The development of the Israelite Monarchy followed the model of a typical Syro-Hittite state and introduced a paganization into the political and social history of Israel with fateful and lasting consequences.

George Karamanolis breaks new ground in the study of later ancient philosophy by examining the interplay of the two main schools of thought, Platonism and Aristotelianism, from the first century BC to the third century AD. Arguing against prevailing scholarly assumption, he argues that the Platonists turned to Aristotle only in order to elucidate Plato's doctrines and to reconstruct Plato's philosophy, and that they did not hesitate to criticize Aristotle when judging him to be at odds with Plato. Karamanolis (...) offers much food for thought to ancient philosophers and classicists. (shrink)

This paper examines people's reasoning about identity continuity and its relation to previous research on how people value one-of-a-kind artifacts, such as artwork. We propose that judgments about the continuity of artworks are related to judgments about the continuity of individual persons because art objects are seen as physical extensions of their creators. We report a reanalysis of previous data and the results of two new empirical studies that test this hypothesis. The first study demonstrates that the mere categorization of (...) an object as “art” versus “a tool” changes people's intuitions about the persistence of those objects over time. In a second study, we examine some conditions that may lead artworks to be thought of as different from other artifacts. These observations inform both current understanding of what makes some objects one-of-a-kind as well as broader questions regarding how people intuitively think about the persistence of human agents. (shrink)

Background: There is growing interest in credentialing hospital ethicists. Consult volume is being incorporated into credentialing criteria, although few data supporting this approach are available...

This book offers a re-examination of the evidence about citizens' capacity for self-governance and what it means for the future of democratic politics, from both empirical and normative perspectives. Are ordinary citizens capable of governing themselves? For more than three decades, social scientists have accumulated evidence of the undemocratic propensities of many ordinary citizens. This has caused some to worry about the stability of existing democratic institutions, while others argue that the institutions themselves are the problem: politics needs to be (...) democratized further, giving citizens more opportunities to practice democratic politics and acquire democratic values. The thirty-three contributors to this volume enter this debate with new evidence on citizens' capacity for deliberative politics. They argue that previous methods of investigation significantly underestimate people's ability to govern themselves, and that the prospects for democracy are better than conventional wisdom suggests. Realization of these prospects will depend on citizens grasping the interplay of emotions and reason in political life, creating new opportunities for citizen deliberation, and reinvigorating the institutions of representative government. Theories of democracy in turn will have to accommodate this changing reality as citizens show themselves to be self-determining in their political activities. (shrink)

The present studies investigated children’s and adults’ intuitive beliefs about the physical nature of essences. Adults and children (ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old) were asked to reason about two different ways of determining an unknown object’s category: taking a tiny internal sample from any part of the object (distributed view of essence), or taking a sample from one specific region (localized view of essence). Results from three studies indicated that adults strongly endorsed the distributed view, and (...) children showed a developmental shift from a localized to distributed view with increasing age. These results suggest that even children go beyond mere placeholder notions of essence, committing to conceptual frameworks of how essences might be physically instantiated. (shrink)

We question whether Plamondon & Alimi's model is useful in accounting for the nonsymmetrical and multiple-peaked velocity profiles observed in young and elderly subjects for ballistic aiming tasks. For these subjects, both data and observation suggest that a central representation initiates the movement in an appropriate direction but that multiple adjustments are made, both early and late, to achieve spatial accuracy.

This paper proposes that eight positive emotions: awe, love , trust , compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy and hope constitute what we mean by spirituality. These emotions have been grossly ignored by psychiatry. The two sciences that I shall employ to demonstrate this definition of spirituality will be ethology and neuroscience. They are both very new. I will argue that spirituality is not about ideas, sacred texts and theology; rather, spirituality is all about emotion and social connection. Specific religions, for all (...) their limitations, are often the portal through which positive emotions are brought into conscious attention. Neither Freud nor psychiatric textbooks ever mention emotions like joy and gratitude. Hymns and psalms give these emotions pride of place. Our whole concept of psychotherapy might change if clinicians set about enhancing positive emotions rather than focusing only on negative emotions. (shrink)

In this unique and comprehensive book, George McCarthy examines the influence of Greek philosophy, literature, arts, and politics on the development of twentieth-century German social thought. McCarthy demonstrates that the classical spirit vitalized thinkers such as Weber, Heidegger, Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, Gadamer, and Habermas. With the romancing of antiquity, they transformed their understanding of the modern self, political community, and Enlightenment rationality. By viewing contemporary social theory from the framework of the classical world, McCarthy argues, we are capable of (...) thinking beyond the limits of modernity to new possibilities of human reason, science, beauty, and social justice. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for exploring the temporal and behavioral aspects of the responses of various involved parties that may lead to governmental intervention in situations involving exposure of the public to hazardous substances. The activities of key individuals are closely scrutinized. Relevance of the framework to agricultural and food concerns is also indicated. The exemplary case is the contamination of livestock in Michigan that began in 1973, but other cases are discussed that conform closely to the pattern described (...) by the framework. (shrink)

A particular research program on mental imagery is defended against certain sweeping methodological criticisms that have been advanced against it. The central claim is that the approach taken in the program is an appropriate response to the problem of doing empirical research in a theoretical vacuum, and that when it is viewed in this perspective, the criticisms are not merely unfounded, they are inappropriate. The argument for this claim is developed by first describing the program and then analyzing the methodological (...) rationale behind it. (shrink)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions are in (...) fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason and thus essential for rational democratic deliberation and political judgment. Attempts to purge emotion from public life not only are destined to fail, but ultimately would rob democracies of a key source of revitalization and change. Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Marcus shows how emotion functions generally and what role it plays in politics. In contrast to the traditional view of emotion as a form of agitation associated with belief, neuroscience reveals it to be generated by brain systems that operate largely outside of awareness. Two of these systems, "disposition" and "surveillance," are especially important in enabling emotions to produce habits, which often serve a positive function in democratic societies. But anxiety, also a preconscious emotion, is crucial to democratic politics as well because it can inhibit or disable habits and thus clear a space for the conscious use of reason and deliberation. If we acknowledge how emotion facilitates reason and is "cooperatively entangled" with it, Marcus concludes, then we should recognize sentimental citizens as the only citizens really capable of exercising political judgment and of putting their decisions into action. (shrink)

Biblical theology has always been essentially a theology of salvation history, because salvation history is what the Scriptures present. The urgent task of theology is to formulate a concept of history that is appropriate to its canon.

We agree that supernatural beliefs are pervasive. However, we propose a more general account rooted in how people trace ordinary objects over time. Tracking identity involves attending to the causal history of an object, a process that may implicate hidden mechanisms. We discuss experiments in which participants exhibit the same “supernatural” beliefs when reasoning about the fates of cups and automobiles as those exhibited by Bering's participants when reasoning about spirits.

The Christian conception of philosophy and Christian philosophical methodology -- Physics and metaphysics: first principles and the question of cosmogony -- Logic and epistemology -- Free will and divine providence -- Psychology: the soul and its relation to the body -- Ethics and politics.