Summary Physical anthropologist Grover Krantz (1931–2002) spent his career arguing that the anomalous North American primate called Sasquatch was a living animal. He attempted to prove the creature's existence by applying to the problem the techniques of physical anthropology: methodologies and theoretical models that were outside the experience of the amateur enthusiasts who dominated the field of anomalous primate studies. For his efforts, he was dismissed or ignored by academics who viewed the Sasquatch, also commonly called Bigfoot, as (...) at best a relic of folklore and at worst a hoax, and Krantz's project as having dubious value. Krantz also received a negative reaction from amateur Sasquatch researchers, some of whom threatened and abused him. His career is best situated therefore as part of the discussion about the historical relationship between amateur naturalists and professional scientists. The literature on this relationship articulates a combining/displacement process: when a knowledge domain that has potential for contributions to science is created by amateurs, it will eventually combine with and then be taken over by professionals, with the result that amateur leadership is displaced. This paper contributes to that discussion by showing the process at work in Krantz's failed attempt to legitimize Bigfoot research by removing it from the amateur sphere and repositioning it in the professional world of anthropology. (shrink)

As face shields are dusted off and conferences go virtual again, Omicron reminds us how the once-novel coronavirus ruptured our collective idea of medical training. For nearly 2 years, social media...

Franz Brentano's remarks on theodicy presuppose both his ethical and his metaphysical views. But he does not tell us precisely how his ethics and his metaphysics are supposed to relate to one another. Indeed, the two appear to be irreconcilable. So I try to show how Brentano's solution to the problem of evil can disclose to us the relation between his ethics and his metaphysics. First I discuss those of his ethical principles which I take to be relevant to theodicy, (...) namely, that mental activity is indefeasibly good in itself, and that in practical decisions only one choice is good. Then I explain the relevant metaphysical doctrines, concerning the substance-accident relation and the principle of sufficient reason. I then raise the general problem of evil, as well as the specific problem for Brentano. And finally I explicate and defend his theodicy, both in terms of what he clearly states and in terms of what we can infer from his writings on what is good and evil, on what exists, and on the nature of God. (shrink)

Franz Brentano took exception to the classic statement of the correspondence theory of truth, the thesis: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. His reasons for objecting to it, and his proposed revision of the thesis, are interesting considered in themselves as well as for the light they shed on Brentano's view of the relation between the thinker and the world. With regard to the former, it is shown how Brentano analyzes the adaequatio thesis word by word in order to demonstrate (...) what he takes to be its fundamental incoherence. With regard to the latter, it becomes apparent, by contrast with the Thomistic understanding of the adaequatio thesis, that Brentano's revision of it in the direction of a phenomenological theory of truth also involves a revised understanding of the nature of the thinker or knower. (shrink)

The Aristotelian conception of the soul as Brentano understood it is examined, with respect to the nature of the soul and mainly to what Aristotle called the sensitive soul, since this is where the issue of the soul's corporeity becomes important. Secondly the difficulties are discussed which Brentano saw in the Aristotelian semi-materialistic conception concerning the intellectual, as distinct from the sensitive soul from Brentano's reistic point of view which and that it is an immaterial substance. Finally there follows a (...) presentation of what is taken to be Brentano's conception of the soul as it appears from a reistic interpretation of his analyses of the act of sensation and of the subject of sensation in order to shed some light on the reistic ontology that may be taken to underlie Brentanos's psychology. (shrink)

Shows how Singer's ethical theories threaten human values in a variety of ways.

