The collapse of the Saddam regime in March 2003 saw the publication of a number of articles or more encompassing works devoted to the situation of the Christian communities in Iraq. The majority of these focus on ecclesiastical issues and much less on political developments. However, it is clear that it would be artificial to separate the religious from the political: some religious leaders actively participate in the political debate and express views on the ethnic profile of their community, which (...) has consequences for the role they want their communities to play in the Iraqi society. The present article tries to describe and understand some political developments, focusing on three interrelated themes: the divided political landscape, the position of the Christians in Kurdistan and their relations with the Kurdish Regional Government and the Central Federal Government and the discussion on political and cultural “autonomy” for the Christian communities and the creation of a Christian “homeland”. (shrink)

Recent empirical work indicates that reduced autobiographical memory specificity can act as an avoidant processing style. By truncating the memory search before specific elements of traumatic memories are accessed, one can ward off the affective impact of negative reminiscences. This avoidant processing style can be viewed as an instance of what Erdelyi describes as the “subtractive” class of repressive processes.

This paper examines two attempts to justify the way in which intuitions about specific cases are used as evidence for and against philosophical theories. According to the concept model, intuitions about cases are trustworthy applications of one’s typically tacit grasp of certain concepts. We argue that regardless of whether externalist or internalist accounts of conceptual content are correct, the concept model flounders. The second justification rests on the less familiar belief model, which has it that intuitions in philosophy derive from (...) one’s beliefs. Although more promising than the concept model, the belief model fails to justify traditional philosophical use of intuitions because it is not clear a priori that the beliefs at issue are true. The latter model may, however, legitimize a less a prioristic approach to intuitions. (shrink)

This article pursues a Whiteheadian association of meals and cooking with an orienting concern for ecological well-being and planetary health. Process thought helps those who eat to recognize the real influences that our meals have upon the emerging world.

NG van Kampen is a well-known theoretical physicist who has had a long and distinguished career. His research covers scattering theory, plasma physics, statistical mechanics, and various mathematical aspects of physics. In addition to his scientific work, he has written a number of papers about more general aspects of science. An indefatigable fighter for intellectual honesty and clarity, he has pointed out repeatedly that the fundamental ideas of physics have been needlessly obscured. As those papers appeared in various journals, partly (...) in Dutch, it was felt that it would be worthwhile to collect them (translating the Dutch material into English) and make them available to a larger audience. This is a book of major importance to scientists and university teachers. (shrink)

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion is the third volume in a new critical edition of the complete works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information.Published in the spring of 1900, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion was George Santayana's first book of critical prose. It developed his view that "poetry is called religion when it intervenes in life, and religion, when it merely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but poetry." This statement (...) and the point of view it espoused contributed significantly to the debate between science and religion at the turn of the century, and its eloquence and clearsightedness continue to have an impact on current discussions about the nature of religion.Interpretations of Poetry and Religion affronted Santayana's peers with its assault on literary and religious pieties of the cultivated classes. William James called its philosophy of harmonious and integral ideal systems nothing less than "a perfection of rottenness."In his insightful introductory essay, Joel Porte observes that while Santayana's theory of correlative objects, his espousal of the "ideal" - the normal human affinity for abstraction - and exaltation of the imagination may have offended some at Harvard, these ideas had a significant influence on other Harvard scholars T.S. Eliot and Santayana's "truest disciple," Wallace Stevens.Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr., heads the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A & M University. William G. Holzberger is a Professor of English at Bucknell University. Joel Porte is Whiton Professor of American Literature at Cornell University. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the bearing intuitions have on semantic theory, and suggest that when the phenomenon is properly understood, they are less important than philosophers tend to think. We also argue that our conclusions go beyond intuitions about semantics, and impugn the idea of intuition more generally.

Since the first selection of George Santayana's letters was published in 1955, shortly after his death, many more letters have been located. The Works of George Santayana, Volume V, brings together a total of more than 3,000 letters. The volume is divided chronologically into eight books of roughly comparable length. Book Two covers Santayana's first decade as a "freelance philosopher," following his resignation from Harvard University and move to Europe. Of particular interest is Santayana's continuing correspondence with the American philosopher (...) Charles Augustus Strong and with his sister Susana Sturgis de Sastre. Also included is correspondence with such notable figures as Bertrand Russell, Robert Seymour Bridges, Horace Kallen, and Logan Pearsall Smith. The correspondence covers Santayana's resignation from Harvard, his time in England during World War I, and comments on his philosophical work during this period. (shrink)

