Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

We show that a 0–1 law holds for propositional modal logic, both for structure validity and frame validity. In the case of structure validity, the result follows easily from the well-known 0–1 law for first-order logic. However, our proof gives considerably more information. It leads to an elegant axiomatization for almost-sure structure validity and to sharper complexity bounds. Since frame validity can be reduced to a Π11 formula, the 0–1 law for frame validity helps delineate when 0–1 laws exist for (...) second-order logics. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page W1-W2, January 2012.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 31-38, November 2011.

We show that a 0–1 law holds for propositional modal logic, both for structure validity and frame validity. In the case of structure validity, the result follows easily from the well-known 0–1 law for first-order logic. However, our proof gives considerably more information. It leads to an elegant axiomatization for almost-sure structure validity and to sharper complexity bounds. Since frame validity can be reduced to a Π11 formula, the 0–1 law for frame validity helps delineate when 0–1 laws exist for (...) second-order logics. (shrink)

In their article in the September-October 2010 issue of IRB: Ethics & Human Research, Chris Kaposy and Françoise Baylis argue that the contraception policy of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s institutional review board fails to meet an ethically ideal standard in establishing the criteria investigators should follow when including women of childbearing potential in clinical research. In this response, we argue that the UNMC IRB’s policy is evidence-based and pragmatically oriented and that it therefore better safeguards women’s autonomy than (...) an ideal policy could. We also offer some of our experiences with the policy since it was implemented six years ago. (shrink)

Writing about the intellectual development of a philosopher is a delicate business. My own endeavor to reinterpret the influence of Hegel on Dewey troubles some scholars because, they believe, I make Dewey seem less original.1 But if, like Dewey, we overcome Cartesian dualism, placing the development of the self firmly within a complex matrix of social processes, we are forced to reexamine, without necessarily surrendering, the notion of individual originality, or what Neil Gross calls “discourse[s] of creative genius.”2 To use (...) a mundane example, I can recall several conversations with Dewey scholars about his dislike for his home state of Vermont, all of which revolved around personal reasons he may.. (shrink)

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) "neuron" and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) “neuron” and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. Once upon a time a hungry wanderer came into a village. He filled an iron cauldron with water, built a fire under it, and dropped a stone into the water. “I do like a tasty stone soup” he announced. Soon a villager added a cabbage to the pot, another added some salt and others added potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was a meal for all. (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia is a unique collection of essays that examines the exchange of political ideas between Western Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. The contributors to the volume call for globalizing the scope of research and teaching in the history of political thought.

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Joseph Noshpitz was at the forefront of psychodynamic treatment and research with children and adolescents. These previously unpublished papers are introduced by experts who contemporize and contextualize the work for the modern reader.--[book cover].

Interpretation and politics merge in one the famous story of Joseph's power of dream interpretation in the Hebrew Bible. Rome's College of Augurs reinforces the entwinement of interpretation, power, religion, and folklore that one can also find in the earlier context of the Delphic Oracle. Augury reminds us that understanding happens in the context of an event, a context that presupposes one is missing something, lacking the necessary vision or foresight, and help is called for. Most of the contemporary (...) scholars who write about philosophical hermeneutics, the tradition which includes Martin Heidegger and Hans‐Georg Gadamer, are allergic to politics in the proletarian sense of that word. Party politics and parliamentarian procedures receive almost no attention in the secondary literature on contemporary hermeneutics. Assertion about the political incompetence of philosophy opens the door to an esoteric tradition in philosophy that includes Plato's “secret doctrine”, and stretches back to Pythagoras and Heraclitus. (shrink)

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections (...) into several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