Thomas hobbes's papers at chatsworth prove that he had considerable knowledge of legal concepts. apparently he used the chatsworth copy of christopher saint german's "doctor" and "student" in developing his concept of contractual obligation. realizing this is useful for a careful analysis of hobbes's theory of why contracts oblige. the crucial problem is hobbes attempt to explain why we should perform a disadvantageous contract. he suggests different motives in all three of his major political works. in "leviathan" he finally settles (...) on the argument that it is always to our long-term advantage to fail to keep contracts. this argument is not very satisfactory, but it is the best that he can come up with given his account of human nature. (shrink)

The measurement of force is based on a formal law of additivity, which characterizes the effects of two or more configurations on the equilibrium of a material point. The representing vectors (resultant forces) are additive over configurations. The existence of a tight interrelation between the force vector and the geometric space, in which motion is described, depends on observations of partial (directional) equilibria; an axiomatization of this interrelation yields a proof of part two of Newton's second law of motion. The (...) present results (which were derived from a curious and deep isomorphism between force measurement and trichromatic color measurement) yield a kind of subunit, which needs to be incorporated into more complete axiomatizations of mechanics that would fulfill the Mach-Kirchhoff program. (shrink)

In discussing propositional quantifiers we have considered two kinds of variables: variables occupying the argument places of connectives, and variables occupying the argument places of predicates.We began with languages which contained the first kind of variable, i.e., variables taking sentences as substituends. Our first point was that there appear to be no sentences in English that serve as adequate readings of formulas containing propositional quantifiers. Then we showed how a certain natural and illuminating extension of English by prosentences did provide (...) perspicuous readings. The point of introducing prosentences was to provide a way of making clear the grammar of propositional variables: propositional variables have a prosentential character — not a pronominal character. Given this information we were able to show, on the assumption that the grammar of propositional variables in philosopher's English should be determined by their grammar in formal languages (unless a separate account of their grammar is provided), that propositional variables can be used in a grammatically and philosophically acceptable way in philosophers' English. According to our criteria of well-formedness Carnap's semantic definition of truth does not lack an ‘essential’ predicate - despite arguments to the contrary. It also followed from our account of the prosentential character of bound propositional variables that in explaining propositional quantification, sentences should not be construed as names.One matter we have not discussed is whether such quantification should be called ‘propositional’, ‘sentential’, or something else. As our variables do not range over (they are not terms) either propositions, or sentences, each name is inappropriate, given the usual picture of quantification. But we think the relevant question in this context is, are we obtaining generality with respect to propositions, sentences, or something else?Because people have argued that all bound variables must have a pronominal character, we presented and discussed in the third section languages in which the variables take propositional terms as substituends. In our case we included names of propositions, that-clauses, and names of sentences in the set of propositional terms. We made a few comparisons with the languages discussed in the second section. We showed among other things how a truth predicate could be used to obtain generality. In contrast, the languages of the second section, using propositional variables, obtain generality without the use of a truth predicate. (shrink)

Brentano's thoughts on unity of consciousness are of central importance to an understanding of his psychology and of his ontology. By means of a reistic interpretation of his views on unity of consciousness, and in contrast with the Aristotelian approach to unity of consciousness, one begins to see the paradoxically objective and realistic spirit of Brentano's subjectivism in psychology.

This elaborate study of Kant's entire philosophical system is the published form of the author's doctoral dissertation and the first in a proposed series of four works on Kant. The overall plan of the book takes the reader from an explication of the general structure of Kant's system, to its epistemological underpinnings, its transcendental elements, and finally its metaphysical implications. There are seventy pages of appendixes.

Whats human rights got to do with it? That is, whats human rights got to do with the June 2004 report of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Special Working Committee to the Inter-Agency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics. The disturbing answer is not enough. Certain key recommendations of the working committee, it is suggested, would unacceptably weaken the researchers legal and moral accountability to research participants. Those particular recommendations rely on misguided references to academic freedom and the nature (...) of the non-medical research context. In fact, universal human rights, and the legal instruments in which they are embodied ought to inform the research endeavor at every stage; from problem selection to analysis and conclusions. This will lead us closer to shared truths rather than simply to the academic elites vision of truth. Without sufficient regard for the human rights of research participants academic freedom itself is not possible. (shrink)