Published in 1935, George Santayana's The Last Puritan was the American philosopher's only novel. It became an instant best-seller, immediately linked in its painful voyage of self discovery to The Education of Henry Adams. It is essentially a novel of ideas, expressed in the birth, life, and early death of Oliver Alden.The Last Puritan is volume four in a new critical edition of The Works of George Santayana that restores Santayana's original text and provides important new scholarly information. Books in (...) this series - the first complete publication of Santayana's works - include an editorial apparatus with notes to the text, textual commentary, discussions of adopted readings, lists of variants and emendations, and line-end hyphenations. Irving Singer's new introduction to this edition takes up Santayana's philosophical and artistic concerns, including issues of homosexuality raised by the depiction of the novel's two protagonists, Oliver and Mario, and of the relationship between Oliver and the rogue character Jim Darnley. In his thoughtful analysis Singer finds the term "homosexual novel" too reductionist and imprecise for what Santayana is trying to achieve. Singer brings to light the author's skillful and inventive methods for perceiving and interpreting reality, including ideal forms of friendship, and his success in exploring the pervasive moral problems that people face throughout their existence. (shrink)

The Malabo Declaration places the transformation of agriculture and food systems at the centre of regional and national policy priorities across Africa. Transformative change in the way that food is produced, processed and consumed is seen as not only necessary for addressing the complex challenges of food security and poverty alleviation, but also as a driver of new employment opportunities and economic development. As pointed out within the recent UN Food Systems Summit, essential elements of food system transformations include digital (...) transitions and the empowerment of women and youth. However, there are few empirical examples demonstrating how these agendas come together to affect food system change. Here we focus on an enterprising group of young farmers referred to as Malawi’s _new achikumbe elite_, who are urban based, educated and engaging in agriculture on a commercial basis. The aim is to characterise this emergent group of agriculturalists and to understand the role that they have within the transformation of Malawi-s agricultural sector. We explore how digital platforms are supporting the emergence of this new category of farmer and positioning young people as agents of change in food systems transformation. Based on interviews and ethnographic research with 32 young farmers between 2018 and 2022 combined with interviews with representatives of service providers and agricultural organisations, we argue that this group is characterised by a higher level of education, self-dependency and use of digital platforms, enabling them to adapt their context to sourcing production resources and engaging in commercial agriculture. We present evidence that digital platforms are supporting the new achikumbe elite (NAE) to engage flexibly with new commercial markets, contracts and access a wider range of training and advice. However, while digital platforms can offer more equitable access to information and market opportunities, they also represent potential avenues for food system transformations that are inequitable. As such, we argue that there is need for digital technologies to mitigate against potential inequalities. (shrink)

The effect of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on the affective impact of an emotional event was examined. In Study 1 (N = 90) the impact of a negative and positive experience was compared between student participants who habitually retrieve autobiographical memories (AMs) in a specific way and participants who generally retrieve less specific memories. In Study 2 (N = 48) the effect of an experimentally induced (specific vs. overgeneral) retrieval style on the impact of a negative experience was (...) studied in student participants who habitually retrieve less specific memories. Study 1 replicated the finding of Raes, Hermans, de Decker, Eelen, & Williams (Citation2003) that a negative event leads to less subjective distress in low‐specific participants as compared with high‐specific participants. However, both groups did not differ in their affective reaction to a positive event. Important, reduced memory specificity was associated with “repressive coping”, providing further evidence for the idea that reduced memory specificity is used as an avoidant or repressive‐defensive mechanism to regulate negative affect (CitationWilliams, 1996). In Study 2, participants who were induced to retrieve memories in an overgeneral way experienced more distress following a negative event as compared with participants who were induced to retrieve memories in a specific way. Results are discussed in the context of recent findings concerning AM specificity and emotion regulation (CitationPhilippot, Schaefer, & Herbette, 2003). Directions for further research are suggested. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

SummaryTake the following version of scientific realism: we have good reason to believe that (some of the) current scientific theories tell us something specific about the underlying, i.e. unobservable, structures of the world, for instance that there are electrons with a certain electric charge, or that there are viruses that cause certain diseases. Popper, the rationalist, would not have adhered to the proposed formulation of scientific realism in terms of the rationality of existential beliefs concerning unobservables. Popper did not believe (...) in belief. According to Van Fraassen, the empiricist, one may yet have a rational existential belief concerning unobservables, given a liberal notion of rationality of belief. In this paper I will investigate to what extent a reassessment of both Popper’s rejection of the rationality of belief and Van Fraassen’s reformulation of the rationality of belief, points towards a new and pragmatist dissolution of the ‘problem of scientific realism’. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal which was part of a panel discussion of Grünbaum's philosophy of science, M. G. Evans discusses the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis and related matters [2]. The purpose of this note is to clarify and correct some of the points in Evans' paper.

