)

This article examines the influence of Portuguese artisans on the development of navigation and nautical science in Seville in the 16th century. It argues that their work was important not just for the experience and skills they offered, but also because of their indirect impact on the narrative of knowledge dissemination and control in Spanish navigation.

Ethics & Behavior, Volume 21, Issue 5, Page 428-430, September-October 2011.

Did the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. cause the values of teenagers in the U.S. to change? Did their previously important self-esteem and self-actualization values become less important and their survival and safety values become more important? Changes in the values of teenagers are important for practitioners, managers, marketers, and researchers to understand because high school students are our current and future employees, managers, and customers, and research has shown that values impact work and consumer-related attitudes and (...) behaviors. Further, studies that compared higher to lower performing for-profit and not-for-profit companies have found that higher performing organizations had strong values that permeated their organizations [Collins J. C., and J. I. Porras: 1994, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, Harper Business); O’Reilly, C. A. and J. A. Chatman: 1996, in B. M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 18 (JAI Press, Greenwhich, CT), pp. 157–200; O’Reilly, C. A.: 1989, California Management Review 31(4), 9–25; Posner, B. Z., and W. H. Schmidt: 1996, Public Personnel Management, 25(3), 277–298; Rousseau, D.: 1990, Group and Organization Studies 15(4), 448–460; Schein, E. H.: 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, Jossey Bass)]. While one study of adults found value changes, no known studies have explored if the values of teenagers also changed post-9/11. This study filled that research gap by exploring the values of a random sample of 1000 U.S. teenagers in grades 9 to 12 pre- and post-9/11, using a demographic questionnaire and the Rokeach Value Survey. The research results indicated that teenage survival, safety, and security values (a world at peace, freedom, national security, and salvation) increased in importance while their self-esteem and self-actualization values (a sense of accomplishment, inner harmony, pleasure, self-respect, and wisdom) decreased in importance, mirroring the changes for adults. The meaning of these findings for practitioners, managers, marketers and researchers was discussed. (shrink)

Additional Contributors Are James Collins And Anton C. Pegis.

Maas hat einfach den von Heinrich Kirn im Jahr 1880 edierten Text („Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten. Nebst einer kritischen Textausgabe von des letzteren Instituta regularia divinae legis“, Freiburg i. B.) ohne jede eigene Bearbeitung und weitere Aufbereitung abgedruckt (S. 118–234; S. 266–269 Kirns Zitatenregister übernommen; doch keine Berücksichtigung des Textes im Sach-und Autorenregister S. 275–280). Selbst die seit 1947 bekannten zusätzlichen neun Handschriften (M. L. W. Laistner: Harv. Theol. Rev. 40, 1947, 19–31), hat Maas nicht auf (...) ihre Qualität und Bedeutung geprüft, sondern sie S. 116f. nur aufgezählt. Nützlich ist die beigefügte englische Übersetzung, doch hatte bereits J. F. Collins im Jahr 1998 eine solche Übersetzung im Internet zugängig gemacht (ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/junillus.trans.html). Rückverweise vom Text auf die Einleitung oder erläuternde Sachanmerkungen zu Text und Übersetzung finden sich nicht. Und auch die Bezüge der Einleitung auf den Text sind nicht präzis. Der Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Untersuchung liegt also nicht auf Text und Übersetzung der Instituta, sondern auf der Einleitung zum Text (S. 1–115), was ja schon die Titelgestaltung des Buches vermuten läßt. (shrink)

This article details philosophical responses to the problem posed by the existence, whether real or perceived, of priestcraft, a problem that boiled down to a fear that if the custodians of God’s tabernacle were corrupt, so too were the contents of the tabernacle. It first explores the attempts of Edward Herbert and Thomas Hobbes to guarantee the truth of revealed matters of faith in response to their perception of widespread priestcraft, arguing that, while each sought to undermine sacerdotal authority, (...) they ultimately exempted matters of faith from the litmus test of reason. This resulted in a less-than-satisfactory solution to the problem. It turns next to Locke’s Essay (1690) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), exploring how empirical notions of evidence, fact, and probability, as framed in these works, enabled a radical re-evaluation of the grounds of Christian faith, which subsequently influenced the writings of John Toland, Anthony Collins, and Peter Annet between the 1690s and 1740s. These “Lockean free-thinkers,” it argues, were in fact closer to the position of the Essay and Reasonableness than to the deism of Edward Herbert in their efforts to tackle priestcraft. Concluding, this article proposes that the problem of priestcraft served as a catalyst for early modern British philosophers to increasingly narrow the grounds of faith, until faith was deemed legitimate only when grounded upon fact. (shrink)