This article argues that investigators doing developmental and social research with children have, for the most part, failed to acknowledge the inherent implications of their work for children's rights. The impact of these studies upon children's rights occurs at every stage; from hypothesis formulation to hypothesis testing to dissemination of findings. This paper addresses the issue in the context of developmental research on children's ability to report experienced events accurately. This particular research area has generated data that has been extrapolated (...) to legal contexts and created a foundation for assumptions about the credibility of child witnesses. This in turn has had profound effects on children's right to be heard and the weight given to their testimony. The argument is made that there is a need for social scientists to explicitly articulate how their work may impact upon children's rights and what is in fact the social agenda in this regard underlying their research. (shrink)

A scientifically proven method to overcome obstacles and make choices that lead us closer to our goals. WITH A FOREWORD BY MARTINA NAVRATILOVA What do weight gain, poor employee engagement, and climate change all have in common? All three are persistent problems for which solutions are known and readily available. Yet, on an individual and collective level, we continually make choices that lead us not closer to but further away from our stated objectives. Whether we choose the burger and fries (...) over the salad, top-down management over collaboration, or leniency over rigor in combatting climate change, it all comes down to the same thing. The Choice Point. The moment at which we each choose to take an action that we know will undermine our success, but we do it anyway. The Choice Point explains how we experience thousands of thoughts every day: 80 percent are negative, while only 5 percent are new thoughts. We make most of our decisions within two seconds, using mental autopilot systems that we've built through years of experiences, and some of our thoughts (like quitting during a challenge) can compromise our goals. But there's a strategy to change this: Functional Imagery Training (FIT). FIT teaches us how to pick the thoughts that deserve our attention, and how to stop the other, negative thoughts from impacting our actions. Through FIT, we can pause decisions that would typically conflict with our goals, lengthen our Choice Point, and go from passenger to driver of our own minds. Initially developed in 2005 by academics in the UK and Australia, with formal principles emerging through research in 2018, FIT blends motivational interviewing with imagery into a user-friendly model so we can learn, adapt, and adjust our behavior to go beyond what we think is possible. (shrink)

The self-interest paradigm predicts that unethical behavior occurs when such behavior benefits the actor. A recent model of lying behavior, however, predicts that lying behavior results from an individual''s inability to meet conflicting role demands. The need to reconcile the self-interest and role conflict theories prompted the present study, which orthogonally manipulated the benefit from lying and the conflicting role demands. A model integrating the two theories predicts the results, which showed that both elements — self benefit and role conflict (...) — influenced lying, separately and interactively. Additionally, the relative strength of the roles in conflict affected their level of influence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The quantitative argument against the notion of a best possible world claims that, no matter how many worthwhile lives a world contains, another world contains more and is, other things being equal, better. Parfit’s ‘ Mere Addition Paradox ’ suggests that defenders of this argument must accept his ‘ Repugnant Conclusion ’ : that outcomes containing billions upon billions of lives barely worth living are better than outcomes containing fewer lives of higher quality. Several responses to the Paradox are discussed (...) and rejected as either inadequate or unavailable in a theistic context. The quantitative argument fails if some world is such that addition to it is not possible, i.e., if it is intensively infinite, as Liebniz claimed. If the notion of such a world is incoherent, then no world is quantitatively best and the quantitative argument succeeds, but only at the cost of embracing the Repugnant Conclusion. (shrink)

In the same way as the quantum no-cloning theorem and quantum key distribution in two preceding papers, entanglement-assisted quantum teleportation and Grover’s search algorithm are generalized by transferring them to an abstract setting, including usual quantum mechanics as a special case. This again shows that a much more general and abstract access to these quantum mechanical features is possible than commonly thought. A non-classical extension of conditional probability and, particularly, a very special type of state-independent conditional probability are used (...) instead of Hilbert spaces and wavefunctions. (shrink)

