Considering the philosophic intelligence that has set out to discredit it, intentionalism in critical interpretation has shown an uncanny resilience. Beginning perhaps most explicitly with the New Criticism, continuing through the analytic tradition in philosophy, and culminating most recently in deconstructionism, philosophers and literary theorists have kept under sustained attack the notion that authorial intention can provide a guide to interpretation, a criterion of textual meaning, or a standard for the validation of criticism. Yet intentionalist criticism still has avid theoretical (...) defenders and plenty of informal practitioners. The essay that follows, while an exercise in neither such defense nor practice, nevertheless attempts to demonstrate why intentional questions can be expected to be of permanent concern to criticism. (shrink)

Though capable of reproducing experimentally observed velocity profiles, the model proposed by Plamondon & Alimi (P&A) does not provide a viable theoretical framework for the understanding of trajectory formation and speed/accuracy trade-offs. The issues of variation and stability can be better understood by considering movement as resulting from an underlying dynamic rather than from an impulse-response of the system.

Annotation. Against the background of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Bradley provides a detailed differentiation between Aristotle's and Aquinas's view on moral principles and the end of man.

This paper tackles the issue of the diversity of déjà experiences. According to the standard view in the neuropsychological literature, they should all be defined by means of a psychological criterion, by which they are experiences triggered by a perceived item and consist of a conscious clash between a first-order feeling of familiarity about the item and a second-order evaluation that assesses the first-order feeling as erroneous. This paper dismisses the standard view and contends there are two types of déjà (...) experiences, labeled déjà vu and déjà vécu respectively. But it also takes issue with the rare proponents of a distinct déjà vécu type. Contrary to their achievement view, it argues that recollection is not involved in déjà vécu experiences as an actual mental state or a component thereof. In our ability view, déjà vécu involves the feeling that one could recollect past occurrences of a currently lived episode of experience. (shrink)

Good explanations are not only true or probably true, but are also relevant to a causal question. Current models of causal explanation either only address the question of the truth of an explanation, or do not distinguish the probability of an explanation from its relevance. The tasks of scenario construction and conversational explanation are distinguished, which in turn shows how scenarios can interact with conversational principles to determine the truth and relevance of explanations. The proposed model distinguishes causal discounting from (...) causal backgrounding , and makes predictions concerning the differential effects of contextual information about alternative explanations on: (a) the kind of mental models constructed; (b) belief revision about probable cause; and (c) the perceived quality of a focal explanation. Four experiments are reported that test these predictions. The significance of the notion of explanatory relevance for research on causal explanation is then discussed. (shrink)

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and wealth (...) than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the (...) Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. -/- In Plato's Persona, Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. -/- Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to examine the place of the people in the constitutions of democratic nations. While the meaning of democracy and the degree to which it is achieved vary within the family of nations considered democratic, the idea common to all is that the people are self-governing. In its origins, the idea is tied to liberty: not to be self-governing is to be subject to the will of another and so not to be free. What constitutes (...) self-government is open to interpretation, although this is not the place to examine the possible meanings. Nor is this the place to set out the history of the idea or to show how it became central to modern constitutions, except to note the number of nations qualifying as democratic has steadily increased in recent years to just under a half of the total. It seems reasonable to assume that a democratic nation, a self-governing people, would want to make sure that the constitution, the basic of government and of relations between the people and government, provide for and protect self-government and hence democracy. (shrink)

Were there atheists and was there atheism in the Renaissance and the Reformation? There are no clear records for self-professed atheists at the twilight of the period, yet it is largely at that time that the semantic field of atheism began to be assembled and articulated. In one way or another various strategies have been adopted to study the history of atheism and atheists in order to negotiate the lack of evidence of self-professed atheists. Some scholars categorically deny the existence (...) of atheists beyond the level of accusations, while others point to esoteric atheists. Some look for more visible evidence by studying atheism as a product of modern secularism, others by studying the history of theism. The essay offers an overview of the major scholarly approaches of those who have sought to answer this historical question, and presents a concluding case study of the humanist and philosopher Marsilio Ficino’s engagement with atheism. (shrink)