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

This paper addresses four issues: 1. What is nonsense? 2. Is nonsense possible? 3. Is nonsense actual? 4. Why do the answers to (1)–(3) matter, if at all? These are my answers: 1. A sentence (or an utterance of one) is nonsense if it fails to have or express content (more on ‘express’, ‘have’, and ‘content’ below). This is a version of a view that can be found in Carnap (1959), Ayer (1936), and, maybe, the early Wittgenstein (1922). The notion (...) I propose abstracts away from their favored (but wrong) theories of what meaning is. It is a notion of nonsense that can be appealed to by all semantic frameworks and all theories of what content is, but structurally it is just like e.g. Carnap’s. Nonsense, as I construe it, is accompanied by illusions of thought (and I think that was part of Carnap’s conception as well). 2. Yes. In particular, I examine three arguments for the impossibility of illusion of thought (which on my construal accompanies linguistic nonsense) and they are all unsound. 3. Yes. There might be a lot of nonsense, both in ordinary and theoretical speech. In particular, it is likely that much of contemporary philosophy consists of nonsense. Empirical work is required to determine just how much. 4. The struggle to avoid nonsense (and achieve meaningfulness) is at least as important as the struggle for truth. The avoidance of nonsense is a precondition not just for having a truth value but also for more important properties such as saying something interesting or kind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram EilenbergerDavid HermanTime of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside; 432 pp. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.Is it possible to write a deeply researched and technically precise contribution to the history of philosophy that reads like a gripping novel? Time of (...) the Magicians, originally published in German in 2018 as Zeit der Zauberer, convincingly demonstrates that this feat can indeed be accomplished. However, it may be achievable only by the rare expert who, like Wolfram Eilenberger, combines a thoroughgoing knowledge of the field, an unstinting commitment to recreating a public forum for philosophy, and a gift for the exposition—and dramatization—of philosophical debates, the broader circumstances in which they took place, and the motivations and aims of those who participated in them.The book, stylishly translated by Shaun Whiteside, begins by plunging us into the middle of things. Eilenberger provides snapshots of what his four focal thinkers were up to in 1929, before backtracking, in subsequent chapters, to cover key events in the decade that brought them to this point. Then, in the epilogue, he briefly sketches their post-1929 lives and careers. The book's readability is further enhanced by the way the text is broken up into short sections with eye-catching titles ("A Hut of One's Own," "Existential Health Check," "Self-Fashioning through Openness").The opening pages center on June 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein, having previously renounced his portion of his family's fortune and taught for several years at primary schools in rural Austria, undertook an oral defense of his doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge at age forty. Wittgenstein's "thesis" just so happened to be Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the influential, sometimes gnomic book he had published in 1921; and at the conclusion of the defense, the candidate is rumored to have said to his examiners, Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."In fact, as Eilenberger discusses in a later chapter, by 1929 Wittgenstein's own thinking was no longer where it had been when he wrote the Tractatus. The [End Page 492] philosopher's primary concern had shifted away from identifying the logical structure of meaningful propositions; instead, he had become interested in how meaning emerges from the way language is used in particular, concrete contexts. Apropos the evolving nature of Wittgenstein's ideas, one of the funniest parts of the book describes the philosopher's meetings with members of the Vienna Circle, a group that, in seeking to reorient philosophy around the natural sciences, had come to see the Tractatus as a touchstone for their work. During his first meeting with the group, in 1927, Wittgenstein, instead of talking shop, recited poems by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, standing with his back turned to the audience. Later discussions did involve philosophy, but eventually, as Eilenberger puts it, although the "Vienna Circle had hoped for something that coincided with their ideal of objective research," they "were instead left to grapple with an extremely idiosyncratic style of thinking that, in both execution and results, seemed directly contrary to it" (p. 274).Meanwhile, a few months prior to Wittgenstein's defense of a thesis that no longer reflected his real tendencies of mind, two of Eilenberger's other focal thinkers, Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, engaged in a much-anticipated public debate at the Grand Hôtel Belvédère in Davos, Switzerland. When he first mentions it, Eilenberger furnishes just enough detail to whet readers' curiosity about this epochal contest between the eminent neo-Kantian Cassirer, whose reputation for encyclopedic erudition had just been sealed by the publication of the final volume of his masterwork, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and the considerably younger Heidegger, a one-time student of Edmund Husserl who had made a radical departure from Husserlian phenomenology in Being and Time.By the time readers return to the debate, some three hundred pages later, Eilenberger has provided a decade's worth of historical context, which casts a... (shrink)