Approximately two billion people lack access to medicines globally. People living with HIV, cancer patients, those suffering from tuberculosis or malaria, and other populations in desperate need of life-saving medicines are increasingly unable to access existing preventative, curative, and life-prolonging treatments. In many cases, treatment may be unavailable or inaccessible for even some of the most common and readily treatable health concerns, such as hypertension. In the developing world, many of the factors that contribute to making the world’s most vulnerable (...) and marginalized populations particularly susceptible to illness also operate to restrict their access to medicines. As a result of dramatic economic inequities and widespread poverty, it is not profitable for most originator pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines for sale in developing markets or to lower the cost of existing drugs so that they are affordable for the majority of these populations. (shrink)

This paper considers what are the appropriate limits of parental or guardian proxy consent for a child's participation in medical or social science research. Such proxy consent, it is proposed, is invalid in regards “non-therapeutic research.” The latter research may add to scientific knowledge and/or benefit others, but any benefit to the child research participant is but a coincidental theoretical possibility and not a primary objective. Research involving children, without intended and acceptable prospect of beneficial outcome to the individual participant, (...) even if with negligible risk, does not meet the test for “best interests.” Proxy consent for children's involvement in research is justifiable only when given for and on behalf of the child in his or her best interest to enhance the child's well-being. Only in the latter case is the parental proxy consent situation analogous in regards key criteria to a competent individual consenting to research participation. (shrink)

‘Rival creator’ arguments suggest that God must have created the best of all possible worlds. These arguments are analyzed and evaluated, and Leibniz’s position defended.

We use a sequential voluntary contribution game to compare the relative impact of a first-mover’s non-binding announcement versus binding commitment on cooperation. We find that a non-binding announcement and a binding commitment increase individual contributions to a similar extent. Since announced contributions systematically exceed commitments, in sessions with a non-binding announcement, second-movers tend to contribute more to the group activity than in sessions with a binding commitment. Yet, second-movers appear to be more motivated towards achieving a social optimum when the (...) first-mover uses commitment. We also find that a non-binding announcement has a higher impact on individual propensity to cooperate than the ex post contribution of the first-mover. However, the failure to make announced contributions decreases cooperation even though the first-mover is reassigned in every period. (shrink)

Utilizing Carnap's notions of "questions [or assertions] within a framework" and "questions [or assertions] about a framework" and his account of A-truth (analyticity in the broad sense), a theory of the ontological status of entities--in particular, that of theoretical entities--is adumbrated. In addition to the usual L-rules, each conceptual framework considered embodies a set of sentences whose truth value is quickly decidable on other than purely linguistic grounds, a set of A-true formulae, and a set of rules for the confirmation (...) and disconfirmation of non-L-true, non-A-true formulae which are not quickly decidable. Criteria which acceptable sets of A-true formulae must fulfill are given. Using this apparatus, a schema for a realistic interpretation of scientific theories is outlined. (shrink)

The author's focus is on ethical issues relative to one area of professional practice - working with adult learners.