The marginality of poetry in American culture has been taken for granted at least since the dawn of the modernist period, when Walt Whitman printed his first volume of poetry at his own expense. More recently, it has become an article of faith that there is a real popular audience for poetry, but somewhere else-in the East. Literary journals, the popular press, and publishers have made household names of a handful of Eastern European writers: Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Zbigniew (...) Herbert. One is regaled with chestnuts about ordinary people in the Eastern bloc who care about "the Word," manuscripts passed from hand to hand, even poems preserved orally. Inevitably, the questions are revived: Where are the great American poets? Has American poetry been reduced to private confessions and personal trivia? Why is it that our poetry lacks that public, political relevance? The answer to such questions is often that we do not have the weight of History on our backs, the state oppression under which, as Milosz says, "poetry is no longer alienated," no longer "a foreigner in society," and can become more important than bread.1 But what has not surfaced in the vaunted "poetry and politics" debate is the extent to which our homage to victims of censorship everywhere has become a fetishization of totalitarianism, and a self-serving one at that. The mythology of our freedom, unbounded and unmediated, depends precisely on this other world, on what happens over there. 1. Czeslaw Milosz, The Witness of Poetry , p. 95; hereafter abbreviated WP. Bruce F. Murphy's work has appeared in the Paris Review, Pequod, and An Gael. He has completed a manuscript of poems and with Friedrich Ulfers is writing a study of Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

This anthology of selections from the works of noted philosophers affords the student an immediate contact with the unique historical background of the philosophy of science. The selections, many of which have not been readily accessible, follow the development of the philosophy of science from 1786 to 1927. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editor designed to familiarize the reader with a particular philosopher and provide insights into his work. Joseph J. Kockelmans divides the selections (...) into several sections. Part 1, from 17861850, includes chapters by Immanuel Kant, on the metaphysical foundations of natural science, John Frederick William Herschel, on experience and the analysis of phenomena, William Whewell, on the nature and conditions of inductive science, and John Stuart Mill, on induction and the law of universal causation; part 2, from 18701899, includes chapters by Hermann Von Helmholtz, on the origin and significance of geometrical axioms, William Stanley Jevons, on the philosophy of inductive inference, John Bernard Stallo, on the kinetic theory of gasses and the conditions of the validity of scientific hypotheses, Ernst Mach, on the economical nature of physical inquiry, Karl Pearson, on perceptual and conceptual space, Emile Boutroux, on mechanical laws, Heinrich Hertz, on the appropriateness, correctness, and permissibility of scientific theories, and Ludwig Boltzmann, on the fundamental principles and basic equations of mechanics. The third part, covering the first decade of the twentieth century, includes chapters by Henri Jules Poincare, on science and reality, Charles Peirce, on Induction, Pierre Marie Duhem, on the laws of physics, William Ostwald, on energetism and mechanics, Emile Meyerson, on identity of thought and nature as the final goal of science, Ernst Cassirer, on functional concepts of natural science; part 4, from 19101927, includes chapters by Charles Dunbar Broad, on phenomenalism, Alfred North Whitehead, on time, space, and material, Bertrand Russell, on the world of physics and the world of sense, Norman Robert Cambbell, on the meaning of science, Moritz Schlick, on basic issues of the philosophy of natural science, and Percy Williams Bridgman, on the concepts of space, time, and causality. Philosophy of Science provides a concise single volume text to the discipline and enables students to understand and evaluate the various trends in our contemporary philosophy of science. Joseph J. Kockelmans is professor emeritus of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State Univers. (shrink)