Scholars of religion and science have generated remarkable scholarship in recent years in their explorations of love. Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines—whether natural, social, or religious—must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. I briefly introduce the emergence of the love‐and‐science (...) research program and note that scholars have not done well defining what they mean by love. I suggest that the present surge in love scholarship will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might if love is not defined well. I provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing love‐and‐science research: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well‐being. To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases. Love is said to have many forms, but agape is the form to which the love‐and‐science literature most commonly refers. I comment briefly on the debates about how to best understand agape, noting sixteen different definitions proposed by major scholars. I identify weaknesses in many of them and then offer what I argue is a more adequate definition of agape as intentional response to promote well‐being when confronted by that which generates ill‐being. In short, agape repays evil with good. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions, I believe that the definitions I proffer can prove useful in furthering the love‐and‐science research program. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the discussion of materialism in John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding, and then at parts of the Anglophone reaction to those discussions. It considers the early criticisms of Locke by Edward Stillingfleet and the anonymous author of three sets of Remarks on Locke’s Essay. It then looks at some other ways in which readers reacted to Locke’s discussions: the views of Anthony Collins and John Toland, which one might be tempted to think of as (...) Lockean materialism; William Carroll’s reading of Locke as a Spinozistic materialist; and the dualistic Lockeanism of William Duncan’s Lockean logic textbook. (shrink)

The author describes an interpreted modal language and produces some clear examples of logical and analytic truths that are not necessary. These examples: (a) are far simpler than the ones cited in the literature, (b) show that a popular conception of logical truth in modal languages is incorrect, and (c) show that there are contingent truths knowable ``a priori'' that do not depend on fixing the reference of a term.

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 the debate about the nature and identity of possible worlds, philosophers have neglected the parallel questions about the nature and identity of moments of time. These are not questions about the structure of time in general, but rather about the internal structure of each individual time. Times and worlds share the following structural similarities: both are maximal with respect to propositions (at every world and time, either p or p is true, for every p); both are consistent; both are (...) closed (every modal consequence of a proposition true at a world is also true at that world, and every tense-theoretic consequence of a proposition true at a time is also true at that time); just as there is a unique actual world, there is a unique present moment; and just as a proposition is necessarily true iff true at all worlds, a proposition is eternally true iff true at all times. In this paper, I show that a simple extension of my theory of worlds yields a theory of times in which the above structural similarities between the two are consequences. (shrink)

This study defines the relationship between humanism and liberalism by comparing the two Victorian figures who were most concerned with the preservation of humanistic values in a free and democratic society: Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill. The book sets apart Arnold and Mill from their contemporaries and points out their similarities to one another in discussions of their theories of history, poetry, their celebration of the contemplative life and their willingness to welcome democracy. At the same time it examines (...) the differences between the two men, which he uses to create a dialogue between humanism and liberalism on the question of how a high cultural ideal can be realized in democratic society. (shrink)

The discovery, made in Oxford, that crude penicillin could cure systemic and life‐threatening bacterial infections was followed by attempts to purify penicillin, to determine its structure and then to produce it by total chemical synthesis. The β‐lactam structure of the molecule, first proposed in October 1943, was a source of controversy until 1945. However, no useful chemical synthesis was achieved and fermentation became the commercial source of the antibiotic.In 1953, one of the products of a Cephalosporium sp. from Sardinia was (...) shown to be a new and hydrophilic penicillin (penicillin N). This was contaminated with a substance having the same side‐chain but a characteristic absorption spectrum. The latter, cephalosporin C, showed antibacterial activity but was not inactivated by a penicillinase. The determination of its β‐lactam structure and isolation of its nucleus enabled pharmaceutical companies to produce many semisynthetic cephalosporins.A new tripeptide was later found to be an intermediate in the biosynthesis of both penicillin N and cephalosporin C, and this was followed by the complete elucidation of the biosynthetic pathways leading to these compounds and to benzylpenicillin. (shrink)

To Samir Amin, Stalinism, “a Soviet type developmental strategy” involves primitive accumulation of capital through the imposition of “a massive tribute on the peasantry” (p. 36) and a siphoning of a huge proportion of that weal “to the military “ (p. 37) ending in a militarily expansionist police state with nothing in common with socialism. In contrast, Yugoslavia's Titoism is an ambiguous inheritance, consisting in a flexible polity which is not dominated by a Stalinist police state, a system which “may (...) yet evolve in a progressive direction,” although its supposedly excessive reliance on the market and foreign trade produces pronounced economic inequalities incompatible with socialism (p. 127). (shrink)

SummaryThis article examines the international debate over the most appropriate name for what became known as ‘existentialism’. It starts by detailing the diverse strands of the Kierkegaard reception in Germany in the early inter-war period, which were given a variety of labels—Existentialismus, Existenzphilosophie, Existentialphilosophie and existentielle Philosophie—and shows how, as these words were translated into other languages, the differences between them were effaced. This process helps explain how over the 1930s a remarkably heterogeneous group of thinkers came to be included (...) under the same label. The article then shows how the word ‘existentialism’ and its cognates in other languages gained prominence because they were considered to represent best the diversity and richness of the movement. In detailing this process the article helps elucidate how existentialism emerged as an international philosophy in the period immediately following World War II, and sheds light on the ambivalence with which many have viewed both the term and the philosophy it represents. (shrink)