The relationship of consciousness to brain, which Schopenhauer grandly referred to as the "world knot," remains an unsolved problem within both philosophy and science. The central focus in what follows is the relevance of science---from psychoanalysis to neurophysiology and quantum physics-to the mind-brain puzzle. Many would argue that we have advanced little since the age of the Greek philosophers, and that the extraordinary accumulation of neuroscientific knowledge in this century has helped not at all. Increas- ingly, philosophers and scientists have (...) tended to go their separate ways in considering the issues, since they tend to differ in the questions that they ask, the data and ideas which are provided for consideration, their methods for answering these questions, and criteria for judging the acceptability of an answer. But it is our conviction that philosophers and scientists can usefully interchange, at least to the extent that they provide co~straints upon each other’s preferred strategies, and it may prove possible for more substantive progress to be made. Philosophers have said some rather naive things by ignoring the extraordinary advances in the neurosciences in the twentieth century. The skull is not filled with green cheese! On the other hand, the arrogance of many scientists toward philosophy and their faith in the scientific method is equally naive. Scientists clearly have much to learn from philosophy as an intellectual discipline. Manifestations of Mind: Some Conceptual and Empirical Issues Walter B. Weimer Pages 5-31 The Mysterious “Split‘: A Clinical Inquiry into Problems of Consciousness and Brain Peter H. Knapp Pages 37-69 Mind, Brain, and the Symbolic Consciousness Irwin Savodnik Pages 73-98 Brain and Free Will John C. Eccles Pages 101-121 An Old Ghost in a New Body C. Wade Savage Pages 125-153 How Dogmatic Can Materialism Be? John C. Eccles Pages 155-160 Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function R. W. Sperry Pages 163-177 Consciousness as an Emergent Causal Agent in the Context of Control System Theory E. M. Dewan Pages 181-198 Reductionism, Levels of Organization, and the Mind-Body Problem William C. Wimsatt Pages 205-267 Mind, Structure, and Contradiction Gordon G. Globus Pages 271-293 Problems Concerning the Structure of Consciousness Karl H. Pribram Pages 297-313 The Role of Scientific Results in Theories of Mind and Brain: A Conversation among Philosophers and Scientists E. M. Dewan, John C. Eccles, Gordon G. Globus, Keith Gunderson, Peter H. Knapp, Grover Maxwell et al. Pages 317-328 Scientific Results and the Mind-Brain Issue: Some Afterthoughts Grover Maxwell Pages 329-358. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 3O3 Robert Merrihew Adams. Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist. New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 433. Cloth, $55.oo. Robert Adams has previously given us admirable accounts of Leibniz's theories of contingency and of the conceptual containment theory of truth, and has defended an interpretation of Leibniz's mature metaphysics as broadly idealist in nature? Material from his earlier articles anchors Part I and opens Part III of this impressive book. Part II is devoted to Leibniz's various (...) versions of the ontological argument, and is wholly new. It is also fascinating, and easily justifies Adams's view of Leibniz as "the most interesting writer on the ontological argument for the existence of God between St. Anselm and the twentieth century" . Leibniz thought Descartes's ontological proof incomplete: it showed that God's existence is necessary if it is possible, but failed to show that.. (shrink)

Before now, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the multiple relations between A. Comte’s and J.S. Mill’s positive philosophy and Franz Brentano’s work. The present volume aims to fill this gap and to identify Brentano’s position in the context of the positive philosophy of the 19th century by analyzing the following themes: the concept of positive knowledge; philosophy and empirical, genetic and descriptive psychology as sciences in Brentano, Comte and Mill; the strategies for the rebirth of philosophy in these (...) three authors; the theory of the ascending stages of thought, of their decline, of the intentionality in Comte and Brentano; the reception of Comte’s positivism in Whewell and Mill; induction and phenomenalism in Brentano, Mill and Bain; the problem of the "I" in Hume and Brentano; mathematics as a foundational science in Brentano, Kant and Mill; Brentano’s critique of Mach’s positivism; the concept of positive science in Brentano’s metaphysics and in Husserl’s early phenomenology; the reception of Brentano’s psychology in Twardowski; The Brentano Institute at Oxford. The volume also contains the translation of the most significant writings of Brentano regarding philosophy as science. I. Tănăsescu, Romanian Academy; A. Bejinariu, Romanian Society of Phenomenology; S. Krantz Gabriel, Saint Anselm College; C. Stoenescu, University of Bucharest. (shrink)

In the past, philosophy, as it was brought to life originally by the ancient Greeks, was based on the audacious premise that the cosmos is intelligible, that human reason can come to understand reality at least in part. In the early to mid-twentieth century, however, philosophy was declared dead on both sides of the analytic-continental divide, so it seems appropriate to ask whether philosophy has a future and, if so, what sort of future this could and should be. In this (...) essay, I first look at the claims of philosophy’s demise and their philosophical milieu, focusing on Martin Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Then I suggest a reason for the dire forecast, namely, the aftermath of what has been called the “Second Thirty Years’ War,” and respond to objections that can be raised against this explanation. Finally, I indicate the sort of future that I think we should envision for philosophy. (shrink)