Bruce Caldwell has disputed a number of points in my earlier account of the development of the Austrian school of economics from Carl Menger to Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. The issues in contention regard Friedrich von Wieser’s intellectual affiliation with Hayek and his influence on the formation of Hayek’s economic thought; Wieser’s status as a general equilibrium theorist; and the reason for Hayek’s early flirtation with general equilibrium theory. In this article I argue that Hayek was a (...) self-conscious adherent of the Wieserian tradition and remained so even after he received the Nobel Prize in 1974 and that he distinguished between this tradition and the Böhm-Bawerkian tradition followed by Ludwig von Mises. I also contend that Wieser used the construction of a general equilibrium economy subject to a single will as both a normative benchmark by which to appraise the performance of the real-world market economy and as an analytical tool to explain the formation of market prices. Finally, I argue that Hayek concerned himself with the problems of the Wieser-type general equilibrium economy beginning with his earliest writings as a professional economist, years before he began to focus on the theoretical problems of money and the business cycle.Bruce Caldwell a discuté un certain nombre de points de mon article récent sur le développement de l’école autrichienne d’économie de Carl Menger en passant par Ludwig von Mises et F.A. Hayek. Les controverses concernant l’affiliation intellectuelle de Hayek vis-à-vis de Friedrich von Wieser et l’influence de ce dernier sur la pensée économique de Hayek, le statut de Wieser en tant que théoricien de l’équilibre général, et les raisons pour lesquelles le jeune Hayek flirta avec la théorie de l’équilibre général.Dans cet article je défends la thèse selon laquelle Hayek était conscient du fait qu’il s’inscrivait dans la tradition Wieserienne et qu’il l’était toujours même après sa réception du prix Nobel en 1974 et quand il fît la distinction entre cette tradition et la tradition inaugurée par Böhm-Bawerk et poursuivie par Mises. L’article affirme aussi que Wieser utilisa la construction d’une économie en équilibre général sujette à une volonté unique à la fois comme standard normatif pour évaluer les performances des marchés dans le monde réel et comme outil analytique pour expliquer la formation des prix marchands. Enfin, l’article argumente que Hayek s’intéressa aux problèmes relevant d’une économie en équilibre général à la Wieser dans ses premiers écrits en tant qu’économiste et cela bien avant qu’il ne se concentrât sur les problèmes théoriques de la monnaie et du cycle des affaires. (shrink)

Puzzling Out the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman. Edited by Marilyn J. Lundberg; Steven Fine; and Wayne T. Pitard. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 55. Leiden: BRill, 2012. Pp. xvi + 334, illus. $245.

The paper challenges Joseph Salerno’s recent revisionist account in “The Place of Human Action in the Development of Economic Thought” of the relationship between Friedrich von Wieser and F.A. Hayek and of their views on equilibrium theory. The paper argues, contra Salerno, that Wieser was not a proponent of general equilibrium theory, so could not have influenced Hayek in the manner Salerno suggests; that there was not a concerted effort by Schumpeter, Wieser, Mayer, and Hayek to advocate general equilibrium (...) theory in the prewar and inter-war years among the Austrians; and finally, that Hayek’s early attraction to what he called “equilibrium analysis” had causes independent of those alleged by Salerno.Cet article récuse l’interprétation révisionniste récente de Joseph Salerno dans son article “The Place of Human Action in the Development of Economic Thought” à propos des relations entre Friedrich von Wieser et Friedrich Hayek, et de leurs visions au sujet de l’équilibre. S’inscrivant en cela en opposition avec ce qu’avance Salerno, cet article suggère que Wieser n’était pas un partisan de la théorie de l’équilibre général et, en conséquence, ne peut avoir influencé Hayek comme le suggère Salerno ; qu’il n’y a eu aucun effort concerté entre Schumpeter, Wieser, Mayer et Hayek pour promouvoir la théorie de l’équilibre général parmi les autrichiens durant les années d’avant-guerre et celles de l’entre-deux guerres ; et enfin, que l’intérêt du jeune Hayek dans ce qu’il appelait “l’analyse de l’équilibre” avait des causes autres que celles évoquées par Salerno. (shrink)

Transcendentalism and the secular turn -- Transcendentalism in the postwar years -- Gender, reform, and ridicule -- Charles Ives : sound -- Joseph Cornell : things -- Truman Nelson : rage -- Beston, Oliver, Dillard, and fluid transcendentalism.

This article evaluates the centrality of class in the "social interpretation" of the French Revolution put forward by George Lefebvre, Albert Soboul, and others. The social interpreters introduce an admirable complexity into their explanations of the causes and dynamics of the Revolution, but this complexity stems from their use of loose, multiple, and often contradictory notions of class influenced partly by Joseph Barnave's "stage theory" of pre-Revolutionary France and by "vulgar Marxism." These notions contrast with the concept of class (...) - surplus-labor extraction - developed in the three volumes of Marx's Capital, and they also are the focus of criticisms advanced by revisionist historians such as Alfred Cobban and Franqois Furet. While the revisionists' criticisms are often justified and provide useful theoretical directions, the social interpreters' focus on class can be preserved by using this alternative concept. Using this concept can consistently convey the many class divisions in pre-Revolutionary France and the multiple class positions historical agents simultaneously occupied before, during, and after the Revolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are (...) the fruit of a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)