Some of the authors of the essays on Chinese philosophers prefer the pin yin system of romanization for Chinese names and words, while others prefer the Wade‐Giles system. Given that both systems are in wide use today, important names and words are given in both their pin yin and Wade‐Giles formulations. The author's preference is printed first, followed by the alternative romanization within brackets.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY To make this theme conspicuous to the reader, the author deals with three topics in Aristotle's first philosophy: the path from beings to the primary instance of being, the study of sensible substance, and the distinction between the potential and the actual. Grene's essay on the most perplexing of Aristotle's works is the least satisfactory in her study. Though she acknowledges that the path of (...) thg Aristotelian first philosopher is not easy, her analysis of the school X67oLmakes the road more facile than it, in fact, is. For example, what is the relation between Wisdom (the science of principles and causes), the science of being-qua-being, and the science of immovable substance? How can the latter be universal and, at the same time, have as its object one kind of being? Why does Aristotle dismiss substrate in the sense of compound of form and matter as a candidate for substance? It would seem to satisfy his criteria of thisness and separability better (or at least in more instances) than substrate in the sense of form. Finally, it is hard to avoid Ross's conclusion (Aristotle's Metaphysics, Vol. 1, pp. ci) that Aristotle in Book Z moves away from the view that the primary ontological units are sensible individuals toward the view that they are pure forms. The real is either the object of definition (and this appears to be Aristotle's view for the most part in Book Z) or it is the individual (the doctrine of the Categories); it cannot, on Aristotelian grounds, be both. Grene's resolution of the difficulty will not bear scrutiny. She says (p. 205): "Definition is of the universal. But the object of definition is the real substance, the being-what-it-is of the thing. This is substance and not universal." The incompatibility of the first and third sentences in this passage constitutes what Grene refers to (p. 205) as "a very perplexing situation indeed;" and they also reflect the "double meaning" which "pervades Aristotle's whole treatment of substance" (Ross, Aristotle, p. 166). It is the doctrine of the first sentence which comes to the fore in Book Z, for there Aristotle concludes (i) that ot~r is r6 I"L~Tv e~tL and maintains (ii) that rb rl ~v rival 'will belong to nothing which is not a species of a genus' (1030"12-13). And we hardly need be reminded that an Aristotelian species is not an individual. Grene, it seems to me, relieves our perplexity somewhat, but only by blurring the oscillation in Aristotle's mind on this point, e.g., when she implies that the unambiguous doctrine of Book Z is that "as far as the perceived world goes, the naturalist's specimen, the individual of a type, the member of a class, is the prototype of the real" (p. 205). In very readable prose Grene has given us a picture of Aristotle that is at once engaging and in most respects faithful to the interests and outlook of her model. She says in a bibliographical note that her book is "meant more for the undergraduate reader or the general public than for scholars already conversant both with the text and the tradition" (p. 257). I suggest that the account Grene has given us is stimulating and refreshing also for the scholar. JosxAtt B. GOULD,JR. Glaremont Graduate School La filosofia medievale: Antologia di testi. Edited by Nicola Abbagnan0. (Bari: Editori Laterza, 1963. Pp. 440. -----Coll. del Candelaio. L. 2700.) it is the purpose of this, the second volume in the Antologia di testi filosofici to appear under the general editorship of the fine Italian scholar, Nicola Abbagnano, to provide an introduction to the history of mediaeval philosophy through the presentation of selected primary source materials in Italian translation. The book could have been a significant addition to the sparse philosophical literature of the period that is now available BOOK REVIEWS 259 to the non-Latin reader; instead, it turns out to be a sort of catalogue of opinions on a wide variety of philosophical topics held by many of the thinkers active in the period: between St... (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created by revolutionary (...) developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created by revolutionary (...) developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)

Can one and the same quotation be used on different occasions to quote distinct objects? The view that it can is taken for granted throughout the literature (e.g. Goddard & Routley 1966, Christensen 1967, Davidson 1979, Goldstein 1984, Jorgensen et al 1984, Atlas 1989, Clark & Gerrig 1990, Washington 1992, García-Carpintero 1994, 2004, 2005, Reimer 1996, Saka 1998, Wertheimer 1999). Garcia-Carpintero (1994, p. 261) illustrates with the quotation expression ''gone''. He says it can be used to quote any of the (...) following items. (shrink)