In Hard Truths Elijah Millgram argues that ‘partial truth’ is pervasive and for that reason bivalence 1 may rarely be assumed. As classical logic assumes bivalence, and inferences from partial truths to partial truths are central to our thinking, classical logic rarely has application, the argument continues. And so we must develop an account of inference from partial truths to partial truths; as well, our metaphysics must be revised. While the novel positions of Hard Truths 2 raise many interesting challenges, (...) my focus is limited to offering an alternative to Millgram’s account of predication and to exploring some issues raised by his appeal to ‘fit’ in his definitions of truth and partial truth. 1. Introduction to partial truth Millgram defines truth and partial truth in terms of fit, as follows: Advancing a claim as fully true demands complete fit; assessing a claim as partially true allows for slack … but only so much of it. Claims are said to completely fit, slackly fit or not fit, the world, in §6.3. But, the word ‘fit’ is first introduced in §1.2, and it is experience or proto-experience, that fits into moulds provided by claims, thoughts, sentences and predicates. I won’t dwell on which fits what, 3 but on the notion of a ‘complete fit’ and the contrast with a ‘slack fit’; this discussion leads me to ponder the clarity and implications of appealing to these notions in definitions like the above. Millgram’s explanation of fit comes in the context of his account of predication, according to which, most predicates do not quite apply. It’s this that is primarily responsible for his promotion of partial truth. I sketch an alternative account of language whereby predicates do apply because language has come to life as a constituent of the things we do: …. (shrink)

The leader integrity literature has described how professional behavior influences perceptions of integrity, yet behavior in leaders’ personal lives potentially affects those perceptions. The present paper examined how personal life behavior affects leaders. We assessed high profile political sex scandals to explore the research questions of how indiscretions in personal life affect leaders and how leaders recover from public revelations of sexual indiscretions. The results revealed that whether politicians survived the scandal depended on the degree to which the indiscretion deviated (...) from accepted norms, the degree to which the behavior departed from the politician’s expressed values, the leader’s political power, and whether the leader fully engaged in atonement under conditions when denying the allegations is not possible. These components were inter-related such that atonement was possible if the behavior was neither too extreme nor out of character and the leader had sufficient political power. The model was then tested with a sample of business executives engaged in sex scandals, finding support for its elements. (shrink)