“Man is a great miracle”. Nowadays, a student who happens to have studied nothing more than a smattering of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s philosophical writings might only remember this one line from the introduction of Pico’s most famous Oration, which Pico originally conceived as an introductory oration to a public disputation over his 900 Conclusions—that is, the 900 Conclusions primarily about philosophy, theology, and magic that he brazenly wished to debate in Rome in 1486, which earned him an excommunication. If (...) pressed by an instructor during an exam to explain what Pico means by this great miracle, a student might quote from a passage shortly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS At the Origins of Modern Atheism. By MICHAEL J. BucKLEY, S.J. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Pp. viii+ 445. Writing ostensibly a history of the philosophical origins of 18th century atheism in 17th century theism, Michael Buckley, S.J., has contributed a learned, subtle, and provocative hook whose length is significantly increased and whose focus is considerably enlarged by a running commentary about the metatheory (...) (Richard McKeon's philosophical semantics) that structures his reading of the chosen theists and atheists. Buckley provides the best summary of his own historical conclusion: "... theology generated apologetic philosophy and philosophy generated Universal Mechanics, and these in turn co-opted theology to become the foundations of theistic assertions... [But] when the contradictions between Cartesian and Newtonian mechanics were further negated... god became a deus otiosus" [pp. 358-359]. This conclusion rests on a philosophical principle whose elements are taken from Plato's Seventh Epistle: " The name, the definition, and the instance for the atheistic negations are all set by the current theism " [p. 15]. In turn, this principle is justified by a cluster of meta-theses that are not easily summarized, although one stands above the rest: " Much more may he involved in such a process of ideas [from 17th century theism to 18th century atheism] than their· own internal necessity, hut internal necessity remains and governs inherently " [p. 334]. The latter meta-thesis asserts that there is a dialectic of ideas and it is from this point of view that Buckley reads the conceptual history of modern atheism. Dialectical necessity is a bugbear for many contemporary philosophers, hut Buckley argues, convincingly I think, that some kind of conceptual necessity links theism and atheism. Atheism is, essentially, the negation of a particular form of theism. In Hegelian terms, atheism is a determinate negation which draws all of its conceptual content from what it negates. Buckley, however, puts an even greater Hegelian spin on the same point. If the theism carries within itself a contradiction, it negates itself and, thereby, dialectically generates its contradiction-atheism [cf. p. 17]. " Modern atheism took not only its meaning hut its existence from the self-alienation of religion " [p. 359]. A theism that believes in the existence of an intelligent, personal God, Who creates and orders the universe, but that attempts a rational 144 BOOK REVIEWS 145 justification of this belief apart from the religious experience that alone can embody such a faith contains exactly the kind of inner contradiction that generates the negation of itself. Buckley focuses on the poignant contradiction of a Christian theology abandoning " the religious figure of Jesus as the principal evidence for the reality of God" [p. 41] in favor of some philosophy (whether that of Descartes, Malebranche, or Newton) which provides a different and allegedly more certain kind of evidence for God's existence. This theology, or more precisely the theistic philosophies it spawned, are the sources of modern atheism because, if Descartes and Newton are consistently combined, philosophy can do quite well without God. Laplace's famous reply to Napoleon, although it was not originally an atheistic slogan, captures what Diderot and d'Holbach thought: God is an unnecessary hypothesis in a truly universal mechanics which needs to presuppose only matter and motion. The historical story, of course, is more complicated than this skeleton dialectic can suggest. Buckley richly details the story but I shall rehearse only its opening chapter. Buckley begins with the Jesuit theologian, Leonard Lays (1554-1623), usually known under his Latin name, Lessius, whose De providentia numinis et anima immortalitate (1613) set the pattern for subsequent Catholic theology. Lessius, who was convinced that atheism by eliminating the eternal judge destroys morals and sound politics, revived Stoic arguments, numerous variations on a theme, which show that the universe is everywhere imprinted with a divine design. Lessius's intent, although he referred only to ancient philosophers, was not to replay the classical battle between the Stoics and the Epicureans but to combat the atheism, silent and disguised in contemporary Europe, that Lessius thought to be the inevitable outcome of the wars of religion and theological fights. Lessius, however, paid scant attention to his own insight... (shrink)

I suggest that contemporary economics shares many of the characteristics of methodological behaviourism in psychology, with its emphasis on the influence of motivation, learning, and situational incentives on behaviour, and minimal interest in the details of the cognitive processes that transform input (information) into output (behaviour). The emphasis on these characteristics has the same strengths and weaknesses in economics as in behaviourist psychology.

In the ten dense chapters of his new book, John Finnis examines and sometimes amends what he takes to be the key moral, legal, social and political doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. Finnis correctly stresses that neither ethics nor politics, in the Arstotelian tradition to which Aquinas belonged, are theoretical sciences. They are ‘practical’ or action‐guiding sciences. Since societal order originates in free choice, it is subject to moral norms. The latter are more firmly grounded by Aquinas than Aristotle because the (...) former unlike the latter has an explicit and coherent account of universal or exceptionless moral principles.Finnis natural law ethics derives from a set of self‐evident precepts that focus practical reason on the pursuit and protection of basic human goods. Finnis expanding list of the latter now include marriage. Finnis equates – implausibly, in my view – attaining the ensemble of basic human goods with Aquina's notion of beatitudo imperfecta or this‐worldly happiness.Throughout the book, Finnis' exegesis of Aquinas is slanted towards bolstering Finnis' own Thomist philosophical ethics. Accordingly, Thomistic historical scholarship, which carefully traced Aquinas' biblical and patristic sources and which locate Aquinas' theological ethics within the conditions of his own life and times, has little weight in Finnis' interpretation. Overall, Finnis shows little concern for the internal logic of the Summa theologiae and, consequently, he does not adequately clarify how Aquinas' own ethics, according to its proper principles, can be both integrally theological and rational without thereby becoming a philosophical ethics. (shrink)