The name of Franz Brentano is not yet a household word like that of Plato or Descartes, but readers of this volume may well begin to think it should be. From the informative and compelling introduction by Dale Jacquette to the closing essay by the late Karl Schuhmann, the book provides ample evidence of the importance of this thinker to virtually every area and every school of philosophy today. The evidence is incontrovertible, but perhaps the importance has yet to be (...) felt. A recent PBS production, “The Question of God,” features a cameo appearance by an actor playing Franz Brentano as a teacher of young Sigmund Freud, but so far the celebrity of his students has far outshone that of their teacher. Brentano’s philosophical grandchildren are quite diverse, as is obvious from even a short list of those influenced by his students or by his published works: Russell, Jung, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Derrida. One is left with the impression of both the discovery of a common philosophical wellspring and also the proximity of fertile philosophical fields. Jacquette does not exaggerate when he writes, “Readers … may come to see in Brentano’s descriptive psychology the possibility of a radically new philosophy of mind in thought and action, the metaphysics of socially intentional phenomena, and the expression of meaning in culture, a theory whose revolutionary potential has yet to be realized”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century JapanStephen G. CovellPractical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By Janine Tasca Sawada. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 387.In Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth Century Japan, her follow-up volume to Confucian Values and Popular Zen, Janine Sawada breaks new ground and sets a high mark for future studies (...) on Japanese religions. Practical Pursuits pulls down the sectarian barriers that have defined scholarly and sectarian studies of Japanese religions by looking at the common practice of personal cultivation through a detailed investigation that demonstrates the manner in which members of various groups—from Rinzai Zen to physiognomy movements— [End Page 512] engaged each other directly or indirectly in a conversation that came to shape religious practice in the modern period. The uncovering of what might be called a "common religion" is similar to the work of Ian Reader and George Tanabe in their book Practically Religious. Yet, in the process of exploring the contours of personal cultivation discourse, Sawada also sheds light on shifting lay and clerical identities, state-religion relations, and the development of new religions. The first half of the book is dedicated to an analysis of precedents set in the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1603-1868) and lays the groundwork for later changes during the Meiji period (1868-1912), which are the subject of the second half of the book.Sawada begins with the provocatively titled first chapter, "Dead Words." While this term derives specifically from eighteenth-century Nativist arguments, it is revealed in the course of the book to be a central theme in Japanese religious discourse. "Dead words" refers to the reaction by Nativists, Confucian scholars, Buddhist priests, and practitioners of various religious movements to what they perceived to be an overemphasis on obtaining a purely intellectual understanding of texts rather than realizing through practice the practical and moral implications of the texts. Here, Sawada introduces us to what she terms the "grammar" of personal cultivation, namely a framework of Confucian language upon which dialogue between often vastly different communities could take place. This "grammar" provided the foundation for broad and diverse conversations about personal cultivation, the content of which may have differed dramatically even as the language used was similar. Sawada also carefully traces the manner in which definitions of "learning" and "cultivation" changed over time, how religion and learning came to be viewed separately in the modern period, and the reactions of religious organizations to these fluctuations in definition.The "grammar" Sawada describes was used by a broad spectrum of elites and, as she demonstrates, was mediated by leaders of new religious movements. This mix of actors—Rinzai Zen priests, Shingaku leaders, Shintō practitioners, and others—"created their own interpretive conclaves, negotiated between textual systems of knowledge with which they had been imbued and the reality of their social and religious experience" (p. 27). This book brings to light the overlapping conversations between these different groups and peels back the multiple layers of their relations in which conversations over personal cultivation served as a bond between political, religious, and social elites.For students of Buddhism, the two chapters related to koji (lay) Zen are of particular interest. In these chapters Sawada details the interaction between those using the "grammar" she identifies earlier. In so doing, she begins to clarify how the clergy and elite lay practitioners negotiated new understandings of the boundaries dividing lay from professional practitioners. Sawada introduces evidence to counter the standard view that Zen clergy engaged in an "outreach" effort to expand lay practices in order to overcome the financial difficulties faced by temples in the Meiji period. While she gives evidence that finances were indeed a critical issue, she also shows us that, at least in some cases, the effort was more of an "inreach" by lay members seeking to gain or regain what they believed were traditional personal cultivation [End Page 513] practices. In such cases, Sawada shows, the clergy's reaction varied from resistance to passive acceptance.It is hard to find points to critique about this very enjoyable book. That... (shrink)

Social media-related nutritional decisions influencers and commercial postings on social media have a significant impact on people's eating habits, purchasing decisions, and decisions about food in general. It also shapes people's dietary practices and overall nutrition. Investigating dietary habits through social media can be disadvantageous to the potential for biased or inaccurate information, as sensational content can lead to unreliable nutritional advice. The 160 participants' nutritional choices using social media influence data are collected, and random questionnaires are collected. There are (...) some factors depicted in this study that are social media engagement, perceived credibility of nutrition information, influence of social media on food choices, and change in eating habits. The study utilized SPSS-29 for statistical analysis, descriptive statistics, multivariate regression, correlation analysis, and Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were used to determine statistical significance. Social media use and food choices are found to be significantly correlated, with more credibility impacting consumption patterns. The most important effect of social media on eating decisions is revealed by multivariate regression. The study interaction with social media significantly influences dietary decisions, affecting credibility perceptions and highlighting the need for rigorous assessment of online nutritional information, as influence often leads to dietary modifications. (shrink)

In this entry, we offer a very brief overview of Dorothy Grover's prosentential theory of truth.